Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “I don’t have a sword,” I reminded him. “Staff or barehand, sensei. Either.” Need to move, need to think, and need to ask you a favor.

  “A warrior should have sword, Danyo-san. A sword is warrior’s honor.”

  I was hoping you’d say that. “After the fight, I’ll need a sword. Unless you don’t think you can take me, old man.”

  He blinked across the room to the rack of staves, his brown fingers curling around a quarterstaff. My heart settled into its combat rhythm, eyes dilating, every fiber of my skin aware of him. “I begin to think you need lesson for manners,” he said gently, avuncular.

  He tossed me the staff, and followed a split-second later with a staff in his own slim brown hands. The crack of wood meeting wood echoed through the dojo.

  Spin, kick, the end of his staff arcing up toward my face, half-step back, can’t afford to do that with him, he’s too fast—

  Wood crackled, he jabbed for my midriff and I swung back, the rhythm of staff striking staff lacking a clear pattern. The end of my staff socked into the floor, and I flung myself forward, body loose and flying, Jado narrowly avoided the strike and folded aside but I was ready, landing and whipping the stave out, deflecting the only strike he could make at that angle. Down into a full split, stave spinning backward—a showy move, but the only one I had. Each moment of a fight narrowed the chain of coincidence and angle, Jado moved in as I bent back. I heard the crackle of my spine as I moved in a way no human being should, front heel smashing into the tatami to push me up. My body curved, I landed again and feinted, struck—but his stave was there before me, wood screaming as we smashed at each other.

  Propellor-strike, shuffling, my breath coming in high harsh gasps, like flying. Alive. I was alive. The lingering chill of going into Death and bringing Christabel out faded, washed clean by adrenaline, every inch of my body suddenly glowing. Alive. All grown up and alive. Another flurry of cracks. We separated, I shuffled to one side, he countered. Then, the first flush of the fight over and neither of us having made a stupid mistake, we settled into feinting; first Jado, then me, him trying to lull me into a pattern, me testing his defenses. I earned a solid crack on the knuckles by being too slow, blurred back, shaking my hand out, staff held in guard. Red-black blood welled up, coated the scrape along my knuckles and vanished, leaving the golden skin perfect.

  I still wasn’t used to that.

  “What is it, Danyo-chan?” he asked, standing apparently easy, holding his staff in one hand. Tilting forward a fraction of an inch, testing; I countered by leaning sideways, my staff lifting slightly, responding.

  “Old ghosts, my friend.” My breath came harsh, but I wasn’t gasping. Not yet. “The goddamn school. Rigger Hall.”

  I’d never told him about the Hall. I wouldn’t have been surprised at anything he’d guessed, though. I’d come to him for training straight from the Academy, having heard he was the best; he had known me longer than just about anyone, except maybe Gabe.

  He nodded thoughtfully, almond-shaped eyes glittering and sweat gleaming on his brown forehead. His mouth was a thin lipless snarl, I’d scored a hit or two of my own. It just felt so good not to have to hold back; humans were so fucking fragile.

  Careful, Danny. You’re still human where it counts. I swallowed, eased down a little, watching his chest. Any move would be telegraphed there. We circled; another fast flurry of strikes deflected. Sweat began on my skin, trickled down my back. It felt good.

  It felt clean.

  “And so you bring ghosts to Jado, eh?” He grinned, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. Here on the sparring floor, there was no quarter asked or given.

  “At least I can’t kill you,” I shot back.

  “Hm.” He shrugged, inscrutable as ever. His robes whispered as bare brown feet moved over the tatami; he closed with me in a flurry of strikes. Sweat flew, his and mine. Move move move! I heard his voice from other training sessions. No think, move!

  His staff shattered, my cry rising with it to break in the sunlit air. I held my own staff a quarter-inch from his chest. The echoes of my kia bounced off the walls, made the entire building shiver. Dust pattered down from the groaning roof.

  “Not bad,” Jado said grudgingly. I treasured that faint praise. “Come. I make you tea.”

  Sweating, my staff still held warily, I nodded. “Have you ever seen anything dismember a Necromance,

  Jado-sensei?”

  “Not recently.” He brushed his horny hands free of splinters. “Come, tea. We talk.”

  I racked my staff and followed him into the spotless green and beige kitchen. Early-evening light poured in through the bay window. Jado got down the iron kettle and two bowls, and his pink Hiero Kidai canister that held green tea. I hid a smile. The old dragon was gruff, but he loved little pink things.

  Maybe humans are little pink things to him too. I had to swallow bile again. My left shoulder twisted with hot feverish pain.

  “So.” Jado put the water on to boil while I eased myself onto a wooden stool set on the other side of the counter. “You have been called out of slumber, it seems.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping, I don’t sleep,” I objected immediately. “I’m just not a social person, that’s all. Been running bounties.”

  He shrugged. He was right, throwing myself into one hunt after another was a way of numbing myself. Trying to exhaust myself so I could sleep, staving off the pain with furious activity. It was a time-honored method, one I’d used all my life; but as a coping mechanism I had to admit it was failing miserably.

  His robe, rough cotton, caught the sunlight and glowed. I filled my lungs—the lingering smell of human was only a tang over his darker scent of flame and some deep, scaled hole, darkness welling up from the ground, incense burned in a forgotten temple. I didn’t know what Jado was, he didn’t fit into any category of nonhuman I’d ever read or heard about. But he’d been in Saint City for at least as long as Abra, because I sometimes, rarely, took messages from one to the other; little bits of information. I had never seen Jado leave his home, or Abra leave her shop, and I wondered where they had come from. Maybe one day I’d find out.

  It was a relief to smell something inhuman. Something that didn’t reek of dying cells, of pain, of eventual abandonment.

  Japhrimel’s gone, I thought, and the sharp spike of pain that went through me seemed somehow clean as well. “What do you know about Christabel Moorcock? Did you ever train her?”

  He shook his head. “She is not of my students.” The kettle popped on the stove, heating up. “You wish for a sword, then.”

  It was my turn to shrug, look down at the counter. I traced a random glyph on the Formica with one black-nailed fingertip. My rings sizzled. The glyph folded out, became something else—the spiked fluid lines of the scar on my shoulder. I traced it twice, looked up to meet his tranquil eyes.

  “You have decided to live.” Jado leaned on the counter, his own blunt fingertips seemingly arranged for maximum affect. His broad nose widened a little and he seemed to sniff. For a moment, his eyes were black from lid to lid, maybe a trick of shadow as he blinked, his eyes lidding like a lizard’s. “Though you still smell of grief, Danyo-chan. Much grief.”

  He’s not coming back. Maybe I can grieve instead of trying to avoid it. “I never thought I wouldn’t live,” I lied. “Look, Jado, it’s about Rigger Hall. And I think I need a sword. My hand won’t get any stronger if I don’t exercise it.”

  “Christabel.” His accent made it Ku-ris-ta-be-ru. “She was death-talker. Like you.”

  With only four of us in the city, it stood to reason he would know. I looked down at my left hand, narrow and golden and graceful. His, brown and square, powerful, tendons standing out under the skin. “I don’t think that’s what killed her.”

  A slight nod. “So, you have theory already.”

  “No. Not even a breath of one. I’ve got a dead normal, a dead sexwitch, and a dead Necromance who left a little note about Rigger Hall. That’
s all I’ve got.” I think it might be ritual murder, but I’m not sure. And until I’m sure, nobody’s going to hear a theory from me, dammit.

  “And this means you need sword?” His eyebrow lifted. The kettle chirruped, and he poured the water into the bowls. I watched him whisk the fine green powder into frothy, bitter tea, his fingers moving with the skill of long practice. When my bowl was ready, he offered it with both hands. I took it in both hands, with a slight bow. Black raku glaze pebbled under my fingertips. The bowl still remembered the fire that made it strong; I caught the echo of flame even in the tea’s strong, clear, tart taste.

  We are creatures of fire. Tierce Japhrimel’s voice threaded through my memory, slow and silken. I was too busy keeping Jado from bashing me with a staff during sparring, but now the thought of Japh crept back into my head. I had managed a full half-hour, forty-five minutes without pain? Call the holovids, stop the presses, rent a holoboard, it was a banner event.

  No. I hadn’t stopped thinking of him. I never stopped thinking of him. But he was really, truly, inevitably, finally gone.

  “I miss him,” I said without meaning to, looking into the teabowl’s depths. Now that I knew he wasn’t in Death’s hall, I could admit it. Maybe. “Isn’t that strange.”

  Jado shrugged, sipping at his own tea. His slanted charcoal eyes half-lidded, and the rumble of our strange paired contentment made the air thick and golden. “You have changed, Danyo-chan. I met you, and I saw it, so much anger. Where did anger go?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.” The anger isn’t gone, Jado. I’m just better at hiding it. “I’ve been doing research on demons. And on A’nankhimel. Between bounties, that is.” My mouth twisted into a bitter smile. I stared into the tea. “He never really told me what he did to me, or the price he paid for it. I still only have a faint idea—it’s so hard to separate myth from reality in all the old books, and demons seem to delight in throwing red herrings across the trail.” I realized what I was talking about, looked up. Jado examined the window with much apparent fascination.

  I sighed. “I used to work so hard at just staying alive, paying off my mortgage, just jumping from one rock to the next. Now I’ve crossed the river, and you know what? I wish I was back in the middle. At least while I was jumping I didn’t have so much goddamn time to brood.”

  Jado made a soft noise, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, just showing he was listening. Then his dark eyes swung away from the window and came to rest on me. “Perhaps would be best if you did not pursue your past, Danyo-chan.”

  Remember Rigger Hall. “I’m not pursuing it. It’s pursuing me. Now I have to find out what Christabel did at Rigger Hall, and what connection the three victims had.”

  “Why?” He took the change of subject gracefully, of course. If anyone knew me, it was Jado. Even before Rio he had never treated me differently than any of his other students.

  How could an old man who wasn’t human have made me feel so blessedly, thoroughly, completely human myself? “There’s only three Necromances left in the city. Me, Gabe, and John Fairlane. We can’t afford to lose any more.” Bitter humor traced through my voice, etching acid on a pane of glass.

  Jado snorted a laugh as if steam was coming through his nose. “Come, drink your tea. We will find you sword. I think I know which one.”

  The room at the head of the stairs was just as I remembered. Dying sunlight fell through the unshielded windows, slanting to strike at the polished wooden floor. Dust swirled in sinuous shapes with long frilled wings. The door had been taken off its hinges, a long fall of amber silk taking its place. The silk rippled and sang to itself in the silence.

  On the black wooden racks against the wall the swords lay, each humming in its sheath. I glanced down to the space where my sword had hung; it was empty. There were four empty spaces—four of Jado’s students, out in the world. I wondered if any of the others had broken their sword in the heart of a demon.

  The thought managed to make me feel ashamed. Jado didn’t hand swords out to just anyone, and I’d broken the last one. “Sensei,” I whispered, “is it really right?”

  He laughed, a papery sound in the bare room. There were two tatami in the middle of the floor, and he gestured me to one. I folded myself down as his thick-skinned bare feet scraped against the floor. An unlit white candle in a plain porcelain holder sat off-center between the mats. “Ai, even swords come and go. You used Flying Silk well. But now, something else.” He paced in front of the swords, their wrapped hilts ticking off space behind him. His long orange robe made a different sound than the silk in the door, I could hear the rattlewhine of faraway hovertraffic. It was soothing.

  I eased down onto my knees on the mat, tucking my feet under me. It was quiet here; even the dust was serene. My shoulder settled back into a burning prickle, like a limb slowly waking up. I inhaled, smelling Jado’s fiery smell, and wished, as I often did, that I could stay with him. It wouldn’t work—he was old and liked his space, and my own neuroses would probably irritate both of us to the point of murder after a while. But when I stepped over Jado’s threshold, I was no longer a psion feared by normals, or a Necromance crippled by fear and a clawed hand. I was no longer even a hedaira, something that wasn’t even alluded to directly in the old books about demons I’d managed to dig up. Here, in this house, I was only a student.

  And here, I was valued for myself alone. My skill, my bravery, my honor, my willingness to learn all he could teach me.

  “This one.” Jado lifted down a longer katana. It was in a black-lacquered reinforced scabbard, probably made by Jado’s own hands. The wrapping on the hilt was exquisite, and I saw a faint shimmer in the air surrounding it. I found myself holding my breath.

  The first time I had stepped into the dojo after killing Santino my breath had come short, my heart pounding; my palms had not been wet but my right hand had twisted into a painful knotted cramp. Jado had been teaching a group of rich teenagers t’ai chi as part of the federal health regimen. I’d waited in the back, respectfully; when class was finished and the young ones gone, he had stalked across the tatami and, without a word, took my right hand and examined it, moving the fingers gently. I let him, even though I couldn’t stand to let anyone else touch me, shying away from even Jace’s unconscious skin when he happened to collapse on the couch in an inebriated haze.

  Then Jado had grunted. No sword yet. Staff. Come. That simply, my nervousness had fallen away like an old coat. An hour later I had dragged myself sweating and shaking to the water fountain after a hard workout; it took a lot more to make me sweat now, but he’d done it. And that, apparently, was that.

  No other man could make me feel so much like a child. If Lewis was the father of my childhood, Jado was the father of the adult I had become. I hoped I’d made them proud.

  Jado settled down cross-legged across from me. His thumb flicked against the guard, and three inches of steel leapt free. It was beautiful, slightly longer and wider than my other sword. The steel rippled with a light all its own. “Very old. For some reason, Danyo-chan, you delight the very old. This—” He slid the blade home with a click, “—is Fudoshin.”

  The candle between us guttered into life, a puff of smoke rising briefly before the flame steadied. I smiled at the trick, pretending not to notice, my eyes fixed on the sword.

  I tilted forward slightly, a bow expressed more with my eyes and upturned hands than anything else, looking up to meet Jado’s eyes. “Exquisite.”

  He nodded slowly, his bald head gleaming with reflected sunlight. The candle’s gleam was weak and pallid in the brightness of day. “You delight my heart, Danyo-chan. Fudoshin has been with me very long time. He is very old, and very much honor. But I tell you, it is not very good to give this sword.”

  More time ticked by, the swords singing their long slow song of metal inside their sheaths. Jado breathed, his eyes dark but lit with pinpricks of orange light, his gaze soft as if he was remembering something very long ago.

  I
always knew Jado wasn’t human, but he hadn’t truly frightened me until the first time I’d sat across from him in this room. His stillness had been absolute, not the dozing stillness of a human, but a trance so deep it was like alertness. Now I wasn’t only human either, and I found myself copying his watchful silence, as if we were two mirrors reflecting each other into eternity.

  Finally, Jado drew in a breath, as if wrapping up some long conversation with himself. “Fudo Myoo is the great swordsman. He breaks the chains of suffering, lives in fiery heart of every swordsman. Fudoshin is dangerous, very powerful sword. He must be wielded with honor, but more important, with compassion. Compassion is not your strongest virtue, Danyo-chan. This sword loves battle.” He looked up at me, his seamed face suddenly seeming old. “So do you, I think.”

  I shook my head. A strand of hair fell in my face. “I don’t fight without reason, sensei. I never have.”

  He nodded. “Just so, just so. Still, I give you caution, you are young. Will ignore me.”

  “Never, sensei.” I managed to sound shocked.

  That made his face crinkle in a very wide, white-toothed grin. He offered the sword again, and this time I held my hands out, let him lay the almost-instantly familiar weight in my slightly cupped palms. I felt a shock of rightness burn through me, a welcome jolt not from my shoulder but from the pleasure of holding something so well-made, something intended for me. “Fudoshin,” I whispered. Then I bowed, very low, over the blade. It seemed right, even though my braid fell forward over my shoulder and swayed dangerously close to the candleflame. “D’mo, sensei.” My accent mangled it, but his loud laugh rewarded me. I straightened, balancing the sword, already longing to slide the blade free and see that gleaming blue shine again. Longing to hear the slight deadly hiss as I freed it from the sheath, the soft whistling song of a keen blade cleaving the air.

  Jado’s laugh ended in a small, fiery snort. “Ai, my knees ache. Ceremony bores me. Come, let me see if you can still perform first kata.”