Fool, he thought now. But when he considered who else might have sat the throne, or who would have had the force to hold it—there was no one... not after the brutal example of lord Heisu; and not in the opposition of the priests, the hired ones and the simple-minded ones who simply, doggedly, upheld the Chosen of Heaven, even when he was a fool. It was the will of the gods that the Empire was to suffer. It was the will of the gods that murder was done. Was not the Emperor the arbiter of right, the interpreter of the divine, the Bridge to Heaven?
As the priests went, so went the people, who hoped in the gods, and mostly hoped to be let alone: least of all would they fight against the priests. Shoka had understood that the first time a band of peasants tried to collect the reward on his head. He had spent his life thinking first of his obligations and his Emperor; he had defended the law; he had given up everything for the sake of Chiyaden and the Emperor in Cheng'di; and Chiyaden, in the end, had betrayed him.
So what do I have to teach you, girl? Wisdom? I've found none here either.
I had a dozen lovers. There was one love. I gave that up. I honored my father, she honored hers, we were fifteen: what do children know?
He could not forget the cup, lady Meiya, and the window, the way the stories told it—that solitary perfect image, as if he had been there, in that room, in that moment that she gave up hope—even though their converse in later years had all been plotting how to extricate the heir from his wild-living friends, how to circumvent lord Ghita and his cronies, how to persuade the dying Emperor to take at least some action to protect himself against assassination....
If she had been his wife—
But Meiya had chosen duty too.
So she was dead and he was in lifelong exile, plagued now by a young fool of a peasant girl who thought that she could right the wrongs her family had suffered, that blood would account for her people's blood, or that the ghosts would not cease then to trouble her sleep.
One could not advise fools. Fools, old master Yenan had been wont to say, have to mend their foolishness before they can listen. They have to know what truth is.
So that was the first thing—for a girl who did not want to be a girl, for a fool who wanted revenge that would profit her nothing.
That was the first thing that had to change.
Gods, he wanted to hit her. And he could not understand the why of that either, except that she was a fool.
That he wanted to sleep with her—with a scar-faced pig-girl—seemed like an exorcism, a coupling with a creature as rough and ungentle as he could imagine. Shoka's choice, not Saukendar's. Shoka's consolation. Not the woman he could have had.
Damn, better a woman who could take care of herself in the place he was condemned to live in, better a woman as real as the dirt and the summer heat.
Meiya was—what, twenty-two years ago?—when he had been young and whole, when he had believed there was right in the world.
This girl—Taizu—came to him like a second chance.
Teach her the sword.
Gods!
"Heel thus," he said to her, tapping the ground with the stick. "Toe." He pushed her foot into line, and walked around her, tapping an elbow, a knee, surveying her from all sides.
"Break," he said then. "Relax." And when she had drawn the first breath. "Resume your guard."
She looked at him, betrayed, and he thwacked her on the back of the calves.
"Resume your guard."
She wobbled desperately into position.
He thwacked her again, rapidly, on a misaligned toe, a knee, an elbow. Limbs jerked nervously into a half-remembered line.
He put her carefully back into position.
"Stand there a while," he said. "Until your body remembers."
And he went to sit in the shade and enjoy a cup of tea.
"Turn! Turn! Turn!" Shoka yelled, and the girl spun into guard position and spun and spun again, perfect in her alignment. She landed on guard and he brought his stick whistling around at her shins. She jumped over it and landed again on soft-shod feet, immaculate in her posture.
He took a tentative swipe at the backs of her knees.
She jumped, wrong move for that attack. The staff clipped her legs. She still recovered and landed.
"No," he said, and leaned on his staff with both hands, considering her, her reach, her balance.
There was only one student he had had—and Beijun had dodged out on his practices, whined when he took a fall, lamented the sweat and the exertion.
A line of sweat trickled down Taizu's face. She did not move from her guard. She waited.
"There's no more you can learn without the sword," he said. "There is a counter for that move. The sword is part of it. The sword makes the difference in your balance."
He walked up to the house without a word then, took the rag-wrapped sword from its place in the corner and brought it out where she stood waiting, in front of the porch.
He drew it and threw the sheath onto the porch. "Break," he said.
She came off-guard, wisely, warily.
"It's all right," he said, and held out the sword to her hilt-first. "Resume guard. Take it gently, gently as you can. I'll let you have the weight little at a time. Light with the fingers, understand?"
She nodded, came on guard with her face quite set and eager, but there was no grabbing at it: she took it exactly the comfortable way.
"That's right. That's one-handed. Second hand, now."
There was only one comfortable way, in that position. She found it.
"Exactly right," he said, with a sense of satisfaction the young Emperor had never given him, a feeling all but sensual. "Flawless."
She heard. She gave the tiniest of nods. But the muscles never varied.
"This is the weight. This is all the weight. Don't be aware of the sword. The sword is your right arm. Keep the body in position. Think of that position. Don't feel the sword. Feel your centering. When you feel it perfectly, go through your moves." He stepped clear. "Not until you're ready. Begin like the beginning: slowly."
She stood still for several breaths. The movement when it came was as perfectly centered as the resting-posture. Each step in the advance and turn was exact.
"Stop," he said, and she stopped in mid-turn, in a position she could hold for a very long while. He lifted his hand to a point in the air. "Bring your point to my fingers."
The steel touched.
"Now complete your move slowly and keep the point always in contact with my fingers."
He walked the half-circle with her turn, until her feet were in base position. "Again," he said, and walked it again. He did it seven times more, slow, stopping from time to time, at which she would stop, and her eyes never left his eyes, the way he had taught her.
Graceful, he thought. Beautiful. Not the face, but the perfection of the balance, the attention of the eyes—absolute attention.
"When you're ready," he said. "There should be no strain."
He drew back his hand, stepped back and watched her, amazed at the pig-girl who moved like a figure in a drifting dream.
His teaching, he thought. He was capable of creating something like this.
He felt the impulses in his own muscles, the remembrance what that movement felt like, rightly done. He had moved like that once.
But he could not do it now. He would never do it again. He had constantly to recall that too.
"Again!" he said, and sat and watched while the girl went through the pattern, sweating profusely now in the late summer heat. He watched, and finally, having made up his mind, got up and walked to where she stood, panting, having finished the exercise.