Champion Kevintor Neverloss's Arc

Chapter 25 of 42

Kevintor came down from the falls with three circles crossed and the fourth waiting under his ribs. He felt for the next door inside him and his hand passed through empty air. The fourth art was kung fu, and kung fu had never been a single shape. It was a hundred small choices answered by another body. He sat on a stump beside the road and read the fourth passage twice. The scroll told him to draw the art out and cut it. It did not tell him how to draw out what only came when someone else moved first. He pushed anyway. In a clearing off the path he set his feet and worked through forms against the air. He chased the edge the way he had chased it in the cave. His shoulder tore on the second hour. His left knee gave on the third. He went down on the grass with blood in his mouth and the door inside him still shut. He understood then that he would die in this clearing if he kept going alone. The art needed a partner. The scroll had been written for a man who had one. He walked until the trees opened on a wooden sign nailed to a post. The letters were burned deep and the paint was fresh. Warriors Sparring Grounds. Behind the sign stood a low stone building with a wide flat yard inside its walls. He had heard fighters speak of the place. Two practitioners trained here when one alone could not finish a thing. He went through the gate. Roxy Fisk was wrapping her hands at a bench. She looked up and did not pretend she did not know him. "You look bad," she said. He told her what he needed. He told her he was cutting kung fu out of himself and could not find it without someone to hit. He showed her the torn shoulder. She listened. She said, "I have a bout Friday. If you break me, I lose it." He said he would not break her. She tossed him a pair of training mitts from the bench. "Then hold these. I throw. You read me. When you find the thing, you tell me and we stop." They worked an hour. She came in with knees and elbows the way Muay Thai taught her, and he answered with kung fu without meaning to. Every block was the art speaking. He felt the edge rise under the mitts. He named it aloud the way the instructor had taught him. Roxy stepped back. He dropped the mitts and pressed his palm to his sternum and cut. The door inside him opened and emptied. He went to one knee on the sand. Four circles. Two to go. Above the yard, on the road, Starlark Grandstand stood at the gate with a notebook out. "Champion in a sparring house," he said into the air. "That's a line. That's the line." Kevintor lifted his head. The man had already turned to walk, and somebody would hear it by nightfall.