Sanctuary's Assassin (The Complete Part 1)

CHAPTER 15

  Fingertips pressed together hard beneath steady lips, as Ren’ai drew the moist air deep into her chest. Her eyes drifted up the column of light jutting down from the opening far above onto the arena floor. Mid-day fell upon the Jagged. The only time and place when she could stand there in the safety of the Jagged and still see sunlight, feel its warmth. It enlivened her, brought her strength.

  Her hands slipped out before her as her palms melted outward, her hands side by side forming a spear tip with fingers and thumbs. She exhaled. Her weight fell back as a leg went smoothly forward, knees bent slightly, forming a deep stance. Her hands flew up before her, one near her chest, the other, out over her forward knee.

  With fingers curled in, she waited but a flick before shifting her back leg forward and around, moving her hands as daggers drawn across the abdomen of some unseen foe then up across the throat. She took a hard step as she shifted back and to the side.

  She could almost feel Lieten’s staff upon her back as her heel met the rock though he had left her today to train without him. Across her arms as they swung forward. “Faster, Nai. Faster.” She could hear his voice clear as the echoes of each step swallowed by the vast emptiness of the place where they trained. “Light steps. Don’t touch the ground.”

  Lieten always said what might seem like the most absurd things. She was no bird. She could not fly. She could only be one quite grounded in her movement.

  But soon enough she had come to see what he meant. If she moved fast enough. If she used her weight to advance each movement that much faster, sometimes she felt like she would go on and on and never touch the ground.

  She drew up the air faster and faster as her pace quickened until she slowed it with a thought, with no loss of speed. A breath wasted could never be recovered. “Wasted breath, hastened death,” Lieten always told her.

  Standing in that column of light, her mind emptied of thought now as all of her focus lay on the motion. She hardly noticed when the shadow rose before her. She laid her blows into it, strike upon strike. Flinging the darkness forward across her leg and down on its back, she pulled her foot up to drop down upon it. Her foot hit rock as it wriggled up behind her laying hand upon her neck, giving the unmistakable sensation of angry bees.

  The shadow flung her back. She skid across the stone. A hand flew back to slow her motion until the column of light only touched her feet. As she shifted her upper body forward to land upright, her jaw flew back with a cut underneath from an unseen force.

  With the column of light now two body lengths from her, her eyes refocused on the darkness. But she knew them a useless tool against the shadow. She was in his arena now. She rolled to the side as she heard a forceful swoosh near her ear. Standing to her feet, she readied her body for an unseen blow. It came as she expected. And she was ready. Her body curled with a blow to the gut. As her hand met its arm, she again felt the stinging pain. She leapt around feeling out its body position, and twisting it up behind. She dragged the shadow back under the pillar washing down upon them, until its form lay revealed with the brush of light.

  “Surrender.” The shadow squirmed, but her grip endured. A man’s arm would have been pulled from joint at the position she held it. She knew it well for it would not have been the first time she had sought surrender with this move. Sometimes, they gave up and sometimes they did not.

  When she heard no reply, she pushed harder with the strength of her grip driving the piercing pain through her hand, into her arm. She had to block it from her mind. It was the only way. Dots danced in her mind as she pushed harder. “Surrender.”

  An unhindered voice met her ears from across the room. “I surrender.”

  A smile ripped across Ren’ai’s features. The shadow faded away and the pain with it. Ren’ai scanned the darkness until her eyes shot around to her left.

  Master Jabari stepped into the light.

  Ren’ai fell into a deep bow. “Master.”

  He returned the gesture, bowing deeper still as if she were the one to be honored.

  “How goes the training, Nai?”

  “Great.” The word spilled from her lips. She could muster no more with stringy brown hair hiding her eyes, two round ears poking up through it. Sweat trickling down her neck and back, evidence of a battle fought and won.

  “Lieten’s not being too hard on you, is he?” Master Jabari’s eyes met hers.

  The girl thought on it a moment. She knew the beating her teacher would lay to her, if he thought she had disparaged his methods. “Not at all. Lieten is the best Teacher in the Jagged.”

  “That’s good to hear. I know his techniques can be harsh at times, but I trust him. He will get results.” Jabari possessed no doubt.

  “And that’s what I want. I want to be the best. I want to be a guard someday, like Nakali and Lieten and Kerr and all of the others.”

  “I have no doubt you will be. Are you impatient to become a guard because you feel you will be ready to avenge your family?”

  She did not know what to say. Timidly she spoke. ”No, well yes…Maybe a little. I know what you are going to say. It is a path I should not follow.”

  “Well, you’ve only been with us a season now. You’ve a good many Haerfests yet to train with us before a guard you can be.”

  “But I can be a guard now. You saw me with the shadow. I am strong, and I am fast. It is why you chose me.”

  “Yes. I chose you and you chose me, but this is only the beginning, Nai. The beginning of your understanding of our way of Pin Hi. You have taken one shadow, but what will you do with ten. That is the foe we face when we travel. I know it feels that you can do so much that you could not do before. But you are not a guard now. You are an apprentice. Don’t rush it. Nai. Nothing worth doing, unless you can to take the time to do it right.”

  "Father always said that."

  "I know."

  "You knew him well, then?" Ren'ai could not imagine how that would be possible.

  "More than some less than others."

  "You know he did not do the things they say then?"

  "It does not matter if I know it. You must know it. Do you?"

  "Yes."

  "Good." His lips curled, and cheeks rose. He gave her a strong pat on the shoulder. "Then I believe that it is time to begin the next element of a guard's training."