Chapter 7 #3
“She’s not accusing anyone of anything,” Jiang interrupted serenely.
It was the first time he’d spoken since the start of her exam.
Rin glanced at him in surprise, but Jiang just scratched his ear, not even looking at her.
“She’s merely attempting a clever answer to an otherwise inane question.
Honestly, Yim, this one has gotten pretty old. ”
Yim shrugged. “Fair enough. No further questions. Master Jiang?”
All the masters twitched in irritation. From what Rin understood, Jiang was present only as a formality. He never gave an exam; he mostly just made fun of the students when they tripped over their answers.
Jiang gazed levelly into Rin’s eyes.
She swallowed, feeling the unsettling sensation of his searching gaze. It was like she was as transparent as a puddle of rainwater.
“Who is imprisoned in the Chuluu Korikh?” he asked.
She blinked. Not once in the four months that he had trained her had Jiang ever mentioned the Chuluu Korikh.
Neither had Master Yim or Irjah, or even Jima.
Chuluu Korikh wasn’t medical terminology, wasn’t a reference to a famous battle, wasn’t some linguistic term of art.
It could be a deeply loaded phrase. It could also be gibberish.
Either Jiang was posing a riddle, or he just wanted to throw her off.
But she didn’t want to admit defeat. She didn’t want to look clueless in front of Irjah. Jiang had asked her a question, and Jiang never asked questions during the Trials. The masters were expecting an interesting answer now; she couldn’t disappoint them.
What was the cleverest way to say I don’t know?
The Chuluu Korikh. She’d studied Old Nikara with Jima for long enough now that she could gloss this as stone mountain in the ancient dialect, but that didn’t give her any clues.
None of Nikan’s major prisons were built under mountains; they were either out in the Baghra Desert or in the dungeons of the Empress’s palace.
And Jiang hadn’t asked what the Chuluu Korikh was. He’d asked who was imprisoned there.
What kind of prisoner couldn’t be held in the Baghra Desert?
She pondered this until she had an unsatisfying answer to an unsatisfying question.
“Unnatural criminals,” she said slowly, “who have committed unnatural crimes?”
Jun snorted audibly. Jima and Yim looked uncomfortable.
Jiang gave a minuscule shrug.
“Fine,” he said. “That’s all I have.”
Oral exams concluded by midmorning on the third day. The pupils were sent to lunch, which no one ate, and then herded to the rings for the commencement of the Tournament.
Rin drew Han for her first opponent.
When it was her turn to fight she climbed down the rope ladder and looked up. The masters stood in a row before the rails. Irjah gave her a slight nod, a tiny gesture that filled her with determination. Jun folded his arms over his chest. Jiang picked at his fingernails.
Rin had not fought any of her classmates since her expulsion from Combat. She had not even watched them fight. The only person she had ever sparred against was Jiang, and she had no clue if he was a good approximation of how her classmates might fight.
She was entering this Tournament blind.
She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath, willing herself to at least appear calm.
Han, on the other hand, looked very disconcerted. His eyes darted across her body and then back up to her face as if she were some wild animal he had never seen before, as if he didn’t know quite what to make of her.
He’s scared, she realized.
He must have heard the rumors that she had studied with Jiang. He didn’t know what to believe about her. Didn’t know what to expect.
What was more, Rin was the underdog in this match. No one expected her to fight well. But Han had trained with Jun all year. Han was a Sinegardian. Han had to win, or he wouldn’t be able to face his peers after.
Sunzi wrote that one must always identify and exploit the enemy’s weaknesses. Han’s weakness was psychological. The stakes were much, much higher for him, and that made him insecure. That made him beatable.
“What, you’ve never seen a girl before?” Rin asked.
Han blushed furiously.
Good. She made him nervous. She grinned widely, baring teeth. “Lucky you,” she said. “You get to be my first.”
“You don’t have a chance,” Han blustered. “You don’t know any martial arts.”
She merely smiled and slouched back into Seejin’s fourth opening stance. She bent her back leg, preparing herself to spring, and raised her fists to guard her face.
“Don’t I?”
Han’s face clouded with doubt. He had recognized her posture as deliberate and practiced—not at all the stance of someone who had no martial arts training.
Rin rushed him as soon as Sonnen signaled them to begin.
Han played defensive from the start. He made the mistake of giving her the forward momentum, and he never recovered.
From the outset, Rin controlled every part of the bout.
She attacked, he reacted. She led him in the dance, she decided when to let him parry, and she decided where they would go.
She fought methodically, purely from muscle memory.
She was efficient. She played his moves against him and confused him.
And Han’s attacks fell into such predictable patterns—if one of his kicks missed, he would back up and attempt it again, and again, until she forced him to change direction.
Finally he let his guard down, let her get in close. She jammed her elbow hard into his nose. She felt a satisfying crack. Han dropped to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Rin knew she hadn’t hurt him that badly. Jiang had punched her in the nose at least twice. Han was more stunned than injured. He could have gotten up. He didn’t.
“Break,” ordered Sonnen.
Rin wiped the sweat off her forehead and glanced up at the railing.
There was silence above the ring. Her classmates looked like they had on the first day of class—startled and bewildered. Nezha looked dumbfounded.
Then Kitay began to clap. He was the only one.
She fought two more matches that day. They were both variations on her match with Han—pattern recognition, confusion, finishing blow. She won both of them.
Over the span of a day Rin went from the underdog to a leading contender. All those months spent lugging that stupid pig around had given her better endurance than her classmates. Those long, frustrating hours with the Seejin forms had given her impeccable footwork.
The rest of the class had learned their fundamentals from Jun.
They moved the same way, sank into the same default patterns when nervous.
But Rin didn’t. Her best advantage was her unpredictability.
She fought like nothing they had been expecting, she threw them off rhythm, and so she continued to win.
At the end of the first day, Rin and six others, including Nezha and Venka, advanced undefeated into elimination rounds. Kitay had ended the first day with a 2–1 record but advanced on good technique.
The quarterfinals were scheduled for the second day. Sonnen drew up a randomized bracket and hung it on a scroll outside the main hall for all to see. The pairings placed Rin against Venka first thing in the morning.
Venka had trained in martial arts for years, and it showed. She was all rapid strikes and slick, impeccable footwork. She fought with a savage viciousness. Her technique was precise to the centimeter, her timing perfect. She was just as fast as Rin, perhaps faster.
The one advantage Rin had was that Venka had never fought with an injury.
“She’s sparred plenty of times,” said Kitay. “But nobody is actually willing to hit her. Everyone’s always stopped before the punch lands. Even Nezha. I’ll bet you none of her home tutors were willing to hit her, either. They would have been fired immediately, if not thrown in jail.”
“You’re kidding,” Rin said.
“I know I’ve never hit her.”
Rin rubbed a fist into her palm. “Maybe it’ll be good for her, then.”
Still, injuring Venka was no easy task. More by sheer luck than anything, Rin managed to land a blow early on in the match. Venka, underestimating Rin’s speed, had brought her guard back up too slowly after an attempted left hook. Rin took the opening and whipped a backhand through at Venka’s nose.
Bone broke under Rin’s fist with an audible crack.
Venka immediately retreated. One hand flew to her face, groping around her swelling nose. She glanced down at her blood-covered fingers and then back up at Rin. Her nostrils flared. Her cheeks turned a ghastly white.
“Problem?” Rin asked.
The look Venka gave her was pure murder.
“You shouldn’t even be here,” she snarled.
“Tell that to your nose,” Rin said.
Venka was visibly unhinged. Her pretty sneer was gone, her hair messy, her face bloodied, her eyes wild and unfocused. She was on edge, off rhythm. She attempted several more wild blows until Rin caught her with a solid roundhouse kick to the side of her head.
Venka sprawled to the side and stayed on the ground. Her chest heaved rapidly up and down. Rin couldn’t tell if she was crying or panting.
She didn’t really care.
The applause as Rin emerged from the ring was scattered at best. The audience had been rooting for Venka. Venka was supposed to be in the finals.
Rin didn’t care about that, either. She was used to this by now.
And Venka wasn’t the victory she wanted.
Nezha tore his way through the other side of the bracket with ruthless efficiency. His fights were always scheduled in the other ring concurrently with Rin’s, and they invariably ended earlier. Rin never saw Nezha in action. She only saw his opponents carried out on stretchers.
Alone among Nezha’s opponents, Kitay emerged from his bout unharmed. He had lasted a minute and a half before surrendering.