The Paladin

by C. J. Cherryh

  Damn her.

  He had set the empty laundry bucket in front of the door last night, as if it were carelessness; and tried to stay awake, or at least not to sleep too deeply, for fear she would try to escape in the night. Not for fear of murder. He had no thought she could succeed at that; and certainly he deserved better than that, even if she was a peasant and a woman, without any concept of honorable behavior. But he was mortally afraid of her trying to slip away and leave before he could make himself clear to her. It would be like her obstinacy to try to leave in the middle of a rainstorm. Damn her again.

  He was a fool ever to have encouraged her. A fool to have taught her. A fool not to have taken her by force and ended her silliness. He could bring her to good sense. Pleasure itself could seduce her away from her lunacy.

  That was what was the matter with her, anyway. Her first experience with men had put fear in her, driven her away from what was womanly and twisted all her thinking. He could cure that. No woman he had ever slept with had complained of the experience. She certainly would not.

  Damn, damn, and damn. Give the bitch straightforward conditions. Tie her hand and foot if he had to. No more negotiations.

  Why in hell had he backed up and gone for the sword, to match her even?

  Could nine years take that much away from a man?

  You're off your center, master Saukendar. . . .

  She had said not a word this morning, not had her bath, nor had he: he had only pulled himself to his feet and dressed, opened the shutters for light and started breakfast before he brought her clothes to her.

  They had had no supper, the morning was cold and wet, and she had dressed and sat down in a lump on the matting, not near the fire, not near him.

  But the food brought a little interest when he gave it to her and sat down. She at least attacked it with appetite.

  "I said we would talk," he said then.

  She did not look at him. Or stop eating.

  "I tried to tell you in words," he said. "You wouldn't hear words. You won't believe me. You insist to be a man. Then take a beating like one, take my advice like one, and listen to me when I tell you haven't the reach, you haven't the weight, you haven't the strength, and unlike a boy, you won't grow into it. You won't succeed at this. There are other things to do with your life. There are other things worth having."

  Long silence. She took another bite and never looked at him.

  "I want you to stay here," he said. "I'll go on teaching you. I'll teach you everything you can learn. But give up this notion of revenge. It's not going to buy you anything but grief. Someday you can be very good. Someday you might have a son or a daughter to teach."

  She looked up at him the way a tiger might, glancing up from its meal.

  "I'm very fond of you," he said.

  It got nothing but that stare.

  "Have I deserved to be hated?" he asked her. He had argued cases before the Emperor and before high magistrates and felt less at risk. "You came to my mountain, you disturbed my peace, you demanded this, you demanded that, you insisted I not touch you, all of which I've granted; and now I deserve a look like that?"

  There was a little tightening of her mouth. A blink.

  "Or are you sulking because you've lost? That's not manly behavior. Are we changing the rules today?"

  The mouth trembled. The eyes flashed. "You caught me by a damn trick. I didn't lose. You cheated."

  "We're not talking about games, girl. You're talking about killing a man. Is he an honest man? Not by anything I know of him. So where is this talk about rules and tricks? Where is any man that will fight duel with a woman? Have you killed, yes. Meet you fair he won't, for his pride's sake. Cut off your hand for carrying a weapon. That, he will. But I haven't taught you to go killing honest men. They're the only ones who'd deal fair. Don't ever take your opponent's word for anything. That's the lesson."

  Her face had lightened a little.

  "But there's another one," he said. "And that's that you're not equal to this. Give up this notion. Stay here. I'm not a cruel man. Everything I've done, I've done trying to stop you from a mistake. Stay and you'll see I'm not the ogre I've been. I don't even say you should share my bed, though I won't say I don't hope you'd want to."

  She shook her head.

  "No," he read that. "But no to what?"

  "No."

  "Taizu, for gods' sake, talk."

  She set her bowl down on the mat in front of her. And stared at it and frowned.

  "Taizu—"

  She held up her hand, asking quiet. So he was quiet, and waited, and after a moment she said:

  "Are you going to interrupt me?"

  "No," he said.

  A moment more she stared at the floor, her hands on her knees. Then: "You cheated to beat me. I didn't expect that of my teacher. I should have, you're right, and I won't forget it, master Saukendar. I wouldn't have trusted anyone else. Now there isn't anybody." Her chin trembled, and she lifted her hand, insisting on his silence until she had regained her calm. "I told you my bargain. I'll cook and I'll clean. And I'll stay another year. I haven't quit. You'll go on teaching me and you won't cheat me: teach me what I need to win. Whatever it is."

  She's grown, he thought, dismayed. She's learned that much. All right. Another year and more time, and maybe that's the cure for everything. Then she'll come to her senses. Otherwise she can find ways to escape. And damned if I want to track her down.

  "I haven't quit. It's still your word."

  "You've failed, girl. That's the bargain."

  "No. Till I quit, you said. You can't change that just because you say something different."

  "Dammit, quit means when you can't learn any more. And you've gotten there. You're going to kill yourself."

  She shook her head solemnly and looked at him with hard reproach, tears brimming.

  "Dammit," he said aloud, "you could have a broken back. Or a broken skull."

  "If you'd been able to hit me."

  "If I'd been able! Girl, you're sadly mistaken."

  "Maybe I am. I don't know. You said you weren't playing fair. Maybe you weren't telling the truth. Maybe you lied to me about that too. How do I know?"

  "Damn your impudence."

  "I haven't quit. That's the truth, master Saukendar."

  He was quiet a time more, his breakfast cold and mostly untouched. He poked at it, and set the bowl down with a queasiness in his stomach.

  "Are you going to keep your word? They never said you lied."

  "I have kept my word."

  "Are you going to?"

  Backed to the wall. "Yes."

  "Are you going to cheat me this time?"

  "You need to learn respect for your teacher, girl. Your failures are nature's, not mine. I can't help your incompetence."

  "You worked all year to try to stop me. What else do you call it, when you taught me everything so you could beat me and make me think I'd lost?"

  "You did lose, fool. I did precisely what you asked. It's taken you a year to get smart enough to ask what you need, rather than telling me. Shut up," he said, lifting a hand for silence as she opened her mouth. "And listen to me. I gave you your say. Let's first of all have the habit of listening, shall we? You want to walk into a castle and murder a man. How will you do that? Walk in the front gate and say: Here I am, a woman, come to challenge lord Gitu to a duel? Is that your plan? It's got bad holes in it, girl."

  "I wait till he's hunting. Then I don't have to walk in the gates."

  So. We are thinking. So we teach her the right way, the slow way. Teach her prudence, for the gods' sake. That goes with the skills. It's damned well the thing she needs. Prudence, patience, and an understanding what she's up against. "Let's calm down and think, then, girl, about the real world, not your imaginings. So you meet him in the countryside. He's on a horse. He's got a good twenty other men around him. Better shoot him from ambush. That's your best chance. And then you've got to get out of there, because those twenty
men are going to be after you. Have you got a horse?"

  Her eyes were on him now, hot and dark and red-rimmed from recent tears. "I want to kill him. I want him to know he's going to die. I want him to see me plain."

  His gut tightened in the face of a hatred like that. He tried not to remember when he had felt it; but it came back for a breath, in all its force.

  "Listen. There was a boy when I was in training. His name was Abi. His family had enemies. One day he took a sword and attacked their house. The guards killed him. That's the end of the story. He never grew up. He never got smarter. His enemies are rich and his family suffered disgrace."

  "Mine's dead," she said. He had walked into that one.

  "Then at least think of your teacher and don't disgrace me by stupidity. Someone is responsible for you. And I couldn't teach you anything as long as you knew everything. You've lost your sense of balance, here—" He tapped his chest. "And everything's gone. Your courage is all because you don't mind dying. But you're likely to end up only dead, having done nothing you set out to do."

  She scowled at him.

  "First," he said, "plan to get out again."

  The frown deepened.

  "Think about after, girl. There is an after, of one kind or another and a revenge that leaves your enemies able to have their revenge on you is no revenge at all. Think about after, I say. Plan to survive this."

  It was a strange expression in that startled look, a panic fear that touched him too, clear and sharp as if it were still alive—so that his heart sped and he felt the blood leave his hands. He was surprised by the strength of it, by daylight, surprised that a fool of a girl touched the old wound.

  Her kin are dead. And it's as if the dead had deserted us in the street, in public disgrace. Or we'd somehow deserted our dead. I know where you are, girl. I've walked that road.

  She gave him a defiant grimace. And thought her own thoughts, unreachable.

  "Let me tell you something," he said then in a low voice, not ever having voiced such a thing before, having had no living soul to tell it to, and he was embarrassed now to be saying it—in the face of his own dead, to a peasant girl who would probably sneer and call him a coward. But it was sensible advice and it was true, and it was not what the ballads sang or the philosophers said. "You want to know another thing I've learned in nine years on this mountain, girl, it's that there's no particular shame in being too smart to die with your kin and your friends. I could have gone back. If luck was with me I could have gotten to Ghita himself, and killed him. But I wouldn't have gotten out again, and a dozen scoundrels would've survived me. Damned if I'd give them the pleasure of having my neck on the block. I trouble my enemies by living. A dead man is no trouble at all. Neither is a dead girl whose name no one knows or cares about. So be wise. Live here with me. Become a rumor to disturb your enemies' sleep . . . not a memory they won't even look back on. You know what they'll say when you're dead? She was some crazy peasant. That's all. That's damned well all. And some other hound will take Gitu's place in Angen and rule ten times worse than he did, to give other assassins second thoughts. Nothing will get better. It may well get worse for what you do."

  Her face grew pale. She was listening, he thought. For the first time she was truly understanding what he was saying.

  Then: "No," she said, and shook her head vehemently.

  "Think on it. You'll get one man. That's all. Maybe a few of his guards. It's not payment enough. It can't set anything right. Take my advice. Become a rumor. Rumors are much harder to kill."

  Another violent shake of her head. She looked at her hands and up at him, one eye from under a tangled fall of dirty hair. "I'm not you."

  "You can be the same. A mystery to them. Let them wonder who you are."

  Again a shake of her head, a taut, frightened look. "No." She bit her lips and said, then, full of assurance: "I'm not you, but the man that gave me this—" She touched the side of her face. "I wouldn't be wondering if he was dead. He didn't know how to use that knife he had. He thought he did. A lot of them are like that."

  "Some aren't."

  "I'm still good. I'm better than those men are."

  "Of course you are." Still the whisper, closest confidence. He had her attention. He was gaining ground with her, he felt that he was. "What you don't have is experience—and a repertoire of tricks in case one goes astray. You ask me to teach you. That began last night. Let me tell you another thing. Whatever they did to you, that scar outside isn't your trouble. It's fear. It's the kind of panic that makes bad judgement and drives you to heroics. Get rid of your fear of men, girl. I don't say you should sleep with me. But I say that being afraid to—won't steady your arm or make good judgements. You're scared to death of me. You're scared to death of getting caught by these men because you know what can happen. That's not going to make good decisions. I don't think it's making a good one for you now. If you weren't scared of me, you'd think a lot more clearly. And you wouldn't run from me."

  "I said what I would do for my keep! I'm not a whore!"

  "It wasn't a whore's portion that I offered you. You think, girl. Fear makes mistakes. Fear makes its own reasons for a choice, when good sense would say it costs too much. Don't let fear push you. Whatever the fear is. Do you understand me? Until you overcome that—until you make up your own mind—your enemies are masters of everything you do. And you'll fail at the last. I've no question of it."

  She turned away from him and scrambled to her feet, to the door, not looking at him, no.

  "The sword is not the highest skill," he said. For a moment he was back in Yiungei, at home, in the court of pale stone. It was his father's voice. "It's a shadow of that skill. The substance is in yourself."

  She looked back at him, angry and confused.

  "The sword isn't the weapon," he said. "You are. Do you understand me yet? I can teach you the higher knowledge, but I can't say it's going to make sense to you. Don't frown. Show respect for your teacher. By the gods, you'll learn manners before you learn anything. I won't have taught a barbarian."

  "Yes, master Saukendar."

  "Don't give me that tone. I've been patient. You're treading very close to trouble this morning. You ask me favors, you ask me to teach you, this is part of it. Go clean up. And clean up this mess. I'm certainly not going to."

  She bowed, her mouth a taut line. And she went without a word to gather up the cooking pot and the laundry and a bucket and head for the spring.

  One did not know what to do with a girl like that. She was crazy.

  He was, to agree to the things he had just agreed to.

  So he thought, contemplating a cold bowl of rice and a solitary breakfast.

  He was afraid she might change her mind, afraid she might not come back from her bath, afraid that, after all, she would decide she knew enough and take out one day, armed with her sword and her absurd notions.

  She upset his stomach.

  And disturbed his sleep.

  * * *

  It was the way with nagging problems, he thought, that they could lie quiet all day and turn on a man in the dark. If Taizu were not sleeping across the room he would do what he had done on the worst nights, in the early years and sometimes since: light the lamp and find some work for his hands, and sleep during the day till the ghosts and the demons had left him. But pride afforded him no such refuge, and they had drunk most of the wine.

  What's the matter, master Saukendar?

  He lay still, staring up at the roof with his heart pounding, recollecting what hate felt like and what it was to have lost everyone who mattered in the world.

  And when he was not doing that he was reliving the moment that he had backed up from a crazed girl with a wooden sword.

  Stupid, he chided himself.

  Or he was wondering why he had ended up giving in to every demand she made.

  Twice stupid.

  He could not remember what he had sworn to her, that was the truth of it. He grew confused about wh
at he had said.

  One hardly knew what to do with such a woman. Beat sense into her, perhaps. One wanted to. But dealing with her was like trying to hold water in one's fist: the open hand, he told himself, was the only way.

  So one kept the hand open. That was all. One took seriously the idea that she might go, in some fit of temper, and one hoped to teach her enough to save herself.

  One hoped to teach her to rethink her notions and give up her idea of a personal revenge.

  One had to maintain one's own sense of balance, and not relive those days. There was too much anger there, and too much pain; and it disturbed him that he had disposed of less of it than he had thought.

  He had gone completely confused when she had come at him, that was what had happened. Her anger had been thoroughly imposing, and he was so very long from having used any of his other skills that he had instinctively, faced with a girl he had no desire to harm, realized that he was not in control of those skills and refused to use them. That was the truth he came to, in the dark, in long hours.

  He had lost command of his art. That was the other part of the truth. The skills were there, but something essential was gone, whatever had ruled them and made them whole.

  That was not her doing. It had been gone, he thought, from the time he had known there was nothing to be done. After that he had had confidence in nothing, and believed in no divine order, only chaos. If there were demons, and he believed even in them only by dark, the demons ruled the world, and always had.

  So even having discovered the flaw in himself, he could not mend it.—

  Hell with it.

  He should have slept with Meiya; he should have supported Riga in his bid to unseat the young Emperor; he should have taken every opposite course to the paths he had taken for honor's sake.

  Teaching the girl, he took another—for honor's sake—if that was even what he had sworn in the first place.