Luca rather enjoyed the continued sparring sessions until, for a reason he remained ignorant as to, he was suddenly allowed to take the secretive test for his red band. And what he gleaned from his Listener talents turned out to be true in that it indeed involved flies.
***
He was altogether unprepared when he entered the small room to find a carcass so far gone Luca could only guess at its species. The stench cracked him in the nose and saliva immediately pooled at the back of his throat, Luca fighting to keep the bile down. Yet the carcass moved, blackness undulating all over it as the mass of flies made their meal.
The disturbed insects swarming before him and his instructions only being to catch four living flies, Luca believed this to be a short and pointless test, but was soon disabused of that notion.
He trapped the first one within a minute, but then realized his dilemma: he caught it with his right hand, which meant if he were to grasp for a second, he would release the first. So he transferred it to his left and made his next lunge. A few seconds later he claimed another, but when he tried to transfer it to his left hand, the first escaped.
The stench soon became overwhelming, Luca spilling the contents on his stomach and nearly losing his catch as he spasmed. His stomach voided, he felt shaky, but refocused on the task at hand. In all, it took him nearly ten minutes to catch all four, departing the room to receive his second armband and learn, to his horror, that to earn his breakfast each morning he would need to catch ten.
His new status helped dull the sting of his morning routine, and within the week, he could accomplish his task in under a minute. Then Laszlo informed him he needed to be as skilled with his off-hand as with his right, Luca now forced to make all his catches with his left. Soon this became second nature, at which point Luca was required to alternate hands at his instructor’s whims, quickly transferring the contents of his hands reflexively as he switched from right to left and then back again.
After passing the fly test, Luca became fully inducted into the school’s philosophy of tshi. Their order followed insects, and although to call someone a bug was to call them insufficient since insects only possessed one Breath like plants, unlike all other animals, the founder of the Hottenkof School of Tshi believed true victory could only be attained by obeying the lessons gleaned from observing flying insects. Luca found this philosophy insane, but wisely kept his mouth shut during Laszlo’s sessions.
To his surprise, Laszlo’s daily instructions no longer included sparring. Anatomy instead took its place, Luca forced to memorize the human form inside and out. Within a month, Luca learned how to slice a man to either make him drop his weapon or to render the arm useless for life. He discovered a nick to the head would bleed profusely and was therefore the aim if the goal of the fight was only to embarrass a foe. Such fights to first blood were quite common within the Dobra tribes, a test between two challengers that delivered a victor rather than a dead body. Laszlo drove these anatomy lessons home by making Luca drive his blade into the carcass of a hog over and over again. Hovering behind him, Laszlo would call out the result he desired, and Luca would attack the hog accordingly. His instructor would then chide him if his form was suspect.
This focus on form even included the routines spinning the lockblade. A true master, Laszlo said, could identify both the school and skill of his opponent by these spins, and as such, Luca must commit them all to memory so as to represent the school well. Laszlo even explained that in ages past how two masters would meet to do battle only through their routines, the victor the one with the superior style. By demonstrating their tshi mastery so overtly, they eliminated the need to even draw blood in a duel.
The techniques all started off with a similar pattern, similar to Luca’s twirling of the violin’s bow, but to these Laszlo added dozens of flourishes that put Luca’s techniques to shame. These he was required to perform both with the blade retracted and extended, the eventual goal to achieve them all while blindfolded. Although Luca learned several of the initial flourishes, his progress quickly peaked, Laszlo declaring that perhaps Luca was not as gifted as he initially believed.
Luca’s next test for an armband initially appeared similar to his encounter with the flies, but upon entering, he found a wasps’ nest. Four buzzed about, Luca told to bring all out alive. Catching them turned out to be far easier than the erratic flies, but the flies lacked stingers. Luca’s previous strategy of transferring the bug to his other hand still worked, but the insect immediately availed itself of its stinger. It was then that he understood the reasons for these tests: the flies had taught him speed, whereas the wasps instructed him in endurance and the mental fortitude to continue his path despite the searing fire in his swelling hands.
Upon receiving his yellow band, Erro took over Luca’s education. The anatomy lessons continued, Erro teaching Luca to inflict wounds that would either kill instantly, over hours, or even days later. To these exercises Erro added even more complex stances and forms, Luca’s mind awash and struggling to sort them all. To overcome this, Erro initiated Luca into the art of rumination.
Luca almost balked when he realized that day’s training consisted of simply sitting silently in the room as he thought about his techniques rather than practicing them, but he held his tongue. By brushing up against Erro’s Mind, Luca realized his mentor believed mastering rumination was the last step before the final test for the white armband, so Luca dutifully sat for hours without saying a word. In those long hours, he was relieved Erro was no Listener, for if he were, Erro would be well aware Luca thought only of Polis and Jaelle.
Upon returning The Pea and the Pod to Kamm, Luca was deemed adequate enough in his reading and arithmetic. Simza did not require a bieta who read for pleasure, rather one able to understand simple words, and so Luca’s afternoons focused exclusively on the lockblade. He was not terribly aggrieved at Kamm’s departure since her well of information on Jaelle had dried up long ago.
So Luca added to it from his own imagination.
The evenings still belonged to him, and soon Luca intimately knew every inch of the Rax quarter Jaelle once called home. The eponymous proprietor of Armetta’s Pastry Shop now not only knew Luca by name, but his moods with just a glance and would ply him with complimentary sweets. Each time Luca purchased two before departing for one of the nearby parks. There, he would imagine the picnic he and Jaelle might share were she still there. She would easily be the more eloquent of the two despite Luca’s silver tongue, her superior education elevating her beyond his simple status. She would be, of course, the epitome of intelligence and civility, Luca complimenting her insightful views, only to be rewarded with her blush before she would take his hand. Fingers entwined, they would then make their way to the nearby Saulshish Ocean to quietly contemplate the setting sun while falling deeper and deeper in love. With each excursion, these private mental inventions came into greater focus, Luca’s illusions ever more real after Erro’s rumination sessions.
On the nights that it rained and kept him indoors, he entertained himself with whittling. As a child, he had shown some inkling of ability, and like the bix sticks, he returned to the familiar reminder of home. With his remaining time in Polis quickly drawing down, Luca needed some sort of gift to bring back to Jaelle to prove how cosmopolitan he now was. Exchanging the majority of his remaining money with a friendly Rax tailor, Luca adopted the dark suit of the city-dwelling Cousins. This, he knew, would demonstrate to Jaelle how far he had come from his grubber roots, but he still required a gift worthy of his boundless love. Truly she deserved unending jewels, dresses, perfumes, and all the finer things, but Luca now carried more lint than coins. So he bought himself a fine piece of butternut with the intention of carving a replica of the eight-story Rangeley Building towering over all of Polis. This would surely be the monument she deserved, an icon only she would recognize. But Luca found he could not make the first cut for fear of marring the exquisite wood. So it remained untouched in his room as Luca�
�s mind chewed over another worthy gift when he was meant to be ruminating over his final trial.
***
With only three days remaining in Polis, Erro finally proclaimed it time for Luca’s ultimate test. As with the others, Luca assumed it would involve insects, but was surprised when Erro and Laszlo hailed a carriage and drove him to the outskirts of the city to a beekeeper’s abode. There, they led him to a shed where he heard humming within.
“The fly has no weapons, and so it must avoid,” Erro intoned solemnly. “The wasp has one, and so it wounds over and over. But the bee has only one goal—to kill, even when it means its own death. It is sure of its intent, as you must be, because the bee knows that it will die after it strikes. So it must make its attack count since it has only the one. Bring me a bee, Luca. Alive.”
Luca realized the crux of the test upon entering the room to discover the bees circling the disturbed honeycomb. They furiously searched for an enemy, swarming as soon as he arrived and forcing him to dance around the room to avoid them. He was not nearly fast enough, one stinging his cheek. Without thinking, Luca brushed the bee away, his fingers scratching against the poison sack it left behind as it fell to the ground where a single Breath escaped upon its death.
He received another sting to his neck, the pain sharpening Luca’s understanding. Catching one as he had the flies and wasps would be useless since the bee would simply sting his palm and die by the time he exited the building. The pain from the now nearly half-dozen stings distracting him, Luca suddenly wished he had taken the lessons on focus from his rumination sessions to heart. He still felt no fear. He knew he was more than capable of mastering this test as easily as the previous two.
He just needed to figure it out first.
With no other obvious option, Luca snatched a bee from the air and ran for the door. But his palm lit on fire before he took his second step, and Luca tossed the corpse away. Another flew for his face, Luca instinctively swatting it away. As he did, he realized it was one of the parries Laszlo taught him and grinned at the thought of his former instructor’s praise at how well he adhered to the proper form.
His right arm swelling, and Luca in such flaring agony he was unable to guess at the number of new stings covering him, he thought back to Onas and his dog. He had mastered the mutt by understanding its nature, and so he applied that same understanding to the bees. Catching a single insect was not an issue, rather the preservation of an animal dead set on its own destruction. The individual bee eschewed its own life in favor of the hive’s survival. It stung because that was its nature, and Luca wondered if this was the thrust of the lesson. It certainly felt like one of the inane virtues Erro extoled before their rumination sessions.
Then the realization hit him: understanding the bee did not matter since it did not possess a Mind. It only reacted to its surroundings, striking wildly whenever it encountered a living obstacle.
All Luca had to do was ensure it could not make contact with him.
His right hand swollen and slow, Luca’s left shot out to catch the bee. As soon as his hand closed around it, he shook it roughly. Inside, he could feel the bee bouncing about, unable to land on his palm long enough to sting. The bee secure, Luca rushed for the door, but as he approached he remembered his true lesson from Onas and his dog: his accomplishment was still talked about not because Luca touched Onas’ wagon, rather the dog itself. Accomplishing the expected did not provide the cornerstone to build a legend upon, and Luca had every intention of being legendary.
Flexing his swollen right hand, Luca kept bobbling his left as he looked for another straggler. He feared his wounded hand might forsake him, but did not hesitate at snatching a second bee. Both hands now shaking and Luca racing for the door, he grasped his final dilemma upon catching sight of the door knob. To his dismay, he could hear his father’s laughter when invoking the boy swallowed by the sea. In grasping too much, Luca lost everything. He must release one of the bees to escape, but in doing so he would be no better than anyone else wearing a white armband, and Luca knew above all else he was better than the rest.
Lowering his shoulder, he hit the door with all his might and burst out into the daylight. The startled Erro and Laszlo blanched at seeing his engorged face, but Luca laughed for all he was worth as he opened both hands to release the two buzzing bees. For that, he earned two white armbands, a distinguished lockblade, and a catchpenny bottle of rum.
***
Still swollen and aching, Luca grinned with abandon when they arrived back at the school and he was presented with his trophies in front of the other students. He did not need to Listen to feel the Cousins’ shock when he was presented with the two armbands, but it certainly added additional relish to the moment. The ceremonial lockblade was beautiful, with a mother of pearl inlay and gleaming blade. It was a far cry from the utilitarian knife Simza thrust into his hands many months ago, and Luca was proud to replace it with his new prize.
The bottle of rum appeared after all the students were sent home, Erro pouring three glasses and toasting Luca. It was the first of many, the three soon slouched on the training room floor. They shared laughs with their drinks, Luca receiving the largest when he proclaimed, “I must say, becoming a master of tshi hurts much more than I expected.”
Erro could not contain his outburst, Laszlo explaining after struggling with his own laughter. “The white band is only the first step of the initiate. To become a true master, one requires years of study, perhaps an entire lifetime.”
“What you know now,” Erro interjected between intermittent chuckles, “is just enough not to embarrass the school. But the gaji will certainly fear you something fierce now.”
Their summation of his months of training stung, but Luca laughed along. He hurt horribly, but the rum took the edge off and allowed him to feel content for a short while.
The contentedness evaporated as a Cousin with a grey scarf tinged with black entered. Spotting him, Laszlo called out, “We’re not taking on any students at the moment.”
The Hammat boy bowed slightly, Luca assuming he was properly chastened. Instead, the Cousin drew a white armband from his pocket. Erro examined the man closer.
“Rabe Chunvin, is it?”
“It is my father who is the rabe, sir, but you do me great praise in the confusion. One might hope you peer into the future. Myself in particular.”
“Gideon then.” Erro stared harder. “I did not recognize you with the beard. My apologies.”
“No apologies required,” Gideon responded warmly. “I was certainly unable to grow one when I saw you last.” Turning his eyes to Luca, Gideon took stock at the two armbands he wore. “Congratulations. I have never heard of anyone accomplishing so much in such a short span of time. You must be the illustrious Luca everyone is abuzz about.”
Luca received the praise politely, brushing the words away with his swollen hand even as he ate them up. It was unheard of for a Cousin to compliment a Wanderer, and for that alone, Luca liked the lad, extending the diminishing rum his direction.
“I have that dubious honor.”
Gideon accepted the bottle to take a gracious pull. “And you return home soon?”
“In two days.” Luca’s grin widened the sweet reunion he imagined with Jaelle.
“Then would you be so kind as to deliver this to Simza from me?”
Gideon removed an ornate box from his suitcoat and handed it to Luca. With a nod from Gideon, Luca opened it to reveal the golden necklace. He knew little of stones, but Luca suspected that the gem in the center burned with a ruby’s fire rather than a garnet’s.
“It’s absolutely lovely.” Dobra decorum dictated Luca compliment any gift no matter the type, but his words were marrow true. Never before had he seen its equal, even in the hundreds of shops he passed during his nocturnal wanderings. “Simza will be quite pleased with it.”
“I certainly hope so,” Gideon said with a chuckle. “Though it’s actually for her daughter. Please relay to
her that I thought of her the moment I saw it. It, of course, pales in comparison to Jaelle’s smile, but I hope it will suffice as a token of my affection.”
Gideon might as well have sliced him across the stomach as Luca’s grin fell. Concern crossed Gideon’s face. “Are you ill, sir?”
He was more worried about Gideon’s admission to having made Jaelle smile, something that stumped Luca for the last year. Forcing his grin back in place, he still knew it looked false.
“Perhaps a bit too much rum. I’ll pass along both your gift and your well-wishes.”
“Would it aid you in any way if I wrote them down?”
“No,” Luca replied. “I’m sure I can remember them word for word.”
***
Gideon left shortly thereafter, taking all of Luca’s good cheer with him. He tried to hide his woe from Erro and Laszlo, but feared he failed miserably when they soon excused themselves. The box containing the priceless necklace weighed heavy in his swollen hand as he climbed to his bedroom to look over the untouched piece of butternut. He had meant to, in his own poor fashion, procure a gift befitting Jaelle’s beauty, an offering he now carried on the behalf of another. Gideon’s gift eclipsed anything Luca could ever match, and he felt like a dunder for fancying even for a second that he could compete for Jaelle against real affluence. He dared make the foolish mistake of believing himself no longer a grubber, a notion Gideon unintentionally disabused him of.
Luca’s foul mood remained through to his departure, Armetta taking one look at him and declaring he had the perfect confectionary concoction to cure a broken heart. Aware this was Luca’s last appearance, a price did not arrive with the sweet, and as Luca stared at it on the counter, he realized the man was right.
It was indeed perfect.
The Imbued Lockblade (Sol's Harvest Book 2) Page 11
