Chapter 110: The Two Swords Still in Their Sheaths

Qi Qi held out both wrists, palms up, still smiling.

The judge for Ring Four pressed two fingers to his wrist, checked his face, checked his neck, and said, "Pass." The third competitor from Ink Pool Gate stood waiting in the ring, a spear in hand—shaft dark with age, a faded red tassel tied below the head. He wasn't smiling during inspection.

The judge struck a fire starter to light the incense and set it in the bronze holder outside the ring. The smoke rose straight.

The spear swept first. The man's wrist dipped and the shaft came across horizontally, aimed at the ankles. Qi Qi lifted a foot; the shaft slid beneath his shoe, carving a white streak through the dust. The second strike was a thrust, straight at the chest, dead-on. Qi Qi shifted his upper body left; the spearhead grazed his lapel, flipping it up before it settled back down.

"Stop circling him!" someone from Ink Pool Gate shouted. "Stab him dead!"

So Qi Qi kept walking the ring. Three zhang across. He moved neither fast nor slow, his heel skimming the lime line, kicking up a broken trail of white dots, always a step short of the line. The man turned with him, and every two steps he had to draw the spear back and thrust again, each retraction slower than the last. The third time he gave up retracting entirely—the spearhead dragged along the ground as he chased, cutting one long line through the dust.

A short section of incense burned down. The judge walked behind both men, hands clasped, stopping whenever he reached the lime line, eyes on their feet, not the spear.

Qi Qi circled from the east side to the south. Midway there was a patch where the dust had been trampled thin; his foot slipped and he pitched half a foot inside the line—Jiang Wan, outside the ring, sucked in a breath. He planted a hand on the ground, pushed himself up, and kept circling outward. The man's spear came for his back, missed, and the head bit half an inch into the dirt.

Qi Qi sidestepped. The man lunged, drove forward half a foot, and his front foot landed outside the line.

The judge's voice was low: "Out of the ring. Qingya wins."

No one from Ink Pool Gate spoke. The spearman slammed his spear butt into the ground, looked down at his foot as if he couldn't believe it had walked out on its own. Ink Pool Gate's steward watched from outside the ring for a moment, said nothing, and turned to leave first.

Three to zero. The judge folded both forms, said, "The last two rounds won't be fought," and went to speak with the clerk. The clerk wrote, pressing the brush hard, then stacked the two forms neatly and weighed them down under his palm. On the judging stand, Wen Su sat perfectly straight, never having moved once.

A low voice outside the ring said, "Three fights, and it's done."

Another said, "Not one of them touched him."

Huo Qing slung his sword over his shoulder. He'd been holding it in his left hand the whole time—wooden scabbard, the mouth worn pale. Now he shifted the sword strap up, settled the sword across his back, and let both arms hang. His right arm hung at his side, no tension in it.

Jiang Wan's sword was still sheathed. From the start of the opening match to now, she hadn't touched the hilt. She'd only taken half a step forward when Qi Qi stumbled, then stopped.

Xu Yan made the third mark on the scrap of old ledger paper in his sleeve. Three strokes, each shorter than the last: the first for Shi Po, the second for Bai Xiaoman, this one for Qi Qi. He folded the paper and tucked it back.

"Heel," Jiang Wan called toward the ring.

Qi Qi was already walking out. He turned back. "What?"

"Your heel touched the line. Three times."

"I didn't step out."

"Keep touching it and sooner or later you'll step out." Jiang Wan said.

Qi Qi grinned, scuffed his shoe in the dust, and walked over to sit against the wall. Bai Xiaoman was already sitting there, handkerchief spread on her knee, five pebbles resting in it. She kept untying and retying the two cords, then smoothing them out straight, fingers still trembling slightly.

"So?" Qi Qi squatted down.

"I can hold up," Bai Xiaoman said. "I bounced back by the twenty-second."

"You won't have to fight on the twenty-third," Qi Qi said.

"We'll know once the lineups are set."

Shi Po sat half a step away, both hands on his knees, watching her tie the cord.

Across the way, Ink Pool Gate's first-round fighter sat under the low wall, both hands still swollen, shiny with it. He held a water flask in one hand and had to support it with the other wrist.

Over at Ring Three, it was Number Five against Number Six—Willow Bank Gate against a Ninth Rank sect. Qi Qi had barely sat down before he got up again, walked over, and stood behind the back row of spectators outside Ring Three, staying there until that match broke up.

When he came back he was walking fast. He reported half a sentence first: "Willow Bank Gate won."

"What score?"

"Three to one." Qi Qi crouched down and scooped a handful of dust. "Third round when I got there. They use a soft whip. The tip drags along the ground, drags with every step—the moment their opponent enters the ring, he lashes out. Not at the man; at the ground under his feet. The guy jumped out on his own."

Xu Yan pulled the paper from his sleeve again.

"The fourth fighter's their foremost. Uses a sword." Qi Qi said. "Holds it very low, hand hanging down. When he moves, the sword arrives before the man does. I watched half the match and couldn't see it clearly. I just saw the man fall."

Jiang Wan asked, "How many strikes before he fell."

"The second." Qi Qi thought about it. "First strike knocked him off balance, he retreated; after that the man followed up while he was still backing away."

Jiang Wan didn't answer. Xu Yan folded the paper back up and pressed a line under the three marks with his thumbnail.

"How fast does he retract the whip?" he asked.

Qi Qi traced it in the dust: "Retracts faster than he strikes. When it lashes out you can still see it; coming back, there's nothing left to see."

"Can you get to him?" Bai Xiaoman asked.

Qi Qi thought for a moment. "I can, but I'd have to wait until he's finished the strike."

The sun had shifted; the dust in all four rings gleamed from trampling feet. At Horse hour, six people sat against the wall eating flatbread with hot water they'd begged from the guest quarters. Bai Xiaoman ate half and wrapped the rest in her handkerchief, pressing it down on her knee. Shi Po broke half off his own portion and set it beside Qi Qi's hand.

"Winning doesn't get us extra rations," Qi Qi said, but he took it and ate.

"We'll have more when we're back at the mountain," Shi Po said. "This is all there is."

Xu Yan drank two mouthfuls of water and looked up at the wall west of the martial arena. Today was the twentieth. Around now, the pot under the third pillar by Luoxia Town's wall should be coming off the fire; A He and A Sui were stacking empty bowls one by one; Du Xiaochuan was counting empty Qi-Gathering Powder bottles; Qian Duoduo was heading to the grain shop to pay those five spirit stones. All accounts he'd have to record when he got back.

At Wei Hour, rings nine through sixteen opened four matches at once. Ring Two was Chixiao against Jade Spring Sect, judged by Meng Ting.

Xu Yan stopped two paces outside the ring, Jiang Wan on his right. Chixiao's six fighters stood lined up on the east side in their red robes, Ge Song in front with arms crossed. Jade Spring Sect's people faced them, their clothes washed pale.

Meng Ting took both forms, opened them in front of both parties, and read them aloud. When he read Chixiao's first name, he lifted the form slightly: "Zhou Kui."

Zhou Kui hefted his iron staff and walked to the edge of the ring, extending his wrist. Meng Ting pressed two fingers to it, checked his face, checked his neck, said, "Pass." Jade Spring Sect's first fighter also extended a wrist; he pressed it the same way, checked face and neck the same way, said "Pass" the same way.

Xu Yan counted the sequence through in his head: extend wrist, press wrist, check face, check neck, pass. Same order, not one step skipped. The judge for Ring Four had done it the same way. So did he.

"Same as the others," Jiang Wan said at his side.

"Mm." Xu Yan said.

Jiang Wan added, "He presses the wrist with two fingers, too."

Jade Spring Sect's man entered the ring. The judge lit the incense. Zhou Kui didn't wait for him to settle—the staff came down off his shoulder at an angle, crashing into the man's crossed forearms. The arms couldn't hold; the staff head landed in the hollow of his shoulder. The man sat down hard and didn't get up. Meng Ting walked over, crouched to look, straightened: "Stop. Down and unable to rise. Chixiao wins."

Two people carried Jade Spring Sect's man off the field, his feet dragging two straight lines through the dust. By the wall, one person braced his back and turned him onto his side. He was breathing raggedly, hand clamped to his shoulder.

Chixiao's next two rounds went faster and faster. Second round was a saber; in the third, the man kept his hands tucked in his sleeves, and when the hand came out, the opponent still hadn't seen it. Three to zero. Meng Ting folded the forms and handed them to the clerk, face blank.

Shi Po's eyes followed that staff. At the moment it came down, his knee bent once, then straightened. Zhou Kui hoisted the staff back onto his shoulder and walked over from the east side, passing in front of Shi Po without slowing; Shi Po didn't move aside either. Huo Qing was watching the hand Zhou Kui used to grip the staff. Then he looked down at his own right hand. It hung at his side; the fingers twitched once and didn't rise.

At Monkey Hour, the clerk posted the first-round results on the wall, right under the nineteenth's lot-number board. The eight winners were listed at the top. Qingya's row for Number Seven had Ink Pool Gate written after it, struck through. Xu Yan read line by line and saw that his own row still had one blank space below it; the next round's opponent was already written in: Number Five, Willow Bank Gate.

A fair number of people stood beneath the board. Someone in front turned to look back at them, then turned away. On the way back, two people leaned close and exchanged a few words.

"Eighth Rank," Shi Po said.

"Eighth Rank," Xu Yan said.

Ink Pool Gate was Ninth Rank; Willow Bank Gate was Eighth. Eighth and Ninth weren't the same thing. Of Willow Bank Gate's five fighters, Qi Qi had only seen the back two. What the first two used, no one could say even by nightfall. This time all five of them had to be ready; no one could sit idle. Where Jiang Wan went, where Huo Qing went, where Qi Qi's footwork fit—all of it had to be laid out under lamplight, move by move.

"The twenty-third," Jiang Wan said.

"The twenty-third." Xu Yan answered.

At Dog Hour, lamps were lit in the guest courtyard. Xu Yan carried two coarse porcelain bowls to the corner water stove to ask for hot water. The corridor was narrow; a lamp hung from one pillar, its light reaching only halfway down the wall.

The door to Chixiao's east room stood open, the iron staff propped by the doorway, its iron rings catching the light. Someone inside was speaking—couldn't make out the words. It stopped halfway through.

Xu Yan walked on with his bowls. Ge Song came out of the east end, and the two met face to face in the corridor.

"Sect Master Xu has set his lineup well," Ge Song said.

Xu Yan stopped, bowls in hand, steam rising to meet his chin.

Ge Song looked at him for a while, then took half a step closer, eyes going past his shoulder to look beyond.

Jiang Wan came up from behind and stopped at the far end of the corridor, sword in hand.

"The fifth slot," Ge Song said. "Who are you saving it for?"

Someone inside the east room coughed. The lamp pressed all three of their shadows down at their feet, short and dark.

Xu Yan shifted both bowls to one hand, circled around Ge Song, and walked toward the water stove.

Ge Song stayed where he was until everyone had passed, then returned to the east room, the door closing behind him. As Jiang Wan walked past that door, her thumb pressed once on her sword's crossguard.

Xu Yan carried the water back to the berths; both bowls still hot. Shi Po hadn't lain down. He sat on the edge of the bed board, feet together. Bai Xiaoman was already asleep, handkerchief tucked under her head. Huo Qing's sword lay along the edge of the bedding, the scabbard mouth pointing toward himself.

Ge Song's words had been polite enough. But he'd said "saving." The one who set the lineup was him—and the ones watching were also counting what they still hadn't shown.