Chapter 5: One Heartbeat Apart

Su Ning put a small clay jar on the table on the morning of the Trial and walked out without a word.

It came after three days of sparring and three nights the whole camp pretended not to hear.

"What's this?" Jinghan asked.

Luo took it, sniffed it, and turned a red Jinghan had only seen on cooked crab.

"Sesame oil," he said. "With ginger. She says it's for the wall."

"What wall?"

"The wall in my study," Luo said, very fast. "She's been teasing me about the wall."

"The one with the sword strokes."

"There are one hundred and ninety of them," Su Ning said, passing the window with a basket of onions. "He cried at the sixth."

"I did not cry."

"He cried at the sixth."

Jinghan laughed so hard he had to sit down, and Luo threw the jar onto the bed in disgust.

By dusk the whole mountain had come to the Weeping Gate.

Cloudpeak stood on the east bank in white rows.

The Scarlet Lotus stood on the west, red and ragged.

Hua Boyan sat in a carved chair on a rock with his champion beside him and his jade rings flashing.

The gate warden rang her bell.

"The Lotus Trial," she said, bored. "To the yielding or the death. No hand but the fighters', no word but the fighters'. Begin."

Jinghan stood twenty paces from the flat rock with his sword sheathed and his hands clasped behind his back.

That was the Law, and Hua Boyan was watching his fingers.

Luo walked out onto the rock in his black and ember robes.

He did not look at Jinghan.

He didn't have to.

Jinghan could feel him in his chest, steady as a drum.

The champion was nearly as tall as Luo and fifty pounds heavier, with an iron club in each hand, and he moved at once.

His first blow struck the rock where Luo had been.

His second grazed Luo's ribs.

Jinghan felt Luo's balance shift and knew where the next club would fall, and Luo moved before it did.

Jinghan's own right foot slid on the grass at the same moment, exactly the same way.

It was not a hand and it was not a word.

It was only a heartbeat, and Jinghan gave it to him.

"Cloudpeak's third guard," Luo said lightly, and slid inside the champion's swing.

The black sword turned in his grip.

Jinghan knew that turn.

He had taught it two days ago, and Luo had made it his own.

Luo cut the champion's wrist, and one club rang on the rock.

The champion roared and swung the other.

Luo took the blow on his iron bracer with a crack that Jinghan felt in his own bones.

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