“What are you still doing here? Why haven’t you gone!”
Gene, who had been thrown to the floor, got up. The corner of his mouth was split, and his head rang, but he had not forgotten what he meant to say. He had intended to explain it calmly, point by point, but the unjust blow filled him with such anger that he found himself shouting.
“I’ll defeat you!”
Beka’s expression grew strange.
“What?”
Wiping the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, Gene glared at Beka.
“If you’ll only teach me!”
The silence lasted a long time. At last Beka bared his teeth in a grin and spoke.
“Aren’t you curious what I do to anyone who lies to me?”
Beka suddenly kicked a jar from the table. Just before it struck the floor, his sword pierced it and drove into the floor. Wine spurted from the shattered jar. Beka’s eyes met Gene’s. Gene spoke.
“Since I’ve never lied, that has nothing to do with me.”
Then Beka pointed at the floor.
“That’s the wine of a sworn pledge. Drink.”
Without hesitation, Gene lay flat and put his lips to the wine flowing across the filthy floor. Beka approached, seized Gene by the back of the neck, hauled him up, and slapped him three times.
Gene became Beka’s pupil. The condition was that he visit at night once every three days. Sometimes the watch was so strict that he could not get away, but Gene almost always kept his promise. When he could not, he made up for it by practicing twice as hard. Those days continued for four years.
His nightly outings could not have gone undiscovered for four whole years. But at eighteen, Gene was no longer the little child who had to obey other people’s orders as he once had. He was sometimes followed, but Gene was more skilled at shaking off his pursuers. His lessons went smoothly. Gene was astonished by Beka’s mastery of every weapon, not merely swords, while Beka was astonished by the speed with which Gene absorbed it all.
Along the way, Gene learned something of Beka’s past. Beka said he had been born in the north. He had spent his youth in Delphinad, the great city called the capital of the world. From twenty-eight to forty, he had been the most notorious man in Delphinad. He had been an assassin. He said he had killed hundreds. He had handled enormous sums of money and spent it all. He had resolved to take his own life if he could no longer earn that day’s bread with his two swords alone.
Beka could still do that. But the skill of his prime was gone. Because of his right hand. More precisely, because he had lost the little finger of his right hand. He had originally been right-handed, but afterward began training his left. Even with his left sword, he was the strongest in Epherium, yet it could not match his unpredictable right hand. Beka’s rival was none other than himself in his prime. When he had been the “Right-Hand Sword,” he had been the strongest in Delphinad. Since Delphinad drew skilled fighters from across the continent, perhaps he had been the strongest on the entire continent.
After losing his finger, Beka left Delphinad. He did not want to destroy the reputation he had built with his own hands. He disappeared so completely that in Delphinad, they still did not know where he was, or whether he was alive or dead. Beka was not his real name. He never told Gene his birth name either. Gene too kept his own birth name to himself.
Rumor spread through the arena. The Red Blade, said to be the finest gladiator in the south, was coming. The royal capital stirred. Everyone looked forward to his match with Beka.
Beka smiled. He said he hoped the man would be truly strong. Only Gene knew what was in Beka’s heart. Beka was already sixty-three. For all the strict discipline with which he had trained himself, his body was gradually weakening. Above all, he said his vision was growing dim. At this rate, in a few years Beka might lose to some worthless nobody and die. He said he could not tolerate such disgrace. “If I’m going to die, it must be at the hands of someone truly strong.” Beka repeated it as though it were a habit.
The night before his match with the Red Blade, Beka summoned Gene. And he asked Gene to watch his end. From the very front of the stands, to watch more closely than anyone. Then he told Gene to go to Delphinad and pass a message to someone. He even gave the place where that person lived and their name. Gene felt that if he went there, he would learn Beka’s real name.
Perhaps Beka was saying these things deliberately. Over four years, he had come to regard Gene as a son. Though he had told Gene about the past in Delphinad that he hid from his fellow gladiators, he still concealed his real name and origins. Once Beka died, Gene alone would remain to pass on his past. No, Gene alone would remain to prove that Beka had existed. The skill that had once made Delphinad tremble had vanished like the wind. As someone who had inherited even a part of it, Gene had a duty to keep his promise to Beka.
When he had finished speaking, Beka smiled and added, “If I really lose, that is.”
Gene could not smile.
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