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Nanako’s foot broke through Kinuye’s guard and hit the wiry, smaller woman square in the chest like a sledgehammer. The thrust kick was a Crab Clan martial arts speciality, a signature kobo ichi-kai maneuver designed to move fully armored men – or things larger than a man – away and over the very steep south side of the Carpenter Wall. Yoritomo Kinuye stood a head lower than the former Crab and was maybe two thirds of the smith’s body mass. The thrust kick would have moved a fully armored Lost bushi a sword’s length away or more. It sent the unarmored Mantis woman flying straight off the newly built dojo’s patio and into the courtyard.
The onlookers gasped, but Nanako had felt the Samurai-ko move with the thrust. This sparring match was far from over. A long step took the ex-Crab to the patio’s edge and the next launched her off it, her hand pulled back for another kobo ichi-kai speciality – the downward palm strike. She realized her mistake as the scarred Mantis woman grinned and rolled back on her shoulders, whipcording her body into a nasty upwards kick. Nanako aborted the palm strike in favor of a hasty block, taking the force of Kinuye’s kick on her forearm. The impact, magnified by her own momentum, still rattled her like a tetsubo strike. And then Kinuye’s other foot slammed into Nanako’s upper thigh.
The leg almost buckled beneath her as Nanako landed. Kinuye was holding nothing back. She never did, nowadays. If it hadn’t been for the jade pendant her friend always wore… The Crab-born Ronin shook away the thought. No time to contemplate what her captivity with the Bloodspeaker Cult had made of her friend. Kinuye rolled backwards to her feet in a fluid motion and Nanako moved with her to keep her in range, her leg already stiffening but apparently still supporting her. The crowd – a handful of Heimin villagers and Sensei Mirumoto Aki’s score of students - began whooping and cheering again as the two women closed, punishing each other with blitzing punches, ridge hands and elbow strikes. Kinuye rolled and weaved like a drunken woman, the Drunken Mantis style of her home islands presenting a near totally unpredictable target. Nanako blocked and absorbed, taking far more hits than the agile Mantis, but delivering fearsome blows in return. What was Kinuye thinking? Even if she was landing two strikes or more for every one of Nanako’s, this close-in fighting overwhelmingly favored the muscled smith, and…
The scarred Mantis woman dropped suddenly, a murderous hooking palm strike sailing close enough above her head to catch her hair - and drove her elbow into Nanako’s thigh with all her body weight behind it. The former Kaiu grunted in pain and dropped to one knee, grabbing desperately after her opponent. If Kinuye opened the distance again now, the fight was over – the lithe, wiry woman could come in at any angle she pleased, and Nanako no longer had the mobility to counter her. She caught hold of the Mantis’ arm, beginning to twist it into a lock – and took a kick to the side of the head for her troubles that sent stars shooting across her eyes.
Nanako sensed more than saw Kinuye roll with the lock to her bad side, and changed the hold to a shoulder-lock on pure instinct. She could feel the lock snap into place just as Kinuye completed the roll. A number of the audience gave sounds of appreciation… and a few of apprehension. Most other sparring matches would be done by now. The question really was if you could call a match with Kinuye ‘sparring’. No sooner had the thought rushed by the ex-Crab than Kinuye proved her point. It had to be murder on her shoulder, but still the Mantis woman’s knee shot into Nanako’s abused thigh.
Nanako growled like a mountain cat and allowed her leg to collapse completely as Kinuye brought her knee slamming into the same spot again, yanking on the lock one-handed while digging her elbow straight into the Mantis’ shoulder. The part of the crowd that still wasn’t apprehensive changed its tune in a hurry as the joint snapped out of its socket, and somehow Kinuye was still trying to drive her knee into…
“Enough”
Miromoto Aki had fallen very naturally into his Sensei role. Most others would have needed several seconds or many men to get it through to the two women that the fight was over. The young Dragon swordsman did it with a single word. It was Fate, probably. The same fate that had let the exiled Kaiu smith, the young Mantis bushi, and the Taoist Swordsman – among others - into the retinue of a Kitsuki noble son, won them glory at tha Battle of Beiden Pass and sent them on a two-year hunt for the Bloodspeakers while Rokugan burned. That had won Kitsuki Shouju an estate – and his nakama a permanent place there.
Nanako made herself let go and fell back panting for air as she barely heard him declare her the winner. Kinuye was laughing. Somehow, Nanako doubted that was any more reassuring to the Mantis’ husband than if she had been courageously ignoring her pain – or just cursed like the sailor she used to be.
Said husband, Yoritomo Kidori – who had seen an interesting rise from Mirumoto Ji-samurai to marriage to a Mantis with a brand new Family name, and then official promotion to Ambassador – was seeing to Kinuye right now. Nanako eased her way into a sitting position, and gratefully accepted Hida Sakura’s hand. The Hida was even larger and stronger than Nanako was, and pulled her up without showing anyone just how wrecked the smith’s leg was. Some would know, of course. Most would not. The fact that Yogo Emi, the resident Shugenja was headed her way and not Kinuye’s was a clear fact that someone had been paying attention.
Some of Aki’s students looked appalled. Nanako could hear him begin an in-depth discussion on the difference between the fight to the finish they had just seen and the almost-dance that had been the earlier soft-style kaze-do exhibition. Hida Sakura eased Nanako down as relatively subtle as she had helped her up – a good thing, too. Kinuye’s prone kick to her head had caught her full-on, and she expected she would want to sit even if her leg had been working. The Shugenja should take care of that, but would do nothing to ease the lingering doubts about her friend…
The doubts remained when the leg injury had long healed. It was enough of a distraction that Nanako decided to put off further work on the katana she was forging for a while – it was at a stage that required even more concentration to detail than the others, and she refused to disgrace the sword by devoting less than her all to it. Instead, her apprentices would get a week to show her the best possible yari they could make.
After five days, they were almost finished. Taro’s was the better, but Amura’s would be used proudly by any Ashigaru in the village. They were getting good – not Kaiu good or anything, but showing real skill. The question wouldn’t really be if they were ready by the week’s end… but if she would.
She thought of Kinuye. Of the savagery in her. The changes.
Kinuye – just before the end of the War – had stayed behind to cover the others’ retreat during a Bloodspeaker ambush. From what very little she had ever told of it, she had eventually swallowed a piece of jade and tried making sure the Bloodspeakers didn’t take her alive. Sadly, they had other ideas. When the nakama struck back against the Bloodspeaker temple, supported by a group of the then suddenly resurgent Scorpion Clan – they had found her again. What was left of her.
The Scorpion had claimed they could heal her. Repayment for so many former Scorpion Ronin finding sanctuary in Kitsuki Shoujo’s land.
Kinuye was wearing jade. Since she came back from the Scorpions and whatever they had done, she had never been seen without – and not just her own piece, either. The jade remained green and clear. what they had found in the cult temple was not untainted. It was barely even human. With all the fresh scars the Bloodspeakers had left, it had barely even looked like their friend – and all those scars were still there. Even if the maho-tsukai cult somehow hadn’t tainted her, the time spent as their plaything would have twisted anyone’s mind.
In truth, Nanako was remembering campfire tales of demons and Lost impervious even to jade… or at least to its touch. She hated the thought, but it seemed far more likely that the Yogo would have found a way to let Kinuye bear the touch of jade than that they had somehow cleansed her. Nanako had come very close to bringing one of her jade spikes to the sparring match. Kinuye might be able to suffer jade to her skin without burning, but surely nothing Tainted could fail to react to having jade pierce them…
Nanako was no longer alone in the smithy.
She hadn’t seen or precisely heard anything – it was more like she had felt it. That was more than enough for the Crab instincts drummed into her in her childhood. Her two assistants had long since gone home, and the room was dark but for her candle and the dim, red glow from the coals in the forge. There was nothing to be seen, and she was facing the only door. Either whoever - or whatever - was here with her had come in through the door and crept around her without her noticing, or it had come absolutely silently in through the smoke holes.
Either way…
The muscled smith did not turn or challenge her secretive companion. In fact, she gave no indication she had noticed anything amiss at all. She raised the yari-point she was holding as if inspecting some minute detail, put the candle carefully on the table beside her… and launched the sochu bottle standing right beside it into the forge with a savage, sudden sweep. Nanako was strong and muscled, and the rigorous training gave her incredible explosive speed. She swept along with the movement of the throw, spinning a half-circle and stopping in a combat stance, the yari point at the ready, all before the bottle crashed against the inner forge wall.
The liquor ignited like an explosion. It bathed the smithy in red light, the heat singing Nanako’s bare arms. A woman was standing across from her, flinching and raising an arm against the sudden flash as if the light was physically painful. She was small and wiry, dressed in the sparse vest and bindings common to both Dragon and Mantis, rather than the sleeved kimono she had worn durin their sparring match. Terrible scars criss-crossed her arms and face in patterns that the sudden light and shadows seemed to bring out in nauseating detail - patterns broken by other, fresher scars she had made herself. A huge scar, different from the others, arose from the wrappings that covered her midriff and cut diagonally up to her ribs; a scar from a desperation Seppuku that had – to her sorrow – only almost been successful.
Kinuye.
The Mantis woman staggered backwards a step, then locked her feet and matched Nanako’s stance as the furious fireball died down. The crazy shadow play behind her eased into stable darkness… and Nanako wondered if she hadn’t seemed to see Kinuye’s shadow twist and scream in the sudden light.
“Kinuye!”
It came out almost like a hiss, but as her… friend… relaxed, Nanako’s voice softened.
“What are you doing?”
“Watching you work… and almost getting broiled, apparently. Didn’t you almost bite my head off for drinking by your forge, this winter?”
Nanako almost had to smile. The Mantis and a few Scorpion had discovered the simple fact that her smithy was the warmest place in the village in winter… and occasionally snuck in to test the product from the Scorpion still. Perhaps she just should have done like now and showed them why it was a bad idea rather than yell at them.
“You should just have done that back then, neh? That awful stuff isn’t worth getting burned over.”
Kinuye had apparently read her mind. Nanako scoffed loudly, and Kinuye drew a lopsided smile that somehow didn’t pull on the scars the Bloodspeakers had left on her face. The ex-Crab had heard one of Kidori’s friends ask him how he could honestly say he found Kinuye attractive after her mutilation. The bushi had answered by describing that very smile. It took the edge of Nanako’s guard… but not all of it.
Not after what she thought she had seen in the shadows.
“Actually, Nanako… I came to talk. We haven’t seen much of each other since the fight…”
That much was true. They had both spent the next day in reconvalesence, and then Nanako had spent a day following Shojou-sama to the nearest temple. When she came back, Kinuye had already left with Aki in one of their regular mountaintop meditiation courses and not returned before Nanako was deep into working with her apprentices. There was nothing odd about this, really – to a Samurai, duty must always come first.
They were here now, though. Nanako took her eyes off Kinuye a quick moment and found the waterskin, tossing it to the Mantis woman with a simple twist of her hand. Kinuye stood in almost total darkness, but caught it without even looking.
“Make yourself at home. I’d offer you something stronger, but you have only yourself to blame for that not being available.”
Kinuye chuckled and came into the light.
“How come you get to have sochu here, anyway?”
“It’s my smithy.”
This time, they both burst out laughing.
“Fair enough…”
Kinuye stopped laughing. Nanako wanted to say that the laughter didn’t quite leave her eyes… but that was almost never true anymore. After the Bloodspeakers, it was far more true to say that laughter didn’t quite reach Kinuye’s emerald eyes.
“I saw you with the jade spike, just before our match.”
Now Nanako’s laughter stopped, as well. Still, no reason to deny it. She nodded, clearly expecting the Mantis to go on. Kinuye tossed the waterskin back after taking a sip and did just that.
“Ask me, Nanako. I won’t lie to you.”
The silence hung between them a long time.
“Are you Tainted?”
Kinuye sighed, as if letting a full battle armor slip off her shoulders after marching in it an entire day. Relief.
“I… I was. I must have been. The Wards the Yogo Shugenja had set up burned me, and the jade… I could hardly bear to touch it.”
It might have been the light from the forge, but Nanako could swear she saw tears gleam in her friend’s eyes. She quickly took a sip of water herself and looked somewhere else. Their nakama might be friendlier and less formal with each other than most other Samurai could dream, but Kinuye would not thank her for witnessing her weakness.
“But now…”
Kinuye stared at the forge, raising her hand to grip the intricately carved piece of jade she always carried around her neck.
“It no longer burns. I’ve had shugenja carve Jade Wards and crossed them without even feeling a twinge. I’ve been blessed, tested, prodded… You wanted to pierce my skin, didn’t you? See if I responded when it was more than just a touch?”
Nanako nodded again.
“Would have been interesting to hear Aki-san explain that to his students…”
This time, Nanako couldn’t help but smile. Kinuye did too… almost.
“Trust me, Nanako… I appreciate what you do. I don’t know if… if what they did to me somehow cleansed me of the Taint before it really took hold, but…”
She palmed the jade piece and lifted it so Nanako could see.
“According to this, I am pure. You can stab me with that spike, and the only miscolor you would see on it is my blood. One of the wedding gifts I gave Kidori was a jade pin. I have never… have never lain with him without that pin first piercing my flesh and coming back clean.”
Kinuye couldn’t quite raise her eyes to Nanako’s at her first try at explaining the needle, and a memory came back to Nanako of Kinuye flirting wildly with every male around while roaringly drunk, back in the Dragon Embassy in Otosan Uchi. She had sounded like a damned Scorpion Courtesan… and then later that night, she had tried desperately to find out what it really was like pillowing a man from Nanako and Hida Sakura. There were many things to be said about Kinuye, even before what the Bloodspeakers made of her – but she had kept faithfully to her Vow of Chastity, no matter how hard life had tempted her.
Kitsuki Shojou had arranged Kinuye’s marriage – including wrangling both Kinuye and Kidori Diplomat status, allowing them to stay in the Dragon lands even while he became a Mantis – before Kinuye’s capture by the Bloodspeakers. It was a testament to how much Shojou and Kidori believed in Kinuye that the betrothal had never been broken, only put on hold. The Dragon must have come to believe Kinuye was pure.
Nanako did not. Mostly because Kinuye herself clearly did not, either.
What she did believe was that Kinuye – even if she was a sailor, a gambler, a pirate, a thief and all that a Samurai should never be… maybe even if she was Tainted – would never betray her nakama… or her husband. Not until she was Lost.
And, Kami help her, Nanako did not believe her friend was Lost.
“It always has?”
Kinuye nodded fiercely, but there was still a look of doubt on her face.
“It has never gone soft. No jade has gone soft around me since I left the Scorpion lands… and even there, I was not given jade for any period of time until… until whatever they did was over.”
“And it doesn’t hurt? Beyond…”
The Mantis woman laughed bitterly.
“It is a pinprick. It is almost… pleasant. Pain does not bother me anymore, Nanako. Not after…”
She shrugged, her fingers unconsciously tracing the scars she had made to break the blasphemous patterns the Bloodspeakers had carved in her skin.
“But if you were Tainted, little sister…”
Kinuye jerked her head up at Nanako’s address. It had been a joke when they first met. Between Nanako and Hida Sakura, Kinuye could be mistaken for a little girl – or a boy. Then it had become the favored expression whenever Nanako had disapproved thoroughly of something Kinuye had done… which was fairly often.
Clearly, Kinuye had read neither into the words this time.
“If you were Tainted, it would be no pinprick. You would feel if the jade burned you like the Wards of the Yogo did… wouldn’t you?”
Nanako felt the reflexive grip on her makeshift weapon ease as Kinuye almost reluctantly nodded.
“Then… are you not pure?”
The Mantis was silent a long time… and finally shook her head.
“No, Onee-chan… Jigoku has no hold on me… but I am far from pure. I will bear no children. I will not enter my friend’s dojo. I did not think myself fit to carry the name of my Champion… but he saw disagreed. Jade will not burn me, because that is not the taint I carry.”
Kinuye shook her head and stepped past Nanako, moving soundlessly through the circle of light that seemed much smaller than when Nanako was here alone. She stopped just at the light’s edge, silhouetted against the door.
“Arigato, my friend. No matter if it helps or not. Domo arigato.”
Nanako swallowed, and just for a moment she seemed to see the shadows play strangely across her friend’s face again.
“Kinuye.”
The Mantis stopped in a pool of darkness behind the forge, almost invisible.
“If it is not Jigoku, but you are not pure… then what has its hold on you?”
There was a long period of silence, long enough to make Nanako wonder if Kinuye had simply slipped away like she came. Then the Mantis whispered from that same, impenetrable shadow.
“Nothing.”
Then she was gone.
Despite the forge, Nanako suddenly found the smithy to be a very cold place…