Black Steel

by Steve Perry

  Chapter TWENTY-FOUR

  “TAKE OFF YOUR clothes,” Bergamo said.

  The local sun had barely managed to lift itself to the horizon and the morning’s air was chilly out in the foundry yard. Sleel, who did his best work in the afternoon and evening, was still blinking sleep away.

  Even the geese wandered about somnambulantly.

  Do whatever he says, Kee had told him. Fine.

  As Sleel shucked his orthoskins, the old man also began to remove his own jumpsuit. Under his clothing Bergamo was pale his body not nearly as wrinkled as his face, and in pretty good shape. Sleel hoped he held up as well when he got to be that old. Assuming he didn’t freeze to death here first.

  The old man stripped to the buff. Sleel matched him.

  All right. What now? Some kind of strange sexual ritual? Okay, then, mine is longer-though not by much, Sleel saw. And rapidly getting shorter in the cold, too.

  But, no. Vivian came out into the yard where the two naked men now stood. She carried a pan of water, warm vapor rising from it into the morning. Behind her was Sam Sam, the assistant who was probably eighty, and who was also the main polisher. He carried a pan of water, too.

  Bergamo accepted the pan from Vivian and nodded at Sleel, who took the second pan from Sam Sam.

  The container was made of wooden slats fitted closely together and bound with cord. What now? Was he supposed to drink it?

  Bergamo said something in a language Sleel didn’t understand, looked toward the sky and raised the pan over his head, then poured it onto himself.

  “To cleanse the spirit,” Sam Sam said, as the water showered down over the old man.

  Sure, why not? Sleel lifted his own container as had Bergamo and dumped it onto his head.

  The vapor had fooled him. The water was cold.

  Another assistant, this one the other woman, Brittan, came out bearing thick towels. Bergamo began to dry himself off and Sleel didn’t need a map to figure this part out. .

  Sam Sam brought Sleel a jumpsuit, freshly cleaned but soot-stained, and a set of coppery firemesh to put on over the clothes. Sleel dressed, adding slippers and a sweatband. Sam Sam also handed him a set of hardfoam earplugs.

  Bergamo approached him, bearing a device the size of a small cigar. “Hold out your right arm, like this.”

  Sleel stuck his arm out at a right angle to his body, fingers extended. The old man pointed the device at him. A tiny red dot flashed and centered on Sleel’s chest, then danced out his arm to the tip of his middle finger. Bergamo adjusted the device. Sleel saw the pinhead red dot center on the base of his little finger, then move out to the tip and stop. The old man looked at the device and sing-songed something to Vivian, who nodded and repeated the last part of it back to him.

  “Put down your arm.” Bergamo turned away and headed toward the foundry, scattering the geese. They protested sleepily.

  Vivian said, “The length of your sword. Chest to end of large finger, plus little finger. Go with him.”

  Kee was inside, next to the furnace, and there was some kind of bowing ceremony going as she presented the chunks of black steel to Bergamo. It didn’t take long. Kee allowed Sleel a smile as she left.

  The denscris plate slid back on the furnace and the heat reached out and slapped Sleel. The firemesh absorbed most of it, but his face and ears felt as if they had been blasted. Sweat began to run down his face, despite the headband.

  Bergamo handed Sleel a long-handled ladle with some, but not all, of the black steel stacked on it in an odd configuration, and nodded at the furnace. Sleel stuck the shovelful of metal into the furnace and stood there. Doubtless there was a more efficient way of doing this, machineries and whatnot, but hand crafting was what this was all about, wasn’t it?

  After standing there for what seemed years, the old man tapped Sleel on the shoulder and nodded. Sleel removed the glowing pieces of metal and gently deposited them onto the anvil. Bergamo handed Sleel an oddly shaped hammer, one with almost twice as much mass on one side of the long handle as on the other. Vivian moved in to grasp the semi-fused lump of metal with tongs, holding it securely. “Like so,”

  Bergamo said, hitting the metal with his own hammer. “In triple rhythm. “

  Bergamo tapped the anvil once, twice, and Sleel lifted the heavy hammer and whacked the glowing steel.

  “No so hard. “

  Tap. Tap. Whack.

  “Better. “

  Tap. Tap. Whack.

  After several minutes of this, Bergamo nodded. Vivian put the pounded steel back onto the shovel and Sleel inserted it once again into the furnace.

  This was repeated until the material became a solid chunk. Sleel lost count of how many times it took.

  Later the thinned and flattened metal was bent, using chisels and special pliers, pounded again, then bent and folded, heated, bent and folded yet again.

  Wielding the hammer was a lot harder than it looked. Sleel had thought he was in pretty good shape, certainly in better condition than a man old enough to be his great-grandfather, or a woman the same age as his mother. Wrong. Even though he switched grips from time to time, both shoulders, arms, wrists and hands ached with fatigue. What had seemed inanimate chunks of metal now took on a kind of life, flowing liquidly under the hammer. The metal elongated, was folded and stretched again and again.

  Vivian left and went to another furnace where other assistants worked. She returned with a strip of steel that nearly matched the one Sleel pounded upon. This new piece was sprayed with some chemical and added to Sleel’s, being heated and pounded and folded and stretched some more.

  Sleel was finally beginning to get into the rhythm of it all when Vivian touched his arm. The metal was put into a special attachment to the furnace, to “keep it warm,” and Vivian led Sleel out of the foundry proper.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “Piss break,” Vivian said. “Also food, if you need it.”

  Bergamo was down the hall, heading toward the fresher.

  Sleel saw a clock in the kitchen. Good gods, it was after noon. They had been thumping away in there for seven hours, easy. Now that he noticed it, he was hungry. He had been drinking from the cooled pitcher of water next to the furnace off and on, so he wasn’t thirsty, but his bladder was full.

  “Ever. twenty years ago the old fart would have gone until dark before stopping to pee,” Vivian said.

  “Good thing he’s getting up there. I can hold it almost as long as he can now. I snuck off an hour ago, but don’t tell him.”

  Sleel shook his head.

  They quit at dark, and Sleel found he hadn’t been so tired in years, not since the days at Matador Villa.

  Who would have thought that swinging a hammer would do that?

  Kee was sitting in the small community room outside Sleel’s sleeping quarters when he arrived. “Having fun yet?” she said.

  “Oh, yeah, loads.”

  “It is a little taxing.”

  Sleel regarded her. “Speaking again from experience?”

  “Yes. As it happens, the family heirloom here”-she nodded at the sword-“is the proper length for me.

  Great-grammie-times-four must have been about my size. But I have another sword. Someday it will belong to my daughter, if I ever have one.”

  Sleel smiled at the sudden vision of a little Kee padding around the dojo floor waving a sword.

  “Something funny?”

  “No, not funny. Poignant. The image of your child came to me. “

  “Oh? And what did she look like?”

  “I saw her at the age of maybe two. Very serious, very beautiful. Following her mother around.”

  “What color were her eyes?”

  Sleel blinked. “Eyes?” He brought back the image of the little girl. “Blue.”

  “Mine are violet.”

  “I know. So she takes after her father.”

  Kee didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “Better get some rest. Dawn will be here before you
know it.”

  “Do I get an outdoor bath again?”

  “Nope, one soul-cleansing per blade. You’ll work for two or three more days, depending on how it’s going. After that, things get more complex and Miyamoto will have to attend to them himself.”

  “Six weeks, huh?”

  “More or less.”

  After he had gone to his room to shower, Wu sat staring at Sleel’s door. Blue eyes, her imaginary daughter?

  Sleel’s eyes were blue.

  In the sanctum of his power, Cierto listened to the spy’s report. “My agent has planted a listening device within the foundry, Patron. Although he was unable to learn much during his short visit, the device has picked up enough conversation for us to determine that the old man is making a sword-”

  “I thought as much,” Cierto cut in. “Although the one she carries certainly seems to be of good quality. “

  “Forgive me, Patron, I have been unclear. The sword is not for the woman, but for the matador. “

  “What?” Quickly, Cierto clamped down on his surprise and surge of anger. “Are you certain of this?”

  “Si, Patron. The recordings are quite clear about this.”

  When the spy had finished, Cierto chewed on this new bit of information. The old swordmaker would craft a blade for this man whom the House of Black Steel had easily beaten, but not for the master of that house? It burned indigestibly in Cierto’s belly like a shard of hot metallic ice. Of course it was because the woman had interceded for him; still, it pained him no less. That she would vouch for this matador meant she cared for him, perhaps more than Cierto knew. He felt a second shard pierce his entrails next to the first, this one of jealousy. How could she feel something for one so inferior? It pained him, truly. For causing it, the woman would also suffer some pain. And the matador would die worse for it, too.

  These people did not know what an error it was to cross Hoja Cierto. But they would learn shortly.

  Another month or so, six weeks perhaps, and it would be done.

  At some point during the third day of pounding the long piece of black steel, Sleel found himself imagining once again Kee’s daughter, seeing her at the age of maybe twelve, dancing through a kata. She looked like Kee, of course, but her hair wasn’t that shining jet, it was a lighter brown, and truly her eyes were blue. So seriously did she move that Sleel found himself laughing with avuncular pleasure.

  “Too much noise,” Bergamo said.

  Sleel returned to the present, blinking against the heat at the old man.

  “Sorry.’

  “You have been hammering without thinking.”

  “Sorry.”

  The old man grunted and shook his head.

  Through the conversation, Bergamo kept tapping his hammer, a faster beat than before, but still double-tapping for each of Sleel’s strikes. Sleel had no trouble keeping the rhythm and listening or talking. The sound guided him so that it required no conscious thought as it had on the first day. Tap. Tap. Whack.

  Now and then the old man would alter the timing, but Sleel was right there with him, keeping the sounds spaced proportionately.

  During the break that afternoon, Vivian came to see him, grinning widely. “He complimented you!”

  “Huh? When? I must have missed it.”

  “He told you that you were hammering without thinking.”

  “Yeah, so? That didn’t sound like a compliment to me. He sounded irritated.”

  She laughed. “There have been apprentices who worked here for months before he bothered to acknowledge them, much less say something not an insult. Hammering without thinking about it is desirable. The old fart would never say it, but you are equal to any we have ever seen with only three days’ practice. He will allow you to stay another day.”

  “That’s good, huh?”

  “Only twice before has this happened. Kee Wu was one of these.”

  “Who was the other?”

  Vivian smiled. “It was a long time ago, forty years. A young woman of twenty.”

  “You?”

  “So it was.”

  Sleel chuckled. “I’m honored to be in such company.”

  “You should be. The old man has been looking for another apprentice for years. He has hopes that Kee Wu will join us here once she ripens. Another twenty years or so.”

  “Things ripen late around here,” Sleel said.

  “It is not a young person’s art. And now, you.”

  “Me? Well, I can’t see myself beating on little pieces of metal for a living.”

  “Can you not?”

  Sleel thought about it. Well, it did have a certain appeal, to create something from scratch. A kind of simplicity. No matter how complex the metals might be, they couldn’t begin to be as complicated as people out there in the real galaxy. “Maybe,” he said.

  She laughed. “Ah, the old man will dance when he hears this!”

  ” ‘Maybe’ isn’t much to get excited about.”

  ” ‘Yes’ and ‘no’ each close doors as they open others. But anything is possible with ‘maybe.”’

  Funny, he’d never thought about it like that before.

  “Do you intend to waste the entire afternoon in idle chatter?” Bergamo said from behind Sleel. “While your sword waits unformed?”

  “You must have owned many slaves in a past incarnation, old man,” Vivian said. “And beaten them all without mercy.

  “Only when they dragged their heels,” Bergamo said. “To work!”

  The three of them moved back into the foundry to continue forming Sleel’s soul.

  Chapter TWENTY-FIVE

  FIVE WEEKS HAD passed since his time at Bergamo’s forge; the call had not yet come telling him the sword was ready. He and Kee practiced each day, and Sleel found that he much wanted to do the forms with the blade upon which he had worked.

  Kee knew; she laughed at him for it. She had been there, she told him. Having your soul in another’s hands, even the man who was forging and polishing it, felt strange.

  And that was not the only strange feeling Sleel had. Something about Kee had changed. Or maybe it was him and not her. He felt drawn to her, like an iron filing to a magnet. He felt better when she was around. He found himself listening intently when she spoke. He missed her when she was gone. They disturbed him, these feelings, and he didn’t understand what they meant. He didn’t say anything to her, naturally, and he was not sure what, if anything, he should do about it all.

  Now, the night enveloped him like a loose cloak as he walked, pondering the mystery of Kildee Wu.

  What, he wondered, did it all mean? He had been a writer once, he’d had some grasp of emotions, hadn’t he? What was it about this situation that eluded him?

  The man with the dog passed him going the other way, waved, and continued on. Sleel waved back absently.

  He was too old for this, Sleel thought. Whatever it was.

  Wu was in the dojo about to go through Fire Hand when she heard the noise at the door. The sound of plastic shattering. Without pausing she took the sword from its stand and turned to face the entrance to the dojo.

  The threat was not long in arriving. Five of them, one woman and four men, filing slowly into the workout area. They wore swords with long and nearly straight blades, and black fighting tights. None of them spoke as they spread out along the far wall, spacing themselves evenly. These were not Flex players, come to try her after all these years; they would have been children when she walked that path.

  Wu stood silent, waiting. This was a challenge and it was their move to outline it. Who-?

  It came to her two seconds before he arrived.

  Cierto!

  Sure enough, he entered behind the five. He wore his sheathed sword and tights to match the others. He nodded at her. “My gift to our son,” he said, waving at the five.

  She didn’t understand what that meant, but she did realize that this was going to be a fight to the death, hers or theirs. She had to narrow her focus. Even
so, a thought arose: where was Sleel?

  They drew their weapons, five swords whispering against the scabbards as they came into view. All black blades, as was her own. Still Wu did not move.

  The man nearest the door edged forward, his weapon held in one hand, aimed at her heart.

  Wu took a half step to her left, to tread upon the trigger plate that started the dojo’s holocam. Whatever happened to her, Sleel would see it when he returned.

  The second man slid forward.

  Wu watched them. Her sword snicked out unbidden. She dropped the sheath and moved it away with her foot so that it came to rest against the wall to her left.

  The third and fourth opponents moved together.

  The fifth one, the woman, yelled, and jumped forward

  Kildee Wu leaped into the Void.

  Sleel, lost in thought, felt a pang of something, a cool touch on his spine that made him break his step, almost losing his balance. What The man with the dog was behind him, moving faster than normal. That was odd; the man never finished his loop quickly enough to catch up to Sleel before. Why was he in such a hurry?

  Ahead of him, a pair of men stepped out of the shadows.

  They looked innocuous enough, two friends out on a late-night walk, discussing philosophy or religion, maybe, right? No weapons were visible, there was no reason to think they constituted any kind of threat, but Sleel knew, instantly and without the slightest doubt:

  They meant to kill him.

  He was puzzled. The man with the dog, coming up behind him in a hurry, he was in on it, too. And looky here, Sleel, there’s another one across the street, just leaving the shelter of that doorway, pretending to go toward the flitter five meters ahead of you.

  One of the two men on the walk in front of him made an error. Streetlight glinted from a short knife as he moved it next to his leg, trying to keep it hidden.

  What the fuck? Some old enemy who had found him and decided to settle things? Sure wasn’t a chance mugging, not if the dog-walker was in on it. He had been out here for months, following Sleel Never mind that. Worry about it later. Deal with it as it stands.