Champion Kevintor Neverloss's Arc

Chapter 35 of 42

Kevintor spread the basin list on the stone bench. Astella read it over his shoulder and tapped one line near the top. Shiki Koga. He had not crossed her name out because no one had ever found her. Astella said, "She heard him say the calling aloud. She is the only one left who did." She blew smoke past his ear. "She moves. But she keeps a camp. Lina Invi knows where." He found Lina at the dance bar three nights later. She was alone at a corner table with a cup of plum wine. She looked at his empty hands and his thinner frame and did not stand. "You called in the night I owe you," he said. "Not yet," she said. "I need a place first. Shiki Koga's camp." Lina drank. "You want her to teach you something." "Yes." She set the cup down and pulled a folded square of stone from her sleeve. It was a carved map, no bigger than her palm, with huts and paths cut into it. She slid it across. "Two days north. Show this at the second gate. Do not draw on her." He said, "I cannot draw on anyone. The arts are gone." Lina looked at him a long moment. "Then go fast." He rode hard. On the second afternoon he turned off the road where the map showed a stream fork. A woman in a black and red kimono stepped out from the trees with a katana on her back. She did not draw it. She looked at the carved map in his hand and at his face. "Kevintor," she said. "Walk ahead of me." She led him to a small bath house dug into the hillside, smooth stone under an arched roof, steam drifting from a round pool. A pile of broken chains lay beside the door, the links snapped and scorched. "Men come here to give things up," she said. "You already have." She pointed at the chains. "Leave your blades there. Sleep inside. Eat what is brought. Speak to no one until I come for you. Three nights." He said, "I cannot defend myself. There is a contract on me." She said, "My name is on the road behind you now. No one will cross it. That is what you came to buy." He set his knives on the chains and went in. The water was hot. He slept on a mat by the pool and woke to bowls of rice left at the door. No one came inside. On the second day he heard hooves stop on the road above, then turn and ride off. On the third night Shiki Koga opened the door and sat across from him in the steam. "Now," she said. "I will tell you how he called it. Once. Then you decide if you still want to."