by Claire Luana
“Those curved blades are naganita spears. Best for slashing, almost like a sword,” he had said. What she wouldn’t give to have his gentle guidance with her now, she thought with a pang of loss.
“We aren’t supposed to use real blades, Mistress Chiya,” the fresh-face girl called out, her voice cracking.
“Thank you for reminding me of the rules, novice,” Chiya said darkly, her eyes locking Kai’s. “Kai doesn’t mind, does she?”
“No,” Kai said, straightening her shoulders. Her father had taught her how to fight. She had even been able to beat him, towards the end. And clearly Chiya was gunning for this fight. Kai needed to make a stand or the woman would never leave her alone.
“Clear the ring,” Chiya said, and the novices scattered, leaving Kai and Chiya to circle each other. Kai twirled her spear in her hands, swinging it a few times, feeling its weight. Chiya was bigger than her, and likely stronger. But she didn’t know Kai’s skills, and she was cocky. If Kai underplayed her skill, Chiya might get sloppy.
Chiya lunged for her, spear forward. Kai stepped to the side, feigning a fall. She scrambled to her feet, and swiped her spear at Chiya’s legs. Chiya jumped over her strike nimbly and thrust again. Kai threw her shoulder out of the way and Chiya’s spear just missed her. She grabbed it and pulled Chiya forward and past her. She whacked Chiya across the back with her spear, and the woman stumbled, almost out of the ring.
Chiya rounded on her, nostrils flared and eyes full of malice. Cocky and prone to anger, Kai thought, revising her assessment.
Chiya stepped in with a barrage of hits that Kai barely managed to block. The woman was fast. The cracking of the wood staffs and the heavy breathing of the combatants echoed through the night.
Chiya moved into Kai’s stance and shoved her with her spear, causing Kai to stumble back. Chiya cracked the butt of her spear across the side of Kai’s head, and lights exploded behind her eyes. She fell to her side, ears ringing with the blow. Chiya advanced towards her, spear in hand, certain of victory. Had she forgotten that they were sparring?
Kai summoned her strength and spun her legs to tangle Chiya’s. Chiya clearly wasn’t expecting Kai to put up any more of a fight, and she fell backwards to the ground. Kai grabbed a spear and threw herself on Chiya’s chest, gripping the spear like a dagger to Chiya’s throat.
“Yield,” Kai said, feeling blood dripping into her eyes.
“What in the name of the goddess is going on here?” A loud voice called out, filled with cold fury. Chiya pushed Kai off her and stood up, dusting off her tunic and pants. Kai laid back and gingerly set her head on the ground, trying to stop its spinning.
“I was sparring with the new novice,” Chiya said.
Nanase stood with her hawk seishen on her shoulder and her hands on her hips. Their black eyes shone like two pairs of hard coals.
“Sparring with a novice on her first day with real blades? We need to talk about your teaching methods, child,” Nanase said, placing emphasis on the final word. “Report to Mistress Adiru, I’m sure she has some extra chores she can find for you.”
Chiya threw her spear down. “Class dismissed,” she said. She shot Kai a look of loathing as she stalked off across the courtyard.
The novices stood silently for a moment, before they swarmed Kai, helping her up.
“That was amazing!” The fresh-faced girl said.
The praise was short-lived.
“Kai,” Nanase said. “With me.”
CHAPTER 12
Kai and Nanase entered a building Kai had not yet visited, weaving through wood-paneled hallways decorated with oil paintings of severe, silver-haired women.
“Former headmistresses of the citadel,” Nanase said, without turning around. Kai furrowed her brow. How had she known Kai was looking at the paintings?
They turned into a brightly lit room with a high ceiling and windows lining one wall. It overlooked a garden filled with tall green bambu trees dancing gently in the wind. The window lent a green serenity to the room, which was otherwise a whirlwind of papers and books. Nanase’s office.
“Sit,” Nanase said, and Kai did, sinking into one of two large leather armchairs by the desk. Nanase leaned against the desk, crossing her arms, studying Kai with her intense gaze. Kai blew the hair off her forehead, fidgeting in her chair.
“Are you all right?” Nanase asked.
“Yes?” Kai said. She wasn’t sure what Nanase was getting at.
“I would not have asked Chiya to cover your class if I had known her intentions.” Nanase said, motioning towards the black eye Kai could feel forming. Kai touched her face gingerly, acutely aware that her other eye was already swollen from the sunburner’s attack. Now she would have a matched set.
Nanase continued, “Chiya’s bark is worse than her bite. Usually.”
“It’s all right. The moon does not heed the barking of dogs, right?” Kai said with a nervous chuckle. “Or . . . so my mother used to say.”
“An unusual saying,” Nanase said, frowning. “I’ve only heard one other use it. But aptly put in this circumstance.” Nanase walked around the desk and sat in the worn leather chair behind it. “You handled yourself well. Your technique with a naganita spear was surprising. Where did you learn to use one?”
“My father taught me,” Kai said. “We used to spar.”
“Your father was a soldier?” Nanase asked.
“No. A rancher. Cattle.”
“What else did you spar with?”
“Fists, knives, staffs, axes, both masakari and ono, and bows. And the cattle whip when he was feeling creative.” Kai ticked them off her fingers.
Nanase’s right eyebrow raised ever so slightly with each additional weapon Kai listed.
“Yet, you say he was not in the military? Before you were born, perhaps?”
“No.” Kai was growing confused. “At least . . . I don’t think so.”
Nanase contemplated this information. “I will see about getting you moved up into a samanera weapons class,” Nanase said.
“Thank you.”
“Dismissed.”
Kai stood to leave.
“Oh, and Kai?” Nanase said.
“Yes?” Kai paused at the door.
“Put something on that eye.”
Though exhausted, Kai tossed and turned through the day, mind racing through the events of the past hours. Finally, she gave up on sleep and got out of bed. Her face was already swollen and her body was sore from Chiya’s “lesson.” She washed her face in the little ceramic basin in her room and dressed in her soft, gray uniform.
Quitsu sat on her desk and looked at her disapprovingly. “You’re just determined to get the two of us killed, aren’t you?”
“Not you too,” Kai said with a sigh. “All I’m doing is trying to lay low. But trouble keeps finding me.”
Quitsu jumped onto the bed beside her. He leaned his furry body against hers, his solid warmth comforting her.
“You will settle in. People are just jealous. They can tell you are special.” “How do you know that?” she asked. “All I’ve done is manage to avoid dying. I can’t even moonburn.”
He was silent for a moment. “I don’t know how I know. Seishen don’t even understand the bond fully. All we know is that we wake with a certainty—that we have a soulmate. And when the right time comes, the urge to find that burner overpowers us. But I knew you were special when I first awoke.”
“How?”
“Because the goddess sent you me! You must be blessed indeed.” He chuffed his cheeks out, laughing at her.
She swatted at him. “Who am I to doubt the wisdom of the great seishen?”
“Speaking of not doubting,” Quitsu said, “I found a place I think you
should see. Come with me.”
Quitsu stopped in front of a stately, three-story tower, its three black-tiled roofs ornately flanking whitewashed walls. It stood across the courtyard from the entrance to the main citadel building.
“Where are we?” Kai asked, gazing up at the stone facade.
Two tall doors loomed above them, with a smaller, person-sized door cut into one of them. The stone awning above the doors was carved with swooping curves and swirls. A menagerie of stone gargoyles sat high above the courtyard, keeping watch.
“You’ll see,” he said.
They pushed through the door and entered a dark antechamber, lit by the citadel’s trademark silver orbs. They walked into the next chamber and Kai couldn’t help but gawk. The room was huge, a long rectangle that betrayed the depth of the tower’s squat exterior. Its ceiling was vast and vaulted, and tiny silver orbs hung, winking like stars. The room was paneled in dark wood, and fireplaces lined the walls. High windows along the upper walls poured in slanted light from the remnants of the setting sun.
But most of all, she saw the bookshelves. Tall and voluminous, with ladders to reach the upper shelves. She had never seen so many books. Her parents had only five books, and she had read them over and over as a child, even her mother’s medical textbook, Herbs and Tinctures of Eastern Kita.
She looked at Quitsu in amazement. How had he known she would love this place?
“Impressive, isn’t it,” he asked with a smirk. “You could get lost in here.” “I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen,” a voice rang out from among the stacks.
“Who’s there?” Kai asked.
A small, wizened man appeared out of one of the rows of books and approached them. He was short of stature and walked deliberately, leaning heavily on his cane. His clothes were simple: brown cotton trousers, a collarless white shirt with its ends hanging free, wrapped into an olive green obi belt. He had a shock of white hair that formed a halo from ear to ear, with nothing on top. He wore half-moon spectacles low on his nose, distracting from the sea of wrinkles on his smiling face.
“I’m Kai.”
“Master Vita,” he said, flourishing a little bow. “And, Quitsu, excellent to see you again.”
She looked at Quitsu with a raised eyebrow, but he pointedly ignored her. The fox was full of surprises.
“Would you like to join me for some tea?”
It took Master Vita twice the time it would take Kai to make the tea. She almost offered to help him a dozen times, but bit back her offer. He seemed the proud type. While he worked, she studied him. There was something off about him, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Was it something different? His mannerisms?
Finally, he handed her a small teacup, hand-painted with navy phases of the moon.
“Menthe!” She exclaimed as she took her first sip. “It’s my favorite.”
“Is it?” He remarked, a twinkle in his eye. They sat in two oversized red chairs next to the fireplace.
And then it hit her. What was different about him. “You’re a man,” she exclaimed.
Master Vita chuckled, a raspy dry laugh.
“She’s not the brightest star in the sky, is she?” he said conspiratorially to Quitsu, who chuffed with laughter.
“I’m sorry . . .” she said. “I didn’t mean to be rude. But you’re the first man I’ve actually met in Miina. The first who has . . . a position of honor.”
There were hardly any men in the citadel. No male teachers, nurses or even queen’s guard, from what she had seen. The men she had seen were servants or foot soldiers, relegated to lowly tasks.
“I’m not sure serving as head of the library counts as a ‘position of honor,’“ he said. “In truth, I am the only one who knows how this place is organized, so they really had no choice but to let me keep the position.”
“What do you mean, let you keep it?”
“I can see how coming from Kita, this would all be very foreign to you. The monarchy was not always as . . . distrustful of male Miinans as the current administration. Once, there were many men in positions of power and influence. Of course, the moonburners still ruled, but everyone got along a bit better than now. But after the Flare War, we were no longer trusted. These days, we hardly even have male officers in the army.”
“How could you not trust half of your population?” Kai asked.
“It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either, especially as one of those 50 percent,” he winked at her. “But is it so different in Kita? Are there women leaders and academics?”
“No,” Kai said, furrowing her brow. “The women mostly stay in the home.”
“And how is that so different from here?”
“Well, it is natural for a woman to be in the home with her children . . .” Kai said.
“So is it unnatural for a woman to be a master moonburner? A soldier?”
“Well, the king would certainly say so . . .” Kai was getting turned around
now. Her face was growing red.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I need to think more on it. The truth is, I don’t know anything about being a man, or a woman, or what is natural and what is not. I’m afraid I’ve done a poor job of both.”
Master Vita peered at her through his half-moon spectacles. He seemed amused by her distress, which she found both frustrating and oddly comforting.
“It sounds like you have a lot of learning to do. Luckily, you’ve come to the right place.” He gestured grandly to the shelves of the library, almost knocking his teacup over.
He walked to one of the nearby bookshelves and made to step onto the closest ladder.
Kai sprang up, moving to intercept him.
“Can I do that for you?” she asked. The last thing she needed was to be back in the hospital ward explaining the librarian’s broken leg to the nurse.
“Why, how chivalrous of you.” He stepped back, motioning her up the ladder.
She climbed the ladder and examined the books before her. Some of the titles sounded fascinating. Gods and Goddesses: Societal Implications of the Fracturing; Seishen Zoology; Burner Lineage.
“What am I looking for?” she called down.
“Miinan Social History: Abridged,” he called back. “It’s one row further, I think.”
She stepped up a few more rungs on the ladder. There it was. She pulled the large dusty tome from the shelf, tucking it under her arm and making her way back down.
“It doesn’t look particularly abridged . . .” she noted.
“Well, certainly more abridged than the eight-volume set,” he replied.
The first bell rang as she dusted herself off.
“I should go,” she said. “Can I come get this after classes, Master Vita?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks!” she cried over her shoulder, already heading out the front door towards the dining hall.
Kai’s classes that night were blessedly uneventful. She and Pura explored the boundary walls of her moonburning blockage; Mistress Furie lectured about the early Miinan monarchy; they learned the proper care for nighthawks in Zoology; and Nanase put them through their paces on the archery range. Kai knew her way around a bow and arrow, and quickly adjusted to the more compact baliwood bows the moonburners favored.
It had been a good night, almost normal. The novices had given her a wide berth after her defeat of Chiya in the ring, regarding her with a sort of awe.
Nanase had told her to report to the samanera weapons class the next night. Even Quitsu seemed in good spirits, trotting beside her to classes, basking in the whispered exchanges and outright stares.
Kai stopped back by the library to pick up the book she had left with Master Vita and then made her way to the dining hall, famished. The night had been busy, and not even Chiya and silent Tanu could keep her away from food. She heaped her plate with succulent curried axen meat, fried rice, steaming vegetables and two hot honeycakes.
She had loved the gooey honeycakes as a child; they had been her mother’s favorite, too. The two of them had mock fights over the last cake, to her father’s delight. He would make up competitions for them to determine who took the last cake: running two laps around the garden or finding the biggest
spider to bring back to the house for his inspection. Kai had always won. She realized now, wistfully, that her mother had no doubt let her win.
Kai shook off the memory and the pang of sorrow it brought, and joined Maaya and Emi, who were sitting at their usual table.
Maaya flipped a braid over her shoulder and greeted Kai with a wide grin. “We heard you gave Chiya a whooping in your novice class yesterday.”
Emi nodded, leaning forward conspiratorially. “I wish I could have been
there to see that cow hit the dirt.”
“I didn’t exactly get away without a scratch,” Kai said, pointing to her swollen eye. “But it was pretty satisfying when she went down.”
Emi leaned forward further, lowering her voice. “Some of the students are planning to sneak into town this morning. There is a concert at one of the taverns, and the musicians are friends of one of the samaneras in our class. They wanted me to invite you.”
Kai’s heart beat faster. Invited to something? She had never even been to a birthday party for the village children in Ushai. Her parents had made her say no to any invitation she got, which were few and far between.
“Sneak out? Would we get in trouble if we get caught?” Kai asked. As eager as she was to go, she was just getting her feet under her, and didn’t relish a lecture from Nanase.
“Students do it all the time, it’s a rite of passage,” Emi assured her. “The teachers look the other way.”
“She’s right,” Maaya said. “Even if we did get caught, it would just be a slap on the wrist. It will be fun.”
“You’re both going?” Kai asked.
They nodded in unison.
“I’m in.”
CHAPTER 13
A quiet knock sounded on her door, and Kai opened it, cringing at the creak the old hinges made.
Maaya and Emi slipped in. Maaya was wearing a soft olive dress wrapped around her, tied with a wide tan belt. She wore matching knee-high leather boots and a brimmed brown cap that mostly covered her silver hair. Emi looked even more stunning than usual, sporting tight red trousers and a fitted long leather coat with a high collar. She wore a black slouched knitted cap and kohl eyeliner around her dark eyes. They both looked at Kai with distaste.
