Shizuru finished her cup. “Better not be any problems,” she said. “I like this place too much to see it shut down.”
I followed Keichi with my eyes. The rough-cut crowd parted for him, for the most part, though he wore the wooden sword at his belt and not the Daybreak blade. “I’m certain it’s nothing,” I said. “Perhaps there was a spill.”
When Keichi returned to us his face was hard. There was simmering anger in his brown eyes; thick ropes of tension flowing down his neck. “It’s her,” he said.
“Who is her?” Shizuru asked. “Keichi, don’t be an idiot. Say what you mean or don’t say anything at all. I don’t know why I have to keep—”
“It’s the Wall-Breaker.”
My blood froze. Burqila Alshara. No one was particularly happy to see her competing in the tournament, yet no one could deny that she was one of the finest warriors alive. I’d missed her inaugural match due to a few of Shizuru’s distractions, but I’d heard about it after the fact. She’d shown up on horseback. Qorin customs being what they are, she must have thought it would be acceptable.
The judges demanded that she dismount per the terms of the tournament. After a tense, albeit polite, argument with her interpreter she agreed.
Her opponent was a young man with a polearm who stained his trousers at the sight of her. When he charged her, she kicked him in the leg, pulled the polearm out of his hands, and bashed him over the head with it. As he lay bleeding onto the arena she pulled a slate and chalk from her chest pocket.
Are you going to deny the hole in your wall, too? Or only my skill?
Like Shizuru, she took everything we’d come to expect from honorable combat and turned it upside down. Unlike Shizuru, Burqila Alshara was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Hokkaran civilans and a thousand soldiers; likely more on both accounts. And now she was sitting here in a teahouse in Fujino, surrounded by veterans who hated her more than they hated the Traitor himself, having a cup of warm fermented milk.
“I’m going to go give her a piece of my mind,” said Shizuru. “Who does she think she is, coming here?”
“No,” said Keichi. “We don’t want a fight, Zuru, not here. If we get kicked out of this tournament, what are we going to do?”
“This is more important than the money,” said Shizuru, which was the first time I’d heard her so much as hint at anything of the sort. She was already on her feet. My heart sank into my throat as I realized she had one hand on the Daybreak blade.
“Shizuru,” I said, standing and following along after her. “Think about what you’re doing. She’s not your enemy anymore, she’s not hurting anyone—”
“She’s hurt enough people already,” said Shizuru. And by then we saw her.
And, as with Shizuru, the Wall-Breaker looked nothing like I imagined she would. Instead of a hardened woman in her forties, covered in scars and the hint of coming wrinkles, I saw a girl at least ten years my junior. The baby fat clinging to her cheeks undermined the small scars pockmarking her brown skin. Instead of a pampered Hokkaran’s finery, she wore a practical green coat in the Qorin style, embroidered with circles and squares in yellow thread. The coat intensified the viper green of her eyes, which now fixed us with silent expectation.
Her eyes were the trick of it. The rest of her was young, but those eyes had seen much.
All of a sudden Shizuru burst into laughter. “Which one of you idiots had the idea to prank me, hm? Someone told my brother that the Demon of the Steppes was here. You people think all Qorin look the same?”
Keichi, who had followed along after us, put a hand on his sister’s shoulder. “Shizuru, that’s—”
Shizuru didn’t listen. As bold as ever, she pointed to the young Qorin woman with the sheathed Daybreak blade. “That’s a child,” she said, “who wandered off her mother’s teat.”
I loved the woman, but at that moment I was absolutely certain she was about to start a war. Yet how does one stop a hurricane once it’s made landfall? The best I could do was stand at her side and pull her away if she tried anything.
All eyes fell to the Qorin woman. She pulled slate and chalk from her pocket. That was when I knew, without a doubt, that this was not going to be a good night.
Burqila Alshara was famously mute.
Apparently, this was all the confirmation of identity that Shizuru needed. She shoved the Daybreak blade back into her belt and launched herself across the table before I could get a hold of her. Time slowed like ice creeping through lake water as I saw my future wife punch Burqila Alshara square in the nose.
There was one wet pop, and then a moment of perfect silence.
And then—the explosion. The other patrons tasted blood in the water. Soon, two thirds of those who remained in the teahouse started swinging at one another. Cups and pots flew through the air, shattering, sending shards careening through the room. I held up my arm to shield myself as much as I could.
Burqila Alshara was no exception. She grabbed Shizuru’s wrist, rose, and with one hand on Shizuru’s back, shoved her right into the wall. To my horror Shizuru bounced backwards from the force of the blow. Blood ran down her chin from her now-split lip, glistening red as moist fruit.
But Shizuru was not yet finished. She tackled Burqila Alshara with enough force to send the two of them tumbling to the ground.
This was the worst thing she could have possibly done. Hokkaran wrestling was to Qorin wrestling as a wooden sword was to the Daybreak blade. And, though it was not so noticeable when she was seated, Burqila Alshara was at least two heads taller than Minami Shizuru.
Thus, the moment Shizuru took them to the ground, Burqila Alshara wrapped her long arms around Shizuru’s shoulder and leg, and then stood up with Shizuru slung around her shoulders like a sack of millet.
“Shizuru,” I shouted. “Stop this! You need to let it go; this isn’t a proper duel, with rules—”
“I’m not a proper woman!” she shouted—still stretched across Burqila’s back, mind you.
To her credit, Burqila did not continue their fighting until my little outburst was through. But as soon as Shizuru finished her boast, Alshara fell backwards, breaking the table with Shizuru’s body, only to be confronted with a knee to the kidney.
“Get the magistrates,” I said to Keichi.
“I’m not leaving her, you get them,” he said.
I gritted my teeth. I, too, could not bear to leave her—yet there was no doubt someone needed to get help. I broke off for a moment to find the teahouse matron, who was hiding beneath a shelf of pots. She was the one I sent out to get the guard. As I spoke to her the crashing behind me continued. Shizuru’s pained groans heralded the slap of flesh against flesh.