Sarah Snakearm stood in front of the challenger board at the edge of the sparring grounds and counted the names above her own. There were eleven. Two weeks ago there had been four. She wore her purple sports bra and her black and purple trim, and the morning crowd parted around her because everyone in these lands knew the Snakearm had never been pinned by anyone but Kevintor Neverloss. They also knew she had been asking him out since the day he swept her leg and reached down to lift her up. The board listed every fighter chasing the champion, ranked by how close they had drawn to him. A red ramen shop owner sat at the top. Below her, a feast-platter challenger from the poultry trade. Below that, a woman who had traded a saber for a forged message. Sarah's name was eleventh because Sarah did not know where Kevintor had gone. The others did. Every day she waited, the gap widened. She pulled a folded card from her wrap. It was the lesson invitation she had sent him three weeks ago, returned unopened by a courier who would not say from where. Private lessons. Her handwriting. Two ramen coupons clipped to the corner because she had heard he liked the spicy pork. He had not answered. He had not refused either, which was worse, because refusal would have been a fact she could fight. A shop boy pinned a fresh notice beside the board. Sarah read it twice. A floral-bordered date invitation, posted in the open, addressed to the champion by name. The signature at the bottom was the red-haired ramen cook from three valleys over. The notice said she had served him a bowl that brought him back to his feet, and that he would be returning to her shop. Sarah felt the crowd shift behind her to read it. Someone laughed, low and careful, and stopped when she turned her head. She went to the ramen shop that afternoon. Ronda Nayoodle was wiping down the counter and did not look up when Sarah sat. Sarah laid the returned lesson card on the wood between them. "Where is he." Ronda glanced at the card, then at Sarah's arm bands, then back at the broth she was straining. "Dragon mountain. Serpent bridge. He won't be there long." She set down the ladle. "You'll want to move." Sarah asked why she was telling her. Ronda said, "Because you're the only one who'll get there before the rest, and I'd rather lose him to a fighter than a forger." Sarah left the card on the counter. She walked out into the road with a direction for the first time in three weeks, and behind her the board kept its eleven names, and ahead of her the mountain held one.

Sarah took the road to Dragon Mountain at a run and did not stop until the serpent bridge came into view. She crossed it at dusk and slept in a stand of pines above the valley. By morning she had a plan she did not trust. Kevintor received guests at an open sparring ground on the lower slope. Everyone who chased him went there first. Arriving with empty hands meant standing in the same line as the rest. She came down through the trees and saw the gift wall before she saw the ground itself. A long wooden rack stood outside the gate, pinned with paper and cloth and small bright things. Floral cards. Lacquered combs. A folded silk banner with a poem stitched in gold. Two free ramen vouchers, one red-bordered, one with a poultry stamp at the corner. A jade pendant on a black cord. A child's drawing of a champion belt. Sarah counted nine offerings before she stopped counting. Every challenger in the lands had left something. Every gift said the same thing in a different voice. Pick me. She sat down on a stone across the path and opened her pack. She had brought money, a clean training wrap, and a length of polished steel she had been carrying for a year without knowing why. It was a throwing star she had hammered out herself after their match, on a night she could not sleep. She had shaped the points into a heart. She had never shown it to anyone. She had meant to throw it into the river the next time she passed one. She held it in her palm and thought about the wall. A pendant said I am rich. A poem said I am clever. A bowl of ramen said I fed you once. None of them said I fought you. None of them said I lost to you and went home and made this with my hands. She wrapped the star in the clean training cloth, walked to the gate, and asked the boy at the post for a nail. She did not pin it to the gift rack. She pinned it to the inside of the gate, at eye height, where Kevintor would see it when he opened the door and no one else would. The boy watched her. "Name?" Sarah shook her head. "He'll know." She walked back to the stone across the path and sat down to wait. She did not join the line at the rack. She did not leave a card. She had spent the morning learning that every other challenger was buying his attention with something they had bought. She had brought him the only thing she owned that he had made. The gate stayed shut. The line grew. Sarah sat where she could see the door and counted her breaths the way she counted points in a match. She had made her move. The next one was his.

Sarah had been sitting on the stone for an hour when the laughter started. A noodle cart had rolled into the clearing below the red and gold castle gate, and a woman in fight wraps climbed onto its counter to point at her. Sarah knew the voice before she saw the face. A middle-rank challenger she had beaten twice on the circuit, now standing over a pot of broth with a wooden ladle in her fist. "That's Snakearm," the woman called. "Number eleven. Sitting on a rock because she's too proud for the gift wall." She swept the ladle toward the rack of cards and combs. "The rest of us bought him dinner. She brought him a rock." The crowd at the bath pool across the path turned to look. It was a wide white-stone hot spring trimmed in gold, and the off-duty fighters lounging in it sat up on their elbows to watch. More people drifted over from the line at the gate. A boy laughed. An old man pointed. Sarah felt her face go hot. She had planned for silence. She had not planned for an audience. If she stayed on the stone, the story would travel down the mountain by nightfall. Snakearm shamed off Dragon Mountain by a ladle. She would never get a second look from the gate. She stood up. She crossed the path at a walk. The woman on the cart grinned and raised the ladle like a sword. Sarah did not climb up. She kicked the cart's front wheel out from under it. The cart pitched. The woman went down into her own broth pot, and the pot went sideways, and the clearing filled with the smell of pork bones and steam. Sarah caught her by the wrap as she fell and set her on the dirt without breaking anything. "On the circuit," Sarah said, "you lost on points. Here you can lose on points or you can lose on the ground. Pick." The woman picked the ground. She stayed there. The crowd went quiet. Then the gate behind Sarah opened. Kevintor stood in the doorway in his red headband and gold shinguards, the throwing star in his hand. He looked at the cart on its side, at the woman in the dirt, at Sarah. He held up the star so the crowd could see it. "This one made this," he said. "Anyone else here forge their gift?" No hand went up. He looked at Sarah. "Come in. Leave the rest at the wall." Sarah walked through the gate. The boy at the post closed it behind her. Inside the castle yard the noise of the crowd cut off like a door shutting on a hallway. Kevintor was already walking ahead of her toward the inner steps. He had not said her name. He had not asked her to fight. He had only opened the door.

Sarah followed Kevintor up the inner steps and only then looked down at herself. Purple sports bra. Black bands. Sweat dried into the tattoos on her ribs. She had walked through the most famous gate on the mountain dressed to break someone's arm. She had wanted to walk through it dressed for him. The throwing star had been her gift. Her clothes were the wrong sentence. The inner hall opened in front of her and stopped her at the door. The center of the room was a long pool, clean blue, the water flat as glass. White tile edged it. Steps cut into both ends. No weapons on the walls. No trophy belts. A folded towel on a bench. This was where he lived when no one was watching, and it was quiet. Kevintor sat on the bench and unbuckled a shinguard. He did not look at her bands. He looked at her face. "Sit," he said. "Or swim. Your choice." Sarah did not sit. She crossed to the bench, pulled the folded cloth from beside the towel, and shook it out. It was a sundress, white, cut low, red flowers running down the drape and a long slit up one side. Someone had left it for a guest. She did not ask who. She stepped behind the screen at the wall and changed. She tied her bands around her wrist like a bracelet and walked back out barefoot. The dress moved when she moved. The tattoos still showed at her chest and her thigh. She had not stopped being a fighter. She had stopped pretending that was all she came for. "I came up here in the wrong clothes," she said. "I fixed it." Kevintor looked at her for a long moment. Then he stood, walked to the edge of the pool, and sat down with his feet in the water. He patted the tile beside him. "You came up here in fighting clothes because you fight," he said. "You changed because you wanted me to see the rest. I saw it at the gate. Sit down." Sarah sat. Her shoulder touched his. He did not move away. Outside, past the open screen, the gold dragon statue at the front of the castle threw its long shadow across the yard, telling every challenger at the wall who lived inside. In here, the champion was a man with wet feet, sitting next to her. He poured tea from a pot on the tile. He handed her a cup. "One hour," he said. "Then I have somewhere to be." It was not a date. It was not nothing. Sarah took the cup. She had wanted the gate. She had the hour. She drank.

Sarah set her cup on the tile and felt the hour start to run. Kevintor's feet stirred the water beside hers. The pool reflected the open screen and the sky past it. She had won the gate. She had won the dress. Now she had sixty minutes to stop being a name he would forget by morning. She did not have a plan. She had one thing in the pocket sewn inside the dress. She pulled it out before she could talk herself out of it. A small gold locket on a thin chain. Her thumb worked the catch. Inside was a faded photo of two children in a dojo yard, a boy and a girl, both missing front teeth, both holding the same wooden practice knife between them. "My brother," she said. "He died the year I made black belt. He gave me this the week before. I carry it to every fight." She set it on the tile between them. "I have never shown it to anyone." Kevintor picked it up. He looked at the photo for a long count. He did not speak. Past his shoulder, the open shutters framed the sun going down behind the ridges, the sky orange over the valley, the light warm on the white tile. Under that light her tattoos looked softer. So did his hands. "I lost to you on purpose the second time," she said. "At the dojo three valleys south. The first time you beat me clean. The second time I wanted to feel your hand on my arm again. I am telling you because I do not want this hour to be a lie." She kept her eyes on his. "I am not here to challenge you. I am here because you helped me up." He closed the locket. He set it back in her palm and folded her fingers around it. "Keep it," he said. "You came with the truth. Most people come with a story." He stood and walked to the small thatched bar at the pool's far end, pulled two short glasses from the shelf, and poured something clear from a green bottle. He came back. He sat closer than before. "I have to leave at the bell," he said. "Come back in seven days. Same gate. No throwing star. Just you." He touched his glass to hers. "That is not a fight invitation." Sarah drank. The hour was not finished, but the question was. She had not won his heart. She had bought a second door. Outside, the sun dropped below the ridge and the orange in the window went to red. The bell would ring soon. She slid the locket back into the pocket at her hip and let her shoulder rest against his while the light held.