“The one in the green and indigo robes is the Chuora Kyovin, from the House of Chuora,” she went on.
Jebi nodded. They wondered at the woman’s evident adulation of a Razanei, but maybe it was nothing more than a simple crush. They watched as the priest anointed Chuora with water or oil, impossible to tell at this distance. Too bad it was so cold; they could sketch with gloves on, but it made for a clumsy process. Still, they wanted to jot down their impressions, so they pulled out a pocket sketchbook and a pencil, and made gesture sketches to capture the poses.
The woman sighed as wistfully as any maiden and fished out a miniature portrait from her coat pocket. Its frame was painted a yellowy green that clashed horrendously with the cooler green of the painted clothes. The former was probably some cheap mixture of blue and yellow pigments, but the latter’s vividness made Jebi think it was copper arsenite.
“See?” she asked, practically shoving the portrait under Jebi’s nose while Zakan caught Jebi’s eye and looked heavenward. “I bought this at his first duel in Territory Fourteen. I can’t imagine why he isn’t married yet.”
“He’s very handsome,” Jebi said, which might or might not have been true. The lopsided face of the portrait made it appear as though Chuora had a double chin. “Is he the favorite?”
“Of a certainty,” the woman said. “You can see him out there, can’t you? Such a dashing figure.” She sighed again.
I don’t care about him, Jebi thought, not that they would have dreamed of saying so to their host. “And his opponent?” They didn’t do as good a job of pretending diffidence as they would have liked. Zakan was snickering behind her hand.
Luckily, the woman was too caught up in fervor for the coming duel to notice. “Oh, her,” she said, her nose wrinkling. “I suppose it was inevitable, really.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “People say they were lovers once, but I don’t believe Master Chuora would have such terrible taste.”
Jebi made an effort not to clench their teeth, because their host would notice that, to say nothing of Zakan. “Why, what’s her name and what has she done?”
Vei struck them as singularly unlikely to involve herself in scandal... but then, Jebi didn’t know anything about her personal life. Just because they’d spent the past couple months working with her didn’t mean Vei didn’t have secret vices. What could they be? Gambling? Opium? The Razanei hated opium, even though the modern painkillers they’d introduced to Hwaguk didn’t work nearly as well. Maybe an unfashionable fondness for kimchi?
“Oh, her name is Dzuge Vei,” the woman said with considerably less enthusiasm. She mangled the dz sound, perhaps deliberately, given that she hadn’t had any trouble pronouncing Chuora’s name. “It’s a wonder she’s allowed to duel at all. You know.”
Jebi counted to three. “No, I don’t,” they said, smiling at the woman in an attempt to coax her into an answer. They leaned forward; Zakan’s amusement only increased. “Tell me the dirt.”
That worked, although Jebi almost wished it hadn’t. “Her father could have served Razan honorably,” the woman said. “He was duelist prime for Razan’s embassy, decades ago, during the reign of the Azalea Throne. He’s apparently the one who taught Dzuge how to duel, for all the good it’ll do her. But he took up with not one but two Fourteeners! Dzuge is half and half.”
Jebi grimaced. So that explained Vei’s accent when she spoke Hwamal. She must have learned the language from her other parents. It wouldn’t be the first time a Razanei soldier fell for one of the prostitutes in the Virgins’ District, although most of them didn’t formally acknowledge their offspring. Jebi couldn’t imagine that Vei had had an easy time growing up, considering the prejudices that some Hwagugin and Razanei had against children of mixed heritage, like this woman.
The woman misinterpreted Jebi’s expression. “So you see what I mean,” she said, with a disdain that they found repulsive. “Dueling is in the nature of a ritual, you know. It’s sacred. It will be just as well when Master Chuora cuts her down and the Ministry of Armor can look for a proper duelist prime.”
Zakan shook her head, but kept her opinions to herself. She, like Jebi, would have seen Vei training.
Jebi made the mistake of asking, “Who does Master Chuora work for?” Calling him ‘master’ galled them, but they had spent the last several years using honorifics for people they didn’t like. This was no different, and Jebi didn’t want to lose this spectacular view by antagonizing their host.
Nevertheless, their plan backfired: “Oh,” the woman said, her entire face pulling down in a scowl, as she finally looked at Jebi’s sketchbook. Jebi realized they’d been doodling a monstrous caricature of Chuora with a bulbous head and comically huge ears. Zakan started to laugh. “That’s not what he looks like at all!” She lunged.
What she couldn’t have known was that Jebi had long practice defending their sketchbooks from offended subjects. (Their habit of caricature had gotten them into trouble before.) They snatched it out of reach and shoved it into their pocket, then rose precipitously and backed away. “I’d best be going,” they said. Maybe it wasn’t too late to join the crowd outside, even if they had every expectation of being squashed. “Bye!”
The crowd was so thick, especially this close to the dueling platform, that it took them forever just to open the door. That accomplished, they shoved and elbowed fiercely until they came to rest at a suitable viewing spot.
“Nice job,” Zakan said sarcastically from next to Jebi, having kept up with them during the whole ridiculous interlude. “We could have been watching the duel from a nice comfortable spot, but you had to ruin that.”
“Sorry,” Jebi lied.
Just their luck, they were squeezed next to a vendor selling noodles supposedly sponsored by Master Chuora. Given the number of supporters in Chuora’s green-and-indigo armbands, Jebi kept their skepticism to themself.
So distracted were they by the business of breathing in the suffocating crush that they didn’t notice at first that Dzuge Vei had ascended the platform. But the murmuring and gossip caught their attention, Vei’s name in hundreds upon hundreds of mouths. Notably, no one called her Master Dzuge, although as a duelist she merited it.
Jebi looked up, and their heart stopped in their chest.
Vei was resplendent in her own duelist’s finery, a red jacket over wide blue pants, a white sash holding her sword’s lacquered scabbard. The red and blue, homage to Hwaguk’s forbidden national emblem, could not be denied.
That wasn’t what shocked Jebi, though. Rather, they recognized the costume, for all that they’d never seen it before. The duelist in red and blue who’d cut down their sister-in-law Jia.
Bongsunga. Bongsunga needs to know.
“It’s her,” Jebi breathed. They doubted any other Razanei duelist in Hwaguk matched that description. They’d never made the connection before—and how could they have? They didn’t follow dueling; found the profession distasteful and barbarous, for all the beauty of its forms.
And Vei—Vei had never practiced in her formal dueling clothes. All this time they’d been falling for her, she was the one who’d cut down Bongsunga’s wife. Jebi struggled with a sense of betrayal, although one of the few things they did know about dueling was that the clothes had a ceremonial purpose and were not for casual wear. Surely Vei hadn’t known about this part of Jebi’s past.