“No.”
“Asteroid combat profile?”
“No. Randomized intervals to a floor of point two and a ceiling of four point five G’s. Let’s run the system today. We’ll finish on Mars.” I rub my left forearm hoping it will hold over four G’s.
“Affirmative. Duration?”
“Dealer’s choice.”
“Affirmative, blademaster three.Preparing session one six eight.”
I fight back another yawn as the room warms up. I roll out my shoulders. They’re stiff from the welding and from countless dislocations over the years. A tightness seizes my left lung as I take a deep breath, a souvenir of the razor Lysander drove into my chest in Heliopolis. I shake out my left arm, which had shattered when my slingBlade clashed with the blade Lysander took from Alexandar’s corpse. Aurae, suspiciously versed in medicine, pinned the bones of my left arm back in place and applied a calcium catalyst, but I’ll need a carver’s work to regain full functionality.
My arm throbs. A good reminder of unfinished business.
A thought comes to me as the room’s gravity wells warm up. When I trained with Lorn, he would speak to me as I flowed through the forms of the Willow Way. I miss the metronomic company of his voice, and I’m tired of silence.
“Computer, link to my datapad.” I fish out my datapad and Aurae’s book from my bag and scan in the first two dozen pages. I instruct the computer to narrate the text, then ease into the winter stance of the Willow Way, blade above my head held with both hands. I pause. “Computer. Voice sample from holofile one three one: Sovereign’s Saturnalia Address.”
A moment later, Virginia’s voice fills the room.
“To those who wrote that we might read, to those who fell so we might walk, to those who came before so we might come after, gratitude.”
The sphere begins its program. The gravity shifts are slow at first, alternating orientation as I move through the first branch of the winter stance and sweep the blade diagonally in descending cuts. I grunt in pain as my body warms up and the stiffness dissolves. Soon the only sounds are the whisper of the practice blade, the shuffle of my feet, my breathing, and Virginia’s voice.
“The first understanding: The path to the Vale is inscrutable, eternal, andperfect. It cannot be seen with the eyes, nor felt underfoot. It winds as it wills. It ends where it must. It climbs when it does. It falls when it should.”
I flow into the autumn strikes, bending back and lashing forward in attack.
“It stretches deep into the rocks we dig, and back into our hearts. It winds on before and after us, in all directions and none. Though we may walk it, we may never master it. Though we may see the path, we can never know the truth. The path to the Vale is inscrutable, eternal, and perfect. It must be followed at all cost.”
Six more understandings follow the first as I pass through the seasons of the Willow Way to fluctuations in gravity. Over the course of the hour, the narration loops a dozen times, playing on when I lay heaving on my back.
“The fourth understanding: The supreme good is the wind of the deepmines. It flows through rock, around people, and over all lands. The wind is oblivious to obstacles though they shape her path. When you smell rust on her breeze, or hear the echo of tools in the dark, smile and be glad. The path is upon you, and you are upon it. All you must do is walk.”
My left arm aches. My lung is tight and on fire, but my mind is blessedly empty as I lay listening to Virginia’s voice. The words of the book are, as I first thought, opaque. I do not understand them yet, much less accept them, but they remind me of something I read long ago when I trained with Matteo. Not Dumas, not the Greeks, something that fell between the cracks. The book is familiar, as comforting as the echo of a lullaby from my childhood.
I return to my quarters in a trancelike state. With water scarce, I use a dull knife to strigil off the sweat and dead skin before continuing my nightly rituals. I record a message to my wife as though we’d just been talking and store it with the rest without review. Then I record my message for my son, another chapter in the testimony of an absentee father.
Months ago, I started telling him my life’s story, a story I should have told him in person. Even if I can’t make it back to him, maybe my story will. Tonight I begin with the day I met Virginia at the Institute and end with Cassius, Sevro, and I howling like wolves as we raced across the moonslit plains with Minerva’s standard.
When I’ve finished, I sit on my bed feeling empty and satisfied. The book said something about emptiness being what we use. Boxes, cups. They are useless to us when full, because we use their emptiness byfilling them. I leaf through the book again to find the phrase. Before I can, the base’s proximity alarm begins to scream.
They’ve found us.
I jump from my bed, guilty with joy. At last, a fight, an opportunity, this I know how to do. I dress in sober glee, ready to kill.
Screwface’s voice fills my room.
“Battle stations.Battle stations. Proximity warning. Votum torchShip inbound.”
3
DARROW
Revenants
Alarms blare throughout thebase. I sprint down the corridor and catch a railrifle thrown by Thraxa as she falls into a run beside me. Her mouth is open in a mad-bad grin. She has the only razor on the Marcher and seems not at all interested in sharing it. “How many ships?” I ask.
