Chapter 6: The Assassin

"Miss Seol," the man said. "The Sect Master sends his regards."

He set the book down on the blanket beside him, almost tenderly.

"He'd like this back. And he'd like you quiet."

"He had ten years to ask nicely."

"He's asking now."

He stood up.

He wasn't big.

He moved, and there was a thin straight sword in his hand that Yeon-hwa hadn't seen him draw.

She had her father's sword already out.

She had been carrying it bare up the stairs.

That was the only reason she lived through the first cut.

It came for her throat so fast that her body simply wasn't there anymore.

Her old feet had taken her half a step left, the way they had slipped a thousand lunges.

His blade hissed past her ear.

She answered with Snow on the Pine without deciding to, a rising cut from the hip.

He turned it aside with almost no effort.

Then he hit back, and this time she felt the difference.

There was something behind his sword.

A weight, a push.

Her block held, but her whole arm went numb to the elbow.

He had the fire she had been looking for in the yard.

She didn't.

"The Sect Master says you dance prettily," he said. "He watched you, in the woodshed. Every night for ten years."

So Jin Gwang-hu had known.

All those nights.

"He let you play," the man said, and came at her again.

Yeon-hwa went backward around the brazier.

He followed, patient.

He was going to wear her down, and he knew it, and so did she.

She couldn't win a single exchange with him.

So she stopped trying to win exchanges.

In kumdo, when the other fighter is stronger, you don't meet the blow.

You make him come to you, and you take the one opening he gives you when he does.

She let her guard drop half an inch, the way a tired girl's would.

He saw it.

He came in for the kill, all his weight behind it.

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