127 - A weakness

The fight, of course, was very thoroughly built up.

Seat-chips had been set at five times the usual price; on the street, they were going for ten or twenty times. The Pages and Watcher predicted and speculated and wasted the precious power of the Press on all sorts of nonsense. The city made a holiday of it, complete with Raikas and Riji fans getting into fisticuffs in the streets.

Shops in the market sold black wool wigs, flags and arm-bands and head-ribbons and wine-cups and rosaries in my colours or with my Ring-name. “You’re doing magnificently,” said Skorsas, breathlessly. I’d come to know the gold-chains-in-his-blue-eyes look. “But afterwards will be a whole different world, ten-fold from where you are now, even, I’ll bet. You have to sit for a painting and a sculpture—”

“Wait, wait, you lost me at the start… is this because I don’t entirely know Arkan yet? What do you mean, I’m doing magnificently?”

“You’re up five-fold, just this eight-day!” he chortled. “Oh… right. You never think financially. The gifts are up some, but it’s the permissions for all the Karas Raikas stuff that’s gone through the roof.”

“Skorsas… it must be my Arkan. What in Hayel are you talking about? Permissions? Karas Raikas stuff? Am I too simple-minded a barbarian to follow?”

“They use your name, they give you a portion—I set that up from the start. It didn’t take any great brilliance to see how well you’d do… remember when we went to the banking-house that day and you signed a stack of papers? That was one of them.”

“Skorsas…! It’s not even legal for me to own anything!”

“Feh, that’s just in Yeola-e. You’re in Arko now—you’re free! After you beat Riji, you won’t be silver any more, you’ll be pure gold—who kills becomes, so you will be counted Living Greatest!—which is why I’m saying, we commission a painter and a sculptor to do you, and then we sell permissions to copy those images…” He went on for a while, using many words I did not understand, until he stopped, gazed at what must have been a very blank look on my face and said, “Never mind, Jewel of the Mezem. You’re right that it’s best we each use our strengths: you deal with the Ring; I’ll do the business.” No wonder he called me that.

It is a boy’s duty never to let his certainty that his fighter will win slip, and he didn’t; but I could see through that porcelain-skinned facade. It wasn’t doubt in me, I saw, but his feeling that, if I did feed the lions, it would be entirely his fault. Once, I told him I would not blame him, whatever happened, because there’d be so much talk about me that Riji would have come back sooner or later anyway. It only made him spring up and away, his lips going tight, and when I peeked in his room he was lost in the beads of the device Arkans use to count.

Fighters usually never take sides in other fighters’ fights, since, if the wrong man wins, he will come out inspired against them. But I felt in the air a secret current of favour for me. On first sight it was entirely practical: I killed quickly and without shaming, unlike him, so they’d rather bear my danger than his. Looking again, I saw they were thinking wrongly: if he won he’d go back into retirement, so they’d be rid of both of us. It was their hearts that ruled.

On the day before, that feeling suddenly became much more open. Out of Riji’s sight, for he might stay on if he won and someone had offended him, they’d pat my shoulder as I passed, or give me a blessing in some strange language.

Wishes have strength, whether they influence the falls of chance or the spirit of the receiver; I know it helped me.

All through training, the colonnade was packed with people: writers, oddsmen, motley hangers-on. Riji lingered after Koree had dismissed the rest of us, as did I. Before they could envelop him, he came ambling towards me. “Raikas,” he said, as if we were old friends and he were offering me tea. “Would you like to spar?”

I saw in an instant what he had done, how he had outwitted me. We had never sparred before, though I had wanted to, to get his measure, and to know my weaknesses against him so that I could practice to strengthen them. But he had always happened to be at the other end of the line, or partnered first with someone else. I’d gathered he wanted to avoid it, and so, out of civility, I hadn’t pressed it, thinking that the benefits of sparring go both ways anyway.

What he’d been doing, I saw now, was saving it for this moment, in front of all those measuring eyes. Thus, he was utterly prepared for it, and I was not. The most sensible thing for me to do would be to decline. But then they’d all think he had me unnerved, and he might even say that to me himself, with every pen scratching, and then poised for my answer. No, I thought, the most sensible thing to do is casually accept, and then whip him handily. With him having set his mind and heart for this sparring-session from the start, probably, while it had been sprung on me, though, I didn’t know whether I could.

So I said, “Certainly,” and we both drew and went into stance. The more distant clots of watchers that were just beginning to disperse froze, then rushed back, elbowing each other and whooping.

†

Putting pen to paper to describe Riji Kli-fas’s skill, I find myself shrinking somehow, though I’ve relished doing it with other great warriors I’ve faced. When I search my heart, I find a kind of horror, both that such stunning beauty could be turned to the service of evil, and that evil could find a way to have such stunning beauty serve it. One does not want the world to work that way.

Some part of me feels even that he does not deserve the name of warrior, though on the battlefield he would have been devastating. (As far as I know, he was never on one, reserving his brilliance for the Ring alone.) To my aesthetic, he is a travesty, an aberration like a calf with two heads or a blighted crop, in choosing to fight for pride alone, never for the defense of those he loved.

Or perhaps I am deceiving myself, and my hesitance is not that at all. Perhaps it’s the hesitance of a coward, which of course I would never want to admit, from remembering what happened.

Still, here he was, and I must face that skill, and truly learn its measure.

When I remember, I am filled with wonder again, and the anger, horror and sense that I somehow betray myself by admiring him quickly follow. I can only write it as is honest and so fair to him, I guess, by forgetting his proclivities and thinking only of his skill.

There was a great Yeoli champion of a little before my father’s time, enough that he was in awe of her, by the name of Iyinisa Shae-Lira. She had retired by the time I was old enough to know more of her but that her usename was Windsword.

When I sparred Riji, the name Windsword came back to mind, from the distant time in childhood when I’d last thought of it, because the way he wielded it instantly reminded me of that. He was light as air with the blade, but it could come with the speed and force of a tornado, that can drive a grass-stem into an oak tree, when he chose it to so have.

There was a faultless exactness to his movement that was like an old war-master’s. That was due in part to his age, of course, but it is not possible even in the mid-thirties without an extraordinary innate talent. It was the manifestation in warrior-form of his brilliant intellect, which also showed itself in the drawing in which he’d captured my perfect likeness, and the precision with which he plucked the lyre, and, no doubt, his treatises on philosophy. All-Spirit—there is so much to admire about the man, it takes your breath away.

In speed, I soon knew I had it over him, but also knew I wouldn’t have had it over him at ten years younger. As well, that advantage can be countered well by good anticipation, and he had that, too, reminding me of Azaila in how well he could read my mind. I was stronger than him too, I could feel, but that is no advantage if your adversary is flawless in using your strength against you, which he was instinctively; being the same size as me, he’d fought men bigger than him in the Ring eight or nine times out of ten. I did not doubt I could outlast him, but if he could defeat me fast, that would never matter.

The one clear advantage I might have over him was the one I can almost count as my own, weapon-sense, and so I decided that I would not show any sign of it sparring him, so as to be able to surprise him with it in the Ring. I had never made it obvious, as much out of modesty as the wish to hold something in reserve, and now was doubly glad I had not.

It made me wonder, though, what he was holding back from me. His full fighting-spirit, of course; neither of us would see the other’s until the gates clanged open. With someone of such intellect, I knew I should expect moves I had never seen and could never expect; he might not only know them, but conceive them in the moment.

Though I rarely admitted it in my own mind, there was no one I’d sparred here who I had felt, at heart, I could not take, even if they truly tested me; not even Iliakaj. Now, I’d found one. I was learning just from sparring him; I didn’t want to fight him, I wanted to sit at his feet and let him be my war-teacher. But war-teachers teach in the spirit of love. In those green eyes was no more warmth than the moon, other than the fire of combat, and he had nothing for me but hate.

It was—curse it, curse it and curse it again—nerve-wracking. I had never felt the like, not here or, when I thought about it, anywhere.

The warrior who is so free of weaknesses that he has always fought with confidence is not used to fighting while in fear. That, of course, is—now in my mind I am imagining teaching a class full of war-students, and I am quizzing them. That is a what? What’s your answer? Yours? Yours? The one who is sharpest that time, who says, “A weakness!” I commend.

I was without thought as always, in warrior-mind, but feeling it underneath. When I looked back later, I knew I had indeed been feeling it. Just about then he got me. A feint, a moment of tension of the mind so that I did not mindlessly read his movement, and his sword-tip was against my throat. Though a great part of me simply could not believe it, I froze as one must when sparring, as did he.

Still holding it there, he thought for a moment, a faint smile growing on his lips, while I looked down his blade, the mad and sane faces on the guard looking back at me as if to mock, in the one case, and ponder, in the other. Drawing blood was strictly forbidden—it must be saved for the Ring, and paying customers—but Riji, the Living Greatest, was above all Mezem rules. With the slightest quiver of his sword he pricked me, just enough to draw a drop or two. He drew the tip to his mouth thoughtfully, delicately licked the bit of red off, kissed the blade and fixed my eyes with his, grinning. Now there was warmth in them.

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