“Matron,” she called again.
The door exploded in her face.
The man moved with such speed that she couldn’t see it coming. She ducked on instinct, and a lead-tipped staff sliced air, where her head had been an instant before. He bellowed, kicking through the tattered door, and she kept moving – rolling around to get her fist into his throat – but the man was too strong, and though he’d missed his first strike, he kept his momentum and used it to ram her with his shoulder, an avalanche of hard muscle and bone hitting her face, cracking something in her nose. She tripped backwards, fell outside into the steaming spring, and the scalding water caused her to cry out. It flowed into her mouth – she gasped, heaving. Snowflakes scattered in a flurry.
Before she could pull herself from the water, another blow crashed down. The assailant kicked her in the face, a second man grappled for her the moment she tried to rise again.
No swords, she thought.If they were here to kill me, I’d be dead already.
She started screaming. “Help! Help!”
They were masked, dressed in plain peasant clothes, but they moved and communicated with one another with nothing but a look, a gesture, as though they could read each other’s minds.
Keishi, she thought.
Only now theydiddraw their swords. She bucked back, deeper into thepool, and splashed with her arms, sending the hot water uselessly across their legs, but in the distraction, she managed to grab the second man by the back of the knee, pulling him into the pool with her. In an instant they were wrestling in the steaming water, slowed and hindered by heavy fabric, but his blade cut through water just as well as it cut through air. She came in, close, pressing against him so he couldn’t use the sword, and in return he grabbed her by the neck and yanked her down, knocking her against the rough, rocky edge of the pool and under the water again.
He’s going to drown me.She didn’t know where the sword was. She could only kick off with her feet as hard as she could and push herself into the man again.
Keep close, she thought,keep close.
I should have told Yora where I was.
She slung her arms around his writhing body, kicked with her feet, twisting until they both went under. His knee caught her somewhere in the abdomen, knocked the air from her lungs, sending in a mouthful of scalding water and causing her to pull back and stand instinctively, coughing, gagging; he came at her again. They exploded from the water. He found the sword. She felt something searing hot against her side, under her arm, and swung her fist blindly until it connected with his face. She felt his nose crack, pushed him away, wrenching the sword from his grasp and thrusting downward as hard as she could, again and again, until she tasted the blood that he leaked into the spring.
Something heavy hit her on the back of the head. Her vision went dark. She slipped underwater again, and when she rose, she had just enough time to see the little stool – there were three or four scattered around the spring – that the other assailant had thrown at her. Barely able to dodge as it hit the water, sending steaming spray into her eyes and tangling her between the wood and the dead man who now drifted heavily behind.
She needed to get out of the water. Her left arm felt numb; she realized she was bleeding from a cut beneath her armpit.
The first man struck again. She could barely move in her robes, in the hot water, steam rising into the morning sky.
She was trapped. She threw the sword at him, unthinking, and rolled up onto the wooden platform on the rocks, heaving, coughing up water and blood.
“Coward!” She grasped desperately for another of the little stools, and flung it back at him, but he had his sword ready and knocked it aside.
“Who sent you? The chancellor?”
The man came at her again. This time she was ready. She grabbeda piece of broken wood, the jagged end pointed outward through her fingers. The instant her right foot hit the ground, she twisted, jabbed at him with the wood, catching him in the side of the head and making him bellow in pain. She’d been aiming for his neck. The man jerked an elbow backwards into her temple, knocking the wood from her stunned hand and sending her rolling to the fence.
She fell, winded, landed hard on the wound under her arm. She saw nothing for a moment, then his foot connected with her chest. She hit the fence, fell off the edge of the platform, gasping.
She reached for the wood, but it was gone. She reached for the sword, but she had thrown it already. Her mind wasn’t working. She reached out – nothing was there. He stepped on her wrist, grinding his foot hard enough to make something give way. She yelped in agony. The sword in his hand, his eyes over the mask, staring at her. He ground his foot again.
Then there was a cry, and Hayo came racing through the terrace door, her twin swords in hand, and even now they seemed to shine like moonlight despite the winter sun. But Kai was falling, and the world had gone faint, and she rose in time to see her aunt Hayo challenging the man, two steps on the platform behind him, but as he leaped to the side, it was already too late, and her swords came down, one then the next, parrying his first attempt to strike and moving in faster than Kai could see. Steel rang in the cold, bright morning, and his sword went flying, and with a shout that echoed in Kai’s ears, Hayo rammed forward with her lower blade held out like a spear and her upper still raised from where she’d cast his own aside. In one swift stroke, she ran her slim killing sword through his heart and the deep, steel-blue reflected sunlight as it coursed back out into the air, and even as Kai watched with failing eyes, her second blade came down, cutting cleanly through his neck with a shower of red.
The body fell onto the stones beside Kai’s face, blood in her eyes and nose and mouth, and Hayo, shouting something, had thrown her swords onto the grass and came down, kneeling by her side, calling for help and cradling Kai in her arms.
Kai could only gasp. “I should have told you. I should have told you…”
Her aunt’s voice sounded far away. “It doesn’t matter. I’m here now. I’m here.” Kai let out a sob. She was beginning to shake. Her eyes landed on the snow-licked spearflowers that grew beside the water, with their small, red berries bobbing lightly, bright as blood.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-THREE
Yora
So this is how it starts, Yora thought.I’ll have to move quickly.
The many-storied ministry rose ahead, eaves dark with indigo under snow.Everything seems darker now.He’d been in the capital too long, he told himself – so long he’d started to become one of them, forgotten where his heart truly lay. It was hypocrisy. It was a world of two faces: say one thing, do another; give an honest bow, a happy smile; the hidden hand will draw the blade. Eyes everywhere, whispering, faces hidden by a sleeve; a glance of knowing parties, a subtle arrangement behind doors. At each corner, every alcove, there they were. Bickering. Plotting. Judging. How often had they come to him and beamed, how often had they asked him:Isn’t this a better life, lord poet, here in our civilized world?
