I scoot my right foot back half a step to gain better leverage. All the same, my arms tremble. My sword slants at an almost unsalvageable angle: If I allow my elbows to bend, I will not be able to straighten them again. But I also cannot hold out much longer, and I cannot move back any farther without being trapped against the waist-high wall.
We stare at each other. The wind howls. The flimsy light jerks with the violent swings of the lanterns. I can read nothing in his eyes, dark and becoming darker, but a blank intensity that makes my breath emerge with a sound halfway between a gasp and a sob. My entire body shakes with the effort of holding him back.
I yank my sword toward myself, dodging just in time as he staggers forward, unbalanced. He seems about to crash into the decaying wall. But with a hard slam of his free hand against the masonry, he vaults himself into a sideways somersault.
I leap to the top of the wall. As he lands on his feet, I dive from my perch and strike from above. He meets my blade with his own. I pivot as soon as I touch ground so he won’t be able to trap me again.
He does not immediately attack. Three paces apart, we circle each other, our blades gleaming coldly.
Patience, Father has always counseled. Patience and concentration.
I don’t find it difficult to concentrate when there is something to concentrate on—a weapon lashing my way always has my undivided attention. But in a lull my focus splinters. My ears listen to his footsteps to gauge whether he walks more quietly than I do. My gaze flickers over his clothes—what can their style and construction tell me? My fingers flex and tighten around the handle of my sword, and I’m again envious that he can carry his priceless blade into combat and I’m not allowed to use mine even at home.
“Hua xiong-di’s footwork has improved,” he declares softly.
My eyes narrow. He hasn’t exactly paid me a compliment, as I had to rely on footwork to get out of an undesirable position.
“Yuan xiong’s strength has also improved,” I retort.
That is practically an insult, to comment on a swordsman’s vigor rather than his skill.
He laughs. “It will be an epic battle, won’t it, our duel?”
Father has taught me that I should feel only utmost vigilance toward the duel. But each time I’ve met Yuan Kai, beneath my trepidation, there has been a . . . thrill—as if some part of me wants a contest that lasts luxuriously, from dawn to dusk.
I spring and attack, my jabs quick and just a little agitated. I can’t be sure, but I seem to have caught him off guard. He parries, but his blade meets mine a fraction of a second too late each time. If I were fighting like that, Father would have sharp words for me. In fact, I find myself tempted to tell Yuan Kai to do better.
Our swords brace. The previous time, he applied overwhelming force; now, just enough to ensure that I don’t hack into him. We stand toe to toe, nothing but crossed blades between us.
He studies me—not my technique, but my face, as if he has forgotten the precise arrangement of my features. As if he would rather look at me than fight me.
I would rather look at him too—preferably with his face uncovered.
I think of him constantly. And when I do, it is often accompanied by a sharp pinch in my heart, a pang of loss. For what, I don’t know, because we are only opponents and we can only be opponents. But sometimes my thoughts run away with me, and in my daydreams we roam the shores of Lake Tai in spring, as peach blossoms drift onto our path. Sometimes we even sit on the bow of a small boat and glide across the lake, under the golden and crimson sky of a summer sunset.
In my daydreams, the duel does not mark the last time I will ever see him.
Does the frail, flickering light seem to trace a line across his forehead? Is that a crease of concentration—or a scar? If it is a scar, how did he come by it in that perilous spot?
With a start, I realize I have lifted my other hand, as if I intend to touch that perhaps-scar. Our eyes meet again. He does not look away, and neither do I.
A gust roars past. The lanterns gutter, once, twice—and extinguish. The near-dawn plunges back into darkness.
We leap apart as if we’ve been caught in something illicit.
I inhale slowly. His indrawn breath too is carefully even. Silence spreads, broken only by the restless wind, bumping lanterns into gateposts and rattling the roof tiles that still remain on the shrine. In the distance, the Northern town that serves as my new home is almost uniformly dark, with only a few lit windows. And the city gate won’t open for at least the time of a meal.
Abruptly he says, “I take my leave of Hua xiong-di.”
I exhale. But my relief at not having lost to him is immediately superseded by the questions that always plague me at his visits. Does he have his family’s permission to seek me out? How is it that he can find me, South or North? And why did he visit me twice in quick succession, making me believe that we would see each other regularly, and then disappear for almost two years—only to reemerge now, little more than a month before the duel?
“Yuan xiong must excuse me for not escorting him farther along his path,” I reply, back to courtesy and politesse. “I trust we will meet again.”
We sheathe our swords and salute each other. He walks to his horse, pins on a cloak, and mounts, his motion easy, fluid.
From atop his steed, he murmurs, “A shame, isn’t it?”
I frown. “What’s a shame?”
“That we were born into this rivalry.” He gazes at me. “Had we met under different circumstances, we could have been . . . friends.”
And then he is off, his cloak streaming behind him, a great wind-whipped shadow.
Half a month later
Only seven left.
I am to catch forty-nine pebbles Father fires at me, hit forty-nine targets he indicates around the courtyard, and intercept forty-nine projectiles in midair with projectiles of my own. All while blindfolded.
Father sets these exercises because the Hua family produces not only sword masters, but also experts in hidden weaponry, who can capture and deploy small flying objects under almost any circumstance. Today I have finished the first two sets without mistakes. Only seven are left in the third set, and I will have achieved a perfect record, which I haven’t managed in a year and a half.
Of course Father makes me wait now.
Patience, I tell myself. Concentration. Don’t let your attention wander.
Murong, my little brother, jumps in place to keep warm—whenever I practice hidden weaponry, it’s his chore to pick up all the small objects that end up on the ground, and he is even more impatient than I am with Father’s deliberate pause. In the kitchen, Auntie Xia’s cleaver falls rhythmically on a wooden board. This morning Father started my practice late, or I’d be helping her. A cold wind skitters through, carrying with it the aroma of frying dough and the soft whimpering of a baby from several courtyards away.
Beneath it all, I hear the odd quietness in the marketplace, when it should be boisterous with bargaining shoppers and poultry in woven cages, clucking and quacking.
I wonder how Father will react if I manage to intercept the last seven remaining projectiles. The first time I accomplished a perfect record, I wept in euphoria and sheer relief. He said, Let’s see how long it will be before you do it again. And when I succeeded again, after two years, he only said, Took you long enough.