Champion Kevintor Neverloss's Arc

Chapter 22 of 42

Kevintor woke on the floor of the hut with his wrist swollen to twice its size and his shin weeping through the bandage. The split in his gi ran from collar to hem where he had not noticed it tearing. He sat up and the room turned once before it settled. Two arts gone. Four to go. He counted his breaths the way the scroll told him and got to six before his ribs locked. He walked the gi back to the stone yard at first light. The page on the post was still pinned where he left it. Two circles crossed out. Four open. He set the paper flat and weighted it with a stone so the wind would not lift it. The cast dragon waited at the foot of the steps with one wing cracked through. Beside the platform, a low pool he had not used held clear water and a few orange fish moving slow under the surface. He knelt at the edge and put his bad wrist in. The cold ran up his arm and stopped the shake in his fingers for a minute. Then it came back worse. He tried the third art anyway. Judo. He stepped to the dragon and reached for a grip on its shoulder and felt his knee give before his hand closed. He went down on the stone. He stayed down. When he stood, his vision went black at the edges and he had to sit again. The scroll had warned him. A half-undone art lashes out without aim. He had two arts unfinished in him and a body that could not hold a third dismantling without breaking under it. He understood this on the steps with his head between his knees. He rolled the scroll and walked off the mountain. He did not tell the instructor. He took the road down to the valley and kept the torn gi closed with one hand. By the time he reached the carved stone gate of the bath house he had heard of, his shin had stiffened so badly he was dragging the leg. The woman at the door was Scarlet Violet. She had come east, she said, on her own business. She looked at his wrist and at the blood through his trouser and did not ask. "Three days," she said. "You will not train. You will sit in the hot water and you will eat what I bring. After three days you may try the next one." He started to answer and she cut him off. "Three days. Or you finish nothing." He gave her the scroll to hold and let her take his arm down the steps. He sank into the stone pool and felt the heat find the places he had been hiding from himself. He had bought the time he needed. He had also told a stranger where he was, and what he carried, and what it was worth.