Scalding water splashed up onto the sensitive skin on Yipachai’s forearm, the result of a careless swipe with the scrubbing brush on the rice pot he’d been working on for the last several minutes.

  He hissed and dropped both pot and brush back into the basin with a wet slap and a thunk, and hopped back a step to avoid the resulting spray of hot, soapy death.

  Mamoru had heated the water too much again, and Yipachai’s hands were already red enough to prove it.

  But there was nothing to be done about it. He had already accepted the new rhythm of his days: wake up while he was still half-asleep and shivering, run until his lungs nearly burst—he’d actually caught the very end of morning meditation this morning—then back down to the dining hall for breakfast before going to work on stances and basic striking angles with instructor Shuji, who still seemed to find some twisted type of pleasure in making novices sweat.

  After that, he and his roommates—most of whom still tried to avoid him, when they could—hurried to a quick lunch before they had to do chores. Then, it was back to dueling practice with master Rurou.

  For Yipachai, it was a pretty constant source of pain, frustration, and being ridiculed. Ridiculed for being smaller, weaker. For not being Banqilun.

  “Hurry up, Hetanzou,” Hachiro said, elbows-deep in the wash basin to Yipachai’s left. “I don’t want to be late for practice.”

  Yipachai sighed and began scrubbing again. That was the way most of his interactions went at the School of the West Wind. Only Mamoru called him by his name. To the others he was just Hetanzou, Het, or kid.

  Yipachai could put up with the names. He’d certainly dealt with worse even back at the monastery in Hongshu. He could deal with the soreness in his arms and legs. He knew it would take strength to become a master. But the thing that really broke him down?

  He still hadn’t been allowed to duel in master Rurou’s class.

  Grinding his teeth, Yipachai set to scrubbing a particularly stubborn section where the goopy leftovers of rice stuck fast to the side of the pot. Every time he thought about dueling class,he sunk back into his near-constant bad mood.

  He had come so far, to Amigawa the country, then Amigawa the city. He’d endured ridicule from the other dueling schools as well as the other students and masters at the West Wind. He had paid the entry fee—or, well, Harato had paid it for him.

  Yipachai had come to learn, but still Rurou refused to teach him.

  The master had continually told Yipachai the same thing. You’ll duel when you’re ready.

  But Yipachai was ready. He did all the same work as the other boys. He didn’t complain. Sure, he might lose, but he had to start somewhere. And how was he ever supposed to master the sword if they never let him fight?

  He squinted through the steam at the now-shining pot, the last remnants of rice finally conquered.

  It ended today, he decided. As soon as his chores were done, Yipachai was going to walk down to Rurou’s clearing and tell the young master that he was ready to duel, whether Rurou himself could see it or not.

  Yipachai finished his stack of dishes faster than he’d ever done. He ignored the looks of the other boys and the still-stinging skin on his hands as he swept from the kitchen area, fetched his practice sword, and started for the clearing where they practiced dueling.

  He didn’t slow down until he saw master Rurou at a distance, working his way through a complex sword form with the blade that Yipachai himself had delivered to him.

  What if I’m not actually ready? What if I get killed?

  He tried not to imagine the impact of one of the Banqilun boys’ practice swords crashing into the side of his head with the strength of someone far larger than him. Those reeds weren’t strong, but they were solid enough to do some damage if they connected. He would just have to block it, right?

  “Alright there, Yipachai?” Mamoru said from behind him. “You hustled out of the kitchen rather quickly.”

  Yipachai turned and suddenly realized his mouth was dry. Mamoru and the others had caught up to him while he hesitated. Which meant now the time for dueling class was upon them, whether Yipachai was ready or not.

  Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad idea if he just waited until Rurou said he was ready to join the dueling.

  “Erm, yeah, I’m alright,” Yipachai said, and joined in with the rest of the group. “Just thinking.”

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  Mamoru gave him an affirmative grunt, then continued walking. Yipachai’s confidence waned with every step.

  It faded completely as they drew nearer and he could see that Rurou was staring in his direction.

  “Hetanzou. Mikio. You’re up.” Rurou pointed a finger at each of them in turn.

  Yipachai’s heart nearly stopped. Mikio always tried to duel like he was fighting to the death, and was probably the strongest in their dormitory besides Mamoru.

  Yipachai tried to swallow, but found he couldn’t. He could only nod as the other boys made collective sounds of excitement. Hachiro pounded Mikio on the back—as if he wasn’t the one who was most eager to take a swing at the smallest person in their dorm and needed a boost of energy. Yipachai had heard Mikio and the others making bets about how far they thought he would fly.

  “Don’t listen to them,” Mamoru said, drawing Yipachai off to one side. “Remember, Mikio is strong but he lacks control. Just wear him down and keep trying the strikes we do with instructor Shuji. You’ll be alright.”

  “Places, you two,” Rurou called.

  Yipachai stepped forward, his hand on the hilt of his practice sword. He didn’t feel nearly as ready as he had while washing dishes. A few paces away, Mikio’s eyes were locked on him, the other boy’s features displaying all the cold focus of a serpent regarding a forest mouse.

  “Move!”

  Yipachai lurched into motion, his legs moving seemingly without him telling them to until he and Mikio faced one another in front of the other boys, who were mostly jostling one another for a seat on one of the stumps in the front row.

  Mikio gave him the tiniest of toothy smiles—one that left the rest of his face untouched.

  Suddenly, Yipachai was in another time and place. That self-important smile. Those cold, dark eyes.

  They were the same as Mangsut’s that day he had found Yipachai weeping over Elder Satsanan’s body.

  And there Yipachai was again, in that little cell, shaking Elder Satsanan, trying to wake her as smoke filled his nostrils alongside the tangy smell of blood—her blood—on her robes, on his. The sounds of shouts and blasts of Lan Banti energy filled his ears.

  Yipachai stumbled forward a step as he tried to perform the first of the ritual bows. It felt like he’d just been punched in the stomach.

  “On your feet, Hetanzou,” Rurou snapped. “If you can’t make it through the rituals, I might just have to change my mind. Again.”

  Head spinning, Yipachai bowed low again, pausing for a beat at the bottom before rising and regarding Mikio again. Had the other boy’s expression changed at all? Did he look more cruel somehow? Or was Yipachai just imagining it?

  “Four steps.”

  Somehow, Yipachai kept his balance as he spun, putting his back to Mikio and striding out four paces in the opposite direction. His heart pounded in his chest, both from the flashback he’d just experienced and from what he was about to do. He thought he could still smell the monastery burning.

  Turning back around to face his opponent, he bowed again, this time drawing no correction from Rurou. It seemed the master was as eager as the other students to watch Yipachai get knocked senseless.

  “Begin.”

  Mikio snarled and came for him, practice sword out and raised above his head.

  Yipachai fumbled once with his own sword before whipping it out of his belt. His mind went blank, instinct and training moving his limbs more than active thought. Yipachai stepped to one side and raised his blade at a soft angle, the kind that was supposed to meet Mikio’s strike and send it rolling off the blade of Yipachai’s sword like rain water.

  Mikio closed the final distance, and Yipachai braced for the impact on his hands, his wrists, his arms.

  It didn’t come.

  Faster than Yipachai could react, Mikio hitched and shifted his sword so that instead of striking from above, he was now swinging across his body, his long, whip-like arms sending the dull wooden blade at Yipachai’s unguarded ribs quicker than a viper’s strike.

  The blade connected, and Yipachai was certain he heard a crack come from somewhere inside his body as fiery pain erupted along his left side. He cried out, his blade coming down just as Mikio’s sword finished its rebounding arc to crash into his right shoulder. Yipachai stumbled back, his body a beacon of pain. He tried to raise his sword in front of him to ward off Mikio’s next strike, but his foot caught on something and he began to teeter backwards just as the Banqilun boy swung for Yipachai’s blade, connecting with enough force to rip it from Yipachai’s grip and send it flying off into the forest to his right.

  He saw multiple pieces of his practice sword spin away before he hit the ground, the wind driven from his lungs.

  “Stop it, now!” A voice called. It wasn’t Rurou’s. Mamoru?

  Yipachai looked up, dazed. Mikio was still advancing, apparently unwilling to listen to the other boy.

  “No!” Mikio said, his dark eyes alight with some kind of wicked intensity. “This is my duel. I’ll say when it’s finished.” He stood over Yipachai and looked at him like he was a slab of meat for butchering.

  I’m going do die, Yipachai thought. Terror and pain kept him rooted to the ground as he stared up, helpless.

  “Say goodnight, Hetanzou,” Mikio muttered, then brought his blade crashing down.

  “Enough!” Rurou said at last.

  Mikio’s blade struck the earth a finger’s breadth from Yipachai’s ear. The other boy roared, triumph and rage swirling together in the sound.

  Yipachai couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t believe he was still alive, but—he still couldn’t breathe. Every attempt sent stabs of pain through his left side, his shoulder. He tried to reach up, tried to signal that something was wrong.

  “Well done, Mikio, you beat up a Hetanzou child. Go sit.”

  Then it was Rurou’s face peering down at Yipachai. The young master had drawn a l’anti wand from somewhere and had it aimed at Yipachai’s side.

  “We should probably get that fixed up before we send him to the healers, eh?”

  A flash of green light, but unlike the uses of Lan Banti that Yipachai normally saw, this light remained steady, a stream of verdant flame flowing between Rurou’s wand and Yipachai’s side.

  Slowly, Yipachai felt his insides expand, as if his ribs were clicking back into place. His shoulder still ached terribly, but mere seconds after Rurou started, sweet air filled Yipachai’s lungs again. At least he wouldn’t suffocate on the forest floor surrounded by his roommates.

  “Perhaps we should’ve started him dueling against the girls,” Rurou said, a look like sympathy on his face.

  Yipachai let his head thump back against the earth, unwilling to meeet the eyes of any of the Banqilun, even Mamoru.

  Perhaps Rurou shouldn’t have healed him after all.