They Just Beat Me

Elder Fan watched the arena through a bronze mirror, and in that mirror everything was smaller and closer at the same time.

The elders' pavilion hung over the stands like a nest. A carved balustrade, cushions, a low table, cold tea on the table. It smelled of sandalwood resin smoldering in the censer and of old tea no one intended to drink. Below, the arena roared, but up here the sound arrived muffled, like a rumble from under water.

He was a lean man with a gray beard and eyes like cold stones. For sixty years he had served the Azure Cloud Sect and had seen everything: geniuses, charlatans, daredevils. This he had not seen.

"Who is that boy?"

"Shen Yao, Elder," the assistant answered nervously, bowing his head. "A forge servant. The records say broken meridians."

"Broken meridians don't stand to the end in the array." Fan's voice was quiet, almost gentle, and that made it more frightening. "And they don't lift the post for forty when asked for ten."

The assistant swallowed.

"Shall we test him again? Privately?"

Fan was silent for a long time. The bronze in his hand sang quietly, like a string, as the mirror showed a tiny figure moving across the sand.

"No," he said at last. "A second test will tell him that we know. Let him not know. Watch him: who teaches him, who speaks to him, where he goes and what he wears at his belt. Someone is teaching him."

"As you say."

The assistant bowed and backed away. Fan was left alone.

Eleven years, he thought.

His fingers, resting on the frame, trembled finely, and not from age. Slowly, almost tenderly, he ran them along the edge of the mirror.

* * *

The final round was a duel. Fifty participants, paired by lot.

After two rounds the arena sand had been trampled into gray floury dust, and the wind raised it in clouds. It smelled of sweat, iron and something sweet from the market stalls beyond the wall. The stands buzzed in anticipation of blood. The first bouts were fast and ugly. A hulking outer disciple with a jangling buckle crushed two candidates in a row, and both hit the sand and didn't get up right away. A wiry girl with a spear won only because her opponent stepped back on the wrong foot. Then the boy with the two buckets stepped into the ring. He was holding them even now, though he had no use for them, and set them aside only when the examiner barked. Opposite him stood a burly disciple with a ring in his ear.

"Look how he stands," Yang said quietly. "Feet together, elbows pressed in. He isn't fighting. He's waiting until he can say 'I tried.'"

The bout lasted four breaths. The boy sat down on the sand, covering his face with his hands, and two assistants in green robes led him away, though no harm had been done to him. Yao watched him go until he disappeared into the arch.

That's not a log, he thought. And it's not dust.

"It's worse. It's what nobody knows how to weigh." Yang was quiet for a moment. "Don't stare so long, kid. Everyone has his own examination, and not all of them give a reward."

Yao stood at the edge of the ring working out a problem no disciple could have solved.

"Your ribs," said Yang. "Haven't lost track?"

Five cracks, you counted yourself.

"The forge is still busy with them. It's been occupied since last night, and until it finishes, it won't take new wounds. Which means new wounds will hurt and heal like anyone's. So listen carefully. Bruises on the arms and shoulders are dust, the forge doesn't count them. It counts only what could have cost you a bone or an organ, and that gets in the queue. The queue isn't endless: three heavy portions, and after that, debt. But don't give him your left side even once."

And if he hits it?

"Then we'll find out what it's like when a bone breaks for real and the heat doesn't come running to help. I don't recommend it."

"Shen Yao against Zhou Kuan!" the examiner shouted.

The stands exploded. Zhou Kuan stepped into the ring with his arms spread like a victor, grinning from ear to ear. It was as if all the contempt had been wiped off his gray robe: now there was only the eagerness of a hunter who has finally spotted his prey.

"I've been waiting for this, trash. Today I'm going to break your arms in front of the whole sect."

"You've been saying that for six winters now," Yao answered calmly. "You could come up with something new."

Someone in the stands snickered. Zhou Kuan turned beet red.

"Begin!"

Zhou Kuan lunged, his fist in its dull film of strength. Yao raised his forearm and took the blow. A crash rolled across the arena. He was thrown back three steps, but he didn't fall.

"Huh?" Zhou Kuan blinked.

He struck again, and again, and again. Blows rained on arms, shoulders, thighs. The stands gasped: it was a slaughter. But Yao kept standing, and every time the other man's fist flew at his left side, he turned his body just slightly, so that the blow slid off. Small, economical movements, like a man who had spent hours learning where another man's hand goes.

"Watch his breathing," said Yang. As always, he was laughing, only now he laughed without a sound. "Watch his feet. He's burning his strength like a fool. Ten more blows, and he'll have nothing left."

Yao counted. His arms were going numb, his ears were pulsing, a taste of iron spread across his lip. He saw Zhou Kuan's movements growing sloppier, his breath tearing into a rasp, sweat running into his eyes. On the bottom bench a green robe was trembling, and he knew she was watching, and he couldn't let himself look away.

But Zhou Kuan was a fool, not blind. On the seventh blow, it seemed, he too saw what Yao saw: the left rib was being guarded. He grinned.

"So that's it."

A foot wrapped in dull film drove into his left side.

White flashed in his eyes.

This wasn't the pain Yao had known these past days. That one had been deep and thick and each time answered from the bottom with a warmth he could lean on. This pain was clean and sharp as glass. The rib cracked for real. The air left his chest, and the heat he'd been counting on didn't come: the forge, busy with yesterday's work, turned away indifferently.

He dropped to one knee. His mouth filled with sand.

"That's weight," said Yang. His voice was even and calm, without a shadow of a joke. "All those fists on your arms were dust. Here you could have lost a rib. The forge counts only that. Get up. Count. How much does he have left?"

I don't know.

"You do. Look."

Zhou Kuan stood with his legs apart, breathing hard. The dull film on his fists had gone out, the hand he'd struck with was shaking. His arms dropped, and he didn't have the strength to meet the gaze of the servant who had gotten up again.

Yao rose. It was the longest moment of the last six years: the rib groaned, the air tore in his throat, the stands roared like an overcrowded market. Zhou Kuan lunged, and his fist flew wide and shaking.

Yao stepped inside the punch.

He had never studied this move. But he knew it the way no one in this arena did: for six years Zhou Kuan had been teaching him this lesson, every time he hit him. Where the fist comes from, how much room it needs, where Zhou Kuan left his side open when he tired. Yao caught Zhou Kuan's wrist and planted his open palm squarely against his opponent's chest, putting his full weight into one slow, measured movement.

Zhou Kuan flew backward, struck the edge of the ring and slid down the wall in a limp heap. The arena went so quiet you could hear a cart creaking somewhere far away.

"The winner," the examiner stammered, "Shen Yao."

For one heartbeat no one breathed. Then the stands erupted. The servants he'd hauled charcoal with were screaming like madmen. Some of the outer disciples whispered sullenly, never taking their eyes off him.

Zhou Kuan lay coughing, staring at him with wide, disbelieving eyes.

"How… you were the weakest…"

Yao looked down at him. The rib answered every breath, and the only expression on his face was a weary calm.

"I wasn't weak," he said. "They just beat me."

"Well, that was impressive," Yang whispered dryly. "A bit pompous. But impressive."

Yao smiled slightly. The words "they just beat me" had slipped out on their own, and he didn't know whether it would cost him dearly.

He turned and left the ring. His legs were shaking, and every little bone in his side was playing its own tune. The sand crunched under his soles, and the smell of sweat, blood and iron dust trailed behind him like a train. Then the elders on the dais leaned forward. Yao felt their gazes, heavier than any iron post, and didn't turn around. Some of them, he could have sworn, were looking not with curiosity but with hunger.

Walk. Just walk. Don't fall here.

Only at the very edge of the arena, where the shade of the arcade began, did he look back.

Liu Qinghe was crying and laughing at the same time.

* * *

The list was nailed to the board after lunch, and within half an hour the square looked like a stirred-up anthill. Someone was guffawing, someone was sitting right on the stones staring at one spot, and someone no longer had the strength to cry out in self-pity. It smelled of warm stone, dust and pies from a stall. Yao read the list twice from top to bottom, then from bottom to top, as if that could change the order.

Fourth place. Out of two hundred. Three outer disciples, all with years of training, ranked above him. The overall standings combined the scores from all three rounds. Yao had come first in the post lift, third in the array, and fourth in the duel round.

His name was written in the same neat hand that had written "forge servant, meridians broken."

He had bound his side himself, over his shirt, tightly, the way you tie a sheaf. He breathed shallowly. Every number bumped into the rib, and the rib preferred smaller ones.

Not my name. It can't be my name.

"Congratulations," said a familiar voice.

Liu Qinghe stopped beside him, hands clasped behind her back. Her eyes were red.

"You were crying."

"I wasn't crying." She sniffed. "Dust in the arena."

He turned to her. The noise moved off somewhere, and between them there was only a silence in which he could hear nothing but his own heart.

"You vouched for me," Yao said. "At the table. They wrote your name next to mine. If I'd lost, you'd have paid."

"I know."

"Why?"

She looked at the board, then at him, then aside, at a scrap of sky above the roof.

"Because I've been watching you carry things for a long time. Heavy things. And no one ever once asked whether you were tired."

Something tightened in his throat. He wanted to answer and couldn't find the words.

Tell her. Tell her something.

"Let's go," she said hurriedly, and took him by the sleeve, as if afraid to hear something she'd have no answer to. "I'll show you the outer disciples' dormitory. You need a bed, not straw."

"Thank you."

"Hush, you're breathing badly."

On the way she told him about the dining hall, about the customs, about how they served fish on Thursdays, and he caught every word along with the warm fingers on his sleeve. She didn't let go of the sleeve even after they'd left the crowd. He didn't remind her.

From the broken sword at his belt Yang quietly chuckled.

"Oh, this is going splendidly."

All around, the newly accepted disciples were jostling and laughing, clutching gray robes to their chests. Yao had never worn anything but a servant's brown, and the mere thought of the gray caught his throat again.

Hush, he thought. She shouldn't hear this.

Qinghe glanced back, seeing him shake his head slightly.

"What?"

"Nothing."

She smiled, as if she'd understood that this was exactly what he couldn't say aloud.

* * *

He had to return the brown robe to the storeroom and sign it back in, or they'd charge him for it. The gray one they issued him was new, dense, smelling of lacquer and of an unfamiliar cleanness. The robe was too big for him, and that made Yao feel by turns a stranger and a fake.

Lu stood by the shed gate with his pipe. He didn't come closer and didn't raise his head. He was looking somewhere past him, but so that Yao would notice.

"Gray," he said simply.

"Gray."

"Raising your head will cost you more now." Lu chewed the stem. "But you know that already."

"I know."

"Well." Lu nodded at the bandage showing under the robe. "Rib?"

"Yes."

"Broken honestly?"

"Honestly."

The old man grunted something into his beard that sounded like "good" and walked past, limping, with an empty bucket. Only at the turn, without looking back, did he add:

"Don't forget where you came from. Here they won't let you forget it."

Yao stood a long time watching him go, and the brown robe, handed in to the storeroom, seemed to him no longer a garment but something like a skin he had shed.

* * *

The outer disciples' dormitory was a long stone barracks, twelve beds to a room. It smelled of wax, other people's foot wrappings and fresh whitewash. Shen Yao's bed stood in the corner by the window, which let in a draft of wet grass.

He counted: bed, blanket, pillow, a shelf over the headboard. Four things, and all of them belonged to him, as long as he didn't do anything stupid. He'd never had so many.

He laid the sword on the shelf, wrapped in a rag, the way you put away a spoon. The wooden board creaked slightly under it.

"What's that you've got, a poker?" The voice came from the next bed.

Three of them were sprawled on the neighboring beds. The leader, a skinny boy named Meng Hu, had the scornful smile of someone with influential relatives behind him. He was twirling an ivory comb in his fingers and looking Yao over the way a merchant looks over dubious goods.

"A memento," said Yao.

"Of what?"

"Of the fact that not everything should be thrown away."

Meng Hu snorted. Yang, by all appearances, was offended: the rust under the rag suddenly turned prickly to the touch.

"My uncle's a steward in the Inner Sect," Meng Hu added. "He says you cheated."

"How?"

"Don't know yet. But we'll find out. Zhou Kuan's my friend, he'll want to have a talk."

"Let him come."

Meng Hu had apparently expected fear and didn't get it: his smile slid away. The room went quiet. Outside the bell rang for supper, but no one moved until Meng Hu got up first and walked out without even looking back. His two friends trailed after him.

At night Yao lay listening to them whisper behind his back. The rib ached with every breath, and the forge, which didn't want to tear itself away from yesterday's work, labored somewhere deep and silent. Beyond the wall the old watchman coughed and shuffled down the corridor on his round, and through the crack above the window seeped moonlight, cold and blue.

"Enemies have shown up already," Yang remarked. "Good. Enemies are free whetstones."

I'd rather have friends.

"You have one." Yang's voice softened. "A lovely girl. Don't neglect her."

Yao stared at the ceiling and said nothing. But his face flushed so hot that even the darkness seemed warmer.

Don't neglect her. And how is that even done?

He turned onto his side, carefully, so as not to jar the rib, and looked for a long time at the shelf with the rag. Then he closed his eyes and fell asleep without ever counting to a hundred.