armed, he added, “Begin.”
Almost at once, someone yelled. I found out why when I looked away from the cut I was making and my
tån went outside the red zone. A healthy jolt traveled up from my blade into my arm, making me yelp.
“If you do not strike the kill zones, it will cost you,” the Chakaran announced.
I rubbed my forearm. “Now he tells us.”
We were all more careful with our blows from there, but still, every couple of minutes someone hissed or
squealed in pain. Since the targeting trainer had emphasized the importance of going for a cardiac strike, I
concentrated on cutting a nice big hole through the red chest zone.
“Do not hesitate!” The Chakaran stepped between a novice and the stuffed form suspended from a pole
in the ceiling, and took the tån from the student with ridiculous ease. He struck a single blow to the
novice’s chest. “Now I have your weapon, and you are dead. Students, halt your practice and attend me
here.”
We stopped stabbing and slashing at the forms hanging from our poles, and gathered around Bek.
“During your targeting training, you were taught the three objectives when confronting an armed, vigilant
opponent. Saj”—he nodded at me—“recite them, in order.”
Luckily, I still remembered them. “Disarm.”
Bek swept the student’s tån to one side, cutting off the form’s hand, then reversed the move and cut off
the other.
“Disable.”
With two more strokes, he amputated the form’s stuffed legs.
“Dispatch.”
Bek thrust the tån into the chest target indicating the cardiac organ, then stroked the blade across the
form’s neck. What was left of the body collapsed onto the floor, leaving only the head hanging from the
pole.
There was a moment of silence as we all stared, first at the decapitated form, then at the little Chakaran.
“When you attack, there can be no pause, no consideration, no discontinuity. A split second of indecision
creates opportunity for retaliation.” The trainer handed the blade back to the now-pale student and called
for a replacement form. “Resume your practice.”
As we went back to hacking up the forms, the ceiling rods began to move, making targeting even more
difficult. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Bek weaving his way through the lines, watching each of
us for a short period before moving on to the next student.
“You have used a blade before,” he said when he got to me.
“A knife, not a sword.” I went for the disarm cut and managed to almost amputate my target’s left hand.
“Will we really have reason to use the tåns in raen form, Trainer? Sword fighting went out on my world
about a thousand years ago.”
“The blade is silent; powered weapons are not. Many civilizations have forgotten how to defend
themselves against long blades, and the raen form would best serve you against them. It is especially
effective when attacking multiple-armed opponents, for example.” He made a circle around me. “You are
part Terran, are you not? You and the other crossbreed male?”
“Yep.” I grunted as the tip of my blade ventured outside a red zone, and I got zapped again.
“To date, I have taught only three Terrans to dance.” Bek evidently found that amusing, from the growled
laugh he uttered.
“Well, between us we make a whole Terran,” I said, glancing at Kol. “Count us as four.”
“I will,” he said as he moved on. “If you both survive.”
“Look.” Renor nodded toward one of the two fighters climbing into the quad. “A challenge is about to
begin.”
Their blurry figures made my eyes narrow. “Hey, how come they get to wear dimsilk, and we don’t?” I
demanded.
A passing red student paused for a moment to tell me, “All students don dimsilk for challenges.”
“I know that one hanging the red band in his corner,” Ren added when the student moved on. “He is a
“Why will he win?” I studied both fighters, who were wearing dimsilk. “They look pretty evenly matched.”
“The Threkr are a powerful equine species, and none of his sparring partners have prevailed over him
yet.” Ren’s cheek flashed. “Including me.”
A hoverdrone descended to initiate the bout, and I glanced over at Kol. Since our own private wrestling
match, he had gone to great lengths to stay away from me. Which was fine. Most days I still felt like
stabbing him in the heart.
I cannot take you.
As if I’d ever want to tie a three-hundred-plus-pound Jorenian around my damn neck for all
eternity. I turned back to the quad in time to see the drone rise and the two challengers approach each
other.
The Threkr’s opponent seemed unremarkable, except for the green band it hung in its corner. “Do you
know the other one, Ren?”
“No.”
Had someone been taking bets, I’d have put my credits on the horse-guy at first. But a few minutes later I
started to wonder just how much of an advantage strength really was.
The two fighters began the bout with their blades in raen-tån form, the length and weight of which
required a two-handed grip on the hilt. I should have been analyzing their movements as the pair thrust
and parried and slashed, but the lethal elegance of the dance mesmerized me.
“A well-matched pair,” Danea murmured beside me. “The Threkr will not prevail so easily, I think,
Renor.”
The green-band fighter transmuted its blade through the thion-and rangi-tån forms, always advancing,
effectively taking the offense away from the Threkr. Gradually the circles they danced around each other
grew tighter, and their tåns shorter, slimming down through jyan-, shou-, and elok-tån forms.
“They’re going to osu-tån,” a student near me said, his voice thin with excitement.
“They don’t allow two-blade fighting on the second level,” someone else told him.
The first one made a sound of contempt. “Only in bladework practice. There are no rules in the
challenge quad, except to survive.”
Kol moved forward, drawn to the side of the quad as though fascinated. His eyes followed every
engagement of the blades, and I saw his fingers curl around the hilt of his own tån.
He wants to jump in. I could feel the intensity of his concentration, and wondered why he was so caught
up in this particular fight. We’d seen others he’d walked right past.
I looked back at the challengers. Green was moving faster than red—much faster—and seemed to be
everywhere, slashing mainly at its opponent’s chest. The hoverdrone, which maintained a safe distance
above the clash, made a funny sound, and everyone around us took out their blades and struck them
together.
“One hit to the red challenger,” the drone announced.
“Why does everyone have their blades out?” Osrea asked me.
“Maybe they don’t want that green coming after them.”
“We count the hits by clapping tåns,” one of the other students told me. “Green only has to strike one
more before red will have to capitulate.”
Visibly tired, the red challenger tried to make up with a burst of fancy thrust patterns. Green nimbly
danced out of the way, darting under red’s guard to slash at his dimsilk. Part of the fabric peeled away,
and I saw a series of crisscrossing wounds streaming with milky-looki
ng fluid.
Then the green challenger transmuted its tån to split, and every student around us seemed to freeze. The
red fighter staggered back, confused, and green chose that moment to strike again.
The drone dropped down to hover just between the two fighters. “Two hits to the red challenger. Red is
advised to withdraw from the challenge now.”
The sagging challenger pulled his obek-ten from his head, revealing a sweaty, pale face. He moved
The green fighter leaped into the air, flipping over and landing behind the red challenger. With brutal
efficiency, it drove one blade into red’s chest implant.
The Threkr stiffened, his blades dropping to the quad surface; then he fell forward, landing with a heavy
thud. He didn’t move again.
“That is not fair!” a high-pitched voice yelled, and Galena ran to join Kol at the side of the quad. “He was
through fighting!”
“Three hits to the red challenger.” The drone rose and buzzed away. Two trainer drones entered the quad
and dragged the student’s still body away, leaving a splattered trail of milky blood behind them.
The green challenger walked over and crouched down at the side of the quad. “You wish to challenge
me?”
“You murdered him,” Birdie said, though not quite as loudly. “He meant to capitulate; we all saw it. How
could you attack him like that?”
“He approached me, and I defeated him.” The fighter pulled off its obek-ten, and shook out her pale hair
before she smiled at Kol.
Fayne.
“What about you?” she asked Kol. “You look ready to die today. Shall we dance, breed?”
Before I could move an inch, Nalek and Osrea grabbed me by the arms. “Let go, you guys. I just want
to have a talk with the little shrimp.”
“No, Jory,” Nal warned me. “Let Kol deal with her.”
Os leaned close. “If she kills you, you’ll never balance the tally.”
“Even the score,” I corrected him through clenched teeth.
“Whatever.”
By that time Kol had pushed Galena behind him and was speaking to Fayne in a low voice. Whatever he
said, it made Blondie’s expression turn smug. He nodded to her, turned, and guided Galena back to us.
“We will report for our next training session now.” Kol pointed to the stealth chamber.
“What did you say to her?” I demanded, jerking my arms free of Nal’s and Os’s grips.
“I offered her a compromise. She accepted.”
Sparky frowned. “What sort of compromise?”
“She will not challenge any of us. In return, when I advance to the third level, I will fight her. Should I
prevail, she must leave the Tåna.” He glanced at me. “Should she prevail, we seven will leave.”
At that moment I could have killed him. Easily. With no regret. “So if she wins, we’ll be able to personally
escort you back to Joren. In a body bag. How nice.”
I stalked off to class.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“The traveler journeys when it is time to follow the path, not when it is convenient to do so.”
—Tarek varena, ClanJoren
Blade training made everything that had happened before seem like kid’s stuff. When Bek wasn’t pushing
us through exercises on form, he constantly nagged us about ignoring our instincts for self-preservation,
until I thought I’d stab him in the heart myself just to shut him up.
From there, days blurred into weeks. We practiced for hours, stopping only to eat our tasteless meals,
then went back and practiced until we were ready to drop. We barely spoke to each other when we
were dismissed from bladework, too tired to make even an attempt at conversation. Most nights we filed
into our quarters, secured the door panel, and dropped on the nearest unoccupied mat.
I was usually unconscious before my face smacked the floor.
At last the Chakaran felt satisfied that we’d adequately gotten over our defensive instincts, and that was
when he put us to work on blade form.
“You will master first the raen-tån, the long sword.” Bek held his up, and again I noticed the difference
between the trainers’ blades and ours—the black alloy glittered with keen, lethal promise. “This is the
longest and heaviest of blades. It presents certain advantages and challenges during the shahada. We will
explore these aspects as they apply to your potential success or failure when engaging a target.”
Through each subsequent session, Bek stepped up the pressure, demanding more every day. From the
very basic attack forms he began adding nuance after nuance, drilling us on each until we were able to
execute them without error. Our inventory of specific moves went from three to thirty to more than three
hundred. We perfected our techniques through dogged repetition, but the trainer insisted there was more
to the dance than proficiency.
“The blade must belong to you, as much as another hand or limb,” Bek would say, jumping immediately
on anyone showing the slightest awkwardness with the tån. “It must be that when you move, it moves.
No thought, no self. You become a single presence.”
He didn’t like heavy-handed hacking, either. “You do not wield an implement. In the hand of a true
dancer, the blade acquires a soul.”
The picky Chakaran also hated errors with a passion. “Anticipate the strike. See it penetrate the kill zone
before the blade makes the initial incision. Change the direction of your blow the moment you see it will
fail—turn the downward strike upward, the right cut to the left.”
Gradually we adapted to the rigors of blade training, from bearing the heavy weight of the raen-tån for
hours to the enforced, dismal diet of synthetic protein. I noticed that we were all dropping weight fast,
even Galena, who didn’t need to.
Still, our bodies and physical conditions improved despite the rigors. Shedding what extra body fat we
possessed allowed sleek, hard muscle and sinew to emerge. Osrea’s exocartilage plates shrank along
with his bulk, but they doubled in thickness. Though painfully thin, Galena seemed to be getting a little
taller, and her winglets, which I kept nagging her to stretch instead of holding them flat against her back,
were growing and expanding. And Nalek’s physiology seemed to thrive on the requisites, until his ridges
literally rippled with power whenever he moved.
While bladework helped us to build our bodies and develop better physical tolerance, it exposed some
significant problems, too. I started noticing them as I watched Bek evaluating us during the sessions. The
same mistakes kept cropping up over and over.
Galena, by virtue of her size and body weight opposed to the expanding wings on her back, had trouble
maintaining balance. She regularly overcompensated and buckled under the weight of the blade. This
made her miss kill zones, sometimes so often Bek threatened to send her back to the basic classes.
Danea could not spar with anyone without jolting them, so the trainer ordered her to wear insulating
thermals under her garments. Losing the advantage of her corporeal field made Sparky more cautious
and prone to lock up her blade during sparring, which the Chakaran read as hesitancy.
“Advance; do not counterparry!” He pushed her back from her opponent. “Roll the blade under and
break the contact!”
Nalek had the same problem, for different reasons. When we surpassed the forms and began sparring
with each other, he ended up inevitably on the defensive.
“A dancer does not lack aggression,” the Chakaran told him. “Find yours, Nal, or you will end as an
overlarge skewer of dark meat.”
Osrea suffered from extreme clumsiness. Half of his upper limbs remained bound during training (because
we trained with one or two blades at a time, species with more than two upper-body limbs were required
to wear special tunics that kept all but one pair of limbs pinned underneath the fabric.) Gradually I
realized Os’s situation would have been like me trying to fight with one arm tied behind my back. He had
dropped his blade more often than anyone in the class.
Renor, like Danea, proved too dangerous to be allowed to practice without protection for his sparring
partners. His crystalline hide inflicted more wounds than his tån. Bek came up with a thick, padded
garment for him to wear under his outer garments, but it slowed his reactions, and he also missed too