Champion Kevintor Neverloss's Arc

Chapter 36 of 42

Shiki sat across from Kevintor in the steam and held out her hand. "The knife at your belt," she said. "And the one in your boot. I will not say his words while you carry a blade." Kevintor did not move. He had set his swords on the chains at the door, but he had kept two short knives. The contract was still on him. Her name on the road was only a name. "You said the road was bought," he said. "It is," she said. "By me. Not by what you wear." She did not lower her hand. "Three nights you have eaten my rice and slept by my water. The fourth thing I want is the steel. Then you hear it. Once." He weighed it. He had no arts left in his body. A knife was the only thing between him and a paid killer at the door. But the calling was the reason he had ridden two days north and slept three nights in silence. Without it the scroll ended where it ended and the seat Astella offered him was the only road back. He drew the boot knife first and laid it on the stones. Then the belt knife. He pushed both across the floor. Shiki picked them up and walked out. He followed her to the porch of the bath house, a low wooden retreat dug into the hillside with a sauna at one end and the pool steaming behind them. A wooden chest sat by the door, brass at the corners, iron clasps worn smooth. She opened it. Inside lay folded cloths and the hilts of other men's blades, laid in rows. She set his two knives on top, closed the lid, and dropped the clasp. Two hooded guards stood at the path with short swords drawn across their forearms. They did not look at him. They looked past him, at the road. She led him back inside and sat. "He said it in a barn outside Kano," she said. "He had cut the six from himself the way you have. He knelt on the dirt. He spoke seven words. I will not write them and I will not say them twice, so listen." She said the seven words. They were short and ugly and meant nothing he could parse. He made his mouth move with them once, silent, to fix the shape. "That is the calling," she said. "What comes after is yours. He did not live a year." She stood. "You leave at first light. My road ends at the stream. After that you are a man with no arts and no blade and a price on your head. Do not come back here." She walked out. Kevintor sat in the steam with the seven words in his mouth and his hands empty on his knees. He had what he came for. He had nothing else.