Chapter 4
“Thank you for meeting me on such short notice. It’s the only day off I have left before I’m leaving.” Rivers Between Us gestured for Selara to have a seat across from him. As she sat down, Marta joined them at the table and sat at his side, pushing a plate of stew in front of him.
“Eat, now.”
“I need to finish this, then I promise I’ll eat something before I fly.”
Selara smiled. “If you need a moment...”
“No, I’m fine. Really. Listen, I have a special mission in the works for you, so I wanted to tell you myself.”
Selara bowed her head and looked at him through one slitted eye over the dozen low candles spread across the table. It was a noisy afternoon in the Grand Lodge, but such was generally the case these days. The pace of construction was kept so hectic that there were always workers coming off of their shifts around the clock. She whispered, just loud enough to cut through the noise, “Please tell me that you want me to track down that pack of lunars and release their exaltation so that I can have a piece of the action.”
“Heh... eh... not exactly. Good plan, though. Initiative. Have you ever been to Varsi?”
“Never. They’re not even part of the Marukan alliance, are they?”
“They have a king, or voivode, or whatever, and they like to think they’re independent.” Rivers rubbed his eyes and stretched his neck. “Really, they’re just begging to be conquered and turned into a garrison with those walls. We’d love to offer them protection and be that garrison, only without the killing, but so far they’ve rebuffed our ambassadors. It seems they don’t trust our ability to back up our claims. Oh, and they hate us, just like they hate every nation close enough to field an army within sight of their turrets.”
“So we’re going to conquer them? I may need a few more women...”
“We’re going to impress them. Demonstrate our strength. They’re already terrified of the Mask, so maybe if we put on a good show they’ll see the alternative actually stands a chance.”
“I’m still not following you. Does this involve singing and dancing?”
“A tournament. A martial arts tournament for anyone that can afford the entrance fee, sponsored by the immaculate order and Voivode Turrakhan himself. What do you say?”
“Who will I get to fight?”
“There’s no telling who might show, but there should be a heavy immaculate presence.”
“Really? This far from any realm outpost?”
“Not realm, immaculate. There is a faint distinction that I usually ignore because I don’t care. So... whatever.”
“I’ll do it.” She stood from her seat. “Thank you for trusting me with this mission, master.”
“Yes, well, you’re the best martial artist we have on the Eastern front. Could you give this letter to your teammate as well?” He handed her a folded sheaf of parchment.
“For Ye? Aren’t you going to say good bye to her yourself?” Selara leaned against the railing of their private balcony and overlooked the Grand Lodge below.
Rivers bowed his head and grinned, but Marta punched him in the shoulder as he did so. “Hey, ouch. I’d love to see her off, especially since she isn’t entirely healed, but she just has this way of... I don’t know...”
“Oh, I know all too well.”
He spread his hands weakly. “I would have thought that since she is bound by celestial magic to my will, I would have a little control over the relationship. I may have been very wrong.”
Marta lifted an eyebrow and punched him again. “So there’s a relationship, then?”
“Agh! Women! Good bye, both of you.” He started to pile the sheaf of papers before him together.
“Nathan, you promised you’d eat!”
Selara scratched her nose. “Nathan?”
The sorcerer almost fell backward over the bench as he tried to stand. “I’m sorry, but I have to be at the Marukan redoubt by dusk for my... secret... operation... that I can’t talk about to anyone.”
Marta sighed and reached under the table, producing a wicker basket covered in a checked cloth. She handed it to him and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
Rivers ran his hand over his bald head and laughed. “What am I going to do when we get you married off?” He reached the stairs, flanked by Pai and Pei, his ever present guardians. Beyond him, at the base of the stair, laborers from all corners of the Marukan vied for service, carpenters and stonemasons, glassblowers and painters. It was a crowd of strangers, all united for a common purpose, and Selara couldn’t look at them without feeling an welling of pride in her chest. Before descending into the crowd, Rivers turned to Selara and said, “Fight honorably, Daybringer. I have faith in your abilities; have confidence in yourself as well.”
The five amalgams approached the gates of Varsi, bastion on the Gray. They were enormous, far larger and stronger than a city of this size really needed, if not for its position at the corner of three kingdoms. The walls themselves were made of slate gray stone, rising almost ten yards high to peaked crenellations, narrow towers, and tall, thin windows. The gates were open today; none challenged them as they walked up the ramp and entered the city, past the guards in their red surcoats and black sashes.
Inside the city, the famed walls gave way the squalor of the second age. Inside the gates a makeshift bazaar had formed in what had once been a grand courtyard. Above the cobbled together stalls, on the edges of the yard, the dingy walls of poorly white-washed apartments rose in two and three story sections. The amalgams were quickly pestered by hawkers on all sides, selling malforged weapons, dubious foodstuffs, watery-eyed slaves and spastic livestock.
“Whee! I love vacation!” Yao Ye nearly bounced from stall to stall, using her shockpike as a walking stick and keeping her new, slinged arm close to her chest.
“We’re not on vacation. We are on a mission.” Selara hissed as she grabbed her robe by the hood and pulled her away from a selection of baubles and trinkets.
“Not me! I am still on leave. Rivers told me in my own personal letter. He said I didn’t have to do anything good this week. See?”
Zhou Wing grapped his backside and leaped a foot into the air. “Ow! You’ve got fingers like a blacksmith’s tongs!”
Toruna seemed detached (even more so than usual) as she responded, “Ah, Yao Ye, I’ll not argue with you. You may do as you please. Here’s some silver...”
“Yeah!”
“...and try not to get into any trouble. Some of us are not on vacation.”
“Then why did you leave the cartload of boring things back at the Retreat?”
“We had to use sorcery to get here in order to make it in time for the tournament.” As they pushed through the crowd, Yao Ye juggling a shockpike and a purse of silver in one hand, they came to a circular court around a dry fountain carved from green veined marble. Five muscular, nude warriors, each with a different weapon, supported a bowl three yards across in the shape of a great tortoise shell, each statue surrounded coquettish, adoring cherubim that clung to their arms and legs in rapt worship. The faces of all five figures had been destroyed by hammer and chisel many years past.
As they entered this plaza, Selara quickly became aware of a dozen or so men and women that watched them enter with apparent distaste. She saw a beastman with a goat’s face whisper conspiratorially to a huge man with a tetsubo slung casually over one shoulder, studded with spikes. A man with long, greasy hair that hung to his waist watched them and snickered while tossing a throwing knife over and over again in his left hand, first catching by the handle and then by the point.
Selara noticed all this and looked to Toruna, who gave her a coy half smile. “Your task begins...” she whispered, just as the goat-man sauntered up to them. Almost immediately, as though drawn from the gutters like rats in the rain, six of the thugs materialized from the crowd on each side of him.
“You must be the team sent by those arrogant bastards in God Crossing. Varsi is a free town. We don’t need devils to protect us. You can turn around and go right back the way you came... except maybe the little firebrand,” he said with a grin.
Yao Ye opened her mouth, then closed it without making a sound. Selara took a step toward the man with the head of a goat, and the four people on either side of him moved in to surround her. They grinned patted their weapons, one swinging a saber in an arc past her throat, one with a halberd tapping it against the pavement. Selara looked left, then right, and asked, “Are you the voivode of this town?”
The goat-man gave a barking laugh. “I’m just the lucky man who’s going be throwing your corpse over the wall in five minutes.”
Selara smiled. “Right then.” Without assuming a stance, hardening her limbs with essence, or summoning any of the vast energies that had been bound to her soul, she straightened her arm in a lightning thrust with her fingers closed together into the head of an adder. Her strike hit his hairy throat, sealing his windpipe in a single pinch.
The beastman stood an stared at her, bug-eyed, his mouth open but without breathing in or out. His lieutenants looked at him, speechless for a moment, while Selara gracefully settled into the snake form. After several seconds of helpless choking, he gasped out, “Kill!”
The four rough men and women surrounding her leaped as one into the air to bring their sword, halberd, bo staff, and tiger claws down upon her. She looked up for an instant, her silver eye watching their motions while her arms writhed as of their own accord. One hand caught the foot of the man wielding the halberd, and in a single graceful motion, like drawing a silken scarf past her face, she pulled him, halberd and all, over herself and into the three leaping warriors. The four crashed to the cobblestones in a heap, but the snake artist was immediately beset by another four, charging with spear, hook swords, a wolf-tooth staff, and a chair. Selara charged them shouting at the top of her lungs, running straight into the spear and clapping her hands over the blade. The wielder found herself slammed backwards against the edge of the fountain, cracking her skull against an ornamental stone fish, while Selara use the weapon to vault over the enemies and land, perfectly poised, in the tortoise shell at the apex of the fountain.
From her perch, she struck her pose, calling forth the essence fangs and scales. She shouted hoarsely, “We’re not here for trouble. I’m just here for the tournament!”
As though summoned by her voice from the pits of malpheas, two score men and women, bandits and rogues, rebels and outcasts came pouring out of the plaza’s stalls, leaping into the dry fountain and climbing up the five gargantuan statues.
As men wielding axes, machetes, and rakes ran past him, Zhou Wing confided to Toruna, “I think they really don’t like us here.”
“Maybe...” she said thoughtfully as she watched Selara smash a man’s fingers with her booted heel as he tried to climb into the shell to fight her. “Or maybe this is just their way of greeting visitors. They’re very... competitive.”
“Selara! Help!” Toruna and Wing turned and suddenly realized that Yao Ye was being carried away by the enormous man with the tetsubo. He had her under one arm, laughing heartily as he jogged away from the fight.
Selara turned for an instant, somewhat preoccupied by the midget on her back chewing on her ear and the man that had just caught her feet in a net. “Silly girl, use your shockpike!”
“Well...” The large man was now running around the edge of the plaza, leaping over benches and fallen fighters. She shouted as she tried to keep her balance and avoid bouncing her head on the ground, “That’s the other thing that was in the letter. I’m not allowed to fight for the rest of the week!”
Selara hurled the midget into the net wielder, causing both to stumble off of the shell, but as she turned to chase down her ally, a pair of bearded twins caught both of her arms in their fighting chains. “Hang on!” she shouted as she head-butted the one to her left.
Yao Ye shrieked with terror as her captor reached the opposite end of the plaza, when his motion was arrested by two men approaching from the alley-ways. He bumped into the one in the lead, a short youth carrying a curved saber at his waist and wearing a black silk bandana over his long, braided hair. “Out of my way, boy,” he shouted, as he changed his grip on the struggling Yao Ye.
The second man took two steps away as the ‘boy’ flared his tattered wool cape behind him and adopted the five-dragon stance. His feet were fitted with boots of soft red suede, his limbs wrapped tightly in black cloth bands up to his knees and elbows, and he wore a sleeveless black cotton fighting robe with gold and silver intertwining dragons embroidered on the chest and back. One hand clenched in the five-dragon fist, his black nails biting into his skin, the boy responded, “Who is this fool that dares throw his life in the street before me?”
From where she lay on the ground, the midget, Sun Li, raised her head, and shouted, “Can it be young master Salvar Blackhand?” The man lying under her looked up and said, “You mean the rising star that everyone in the martial arts world is talking about?”
The shopkeepers in their stalls began whispering excitedly with their patrons; Selara struggled unnoticed in the fountain. The great man holding Yao Ye said, “I have heard of you, the pupil of Fear’s Umbra that lacks all concern for the pursuit of virtue. I like your style. If you want the girl, you can have her!” With that, he hurled her bodily through the air at Salvar.
The boy wasted no time. He caught Yao Ye by the waist, spun her behind his back and into his cape, then caught the trailing end of his cape in his now free hand. Plucking the shockpike from her hand, he raised it just in time to receive the strike from the giant hammer. Yao Ye had scarcely enough time to say, “Um... hello,” before she was carried back into the battlefield on the young martial artist’s back.
The brawl raged on. Skulls were cracked like gourds, arms cracked like twigs, blood spattered the arms of the statues, and bodies piled in the square. Salvar found himself, against his will, backing up the side of the fountain until he was also fighting in the bowl of the shell, back to back with Selara, and Yao Ye squashed between!
Selara cast over her shoulder, “Blackhand, eh?” as she stomped on a man’s ear.
“Don’t get me wrong. When I face you in the ring, you’ll feel the full sting of my seven-devils and five-dragons style. Make no mistake!”
Yao Ye tugged at his robe. “Excuse me, but I think there aren’t any people left to fight, and your back is getting really sweaty...”
Salvar swept her around before him and set her on her feet facing him. “I’m sorry, miss. Are you all right?”
She took a step backwards and coughed. She whispered, weakly, “really sweaty...”
For a moment, Salvar and Selara faced one another on the tortoise shell, each still in their stance. The Daybringer opened her mouth to speak, when a shout from the plaza interrupted them.
“A stag will fight for a mate, a wolf for a night’s meal, but only the anathema and their minions will maim and kill for the sake of pleasure.”
Selara looked down, then covered her face with one hand, for just at that moment a procession of monks had entered the square. The dozen men and women in sky blue robes were standing with their hands clasped before them, looking with disdain at the worldly mass of broken and bleeding bodies sprawled before them.
Salvar muttered, “Jin Shin Twelfth Son...”
The monk at their lead was a powerful man with a string of wooden beads the size of fists around his neck. He had eyebrows as thick and dark as though they were painted, a face as big and round as a platter, and hands like blocks of wood.
Selara looked down at him and slowly eased out of her stance. She whispered, “Is he a friend of yours?”
“He’s the reason I’m here. He’s a pupil of my master’s sixth least favorite abbot.”
Selara leaped from the bowl to land before the fountain, approaching the tall monk. “If you have a problem with me or the men and women I serve, we are ready to accept your challenge.”
His voice was strong and clear, like a great brass bell, and he spoke to the people of the plaza without looking at her. “Bloodthirsty as ever. I am here for the competition, not to squabble in the streets. Perhaps if you and your masters spent more time attending to affairs of state instead of quarreling and building pleasure domes, you wouldn’t be in your current situation. Pathetic, honestly. Relying on Lookshy to defend you while the undead eat away your southern border and the hordes of beastmen march into your territory at will.”
Selara lifted a finger, about to make a stunning rejoinder, doubtless, but the immaculate delegation continued on their way. Zhou Wing and Toruna joined her, tripping over groaning bodies as they went. The sorceress wiped a tooth off her shoulder. “Well...” she began.
“Yeah. When I started talking, I didn’t think he would take what I said and make it sound bad like that.”
“Ah...”
Wing opened his medical satchel and began fidgeting with the contents. “Well, I think I’m going to be busy for a little while. You two can go on ahead, I think the first round should be beginning shortly. Say, what happened to Yao Ye and Shu Zhuang?”
“Thanks for asking, Wing. Still being manhandled!”
In fact she was just then being lowered to the ground by Salvar as they reached the bottom of the fountain. She grabbed her shockpike back out of his hand and marched over to them. “You know, I don’t like this town. Let’s go hurt more people.”
Salvar returned to the man he had left on the other side of the plaza, who was even then leaning against a broken column with his rice hat pulled low over his head. As the young martial artist approached, he gave a short bow to him and straightened his cape. “Sorry, sifu... I... ah... I know I shouldn’t be... with these people... ah... she smelled really good.”
Fear’s Umbra let the pipe in his left hand droop until it hung, vertical, from his right hand. He looked for a moment at the long, carefully manicured nails on his right hand, then wordlessly cuffed his student in the ear and began walking toward the hotel district.
The ring for the competition was a raised stone dais before the voivode’s palace, a fluted basalt tower that rose like a barbed pillar from the cobblestones. Around the edges of the courtyard over a hundred people had gathered to watch the fight. The citizens of Varsi did seem to be a rather martial lot. Every man, woman, and child carried a weapon, even if it was only a whip, a pair of war fans, or a wooden sword. Hawkers were traveling through the crowd selling hachimaki for the tournament, and for a small coin they would ink the name of one of the contestants on the headband. None of them had Selara’s name on their brow.
Voivode Turrakhan himself stood in the center of the arena. On his shoulders he wore an immense sleeveless robe of ermine, but around his waist was a leather belt as broad as a man’s forearm. On his head was a thick, regal mane of brown hair, shot with silver, but his beard was a wild mass of bristling curls that ran halfway down his chest. In his hand, he held aloft a pair of magnificently etched and wrought bracers.
“The rules are as follows: no weapons and no armor are allowed in the ring. The fight continues until one contestant surrenders, is thrown out of the ring, or cannot rise to her feet. No techniques, martial or enlightened, are barred, and no interference will be brooked. To the winner, dinner with myself and companion you choose, the title of Champion of Varsi, and this pair of pure jade bracers.”
“There are sixteen entrants this year. There will be four rounds of combat, single elimination. First round: Green Devil Cui and Selara!”
Selara exhaled sharply. “Damn. I was hoping to have a chance to meditate before this fight.”
Toruna shouldered her pack and nodded to her. “Well, I’ll see you when the tournament is over.”
“What?”
“This is your mission, and none of us can help you in the arena. I think I’ll take a little vacation myself.”
Yao Ye grabbed the green warrior’s arm. “I’ll stay and watch you fight!”
Selara sighed and shook the girl off of her arm, then stepped into the stone ring.
Green Devil Cui stood opposite her, and as he entered, the crowd began cheering in a dull roar. He was as short as Ye, with wild red hair in a glistening affro, reddish brown skin, and a rather lewd picture of a green devil tattooed over his chest. He roared at her and performed a kata, but Selara was not fooled. This was not an enlightened contestant.
At a signal from the voivode, who had retreated to a balcony overlooking the square, Cui charged at her with both arms raised in fists above his head. Selara stood, impassive before him, and then reached out with the first charm in the snake form.
Of the hundred and thirty-five onlookers, six of them blinked at that precise moment. Thus they missed the first bout of the tournament. The remaining hundred and twenty-nine that were looking at that instant at the arena saw Green Devil Cui charge, Selara’s foot rising as he approached at the last possible instant to lightly break his nose on the up swing, and then Selara’s foot falling in a devastating ax kick to the crown of his head. In the blink of twelve eyes, Cui was on the stone, bleeding quietly, while the crowd as a body inhaled in a gasp of surprise.
Then they began booing.
Selara quickly left the arena, lowering herself off of the dais. “What’s going on? I won, didn’t I?” she asked Yao Ye.
The girl shook her head sadly. “I can see that you have much to learn about the martial arts world. Come, let wise Ye be your sifu. Humble yourself and she will teach you.”
Stunned, Selara followed her teammate out of the plaza to the collective derision of the people of Varsi.
Varsi is not a capital of industry. It serves as a reliable waystation for trade, and does some business in ore and grain, but the city has never managed to fulfill the promise that it’s lofty walls suggest. Thus it was easy enough to find a vacant warehouse near the waterfront side of the city, after mostly chasing out a suspicious looking band of preteen gangsters.
Zhou Wing crouched along the wall near an open door, trying to evade the pervasive smell of mildew in the long room. Yao Ye paced back and forth in front of Selara, who stood with her arms crossed. Ye began by stretching out a palm to Selara, as though offering her up as an example. She said to herself (out loud), “I can teach this woman, true, but only if she is ready to be taught!”
“Look, Ye, never mind. I’ll just be sure to hit the next one harder. I get that they weren’t impressed, but I was low on essence...”
“No!” Yao Ye stopped her pacing and stamped her foot. “They don’t want to see you knock down men with a single blow. Varsi doesn’t trust us; they’d just say it was magic at work and dismiss it. You must show them strength, but you must show it in a way they can understand. That is what I will teach you today. Now watch me. Wing, hold my robe.”
After a few minutes of struggling with her robe and sling, Yao Ye stood in the middle of the empty warehouse, framed by the early afternoon sun filtering through slit windows high in the walls, clad in her jerkin, boots, and trousers. She spread her legs wide and lowered herself into a deep stance. “First of all, the bark-brown robe does not flatter you. I bet you’ve got a chest under there, you just need to find a shirt that proves it. Give them something to look at when you’re grunting and kicking.”
Wing coughed and covered his eyes as Yao Ye shouted, “See, stick our your chest like this.”
Selara stroked her chin thoughtfully. “Hmm... the other contestants do seem to have slightly more... dramatic attire.”
“Next, my student, you must learn that fighting is like dancing. The goal is not to overwhelm your partner in the first pass of arms. You goad him, draw him in, make him work. Don’t start with a finishing move, and don’t let him know how much better you are until you’ve got them watching.”
“This makes no sense. Fighting is about putting your foe on the ground in such a way that they cannot rise again unless you let them.”
Yao Ye raised her hand like a claw before her face and groaned. “No! Fighting is about demonstrating how awesome you are. Now, my final lesson for you is the most important: heroic speech. Now watch as I demonstrate.”
Yao Ye quickly performed a mock kata in the air, waving her good arm in a series of chops, kicking to the left, then the right, then before her, and then behind her. She finished by standing on one leg, with one arm stretched over her head, crying out, “I am Yao Ye of the Daybringers,” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “I am here to Do Good, Be Awesome, and Annihilate...”
“Yao Ye, every time you say that it sounds more ridiculous. It’s not going to happen. Just... just go, all right?” As Selara said this, however, she heard a faint sound coming from the doorway. Looking there, she saw three children staring in rapt awe... at Yao Ye.
“Fine,” Ye walked over to Wing and grabbed her robe from his lap. “Come on, Zhou Wing, I’m wasting my time trying to teach this one how to fight. She is too old. Too old, and set in her ways.”
Wing sighed and stood. “Good luck, Selara. Don’t worry so much about the crowd; you’ll have your hands full just making it to the finals with some of these contestants.”
Selara watched them leave with her hands on her hips. With the younger amalgams gone, the abandoned warehouse was oddly silent. She looked down at the damp earthen floor and sighed. She paced the length of the room a few times, her hands crossed behind her back. She stopped in the center of the room with her head bowed, thinking.
Suddenly, in a burst of motion, she performed a spinning kick through the air, landing on a rafter fifteen feet above her head. Balancing there in the hanging horse stance, she struck outwards to both sides with the cobra’s fangs, growling in a whisper to the room, “I have wrestled the guardians of the gods and been left for dead by a tiger that was a man. How can you hope to challenge the fury of my kung fu?”
The rafter creaked gently beneath her. Selara sighed again, and jumped to the floor scratching behind her ear. With hands limp with defeat, she pulled open the neck of her robe and looked down.
Meanwhile, in the bazaar of Varsi, Zhou Wing was being dragged from stall to stall by Yao Ye’s good arm. As she stopped at a sweets stand, filling her cheeks with ginger candy, he overheard her saying, “Are you going to see the fight tomorrow?”
“Whose fight? There are four fights tomorrow.” The vendor slapped at a horse fly on his neck and smiled at her, eying the silver that still remained in her purse.
“The dread warrior Selara of the Marukan alliance, that’s who!”
“Hmm... not worth watching.”
“You wait and see. This one will be worth remembering!” With that she walked on through the crowd.
Wing tapped her on the shoulder as she walked. “Why even bother talking to these people? They’re practically savages, no different from the beastmen.”
“Hmph. And what do you think of me?”
“Agh...”
“I’m done working for today. I’m supposed to be on vacation! Next, you help me pick out a kimono.”
“I really don’t know anything about that sort of thing.”
“You’re a man, aren’t you? You know what you like.”
She drew him through the crowds past several cloth merchants. She showed him garments of green, red, pink, and white silk, but regardless of what he said, she tossed them aside. Over and over he replied to her entreaties, “It looks good, great color, excellent quality, might be able to hide your thick legs.” To all of these she responded the same, handing the dresses back to the merchants without a second look (except for the last comment, which made her face turn hot and beet red for the longest five minutes of Wing’s life.)
After an hour of this, Wing was dragging his feet and following her with his head hanging from his shoulders, only looking up long enough to comment on the latest selection. He nearly cursed the day he had ever met Yao Ye, but he continued regardless. He only had to look at her right arm for a moment to remember why he was still following her. He was thinking of this fact when she drew across her sling a short sleeved kimono of shimmering blue silk. The front and back of it were covered in delicately embroidered peach branches, all in full bloom. He stared at it, entranced by the design, noticing how the gentle swell of the cloth fell over her shoulder, its indigo hue making even her firey skin seem somehow delicate and demure. Her blue eyes, lighter than the background of the dress, were set like two blazing stars in her glowing face, making a vivid counterpoint to the buds on the branches. He stared for a moment, speechless.
“Yep, I’ll take this one.” She handed a fist full of silver to the owner of the stall. She bared her teeth in a cat’s grin and laughed to herself. “This’ll make Rivers’ nose bleed!”
Wing shook his head, breaking free of the spell. “You know Ye,” he said as they walked away with the dress. “When you aren’t fighting all the time, you actually don’t look so bad.”
Ye gave him a sour look. “Yeah, your face doesn’t hurt my eyes as much when your mouth is closed, too.”
Two days later, Selara returned to the arena, ready for her next fight. In the chill dawn air she stepped onto the stone platform in her customary brown robes of office. Opposite stood her next opponent.
From high above in his balcony, the voivode personally announced the fight once more. Today he affected a bearskin thrown over his shoulders, and he drank from a steaming mug before bellowing out over the square, “The first match of today will be between Puyo’s own Ogre Fist Kuyen...”
The crowd, somewhat larger that day, burst into a cheer that echoed of of the walls of the tower, raising their fists in the air and stomping their feet as a seven foot tall man with arms like tree trunks stepped onto the stone platform. He wore a leather vest over his scar-crossed chest and breeches of the same material, all of which were carefully worked in repeating patterns of wild beasts prancing in endless circles. Thick leather bracers covered his wrists. His skin was a deep tan, and his deep brown hair was cut flat and short on top of his head.
The voivode motioned for silence and continued, “...and the green monster of God Crossing, Selara!”
The crowd stared mutely at the dais where Selara stood. From one side she heard Yao Ye shrilly shrieking at the top of her lungs, “Go Selara! Break his fat head!”
Ogre Fist Kuyen stepped forward and assumed his stance, his feet at shoulder width, fists clenched at his sides, knees slightly bent and toes turned inward. He gestured to his opponent and bellowed to the crowd, “I am Ogre Fist Kuyen, son of Fu Jin Tao, God of Unpredictable Dismemberment. From the age of six I was trained in the Razor Palm style. Who are you to challenge me?”
Selara lowered her head for a moment as though in submission to his attack, then with one flourish of her arm she whipped away her brown robes, hurling them, spinning, into the crowd. They gasped at the sight of the woman revealed. Selara was not exceptionally beautiful. Her arms and legs were long and tightly muscled; her long throat wrapped in ropey sinews. Even so, for that instant, she fairly shimmered before the crowd. To offset her olive skin she wore a tight blouse of red silk with a low neckline, sleeveless and sheer. The lines of her legs were accentuated by large, baggy trousers, belted low on her hips and dyed a deep shade of purple. Her large feet were bare, planted firmly in the deep snake stance, and the strength of her neck was accentuated by a choker of black bear claws.
She lifted an open hand, palm up, to her foe. She shouted in a sing-song cant that cut through the chill morning air, “I am Daybringer Selara, daughter of Chebhar the horse-thief. From the age of four I was trained to steal and flee. Know then, Kuyen, that a horse-thief’s daughter will use half of her martial skill to defeat your pathetic Razor Palms, for the glory of the solars who punish those who abuse their station and rely on pedigree instead of compassionate ability!”
Silence filled the square. The voivode himself leaned over his balcony to have a closer look at what was happening beneath him in the street. Yao Ye looked to her left and her right, then jumped on Zhou Wing’s back and and lifted one fist, shouting, “Selara!”
And then a small miracle happened, though not without the assistance of certain feats of essence. The crowd as one looked to Selara and began to cheer. The irrational exuberance spread like wildfire through those assembled, and in an instant the people in the square were leaping and shouting as though a great hero had returned to them.
Ogre Fist Kuyen was displeased by this. The hero of Puyo beat his chest with his fists, exhaled a great breath, and then charged at Selara with one palm extended. She struck her stance and waved her arms before her in the sinuous motion of the snake style, though at the last instant her hands slowed and parted. The strike went through to land on her shoulder, pulling bright red blood to the surface in a sudden spray. She staggered back from the blow, and he struck again, this time hitting her in the brow with a flat palm that left a flowing gash above her right eye. He lashed out a third time, leaping into the air and dropping on her arm as it slowly came up in a shielding crane wing. Again blood sprayed from her skin, and the Ogre Fist roared with delight.
Kuyen set his fists on his hips and bellowed out a great laugh. “Is this the compassionate ability you intended to show me? Perhaps in God Crossing, a town so young...”
Selara interrupted him. “Are you ready to begin? I think these people came to see a competition, not a dog barking at a bull.” Inwardly she cringed as the rehearsed words crossed her lips, but the effect was immediate. His face contorted into a ferocious mask of rage, and he launched himself at her in a double palm strike. She wasted no time. As he leaped, she sank into a stance so low and wide it was as though her legs hugged the very earth. As he dropped toward her, her hands writhed inside of his arms to flow to his neck and crotch. Like a farmer pulling a load of grain down from a loft, she lightly tossed him a dozen feet behind her.
He rolled to his feet, snarling, while the onlookers cheered with delight. He launched another flurry of blows at her, but she used the gating steps to lightly flow inside of his arms, inches from his face, as he quickly tried to back away. At the edge of the dais he stopped, his heels dangling over the edge. In his attacks she noticed a flash of silver, so Selara caught one of his wrists in her hand and twisted it between them. As she did so, a pair of razor blade flicked out of his wrist guard and remained extended a finger’s length, parallel to his palm.
Immediately an outcry of rose around him as news of the hidden blades spread through the bystanders. Selara snorted and stepped in, pinning his arms between them, her nose a hairsbreadth from his own. “These lands need righteous warriors. Meditate upon humility and correct action.”
Then her head dipped forward, smashing its bleeding crown into his nose, and he fell into the bystanders.
As she stepped down from the ring, Voivode Turrakhan shouting congratulations after her, Yao Ye waited with arms folded. “I suppose you think that was good,” she said sadly. “Still too quick! Another two minutes and we could have doubled this crowd. Too hasty!”
Selara flicked the blood from her forehead onto Ye’s shirt, and said, “I don’t need your magic, or whoever’s spell that was.”
“What? What are you talking about?” She raised her hands innocently before her.
“Let’s get some breakfast and find Zhou Wing. I don’t need these injuries slowing me down tomorrow.”
The three amalgams sat in an open cafe at a circular table. Selara and Wing ate a little bread and cheese, while Ye continued to place order after order to the kitchen, receiving a whole goose, a mound of fresh fruit, a tureen of stew, and a boar’s leg in turn. Only when her silver ran out did she begin to slow, already mournful of lean days to come.
Wing was beginning to describe to Selara the fight he had watched between Blackhand and a clearly fae-blooded competitor when a young woman approached their table and dropped to kowtow before them.
Selara looked to the other amalgams, then said, “Rise and report. You must be from the Retreat?”
“I am. I have a couple of letters for the Daybringers. This one here, from Marta for Yao Ye...”
“Yeah!”
“...and this is from Cathak Nekuto. I was told not to leave until I had seen you read it.” She handed over the letters and stepped back. Selara shrugged her shoulders and opened Cathak’s letter and began scanning the message as Yao Ye did the same with her letter.
A few moments later, the fiercesome snake warrior’s face had turned pale. She closed the letter and murmured quietly, “We need to find Toruna quickly. We may have been compromised... it seems there’s an assassin loose in the Marukan.”
Ye closed her letter and pounded her fist down at the table, breaking it in half and sending crockery shattering to the cobblestones. “That bastard,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut until they filled with tears. “How could she... and what was he...”
Wing looked at them with confusion, then sighed and looked over his shoulder at the busy street. “I haven’t seen Toruna since yesterday. And where in malpheas is Shu Zhuang?”
