The Children of the Sun (6 page)

“Yer, good fight,” Calum said, and with the help of the other man he made his way out of the ring.

“Still want to do this?” Jakob asked Two.

“Yes,” Two said after a moment’s hesitation. “I think so. What the hell, right? Didn’t come all the way out here just to sit around.”

“Did you bring clothes?”

“Yep. I’ll go change. Hon? Theroen? Will you be all right here?”

“I’ll be fine,” Theroen said, giving her his calm smile. “Go do what you need to do.”

Two glanced at the ring, where several towels had been tossed to mop up the blood. They were stained crimson. She took a deep breath and headed for the locker room.

* * *

Two’s name had been on the list for less than four minutes before someone challenged her, and when next the beginner’s ring was cleared, she found herself standing in front of an Ay’Araf vampire she had never met. She was wearing a pair of black sweatpants and a tank top, and she held her sword in her hand as Jakob strapped leather cuffs around her wrists and neck.

“These give some protection to the bigger veins,” he explained, and Two nodded.

“I figured.”

“Are you nervous?”

“Yes, but I keep telling myself it can’t be any worse than that time you almost cut off my boob.”

“I told you that was an accident,” Jakob said, laughing slightly.

“Didn’t make it hurt any less!”

“Indeed.”

“Mostly I just want to do well. I don’t want to fuck up your reputation, or mine.”

“You won’t. Just do as you’ve been taught.”

“That’s the plan,” Two said.

The vampire across from her had introduced himself as Mike Takahashi. A third-generation Japanese American, he looked to be in his twenties, but was actually closer to forty. He had come to training late for an Ay’Araf but had been studying sword fighting for nearly five years.

Mike was not tall, but Jakob had warned her that he had surprising reach for his height and was extremely agile. He would try to get her off balance by using a lot of feints and switching hands frequently.

“You’re stronger than him,” Jakob said, murmuring close to her ear. “Likely faster, too. Your instincts are better. That should make up for the difference in training. Don’t bite on the fakes and wait until you have the right opening, then get him on his heels like Ricardo did to Calum.”

“Yessir,” Two said.

“Don’t forget to keep your guard up, and remember that there’s nothing wrong with backing away or—”

“Jakob, I got it,” Two said, cutting him off. She smiled at him, thumped her left fist against her chest twice – an Ay’Araf salute – and made a shooing gesture. “Go sit down.”

Jakob bit off whatever he had been about to say, nodded, and made his way toward the edge of the ring.

“That dude is brutal,” Mike commented. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him lose. I bet you’re good.”

Two shrugged. If he was probing her for information, he wasn’t going to get any. “You ready?” she asked.

“Let’s do it.”

Mike gave her a quick salute with his sword and fell into a defensive stance. Two did the same. She heard the crowd around the ring go quiet. Jakob had been right: her match was drawing a lot more interest than the other juvenile fighters had. She hoped she could give them all a good show.

“
Tenor Ay’Araf
!” Mike shouted, and he sprang forward, going for an immediate and obvious slashing attempt at her right arm. Two parried it easily, sidestepping, staying on the balls of her feet. She brought her sword around in a wide arc, aiming for his back, but Mike jerked out of the way. He feinted left and, despite Jakob’s earlier warning, Two bit on it, moving her sword to parry a blow that wasn’t coming. Mike switch his sword from one hand to the other in a single, fluid motion and swung backhand at her unprotected right side.

“Shit!” Two cried, springing backward and twisting her body, avoiding the blow by less than an inch. Mike grinned.

“Almost!” he said.

“No rewards for ‘almost,’” Two replied.

She circled him, blade held out, waiting. Mike gathered himself and stepped back toward her. He tried the left feint again, but this time Two was ready for it and held her blade steady. She parried again, spun, and faked a forward lunge. Mike brought his blade crashing down in front of him, but Two came instead from the side. Off balance, he was still able to switch his blade from hand to hand again and stop her attack. They separated for a moment.

“Don’t press,” Jakob called from the stands. Two ignored him. She knew what to do; the hard part was managing to avoid being carved up while she waited for an opportunity.

For the next five minutes, the fight went back and forth in a series of unspectacular but technically solid exchanges. Two advanced, Mike parried and returned. Mike went on the attack and Two defended, the blades clanging against each other. She felt warm and loose now, breathing easy, comfortable in her body. Stephen had left her with a “maintenance” training regimen intended to keep her at her peak physical form – Two rarely strayed from it, working out for an hour every evening when she woke up.

She had not identified any flaws in Mike’s form, though she was sure Jakob could have given her a laundry list of them. Instead, she thought she had found a problem with his approach; he was almost
too
textbook. It was a sort of dance: she stepped here, he stepped there, and she
had
to make the next step. If she could find a way to break that up, to step somewhere she shouldn’t be or swing her sword in a direction that wasn’t expected, she thought she might be able to get him off balance.

Mike wasn’t giving her a lot opportunity to plan, constantly moving forward into her space. His strategy at this point was plain: be the aggressor, make her expend all of her effort on defense, keep her off balance. He seemed comfortable, and comfort was not something she wanted him to be feeling.

She parried another of his blows and sprung sideways, swinging her left arm outward. Using the leather band on her wrist, she hit Mike’s blade directly, knocking it aside. For the first time in the battle, he looked surprised by her actions, and it was only with a desperate and lucky effort that he was able to parry her next blow. Undaunted, Two refused to let Mike regain his footing. She slid her blade down the length of his sword, aiming at his hands, forcing him to let go of the hilt with his left and pull the blade away, leaping backward.

Now was the time to press. Two advanced on him with all the formidable speed that Theroen’s blood had given her, blade flashing as she swung back and forth, clashing with Mike’s desperate attempts to parry. There wasn’t much room left; in a moment more she would have him on the ropes, impeding his ability to move his arms. Mike glanced quickly over his shoulder, realized this, and attempted to circle to the left. Two lunged in that direction, cutting him off. She could hear people shouting behind her, but she didn’t care what they were saying. The fight would be won or lost here, and if she was making a mistake, then so be it.

Mike executed a pretty spin away from her blade and swung his own outward toward Two’s exposed right flank. A slower vampire would have been hit, and even for Two it was close, but at the last moment she pulled her knee all the way up to her stomach and the sword passed by her flesh and hit the canvas. Two brought her own blade back up in a backhand slash, and to save his neck Mike had no choice but to pull his shoulder up and take the hit. Two’s blade cut into his upper bicep and he shouted in pain. Two took the opportunity to shove him hard in the direction he was already leaning, and, as she had hoped, Mike went crashing to the floor. Two pressed the point of her blade against his chest.

“Yield?” she asked. Mike glared up at her, clearly pissed off but also impressed.

“You doing anything later?” he asked.

“Hanging out with my boyfriend,” Two told him.

“Yeah, that’s my luck. I yield.”

He let go of his sword, holding his open hands up, and Two took the point of her weapon away. She reached out, took his left hand in hers, and helped him to his feet. Behind her, she could hear people approaching.

“Good fight,” she said, and Mike nodded.

“Yeah. You’re really fast.”

“That’s what they tell me.”

“I’m gonna want a rematch next time. Still pretty sure I can beat you.”

Two grinned, stepping aside as Mike’s patron arrived to tend to his wound.

“I look forward to proving you wrong.”

* * *

“Other than completely ignoring my advice, I thought you did very well,” Jakob said. They were sitting on the bleachers again. Two was freshly showered and back in her street clothes. She laughed.

“I didn’t
ignore
it … I just didn’t think I was going to beat him with technique. He had a counter for every move I made!”

“Yes, but he executed several of them poorly. We’ll have to teach you to look for that.”

“I know I have a lot to learn, Jakob. I’m not giving up on my lessons just because I won a rookie fight.”

Jakob nodded. He glanced at Theroen, who was sitting on Two’s other side, half listening to them and half watching the fight.

“What did you think?” Jakob asked him, and Theroen turned to give them his full attention.

“Yeah, did I look OK up there?” Two asked.

Theroen considered this for a moment and then smiled. “I enjoyed the part where you retained all of your blood.”

“Me too!”

“I was proud of you,” Theroen continued. “Proud because you are talented, but also because of the efforts you have made. When I first encountered you, you were spending most of your energy and willpower just keeping yourself from being swallowed by despair. As I watched, I saw in you the person you could be if you could harness your strength. You are doing so now, and it is … well, quite nerve wracking at times, but also very enjoyable.”

Two felt herself blushing, unaccustomed to such naked praise. “I guess. I mean … it’s just some sword fighting.”

Jakob spoke up. “Sword fighting and karate, and intense physical training that most people would have given up after a week, and dealing with Stephen and then me for more than three years, and keeping yourself in peak shape, and—”

“All right, I get it!” Two exclaimed. “I’m awesome. Message received. Thanks, you guys.”

“You’ve become the person you were supposed to be,” Theroen said.

“Long as you still like that person,” Two replied.

“Very much.”

Two glanced at Jakob. “You should totally look away now so we can make out.”

“This is possibly the least appropriate place in the world for that activity,” Jakob replied, his voice dry, and Two grinned.

“Oh, fine. Hey, what happened to Sasha? Did she leave?”

“No, she watched and told me to congratulate you. She’s in the locker room now, changing.”

“She still fights?”

Jakob shrugged. “She’s right-handed. Certainly she’s lost a few maneuvers by not being able to switch hands, but then again, she no longer has to worry about protecting her left arm, either.”

Two shook her head in admiration. “If I only had one hand, I’d be like ‘no thanks, I’m going to learn to crochet.’”

“Crotchet requires two hands,” Jakob said in an odd, gentle voice. For a moment there was silence, and then Two burst out laughing, covering her mouth with her hands.

“That was the dumbest thing I’ve ever said!”

“Oh, if only …” Theroen murmured, and Two whirled on him, still laughing.

“What did you just say?!”

“It must have been the wind,” Theroen replied, and Two punched him in the shoulder. Jakob was watching them, smiling.

“Sasha has been fighting for more than a century. It’s what she likes to do. She’d probably find a way to keep doing it even if she lost both arms. Besides, the speed at which prosthetics are advancing is truly remarkable. She may well be back to dual-handed fighting before long.”

Two nodded. Sasha’s prosthetic arm, which she wore most of the time, was a far cry from a piece of wood with a hook at the end. A myoelectric device, it contained a core made of steel rods and cables, and was covered by layers of carbon fiber and silicone. The fingers on the hand were individually jointed, and Sasha could bend the arm at the elbow, close the fingers into a fist, and perform other actions by flexing different muscles in her upper arm. It was not quite a sci-fi bionic limb, but it wasn’t so far away, either.

“Can we stay and watch her, Theroen?” Two asked.

“We can stay as long as you would like,” he replied.

“She’s very good,” Jakob said. “After the injury there was a string of challengers who had no business stepping into the ring with her. I suppose they thought that the loss of the arm would give them an edge. They were quite wrong.’

“Cool. You must be proud of her.”

“Sasha has always made me proud,” Jakob said. “We have few women here, and yet she has integrated herself so well that few of our members even think about her gender anymore.”