The Paladin Part 15

"You worked all year to try to stop me. What else do you call it, when you taught me everything so you could beat me and make me think I'd lost?"

"Youdid lose, fool. I did precisely what you asked. It's taken you a year to get smart enough to ask what you need, rather than telling me. Shut up," he said, lifting a hand for silence as she opened her mouth. "And listen to me. I gave you your say. Let's first of all have the habit of listening, shall we? You want to walk into a castle and murder a man. How will you do that? Walk in the front gate and say:Here I am, a woman, come to challenge lord Gitu to a duel? Is that your plan? It's got bad holes in it, girl."

"I wait till he's hunting. Then I don't have to walk in the gates."

So. We are thinking. So we teach her the right way, the slow way. Teach her prudence, for the G.o.ds'

sake. That goes with the skills. It's d.a.m.ned well the thing she needs. Prudence, patience, and an understanding what she's up against. "Let's calm down and think, then, girl, about the real world, not your imaginings. So you meet him in the countryside. He's on a horse. He's got a good twenty other men around him. Better shoot him from ambush. That's your best chance. And then you've got to get out of there, because those twenty men are going to be after you. Have you got a horse?"

Her eyes were on him now, hot and dark and red-rimmed from recent tears. "I want tokill him. I want him to know he's going to die. I want him to see me plain."

His gut tightened in the face of a hatred like that. He tried not to remember when he had felt it; but it came back for a breath, in all its force.

"Listen. There was a boy when I was in training. His name was Abi. His family had enemies. One day he took a sword and attacked their house. The guards killed him. That's the end of the story. He never grew up. He never got smarter. His enemies are rich and his family suffered disgrace."

"Mine's dead," she said. He had walked into that one.

"Then at least think of your teacher and don't disgrace me by stupidity.Someone is responsible for you.

And I couldn't teach you anything as long as you knew everything. You've lost your sense of balance, here-" He tapped his chest. "And everything's gone. Your courage is all because you don't mind dying.

But you're likely to end up only dead, having done nothing you set out to do."

She scowled at him.

"First," he said, "plan to get out again." The frown deepened.

"Think aboutafter , girl. There is anafter , of one kind or another and a revenge that leaves your enemies able to have their revenge onyou is no revenge at all. Think aboutafter , I say. Plan to survive this."

It was a strange expression in that startled look, a panic fear that touched him too, clear and sharp as if it were still alive-so that his heart sped and he felt the blood leave his hands. He was surprised by the strength of it, by daylight, surprised that a fool of a girl touched the old wound.

Her kin are dead. And it's as if the dead had deserted us in the street, in public disgrace. Or we'd somehow deserted our dead. I know where you are, girl. I've walked that road.

She gave him a defiant grimace. And thought her own thoughts, unreachable.

"Let me tell you something," he said then in a low voice, not ever having voiced such a thing before, having had no living soul to tell it to, and he was embarra.s.sed now to be saying it-in the face of his own dead, to a peasant girl who would probably sneer and call him a coward. But it was sensible advice and it was true, and it wasnot what the ballads sang or the philosophers said. "You want to know another thing I've learned in nine years on this mountain, girl, it's that there's no particular shame in being too smart to die with your kin and your friends. I could have gone back. If luck was with me I could have gotten to Ghita himself, and killed him. But I wouldn't have gotten out again, and a dozen scoundrels would've survived me. d.a.m.ned if I'd give them the pleasure of havingmy neck on the block. I trouble my enemies by living. A dead man is no trouble at all. Neither is a dead girl whose name no one knows or cares about. So be wise. Live here with me. Become a rumor to disturb your enemies' sleep . . . not a memory they won't even look back on. You know what they'll say when you're dead?She was some crazy peasant. That's all. That's d.a.m.ned well all. And some other hound will take Gitu's place in Angen and rule ten times worse than he did, to give other a.s.sa.s.sins second thoughts. Nothing will get better. It may well get worse for what you do."

Her face grew pale. She was listening, he thought. For the first time she was truly understanding what he was saying.

Then: "No," she said, and shook her head vehemently.

"Think on it. You'll get one man. That's all. Maybe a few of his guards. It's not payment enough. It can't set anything right. Take my advice. Become a rumor. Rumors are much harder to kill."

Another violent shake of her head. She looked at her hands and up at him, one eye from under a tangled fall of dirty hair. "I'm not you."

"You can be the same. A mystery to them. Let them wonder who you are."

Again a shake of her head, a taut, frightened look. "No." She bit her lips and said, then, full of a.s.surance: "I'm not you, but the man that gave me this-" She touched the side of her face. "I wouldn't be wondering if he was dead. He didn't know how to use that knife he had. He thought he did. A lot of them are like that."

"Some aren't."

"I'm still good. I'm better than those men are." "Of course you are." Still the whisper, closest confidence. He had her attention. He was gaining ground with her, he felt that he was. "What you don't have is experience-and a repertoire of tricks in case one goes astray. You ask me to teach you. That began last night. Let me tell you another thing. Whatever they did to you, that scar outside isn't your trouble. It's fear. It's the kind of panic that makes bad judgement and drives you to heroics. Get rid of your fear of men, girl. I don't say you should sleep with me. But I say that being afraid to-won't steady your arm or make good judgements. You're scared to death of me. You're scared to death of getting caught by these men because you know what can happen.

That's not going to make good decisions. I don't think it's making a good one for you now. If you weren't scared of me, you'd think a lot more clearly. And you wouldn't run from me."

"I said what I would do for my keep! I'm not a wh.o.r.e!"

"It wasn't a wh.o.r.e's portion that I offered you. You think, girl. Fear makes mistakes. Fear makes its own reasons for a choice, when good sense would say it costs too much. Don't let fear push you. Whatever the fear is. Do you understand me? Until you overcome that-until you make up your own mind-your enemies are masters of everything you do. And you'll fail at the last. I've no question of it."

She turned away from him and scrambled to her feet, to the door, not looking at him, no.

"The sword is not the highest skill," he said. For a moment he was back in Yiungei, at home, in the court of pale stone. It was his father's voice. "It's a shadow of that skill. The substance is in yourself."

She looked back at him, angry and confused.

"The sword isn't the weapon," he said. "You are. Do you understand me yet? I can teach you the higher knowledge, but I can't say it's going to make sense to you. Don't frown. Show respect for your teacher.

By the G.o.ds, you'll learn manners before you learn anything. I won't have taught a barbarian."

"Yes, master Saukendar."

"Don't give me that tone. I've been patient. You're treading very close to trouble this morning. You ask me favors, you ask me to teach you, this is part of it. Go clean up. And clean up this mess. I'm certainly not going to."

She bowed, her mouth a taut line. And she went without a word to gather up the cooking pot and the laundry and a bucket and head for the spring.

One did not know what to do with a girl like that. Shewas crazy.

He was, to agree to the things he had just agreed to.

So he thought, contemplating a cold bowl of rice and a solitary breakfast.

He was afraid she might change her mind, afraid she might not come back from her bath, afraid that, after all, she would decide she knew enough and take out one day, armed with her sword and her absurd notions.

She upset his stomach.

And disturbed his sleep. * * *

It was the way with nagging problems, he thought, that they could lie quiet all day and turn on a man in the dark. If Taizu were not sleeping across the room he would do what he had done on the worst nights, in the early years and sometimes since: light the lamp and find some work for his hands, and sleep during the day till the ghosts and the demons had left him. But pride afforded him no such refuge, and they had drunk most of the wine.

What's the matter, master Saukendar?

He lay still, staring up at the roof with his heart pounding, recollecting what hate felt like and what it was to have lost everyone who mattered in the world.

And when he was not doing that he was reliving the moment that he had backed up from a crazed girl with a wooden sword.

Stupid, he chided himself.

Or he was wondering why he had ended up giving in to every demand she made.

Twice stupid.

He could not rememberwhat he had sworn to her, that was the truth of it.He grew confused about what he had said.

One hardly knew what to do with such a woman. Beat sense into her, perhaps. One wanted to. But dealing with her was like trying to hold water in one's fist: the open hand, he told himself, was the only way.

So one kept the hand open. That was all. One took seriously the idea that she might go, in some fit of temper, and one hoped to teach her enough to save herself.

One hoped to teach her to rethink her notions and give up her idea of a personal revenge.

One had to maintain one's own sense of balance, and not relive those days. There was too much anger there, and too much pain; and it disturbed him that he had disposed of less of it than he had thought.

He had gone completely confused when she had come at him, that was what had happened. Her anger had been thoroughly imposing, and he was so very long from having used any of his other skills that he had instinctively, faced with a girl he had no desire to harm, realized that he was not in control of those skills and refused to use them. That was the truth he came to, in the dark, in long hours.

He had lost command of his art. That was the other part of the truth. The skills were there, but something essential was gone, whatever had ruled them and made them whole.

That was not her doing. It had been gone, he thought, from the time he had known there was nothing to be done. After that he had had confidence in nothing, and believed in no divine order, only chaos. If there were demons, and he believed even in them only by dark, the demons ruled the world, and always had.

So even having discovered the flaw in himself, he could not mend it.- h.e.l.l with it.

He should have slept with Meiya; he should have supported Riga in his bid to unseat the young Emperor; he should have taken every opposite course to the paths he had taken for honor's sake.

Teaching the girl, he took another-for honor's sake-if that was even what he had sworn in the first place.

d.a.m.n, they were all the only choices he had known how to make. If he had always been a fool he had had no choice about it, being a fool to start with; and if he had forgotten himself so far as to lay himself open to a girl with a stick, perhaps he had come down to a general disgust with living.

He had not felt that since the first years, not since that long night in the first winter, when cold and exhaustion and solitude had had the knife in his hands and G.o.ds and devils knew what had kept him from using it then.

He had been to the brink a few times since, but never at all in recent years. Not in this one, in this strange, different year when he had found himself taking a sudden interest in the world, when he had found the walls going down all around him, past and present and future. He had known the danger he was slipping toward, that he was laying himself open to more than sticks and a girl's temper.

Strange that a man could become so fragile. It was good that he could see it at least, and build back the walls and recover the skills he had let fall. That was the compensation she gave him. A man would be a fool indeed to let the chance pa.s.s, a little good time was worth the pain. And nothing he could win of her by force was worth shortening the time she might stay, or breaking the peace between them.

So he could recover his life if she left.When she left. It was a romantic fool who thought otherwise. He could buy some girl-servant from the village. There were always too many daughters. A village girl would fall down on her face and thank him for the honor of being concubine to a lord of Chiyaden. h.e.l.l with Taizu. Anyway. He could always find another pig-girl to teach. Maybe buy a pig or two to go with her.

Maybe, he thought on the contrary, the spring planting would rouse something domestic in his farmer-girl. Maybe he could buy a few pigs for her. Help her with the gardening. Maybe all his notion of making her quit had only made life here seem too hard.

Maybe he should take more of a hand with things and be gentler with her.

It was worth trying.

"I don't want any pigs," she said to his suggestion. "I'd rather hunt them."

So much, he thought, for that. But he took up the hoe and he went out to chop furrows in the garden, himself: Jiro had not lived this long to pull a plow-moving the occasional dead tree was enough for an old war-horse; and Jiro grazed placidly on the brown gra.s.s while humans sweated.

"You're putting those rows too close," she said, coming up from the stable.

He blinked sweat, wiped it off his face. "You could have said," he said with, he thought, remarkable self-control, "seeing I'm half done." "You ought to be this far over." She measured with her hands.

"All right." His leg hurt. The hoeing was never his best job. And he had worked d.a.m.ned hard this year to get the rows straight.

"You're limping," she said.

"It's soft ground," he said. And swore to himself and started over.

The sword slid past her. "Turn," he said. "Give me your point. Now."

Her sword came around to his fingers. He led it. And stopped. "Stand," he muttered; and stood holding his sword and meditating the lines of her stance, and the likely response to a move like that.

Sheremembered the moves he guided her to. She could repeat them. He s.h.i.+fted an elbow, improved a line like a sculptor in clay.

A smaller man, a lighter man, could turn a more powerful blow if the blade were angled just so, if the force slid along the steel; a swordsman of excellent balance could follow the force and slip under it.

It was not the way his father had taught. It was the art of master Yenan.

Forgive me, he thought to his ghosts. It was not pure form. It was a constant compromise, it demanded agility and the excellence of balance that, thank the G.o.ds, the girl had in unusual measure.

It took perfection of style and turned it askew, to do things more common to the inns than to the teaching-masters.

What has philosophy to do with pigs?

Or what abstract does she understand, except revenge?

"Again." He took up his guard. He followed the perfect, the schooled line, the natural course for the blade.

He brought the sword down solidly. It slid.

"Again."

Harder this time.

"Again."

With real force, his heart in his throat.

Steel grated and flashed around toward him and up again, in the wheeling stroke he had taught her.

It was, he congratulated himself, a move of some subtlety.

Her eyes shone. With hope that turned his stomach.

Chapter Nine.