But I fell out of that place when the alien I’d met on the balcony suddenly walked into the inidrla-na, from the door.
Niko whacked me on the shoulder with his blade and threw me to the floor.
I yelped and held the bruised area, wincing. My teacher stood above me, glaring down.
“There is more where that came from, if you don’t concentrate.”
I didn’t answer, knowing there was none, and looked toward the doorway where the striv stood. He was still there, silent, serious, and impressive. My secret.
Niko said, “Stand, Jos-na.”
I levered to my feet and pushed the wooden blade through my belt out of respect. The striv came forward. Even though I was aware Niko stared at me, I couldn’t take my eyes from the alien. I met his black gaze in the way that was proper greeting.
His voice was just as musical as I remembered. “Orphan of the Starling. Is Niko beating you up enough?”
I tried to hide my surprise at the question. “He’s trying,” I answered politely.
“Succeeding,” Niko corrected.
There was an animal on this planet that Niko had shown me in vidstills and I had seen blurs of at night, high and deep in the trees—a burly creature about the size of a small man, all black fur and wide black eyes. Uurao were nocturnal tree-dwellers and nonviolent unless provoked. One picture showed the eyes illuminated by the flash of a cam. This striv’s dark eyes reminded me of that—fixed on me, curious and large.
“You can outsmart the kia’redan bae,” he said.
“I think so. Niko says I’m smart.” I smiled, then realized I’d used the short form.
Niko said, “Sometimes, but not recently.”
“Enh,” the striv agreed, too quickly for my liking. But I knew the tone they used. Niko had taken it with his brother. “Kia’redan bae,” the striv continued, then spoke a string of words in a dialect I didn’t know.
Niko gestured easily and said something back. Neither of them looked at me. The striv fluttered a wing, the lilts and slurs in his words so perfect that Niko’s human voice seemed rough against it.
The striv glanced at me once more, then turned and left the room. I watched him go. “Are they always that abrupt?”
“Yes. What’s done doesn’t need to be lingered over.” Then Niko thumped me on the head with the hilt of his wooden blade, not very hard but hard enough, and moved to take up a sparring stance once more.
I rubbed my head. “What was that for?”
“Because you looked, ritla.”
“Of course I looked. You people come in and out like ghosts.”
“You people?”
“Who is he? What were you talking about?”
“We were talking business, Jos-na. As for who he is, can’t you guess? He is ki’redan-na D’antan o Anil. The Caste Master.”
* * *
XIII.
The next morning after breakfast in the Tree Room, Niko said, “Let’s go to the roof. There is a garden my mother says you will like.”
That meant going outside, something I hadn’t done except on the balcony. For the past few months my life had been only work, with the occasional afternoon spent painting or drawing. It felt good to be busy, to learn from him without pressure, to not have to worry about anything.
Now he led me through a door I had always found locked from the inidrla-na hallway, up narrow, tiled stairs winding on the outside of the building, and onto the flat roof. The edges and eaves were bordered in blue and red designs, but the central area was hard and grainy. I looked around for plants or flowers and saw none.
“Where’s the garden?”
“Wait,” he said. “Sit here.”
I sank down beside him on the border of the roof, facing inward. Ridges on the flat top, five to ten centimeters high, made patterns in some places. In heavy rains the buildings made waterfalls. With their curved eaves the water built up and flowed over, like stacked glasses I’d seen once at a wedding on Mukudori.
Here the rain poured over the balconies, all the way down to the beach and the sea. Niko had told me about the crevices and tubes along the mountainside, which redirected a lot of the debris that built up during storms. Otherwise in heavy rainfall the houses sat buried in mud. People used to die under piles of mud and fallen trees. Once I’d figured out the house wouldn’t collapse no matter how much rain fell or lightning struck, the noise of the storms started to sound like a weird kind of music. Like the drives of a ship.
Planets were scary sometimes, but no more than space.
We sat in silence as the sun crawled higher in the sky. Niko could stay quiet for hours. I looked up at him, followed his squinting gaze toward the heavy trees and their clothing of bright leaves. Some of the leaves had already started to drift down or got caught in the breeze and landed on the roofs. Birds called to one another and once in a while the branches shook from the scampering weight of a small reptile or mammal. I remembered the Caste Master walking on the branches, perfectly balanced.
Minutes passed and I noticed the patterns had changed on the rooftop. The early afternoon light made the ridges cast shadows that brought the roof to life. Slowly I stood and stared down at the perfect design that bracketed Niko’s face, copied here on the roof in sharp darkness, in a circular shape. It resembled a complex dragon with its tail in its mouth. But it wasn’t a dragon; it represented the jii-na—the place of the sword, the combat circle of every assassin-priest. The circle of your na.
The tattoo reflected his status. The more complicated it was, the higher your status in the caste. The color of your skin marked the caste—white was the ka’redan-na. Sympathizers didn’t have to undergo the altered pigmentation, but some of them did—like Enas-dan. I wondered, when the time came, if I’d choose that way too.
“It’s a shadow garden,” he said. “Depending on the sun, the pattern changes slightly.”
“I like it.”
“You know it’s your birthday,” he said, abrupt as a striv.
“It is?” I hadn’t kept track of the months in the Send reports, and EarthHub Standard Dates just didn’t apply on this planet.
“You’re ten.” He glanced up at me, squinting. I stood with my back to the sun. “By the Hub’s reckoning.”
I felt older. I knew about young crews and old time, how you found them the deeper you went into space away from Earth and its stations and colonies, even with leap points to shorten the distances. My mother had explained about why people looked so much older on stations even though to me we saw them only a few months apart. Maybe I felt older because I was stationary. Or maybe just because in my head I was older.
“In the Hub, when it’s your birthday, you get gifts.” I smiled at my teacher, rubbed the sole of my foot over the warm pebbles.
“So I’ve heard,” he said. “Ash-dan is due back in a couple months. When he does return, you’ll be ready to spar with him. That will be your gift.”
“A spar?” That wasn’t much of a present, but he was a symp and an assassin-priest. Spars would have to do. “You always beat me. How am I supposed to fight him?”
“With open eyes.” He returned my smile now.
I scowled. “Why Ash? I’ve only talked to him once.”
“You need to face somebody you don’t know. It will be a public spar. After that you’ll begin training with peers.”
That would be fun, being with other kids my age. Although I didn’t specifically miss it. Niko and I got along well enough. “But I don’t want to fight in public.”
“Why? How do more eyes make a difference to your skill?”
“What if I mess up?”
“You won’t. You are the student of the kia’redann bae, though sometimes you are ritla.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Unworthy student.” He couldn’t stop smiling now.
I hit his shoulder playfully. The contact shouldn’t have surprised us, but it did. His eyes widened slightly. We necessarily touched each other in unarmed sp
ars, but this wasn’t a spar.
I thought about apologizing, but thankfully he just said, “Ritla. Put your weight behind it next time.”
* * *
XIV
Two months later, as Niko said, Ash-dan returned in the middle of the night when I was asleep. I heard the transport land outside the house but was too tired to bother waking up fully. I saw him the next morning when I went to the kitchen to forage for breakfast. He stood in front of the heatplate, his back to the door and stirring a pot of what smelled like candy-bark soup. That was one of my favorite things so I approached his elbow.
“Is it almost done, Ash-dan?”
He jerked in surprise and a hot spoonful of soup splashed my cheek. I winced and wiped quickly with my sleeve. For a moment he stared at me, as if trying to figure out who I was.
“Jos Musey-na,” he said finally. “Eja, you startled me.”
I was shocked myself, now that he faced me. His gray eyes had shadow crescents beneath them, the corners of his mouth deeply lined. But his eyes didn’t blink or move from my face. I went to the far counter and dislodged a cup from the rack, just to give myself something to do. He’d opened out the little window in the corner and a cool morning breeze washed in, chilling my hands.
“You look well,” he said. “Maybe even a little taller.”
For some reason even his compliments sounded like insults. Even though I knew I had grown.
“So Niko hasn’t yet got tired of you,” he continued, turning back to the pot and stirring again.
It didn’t sound like a tease. I turned the cup in my hands. “I’m learning really fast.”
“I suppose you would. Eja, you had advance training with Falcone.”
He said it so calmly, thrown off his tongue. Mine felt like stone.
“That was a long time ago.” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d thought of Falcone, but now it didn’t matter. It all came back like a sudden leap from a long, deep point.
“Only a year,” Ash-dan said. “Or so. Eja, you might want to know that he’s still out there. Evading justice.”
“So?”
“Maybe one day you’ll meet him again.”
“I don’t want to meet him again.”
“No? Not even when you’re a ka’redan? I knew Niko’s work would be wasted on a Hub orphan. Eja, I thought vengeance would be the peak on your mountain.” He yawned.
Why was he saying these things? I looked at the steam rising from the pot. “I’m not going back to space, so how would I meet him?”
“Oh, yes, you’re right.” He stirred at a steady rate. “Niko’s going back, though. I suppose you’ll miss him terribly.”
“He’s going back?” Of course he would, now that his brother was here. But somewhere in my mind I’d hoped Ash-dan would leave again when the time came. My training wasn’t finished.
“You must know he has to return. His na is in space, not with a buntla-na ke taga ke go.”
“What?”
He smiled down at me. “Pirate-trained orphan. Here.” He held out the spoon to me, filled by the pale red soup. “Taste it and tell me if it’s finished.”
My stomach was upset now. “No thanks.”
“Eja, didn’t you want to know?”
I glanced into his eyes, but saw nothing there. It wasn’t the habitual guarded expression in Niko’s or Enas-dan’s faces. With Ash-dan, there was simply nothing there. I hadn’t seen that since my time with Falcone.
What was it like in space now, that it made him into this?
I didn’t want Niko to get like it. Quite suddenly I needed to be around my teacher. I set down the empty cup, backed up, and headed for the door.
“Jos-na,” Ash-dan said.
He was a kii’redan. I was a student. I turned and looked politely at his hollow face, while the blood flowed cold through my limbs.
“I look forward to the spar,” he said.
* * *
XV.
That day I managed all right in the warm-ups and drills—my individual kicks, punches, blocks, and weapons work—but I failed miserably as soon as Niko reviewed the sparring. After the tenth time landing hard on the mat, and even once rolling right off onto the floor, Niko stepped back and motioned me to stand.
“You meet Ash-dan at the end of the week,” he said.
“I know. I’m sorry.” I folded my arms.
“Are you nervous? You know it shouldn’t be a factor.”
It wasn’t nerves. After days of meditation training, I knew I could handle nerves. He knew it too.
“Why didn’t you tell me you’re going back to space?”
Something flickered behind his eyes. “Who said so?”
“Ash-dan. He thought I knew.”
“I was going to tell you after the spar. I have to go back. It will be fine, Jos-na. You will be in a class. Enas-dan and my brother will be your teachers.”
I wasn’t reassured. “Both of them?” I didn’t mind his mother.
“Ash-dan will be teaching you comp work.”
Irritation clawed the back of my throat. “Why?”
“Because it’s not my area of expertise.”
“You don’t know how to use a comp?”
He breathed out. “I know how to use one, but not in the way I want you to know.”
I walked away, two strides. “Why?”
“Jos-na.” He stepped toward me and stopped.
I glared at him. “I didn’t think comp work had anything to do with being a ka’redan.” And I didn’t want Ash-dan to show me.
“It doesn’t, necessarily. But I think it’s something you should know. Now stop questioning your teacher. You knew one day I’d have to return to my ship.”
“Why can’t I go with you?”
“Because you haven’t finished your training.”
“Then stay and finish it!”
I went too far. His face shut down, the way it got when he wanted to remind me that he was the kia’redan bae.
I looked toward the wide window, at the balcony. The day was overcast.
He didn’t say a thing. He let me hear those last words until the echo left the inidrla-na. I tucked my hands up into my sleeves.
“Jos-na,” he said finally, “I’m sorry but I have to go.”
I watched the trees outside sway in a gusting wind. “What would happen to me if you got killed?”
“My family cares for you.”
I didn’t want to sound like a child. So I pressed my lips tight.
“My mother would take care of you.”
She was busy a lot. And her white face reminded me too much of the Caste Master. Too much like the paintings on their screens and the scrolls of art on the walls. Something to look at but never touch. Something made by a foreign hand.
I wanted him to tell me that he wouldn’t get killed, even though it would be a lie. I wanted just to hear it from him, because I would believe that lie if he said it.
But he didn’t say it.
“I have to go back,” he repeated instead.
“Why? It’s not like the war’s going anywhere.”
“One of us has to change that.”
I looked up at him. “Change it?”
“Too many sons have lost their fathers, Jos-na.”
My throat started to hurt. I swallowed. “That won’t change. Besides, you’re the Warboy. Who would listen to you?”
He walked off the sparring mat.
I managed to steady my voice. “Are we finished for the day, Nikolas-dan?”
He said gently, when I expected hardness, “No, Jos-na. I won’t waste your company with anger. Now let’s work on your han strikes.”
My hane, daggers, sat in a corner wrapped in their ritual bindings. Silence followed me as I went to retrieve them. When I stood again before my teacher, holding them in preparation for a lesson, he inspected my grip with first his eyes and then his hands. He only touched me when it was necessary to teach.
“You must not hold them
too tightly,” he said.
I knew this. But instinct made me think that I would lose them if I didn’t.
* * *
XVI.
The morning of the spar, Enas-dan came to take me to the inija-na, where it was going to happen. I’d thought Niko would take me, but she said he was already there. I bathed quickly and dressed in my standard black, quilted and loose, pulled on soft boots because we were going far, she said, and met her in the Tree Room. I ran my hands through my hair to put it in order—I never knew how it looked since I never used mirrors. Enas-dan wore a head cloth, wrapped around her hair like the rest of her clothing wrapped her body. It was all white, blending into her skin.
She led me out the main doors, onto a wide flagstone porch, covered, the roof supported by polished black columns, carved with symbols. The trees were thinned around the immediate area, cleared entirely in one spot directly in front of the porch. On that landing pad sat a small humpbacked ship, probably unable to seat more than ten people, like the launches some merchant ships used for outriding. It was black, with a nub nose and a sleek, pointed tail, and rested on splayed landing struts, humming. Underneath its thick belly poked two maneuverable, cone-shaped jets. The transport looked like it belonged in the water but sounded like the insects outside my window in summer, thousands of them.
Enas-dan yanked open the sliding door and lifted me up and in as if I weighed nothing, then followed. Inside sat the Caste Master.
“Jos-na,” he said, as if we’d just spoken yesterday.
“Ki’redan-na,” I said, sitting in the cushioned seat beside him, near one of the small, clear windows. Enas-dan echoed my greeting and sat on his other side. He waved a hand at me that I knew was their way of acknowledging people, then he and Enas-dan started talking in some dialect I didn’t know.
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