five

Jiao was not made to be a teacher.

Her patience was a solitary art, the patience of the hunter to squat all night by a trail, waiting for the one clean kill. It was a skill long practiced, an aspect of herself. She had none for other people when they were awkward or idle or slow.

Her restlessness went with her patience, hand in hand. She was a woman who appeared with the evening star, killed if she had to and kissed where she could, and was gone by dawn. She was a creature of the road and the shadow, fugitive as wind; she didn’t linger. That she had stayed with Yu Shan as long as this—well. He was Yu Shan, and she was interested.

Even being here, in a dead-end valley far from the road, walled in by mountains, sleeping in the same bed night after night: even this she would accept, because of him. Because of her interest in him. It came from her, as ever. She wasn’t vulnerable, only engaged.

And closeness to him brought her close to the emperor, insanely close, which was also interesting. And dangerous, but risk was spice in the pot, fire in the night and welcome. It would bring another kind of danger in the city, where she might not follow unless she chose; she had seen politics and ambition before, and was not interested.

But for now they were here, where dangers came with steel blades and hard fighting, and she was happy.

Except that they were trying to make a teacher of her, and she was bored.

Down by the river, Shen taught his colleagues—imperial soldiers and mining clansfolk, group by mixed group—how to fight bare-handed. Up here, in a forest clearing hacked out for timber, she was meant to teach the same groups how to fight her way on bad ground. It was the emperor’s idea, which meant it was probably Mei Feng’s. Soldiers or miners, they thought they could fight already, and they were mostly right. With their own skills added to Shen’s added to hers, they should be formidable. She and Shen were opposites, a pair. Where he taught them to duck, she taught them to bite; where he taught them to kick, she taught them to back away.

When they were prepared to listen. They had grown up with clan wars, or else they had matured on the long march from the north; they thought they knew how to be vicious, relentless, entirely the killer.

Group after group, it was her task to show them they were wrong. Didn’t these people talk to one another …?

Apparently not. One more time, then: her long steel tao blade, her body—tough as a root but tired now, tired in the worst way, tired of doing this—and her honed experience against one of these implausible clan boys. Implausibly young, implausibly strong, implausibly swift and supple. She could be tired of that, too, but he came at her hard and fast and she didn’t have time. Their blades clattered and sparked. He was aggressive and confident, cocksure; he’d learned nothing from watching the others. She backed across the clearing, always giving ground, faltering under the simple weight of his blows until at last his foot stumbled over a stump hidden by new growth. Even then he didn’t trip, but his eyes glanced down instinctively; in that moment of distraction she slammed the hilt of her tao into the side of his head.

Possibly a little harder than she had to.

He fell very satisfactorily, like a hammer-felled ox. No cause to worry. They weren’t Yu Shan or the emperor, these kids, they didn’t heal miraculously from blows that should have killed an ox, but they did have remarkably strong bones—thick skulls, she liked to say, that needed lessons pounded into them—and powers of recovery that were honestly not quite human.

As witness, this lad was stirring already. He did have the grace to groan, but she thought that might just be to gratify his teacher. She held him down with one booted foot on his shoulder and addressed the gathered circle of her pupils.

“You fight on whatever ground you have to, but be aware: bandits will always choose ground that works to their advantage. And use it. Sometimes it’s easier to go backward. You look like you’re retreating, in fact you draw them on, into—”

She broke off as another figure appeared at the edge of the clearing. Another of these clansfolk, but a face Jiao didn’t know; and she came not from the compound but the forest. A volunteer, then, unless she was a messenger. There was a thin but steady stream of them trickling in, the young and the jadeless and the dispossessed. As word spread through the mountains—the emperor here and recruiting from the clans, offering something new—so they came, nervous and curious and hungry.

And hopeful, and extraordinary, and a little bewildered. This one lifted her eyes—green, yes—and said, “Please, they told me on the ridge-height to come this way …”

Actually they’d probably told her to follow the river, but newcomers tended to keep to the trees. It was no easy matter, Jiao knew, to walk openly into enemy territory, and these clans had been fighting one another for generations. It had been no easy matter to establish this as a valley of truce, let alone to make them all settle together. Having a leaven of imperial soldiers helped, but not enough.

Still, none of them had killed each other yet. And the more clans were represented, the more dilute clan loyalty became, the easier it would be to build a new loyalty. They had someone to follow, who was the emperor; they had someone to resent, who was herself; someone to admire, perhaps, who was Shen. They’d sweat down into a reliable crew soon enough.

She said, “Yes, and welcome. Why have you come?” Looking for the emperor, looking for a new life, they had a dozen ways to say it but it was always the same thing, not to eke out their days in ever more strenuous working for ever less stone. This one, though, she looked shy suddenly, perhaps she even blushed a little; her voice was firm enough, though, as she said, “I was looking for my clan-cousin, Yu Shan. I heard he was with the emperor, so I came to see …”

Jiao’s mouth worked a couple of times, soundlessly, before she managed a reply.

“Yes. Yu Shan is here. I can, I can bring you to him …” So could anyone in her class, so could anyone in the encampment, and her lesson was barely begun; but she abandoned it and them, all her curious pupils, as she steered this girl toward the compound.

Her mouth was oddly dry and her mind was oddly dizzy, but one thing at least: she was no longer bored.