The Sword Spirit Chose a Nobody for His New Master novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: What a Sword Eats

Auntie Wen's steamed bun is the spirit's first taste of anything, and in the narrow bunk two virgins say so out loud before the first kiss. At the bell, the Hall calls a test of the bond at dawn.

The bunkhouse was empty, because every outer disciple had gone down to the Founding Day feast.

Chuhe lit the one lamp by his bunk and sat on the edge of the straw mat.

The man in silver stood in the doorway and did not sit.

"You can sit," said Chuhe.

Hanjue sat on the floor, exactly where he stood, with his back straight and the sword laid across his knees.

"Not the floor. The bunk is a bed."

Hanjue did not move.

Chuhe rubbed his face with both hands.

He had been awake since the fourth bell, and now a sword was staring at him.

The door banged open.

Auntie Wen came in sideways, the way she came into every room, with a covered basket on her hip and flour on her sleeves.

She ran the outer kitchen and she had fed Chuhe for five years.

"I saw it from the cook tent," she said. "The whole ridge went quiet, and I thought, that's my boy, he's fallen on something again."

She stopped.

She looked at the silver-haired man on her bunkhouse floor, and then at the sword.

"Well," she said. "He's tall."

"Auntie, this is Hanjue. Hanjue, this is Auntie Wen."

Hanjue rose and bowed from the waist, exactly.

"You are the one who makes the food," he said. "I smelled it from the stone. I have smelled it for years."

"Have you eaten today?" said Auntie Wen.

"I have never eaten."

She said nothing for a long moment.

Then she opened the basket, took out a steamed bun, and put it in his hand.

Hanjue held it.

"Bite it," said Chuhe. "Like this."

He showed him.

Hanjue bit.

His grey eyes went very wide.

He chewed once, slowly, and then he made a small helpless sound in his throat.

"It is sweet," he said. "It is warm. There is something inside it."

"That's red bean."

"Red bean." He said it like a vow. He finished the bun in four bites and held out his empty hand. "More."

Auntie Wen set the whole basket on the bunk and wiped her eyes on her apron.

She left without a word, and Chuhe heard her blow her nose in the yard.

Hanjue ate seven buns.

Chuhe watched with his chin in his hand, grinning for the first time all day.

"Do you always get like this?" he asked.

"I have never been like this."

Hanjue licked a crumb off his thumb and looked startled at himself.

"What do you know?"

"The Hall. The stone. A dark that told me when someone came."

Hanjue turned the last bun in his fingers.

"Three hundred and twenty-four years, by the blade's count. Nobody ever held me except to hold a sword."

Chuhe lifted the sword off the floor beside them and set it on the shelf over the bunk, point up, out of the way.

Hanjue's eyes followed it, and then came back.

He had taken off his boots without being asked, and sat now on the end of the bunk, close.

His hand lay open on the blanket between them.

Chuhe looked at it.

There was a hard ridge across the base of each finger, and a worn patch at the heel of the palm.

He turned his own hand over beside it.

The ridges were in exactly the same places.

"Where did you get those?" he said.

"I have always had them."

"Swords don't get calluses."

"Then I do not know." Hanjue frowned, honestly puzzled. "They are mine."

Chuhe laid his palm flat against Hanjue's, fingers to fingers.

The silver man took in a breath and went still.

"I have never been touched," he said, low. "Not by anything but the hands that gripped me. Not like this."

"I haven't either," said Chuhe.

It came out before he could stop it.

"I'm twenty-two. I was busy being poor. I never kissed anyone, not in the village, not here."

His ears were hot.

"So don't think I know what I'm doing."

"Then you are a virgin," said Hanjue, plainly.

"You say that like you're reading it off a list."

"I am one too." Hanjue's fingers closed gently around his. "I would like to find out about it with you."

The lamp hissed.

"Your mouth," said Hanjue, quietly. "The bun was sweet. I want to know what yours tastes like."

Chuhe could feel his own pulse in his wrist, against the hard palm.

He did not decide anything.

He leaned in, and Hanjue met him halfway.

It was a clumsy first kiss, with their noses in the way.

Hanjue's mouth was cool at first, and then not cool at all.

Hanjue made the same small helpless sound he had made over the bun.

His free hand came up and slid into Chuhe's hair, and the rag cord gave way.

Chuhe's whole body went loose and hot at once.

He broke away, breathing hard, with his forehead against the silver man's collarbone.

"Wait," he said. "Wait. You're a sword. You think you have to."

"I do not have to."

"You said you'd do whatever I say."

"Then say you do not want this," said Hanjue, and his voice shook.

"I will go and stand in the yard."

Chuhe lifted his head.

Hanjue's grey eyes were enormous and wet, and absolutely open.

"I want it," Chuhe admitted. "That's the problem."

Far off, across the dark mountain, the great bell of the Sword Hall began to toll.

It rang three times, the call for an elder's summons.

Outside, boots hit the plank stairs, and a harsh voice called through the door.

"Shao Chuhe. Elder Pei will not wait for dawn. The test is now."

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