Black Steel (18 page)

Now and then, however, he did manage to lose himself in the crisscrossing of Kee's town. That was reason enough to continue it.

"Evening," a man across the street called to him, waving. The man, dressed in a long cloth poncho, was walking his small dog, a floppy-eared, short-haired, stubby-legged beast of several colors. The dog bayed once at Sleel, then went back to sniffing out the urine trails of his distant canine cousins. Sleel had seen the man and dog a dozen times on his night walks. He waved back without any real enthusiasm.

Ahead, a streetsweeper grumbled past the corner on the cross-street, warning lights flashing as it slowly made cleaner the already clean road. Sleel watched the flashing yellow and blue lights. It looked like some kind of organic thing, a dinosaurlike beast bellowing softly to itself as it grazed on civilization's dirt.

Sleel knew what his problem was. Psychologically speaking, he was still recovering from the shock of his failure. But knowing why lightened his depression not in the slightest. He ate, he slept, he stared into the distance, he answered when spoken to, and he walked, for hours at a time.

The smell of the dampened dust behind the streetsweeper reached him as Sleel neared the corner. Kee had been very understanding. He had offered to pay her for lodging and she had shaken her head and smiled. She didn't question him, didn't demand anything, mostly just left him alone. She taught her classes went about her business, and he saw her briefly now and then. That suited him, too.

And so Sleel had become familiar with the streets and alleys and walkways of Kyrktom in the ways only a walker can know. His body was nearly healed, but his mind was still crippled, and while he knew that, he couldn't bring himself to care. His life was maybe a third over if something like a meteor didn't drop out of the sky and kill him, and he had nothing to show for it.

Poor Sleel, he thought. Poor, sad, miserable fucking Sleel.

Cierto tended to his students. Among the new ones, there were six for whom he had hopes. Eight months, a year from now, and these six would, with sufficient training, be better than average swordplayers. As Cierto watched them practice lunges in the gym, he smiled. They were part of his plan, these six. They would be a gift to his unborn, to his yet-unconceived son. It was not given to many men to be able to give such a thing to their children, but Cierto was not just any man. His son would have a hero for a father, a man of honor and courage, and his mother too would be brave and adept. He would be able to demonstrate that to his son, Cierto knew, even if the boy's mother were not around when he came of an age to appreciate it. These six would be instrumental in that demonstration.

So, eight months, a year, and his carefully laid plan would come to fruition. Just as he had slain the thief who had dishonored him, so would Cierto achieve his next goal, of fathering a son to inherit his sword.

He would raise the boy by the Code, and he would make his child in his own image. Such was his duty.

And in this case, such would also be his pleasure, especially the fathering part.

"No, no!" he called out to the students. "You move like cattle! Lightly! You are supposed to be dancing with your enemy, not crushing his toes under your clumsy feet!"

He kept his face stem, but inwardly he grinned. They would learn. He would see to it.

The last of the advanced class finished cleaning and putting away the kendo gear and left, bowing at the exit. Alone now in the dojo, Wu stretched tired muscles as she prepared to practice her kata. It had been a late session, to make up for a class missed due to a local holiday. It was past midnight. Sleel was out walking, dragging behind him as always his mountain of self-pity. Sometimes he walked all night, coming in as she was rising. She thought that he tried to exhaust himself so that he could sleep, but she had heard him moaning and thrashing around in his bed., Still, it was not her place to try and treat his wound. If you wanted to heal, you had to do it yourself. She had learned that lesson long ago.

She took her sword from its stand and moved to the center of the floor, callused bare fleet sliding easily over the swept-clean and polished wood. Maybe it had been a mistake to pull Sleel from the wreckage of that flitter, compounded by bringing him back here. It had been what, almost three months, and he was still sunk into his own miseries, to depths she wasn't sure she could reach even if she tried. Still, there was something there.

Wouldn't it be nice if she knew what it was?

Wu assumed seiza, placing the sword next to her left leg. She closed her eyes, took a couple of cleansing breaths, and sent the thoughts away, reaching from zanshin. Awareness replaced thought, movement followed, and Kildee Wu leaped into the martial dance of hard flesh and harder steel.

Sleel arrived at the dojo. Kee had finished her form and ryas moving to replace her sheathed sword on the rack where it usually lived. She bowed to the weapon, turned, and went to the showers.

Sleel was recognized by the doorcom and admitted. The dojo had a pretty good security system; it was programmed to keep strangers out. Kee had told him there had never been a problem with theft, but that certain of her more valuable possessions were protected by coded transmitters. A very good thief could probably bypass the security system, say, but if he attempted to leave carrying a protected item, he would trigger a zap field designed to center on the stolen property. Unpleasant, that experience, and repeated to anyone trying to continue the crime where the unconscious thief left off.

Sleel walked across the dojo floor toward Kee's sword, smelling the sweat that laced the air. He hadn't paid much attention to her art; he'd never been particularly interested in esoteric weaponry. Swords seemed fairly impractical in a modern society.

Not so impractical that a man couldn't use one to kill your client, hey, Sleel?

Dammit. He didn't need that thought.

The few times he had seen Kee working out, she had been using either a wooden or a bamboo-slat sword. He had never seen the one inside the white-lacquered sheath. He glanced at the weapon as he came to stand in front of it.

Behind him in the dressing room, the shower came on, the sound of the water obvious in the otherwise quiet building. He looked toward the dressing-room door. Kee was in the shower by now.

Sleel reached out and caught the wooden sheath in his new hand. Maybe there was some kind of protocol about this kind of thing, looking at it required permission or whatever. But he was curious, somewhat surprised at himself for feeling that or any other emotion, and what the fuck, she was in the shower anyway.

He took the sword's grip in his right hand. It was warm to his touch, the wrapping and pattern oddly comfortable in his grip. He had a sudden sense of deja vu. He did not recall ever handling a weapon exactly like this one, but his thumb found a button that latched the sword into its sheath, pressing the release as though he had done it a thousand times before. Slowly, he began to withdraw the blade from its scabbard. As he looked at the blade, his eyes widened as he realized that the metal was black. As black as the swords of Cierto and his assassins had been.

Black! Why-?

From behind him, a voice said, "What are you doing?"

Sleel spun, whipping the black steel blade all the way out and pointing it toward the sound. The sheath clattered on the floor as he locked his weak hand onto the butt of the sword's handle behind his right hand. The sharp tip of the curved weapon moved as if guided by doppler, coming up-to point at Kee Wu's throat.

Naked, she stood in the doorway to the dressing room twelve meters away, dripping water into a small pool welling at her bare feet. Quite beautiful she was, tight and muscular and wet that way

"Gods," she said. "It's you!"

As Wu stood facing Sleel, it was as if she had been struck by a bolt of energy that welded her to the spot.

It didn't matter that she was naked and dripping from the interrupted shower. What mattered was the realization that came over her when she saw Sleel standing there with her sword. It was a combination of what she saw-the way he handled the weapon, his expression, his stance-and what she felt, this a sense she could not define but also could not deny:

Sleel. Sleel was her perfect student.

"Gods," she said. "It's you!"

Sleel was shaken, she could see that. As much as she herself was shaken? Wu did not know. She had finished her shower and dressed, trying to order her thoughts, but not managing that very well. Sleel was waiting for her when she emerged. He had replaced her sword and now stood next to the rack upon which the daito rested.

They spoke at the same instant:

"Why is it black?" he asked.

"Where did you learn that?" she asked.

There was a moment of impasse. Wu broke it. "The manufacture of black steel is a family secret," she said. "Or rather, it was a family secret. "Brought from Earth by my great-grandmother's great-grandmother."

"And Cierto . . . ?"

"His ancestors stole the method from mine. Perhaps three hundred years ago. That sword"-she nodded toward the wooden stand-"is four hundred years old."

Sleel looked puzzled.

"I think Cierto thinks that his family created the metal. One of his agents tried to steal this sword. Apparently he has a reward out for information on such weaponry. He must think that my family took the secret from his." A short pause, then, "Why do you think Cierto wanted to kill your client?"

"I don't know."

"I think that I might. Our own legends tell about our theft, only we never knew who the thieves were. Until about fifty years ago. We-it was before I was born, but my grandmother-hired thieves of our own to retrieve our property.'

"Jersey Reason."

"I never heard the name, but it could have been him."

Sleel took a big breath and let it out slowly. "He was on that world about then and he did steal something, but he didn't even know what it was." He looked at her. "How can you get back knowledge?"

"The secret might be lost, but the document was reclaimed. I think that was the end of it, for our family.

I never knew Cierto's connection to all this until his man showed up here. The old stories were like fairy tales; there weren't names connected to them."

"Shit. That was why you were on Mtu," Sleel said. It was not a question.

"Yes. To settle a very old score."

Sleel shook his head. "From three hundred years past? That doesn't make any sense."

"It has to do with honor," she said. "Surely you know about righting wrongs. Would the passage of time make any difference. to you about what Cierto did to you and Jersey Reason?"

"Not to me, no. I wouldn't expect my four-times-great-grandson to lose any sleep over it."

She shrugged. "Karma. One can wait for the cosmos to balance things, or one can help it along, but balance has to happen eventually."

"You sound like Emile. Cosmic justice."

"Mayli believed that, too. Now, my question. Where did you learn to use a sword?"

It was Sleel's turn to shrug. "Outside of the one I took from the guy who attacked us on Earth, I've never owned one. I can't remember even touching one before that. Knives and laser cutters, sure, but swords as such, no. I don't know dick about the things."

A natural swordmaster, she thought. What she had been waiting for these last few years.

"You must learn," she said.

"What?"

"About the sword."

"My hands are enough, thank you. I'm not likely to be shooting anybody else since I parked my spetsdods, but I can defend myself with the Ninety-seven Steps if need be-"

"This is not about defense, Sleel, it is about art and spirit. Tell me, how did it feel when you were holding the sword?"

"Feel? What do you mean?"

"Was it clumsy? Awkward?"

"Nah. It felt pretty comfortable, you get right down to it. Like I'd done it all my life."

She smiled again, bigger. "It took me three years of daily practice to get to the place where a sword felt 'pretty comfortable' in my hands. You have to train with me, Sleel. You are my student."

"Shit. You've got dozens of students-"

"No, you don't understand. They are just ordinary students. You are my perfect student. Every instructor searches until she finds him or her. They are like soulmates; you only get one. There might be others who are faster or more adept or stronger or whatever, but only a single person who is it."

"And you think that's me?" Sleel's tone was halfway between amused and scornful.

"I know it. Not here"-she touched her head-"but here." She touched her heart with two fingers.

"You've lost your track, fem. Busted a repellor."

"No. It sounds mystical but it isn't. I just know."

Sleel stared at her.

He didn't want any more entanglements in his life. Why the hell should he start playing with swords, just because Kee over there had gone geboo on him?

Then again, what else was he going to do with his life? It wasn't as though he had a lot of prospects. As a writer, he had said all he wanted to say. As a matador, he had failed the most important of exams. He hadn't been the son his parents wanted and he certainly didn't want to compound that by fathering children of his own. So, where was he going to go and what was he going to do when he got there? If it didn't matter, if one spot was as good as another, then why not here? If it made Kee Wu happy to show him how to waggle a bar of sharp steel, then why not? Might as well be of some use to somebody, right?

He looked at her again, at her knowing smile. It bothered him to be the focus of someone's hopes and attention. Then again, the alternatives were pretty much null, weren't they?

"Okay," he said. "Why not? I'll stick around and learn fancy carving."

She laughed and actually clapped her hands.

"I knew it!" she said.

"Yeah? What if I'd said space it? What if I had just turned and walked out?"

"But you didn't."

"But what if I had?"

"You wouldn't have. A student needs a teacher. That's part of the equation."