CHAPTER 9: THE FIGHT

The Matsuda dojo occupied over half the compound. In centuries past, it had accommodated fifty students at a time. These days, the only people who trained here were the Matsudas themselves.

Women weren’t allowed on the floor, and Misaki made a concerted effort not to hover at the door too often. A lady was not supposed to take an interest in sword fighting. It wasn’t supposed to make her eyes light and her blood surge. When she watched others in the heat of combat, she teetered close—much too close—to her old self, and she found it best to avoid the edge altogether.

But for once, it wasn’t hunger that drove Misaki to follow her husband and son to the dojo doorway; it was pure motherly concern. There was a deadly edge to Takeru’s nyama that made her want to stay close to Mamoru. Just in case. Takeru had never been excessively violent with his children, never seriously injured Mamoru in training. But just in case.

She knelt in the dojo doorway to watch as Takeru and Mamoru prepared to fight. Most practice matches done with wooden blades, but this wasn’t a normal training exercise. The two had brought out their steel katana, placing them on the floor before them and bowing to the weapons in silence. It was a ritual that marked the beginning of a duel.

Outsiders assumed that traditional steel didn’t mean much to a master of the Whispering Blade. It was only after marrying into the family that Misaki herself realized how much the steel katana meant to the Matsudas. A Matsuda man’s katana was his dearest companion up until and even after he achieved a Whispering Blade. It was only through rigorous daily training with that steel that he instinctively knew how to shape the blade and distribute the weight when it came time to form his Sasayaiba. A Matsuda who didn’t train with an excellent metal sword stood no chance of making even a halfway-decent one out of ice.

Takeru, usually so calm and precise in his movements, tied his katana at his hip faster than normal, yanking the strings taut with uncharacteristic ferocity. His sword was Numu Kotetsu Katashi’s proudest accomplishment, an elegant, minimalistic weapon, with a circular guard of unadorned steel, and a handle of pearl white lacquer. The blacksmith had named the weapon Kyougetsu, the Moon Spire—a blade so bright and clean that it could cut through the dark of night like Nami’s mirror.

Mamoru’s katana, which he had helped to forge himself, was almost as long as Kyougetsu, making it a positively massive sword for such a young fighter. Nami and Nagi’s serpent forms entwined in two-toned silver and bronze to form the guard above a handle bound in dark teal wrapping. The young sword didn’t have a name yet. That was something it would have to earn in its koro’s hands—hands that faltered slightly as Mamoru slid the sheath into the belt of his hakama. Fingers fumbled with the string for a moment before managing to tie it properly.

Takashi claimed that there were days that Mamoru could fight on almost even footing with his father. But Misaki could see when Mamoru took up his starting stance that this was not one of those days. He did a good job making his apprehension look like determination. It would have fooled the untrained observer, but his upper arms were too tense. His grip wasn’t quite steady. They were the kind of cues Misaki used to look for when she needed to dismantle another fighter—which meant that Takeru could see them too.

“If you think you’re man enough to preach truth to me, you’d better be ready to back it up in combat,” Takeru said, fixing his son with an icy glare. “Are you ready?”

Mamoru nodded. “Yes, Tou-sama.”

“Good,” Takeru said and shot forward. The first clash made Misaki’s heart leap in something between terror and excitement. The ring of steel blades was like electricity in her veins. With a clang, Takeru knocked Mamoru’s sword aside and sliced downward, bringing his sword to a stop a hairs-breadth from Mamoru’s neck.

“Your defense is terrible,” he spat, smacking Mamoru’s cheek with the flat of his blade. “I hope you can do better than that.”

Takeru came at Mamoru again and again, each clash ending ruthlessly fast.

“Sloppy!” He struck Mamoru’s knuckles.

Takeru had excellent control. Like any decent teacher, he would hit Mamoru with enough force to let him know he’d made a mistake, never enough to cause permanent damage or overwhelming pain. But today, he was hitting harder than normal—harder than he needed to.

“Still sloppy! Your defense is pitiful!” Takeru blasted through Mamoru’s guard and struck him in the sternum with the hilt of his sword. Too hard.

Mamoru doubled over. For a moment, Misaki thought his knees were going to give out, but he inexplicably managed to stay on his feet.

“Stand up,” Takeru said coldly. “If I wanted to end this fight now, I’d have hit you with the sharp end. Stand and face me.”

Mamoru tried to straighten up, staggered, gagged, and clapped a hand over his mouth. Misaki was certain for a moment that he was going to throw up, but after a few deep breaths, he swallowed and lifted his gaze to meet Takeru’s. Gripping his katana like a lifeline, he resumed his fighting stance.

Takeru took the invitation without waiting for Mamoru to regain his bearings. Their blades crashed together so hard that Misaki felt the impact in her bones, her forearms twitching as she imagined the damage her own body would take under that force. The collision sent Mamoru’s katana spinning out of his hands.

On a normal day of training, they would stop after someone was disarmed. But Takeru kept going. Before the katana had hit the dojo floor, he was attacking again. Mamoru caught on just in time to form an ice shield across his arm.

Takashi talked about how creative and skilled Mamoru was with quickly-formed ice shields, but Misaki hadn’t understood what he meant until she watched the boy summon ice to defend against the Moon Spire. Takeru’s blade glanced off the shield once, twice, and then stuck in the softer outer layer of ice.

Misaki recognized the sophisticated disarming technique. She had never mastered it even at her prime, but Mamoru pulled it off neatly. His jiya swallowed the Moon Spire and froze around it. Then, cranking his body around, he spun the sword from his father’s hands.

Takeru let it happen. His jiya was easily powerful enough to override his son’s, but he loosened his grip and allowed Mamoru to fling the sword away.

“Alright, boy.” Takeru flexed his fingers and the temperature plummeted. “If this is the way you’d rather fight…”

The Whispering Blade flashed out of nowhere. Mamoru ducked under the cut and rolled to retrieve his katana—only to meet a wall of ice.

“I don’t think so,” Takeru said. “If you’re man enough to stand and insult me to my face, then you’re man enough to face me jiya to jiya.”

What came next was painful to watch.

Mamoru had mastered every jiya attack in the Kumono curriculum and then some. He could shoot projectiles with pinpoint accuracy, sling whips of water at blinding speeds, and raise walls as thick as tree trunks. He was smart enough to use everything in his arsenal to keep Takeru and his Whispering Blade at a distance.

None of it made a difference.

Takeru cleaved through his defenses like they were rice paper, closing the distance between them within moments. In close, Mamoru had no choice but to try to match his father’s ice katana with his own. In a seemingly perfect imitation of Takeru’s technique, he opened his hand and let jiya pour out of his palm to form a sword of solid ice. It looked like a Whispering Blade—straight, sharp, and clear—but Takeru sliced through it in a single stroke.

“Weak,” he scoffed as Mamoru scrambled to reform the blade from where it had been severed. “Muddy intentions produce an impure ice.”

Mamoru took a swing with his reformed sword. All Takeru had to do was raise his own Whispering Blade in defense and Mamoru’s ice broke against it. The process repeated again and again until Takeru lost patience and shattered Mamoru’s entire sword, leaving him with a handful of splintered ice.

Weaponless, Mamoru started to form a shield, but Takeru punched through it, knocking him to the tatami.

“I y—” Mamoru started, only to have the breath knocked out of him as Takeru’s foot slammed into his chest, pinning him to the floor. “I yield!” he managed to shout at last.

“Do you?” Takeru growled and stabbed downward.

Misaki screamed.

For a single moment of blind terror, she saw Takeru plunge his blade into Mamoru’s mouth—but that wasn’t quite what happened. As Takeru’s fist shot forward, his Whispering Blade collapsed into harmless liquid. It refroze across his knuckles just as they connected with Mamoru’s face. The boy’s head snapped back, blood blossomed from his mouth, and he lay there stunned.

Takeru let out his breath.

For a moment he looked like he was going to hit Mamoru again. Then he paused. “What are you doing, Misaki?”

“What?” Misaki looked down and realized that she was on her feet. Not only that, she had taken two steps onto the dojo floor. Ice had formed on her fingernails in the beginning of claws. “Oh…” she said blankly. “I-I’m sorry, I… Sorry.” She quickly backed off the forbidden floor and folded to her knees, shaken. “I’m sorry, Takeru-sama. Continue.”

Takeru stared at her for a long moment before turning his gaze back to Mamoru. The boy was still lying flat on his back, mouth and nose red with blood. His eyes had a blank, shell-shocked look about them, and Misaki wondered if he had thought the same thing she had for that split dinma: that Takeru was actually going to kill him.

“A Matsuda does not yield,” Takeru said. “He fights through the enemies before him or he dies in the effort.” Takeru’s fist was still clenched, the ice still cold on his knuckles. “If you’re too afraid to face the Empire’s enemies, you have no right to call yourself part of this family. You have no right to stand before me in this dojo.”

Misaki barely heard the words coming out of Takeru’s mouth. All her attention was on his fist as her mind screamed, don’t hit him again. Gods in the Deep, don’t you dare hit him again. She didn’t think she would be able to hold herself still if she had to watch Mamoru take another blow. She was so intent on Takeru’s icy knuckles and the red of Mamoru’s blood that the sound of approaching footsteps made her jump.

“Setsuko!” she exclaimed as her sister-in-law came to stand in the doorway beside her.

“Sorry.” Setsuko bowed to Takeru. “I—uh…” She paused as she took in the mess of ice strewn across the dojo, and the blood on Mamoru’s face. “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything.”

“What do you want?” Takeru snapped.

“My husband wanted me to remind you that you have a meeting with him at the eleventh waati at his office.”

“Tell him I’ll be late.”

“You’re already late.” Only Setsuko would dare take that tone with Matsuda Takeru while he stood, prickling with jiya, spattered with blood and ice crystals.

He glared at her for a moment before turning to look down at Mamoru. “Clean up this mess,” he said. “Practice on your own until I get back. You do not leave this dojo until you’ve fixed your sloppy technique.”

“Great Nami, what happened here?” Setsuko whispered to Misaki.

“I’ll explain later,” Misaki said in a low voice.

She and Setsuko got to their feet and parted to make way for Takeru as he stepped out of the dojo.

“I’ll go with you to Kumono,” Setsuko said to Takeru. “My husband forgot his lunch, so I’m going to take it to him. I just have to get Ayumi bundled up for the cold—”

“Go on ahead,” Takeru said disinterestedly. “Pack up whatever you need. I’ll be with you when you’re ready to go.”

Setsuko took the hint to clear out and bowed herself out of his presence. When she had gone, Takeru turned his icy glare on Misaki.

“Is this your doing?” he asked in a low voice. “Or just that city boy?”

“I…” Misaki didn’t know what to say. She may have been guilty of putting dangerous thoughts in Mamoru’s head, and she didn’t know how much influence Kwang Chul-hee had on him; it was hard to say who was to blame for his doubts. But the gall to challenge his father wasn’t something he could have picked up from either of them. Mamoru’s rage was his alone. “I’m sorry. I don’t know—”

“I don’t care.” Takeru turned away from her. “Just fix it.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you had some hand in this… this weakness that’s overtaken him, you set it right. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Misaki said timidly.

She stood stiffly in the hall as Takeru walked away, taking the worst of the cold with him.

In the dojo, Mamoru had gotten to his knees but didn’t seem to have found it in his legs to stand. Misaki itched to go to him, to pick him up, to heal the bruises. Instead, she just asked softly, “Are you alright?”

“Yes.” Mamoru stood gingerly, his mouth and nose dripping blood on his hakama. Putting his hands to his mouth, he glanced to the doorway. “I’m sorry.” He said into his hands. “Sorry you had to see that.”

It wasn’t clear if he was referring to his attitude, his sloppy fighting, or the blood. Misaki realized, with a bit of very misplaced amusement, that Mamoru probably thought this was the most violence she had ever witnessed.

She finally came up with what she hoped was a reassuring, “I’ve seen worse.”

Mamoru stood alone in the middle of the dojo with his hands covering his mouth until he heard the sound of Takeru and Setsuko’s footsteps leaving the compound and the thud of the sliding door closing behind them.

Then he moved his hands, waking his jiya. Misaki watched in surprise as he drew the blood from his face and clothes then formed a scab over his split lip. She knew that as a child, he had shown promise in blood manipulation, but she hadn’t realized that he still remembered the little she had taught him all those years ago. Not only that, he had clearly taken the time to get better at it. She had to wonder, that all these years, this boy had been growing up right in front of her—and she had missed it.

His lip mended, Mamoru walked around the dojo, melting down and evaporating all the ice left over from the fight. He didn’t work with his usual speed and power, but Misaki was glad that he was at least walking and breathing normally. Once he had extracted the last bits of moisture from the tatami, to prevent any mold from forming, Mamoru picked up his katana and shifted into his starting stance. With a slow breath, he started running through his katas.

Even without a real opponent in front of him, Mamoru moved with a ferocity that brought the sequence of movements to life. Misaki could feel each breath in her own lungs, each shift and explosion in her own muscles. She found herself matching his steps in her mind, striking and parrying the blade with her eyes. Slowly, she started to pick out the weak spots, the lagging movements, the openings… The form was beautiful. Not perfect.

“Not enough.”

Misaki didn’t realize she had said the words aloud until Mamoru turned to look at her.

“What?”

“It’s…” nothing, Misaki meant to say. It’s nothing. After all, what would a woman know of fighting? “You won’t fend off your father fighting like that.”

“I know that, Kaa-chan.” Mamoru let his sword arm fall. “It’s obvious how much better he is.” Misaki never would have guessed it from the boy’s beautiful, fluid movements, but the irritable note in his voice betrayed the depths of his frustration. “I don’t know how to close the gap. I can’t fight like he does.”

“Yes, you can,” Misaki said. “You fight exactly like he does—just not quite as clean. That’s your problem; you’re trying to imitate a swordsman with many times your strength and nyama. You need to play to your advantages.”

“What advantages?”

“Your range of movement, for one. You’re quicker and lighter on your feet than your father.”

Mamoru was shaking his head. “That’s nice of you to say, Kaa-chan, but I’m not. If you knew anything about fighting, you’d have seen when we fought—I’m not fast enough to counter him.”

“Yes, you are.” Misaki stood. “Your reaction time is noticeably shorter than his, but you waste movement when you hold all that tension in your shoulders. That’s how he keeps getting through your guard.”

Mamoru stared at her and she could see the wheels spinning in his head—as he registered that what she said made sense, but couldn’t figure out how she knew. “If… if it’s so obvious that I’m doing that—if even you can see it—then why didn’t he tell me?”

“He’s been trying,” Misaki sighed. “That’s what he means when he keeps saying ‘sloppy.’”

“Oh…” Mamoru looked down at nothing for a moment, thinking, visualizing. Then he made two cuts—in such quick succession that Misaki could barely follow the blade with her eyes.

“Better,” she murmured. Not perfect. “Better…”

Mamoru tried again, and Misaki found that she had taken a half-step forward.

“Don’t swing so hard,” she said. “If you have the angle right, the cut will go through without you throwing your whole body behind it.”

“Yukino Sensei says it isn’t easy to cut through bone and sinew,” Mamoru said, his eyes still focused forward. “It takes a lot of power.”

“Power,” Misaki said, “not muscle. If you trust yourself and your blade… you’d be surprised how easy it is to cut through a human body.”

Her toes curled at the threshold. She tipped forward ever so slightly. Teetering.

“Kaa-chan…” Mamoru was starting to look worried. “What on Duna are you talking about?”

“I can’t tell you…” Misaki tilted, trying to will herself back from the edge. This is wrong. This is wrong, you stupid woman. Know your place—“but I can show you.” And she was over the edge, striding across the dojo floor, light with an idiot’s elation.

Mamoru’s eyes were wide. “Kaa-chan, what are you doing?”

“Something I probably shouldn’t.” She smiled as she reached the sword rack. “But given your behavior today, you’re not one to judge now, are you?” She stood with her hands on her hips for a moment, surveying the rack of Kotetsu swords in their refined lacquer sheaths. The swords at the top of the rack belonged to Matsuda patriarchs past. Having never seen the men’s weapons so close, she took a moment to admire them.

Beside Takeru’s white Moon Spire sat Takashi’s matched katana and wakizashi, Nagimaru and Namimaru. Named for God and Goddess, both weapons had leaping fish carved into their hilts and ocean blue wrapping knotted around their grips. Higher on the rack rested the ancestral sword Kurokouri, Black Ice, wielded by Matsuda Susumu and great Matsudas past. Above that sat Matsuda Mizudori’s sword, the Mist Cutter, Kirinagi, his father’s sword, the Cloud Whip, Kumokei, and his father’s sword, the God Fang, Senkiba.

Just standing before the blades of legend put a tingle in Misaki’s fingertips. She would never dream of putting her hands on such sacred weapons, but further down rested lesser weapons—katana, wakizashi, and tanto that were worn, damaged or otherwise inferior, but still functional. From those, Misaki selected a slender wakizashi and tested its weight in her hands.

“Kaa-chan!” Mamoru exclaimed sheathing his own katana. “I-I don’t think you should be touching those.”

Misaki ignored him. “Heavy.” She frowned. “I suppose Kotetsu weapons are always on the heavy side. No wonder your shoulders are so tense.”

“Kaa-chan, those blades are all sharp,” Mamoru said in mounting anxiety. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“You’re right.” Placing the wakizashi back on the sword rack, Misaki crossed to the dojo supply closet and rummaged for a pair of bokken. “Put away your katana, son.”

Misaki knew she was violating sacred space. She knew she should leave the dojo now and pretend this had never happened, but her resolve only hardened as her hand found the hilt of a wooden sword. Takeru had told her to fix Mamoru. Well, she couldn’t fix the fact that he was confused and angry. She couldn’t fix the fact that he was fourteen. What she could fix was his technique.

After some coaxing, Mamoru put away his metal sword and took the wooden one Misaki offered.

“I don’t understand this, Kaa-chan? What is going on?”

“You asked what I was up to at that foreign school all those years ago.” Misaki gave the wooden sword a twirl, loosening up her joints. “Your father doesn’t like it when I talk about it, but this won’t require any talking. Go on,” she nodded to Mamoru. “Take a swing.”

He looked aghast. “You can’t be serious! Kaa-chan, I’m not going to—”

“Don’t want to attack a little old lady?” Misaki smiled. “Fine. Then defend!”