Zeph Kaizen's Arc

Chapter 15 of 51

Zeph sat in the dust with the ancestor's words still pressing on him. Refuse Keji. Refuse the tiger. Choose to stand alone. He tried to picture it and could not. Then, from outside, he heard a boot scrape on stone. He rose fast. The pressure in the hall dropped. Whoever it was had climbed the outer steps and stopped there. Zeph moved to the door and eased it open a hand's width. A man lay on the top step. Saiyan armor, cracked down the chest plate. One arm hung wrong. Blood had dried black on his mouth. He was not a hunter Zeph had seen before. He looked young. He was breathing in short pulls. The Saiyan's eyes found him. He did not reach for a weapon. He did not have one. His hand moved a few inches toward Zeph and stopped. "Water," he said. Zeph stood in the doorway. Every part of him that had learned to name refusal named it now. He would not let this man inside. He would not carry him. He would not give up the trial for a stranger wearing the crest that had hunted him across the mountains. But the man was dying on the step, and Zeph's hand was already on the door. He saw it then, the shape of what Zento had asked. Not one great choice at the end. A hundred small ones like this. Every time he opened a door for someone bleeding, he closed the gold one. Zeph crouched. He looked at the young Saiyan's face. He thought of Keji under the snow shelf. He thought of the tiger's blue-striped fur matted with blood. He thought of the crow on his doorstep in Windchill and the four hunters at the stone hall and the enforcer's fist in his shoulder. "No," Zeph said. He said it quietly. He said it to the man on the step and to himself and to the part of him that wanted to be the kind of person who helped. "I will not carry you. I will not treat you. I will not open this door to you." The Saiyan's mouth moved. No sound came. Zeph stood. He stepped back inside. He closed the door and set his palm flat against the wood. He waited. He heard the man's breathing slow. He heard it stop. Something in the hall changed. The pressure under his ribs came back stronger, low and even, spreading down through his legs into the floor. The carved stone fighters along the walls seemed to lean toward him a fraction. Zeph walked back to the center of the room and sat. His hands were shaking. He put them on his knees to stop them. He had paid the first coin of the price. Keji and the tiger were still out there, still waiting, and the trial was not finished. But the door had moved. He could feel it moving.