Black Steel (6 page)

Good as it was going to get.

He straightened and gripped tightly with both hands the branch upon which most of his weight rested.

He couldn't cut the thorns and probably they wouldn't break, either, but they weren't stuck into his bones or anything.

His skin and muscle weren't as hard as the spikes that held him.

He took a deep breath and jerked his trapped leg upward, as hard as he could.

The needle-sharp thorns dug bloody furrows in his foot and ankle. It hurt, it hurt! Ow, ow, ow! But he was free!

His ankle was bleeding and it hurt, but he cried from relief and not the pain. He was free. All he had to do now was climb down and go home.

But the boy who would someday call himself Sleel didn't do that. Instead, he climbed up. To get the flower he'd come for.

When he arrived home with the flower, one boot missing and his bare foot and ankle bloody, it was his mother who saw him first.

"Where have you been?" she asked. "We were worried about you. Are you all right?" She seemed distracted, and she stood back three meters, watching him as if he were a new specimen of bramble she wanted to examine, but one still in quarantine so she couldn't get too close.

"I went to get this," he said, holding the flower out.

"Oh, You've damaged your ankle, haven't you?"

"It's only a scratch."

"Where is your boot?"

"I lost it."

"Well. Well, okay. Go and have the diagnoster look at your leg. And get cleaned up and fix yourself something to eat. Your father and I have a holoconference at twenty-one hundred, and it's almost time."

"Yes, Mother."

With that, his mother bustled off to turn on the holoproj for their conference. She had not swept him off his feet or hugged him, but at least she had noticed he was missing. That was pretty amazing.

His father, passing by, nodded at the boy. "Evening," he said. "You have a good day?"

"Yes, Father."

"That's nice."

If he noticed the boy's bloody ankle or missing boot, he made no mention of it. He didn't act as if he had been aware that his son had been gone at all. When his mother had said "we," she must have meant herself.

His father walked away, no longer interested in his son. The boy looked at the flower in his hand. He dropped it onto the floor and stepped on it with his injured foot. He ground the white petals into the plastic. The cleaning din would suck up the ruined flower and the floor would be none the worse for it; likely his parents wouldn't even notice the mess. His parents had never laid a hand on him in anger. He sometimes wished they would. Even being beaten was probably better than being ignored.

At nine, the boy who would become Sleel had begun to realize that if he wanted to get along in the galaxy, he would have to take care of himself, that nobody else was going to do it. If he couldn't do it on his own, it wasn't going to get done. Well, okay. If that's how it had to be, fuck it. He would take care of himself. Somehow-Sleel came out of sleep suddenly, wide awake. There didn't seem to be anything wrong; the door squeal was armed and quiet, Reason snoring in the next room. He shook his head. It was just a bad dream, he told himself. An old tape. It doesn't matter anymore, what happened to you as a kid. It really doesn't matter.

Chapter SIX

THE HOUSE of Black Steel was steeped in tradition but not so much that it refused to acknowledge the march of time. Technology had its uses, and Cierto was not a man to handicap himself when it came to certain devices.

A viral matrix computer ran the household, insofar as security and communications went, and his stealthware was as good as any but the cutting-edge top-secret Republic military and political gear. Money was a grease that made many things run smoothly, and even when the Confed squatted most heavily upon its citizens, the House of Black Steel had never come close to missing a meal. Cierto was born rich and if he spent a million standards a year and lived to be a hundred and fifty, he would still die rich.

Yes. Money bought security plans and how to get around them; money gave his students devices that would do things Cierto's grandfather would have considered miracles; money talked and when it did, almost everybody listened with respect.

Even so, there came a time when money alone was not enough. His students had thus far failed to remove the final stain upon the family honor, and that stain now sought to continue its vile existence, hiring protection. It was time to become more serious about this task, Cierto knew.

He sat in the hub of his control center, surrounded by holoprojic pictures dancing colorfully upon the air, by machineries worth a king's ransom. The casa was quiet, the students out doing field exercises in the forest that made up the southern quarter of the estate. Only the household dins puttered about, cleaning and polishing, and the house was empty of human life, save for Cierto himself. He had preparations to make before he took to the dueling arena, business to conduct before he was prepared to cleanse the final speck of dirt from his grandfather's boots, and much of that preparatory work could be done here. Calls would be made, favors asked and granted in return, more of the valuable lubricant of the family fortune sprayed upon abrasive places. In the end it would be as Cierto wished it to be, as it had always been for his family. What the Ciertos wanted was, if at all possible, done. And with heads held high.

He was not a betyldese operator, able to converse in several esoteric com languages at once, but it was not necessary. His machineries did what he needed. His skills lay elsewhere.

Cierto glanced up at the Latin signature that shone upon the bases of each of the holoproj images, the family motto that was part of nearly everything in the casa in one form or another: Potius mori quam foedari.

Death before dishonor.

Ah, si, that was always the way. of it. The Codigo de Honor was all for his family. the alpha and omega, and it was infused with mother's milk into the souls of the children of the Ciertos. One did not go against it. Ever. If one did, the consequences were swift and painful. Cierto could never forget what had happened on the morning of his eleventh birthday.

Hoja parried Enrique's cut with his own foil and riposted, a deep lunge at the other boy's heart. Enrique danced away, and the foil's buttoned tip fell short. Enrique slid to en garde and waved his weapon in tight circles, grinning.

Hoja's heads-up display timer flashed off the seconds. Only twenty seconds left in the match and Hoja was down a point. A clean touch was needed were he to win, and Enrique knew it. All Enrique had to do was stay out of range and the match was his. At twelve, Enrique was slightly taller than Hoja, and somewhat more muscular, aside from being a year older. Plus his father was the fencing master, and so he surely must be coached in techniques that the younger Hoja did not know. It was not fair.

Fifteen seconds left. Enrique grinned and made a weak attack, designed to kill nothing but time. Hoja dodged it easily.

Hoja saw his chance as the other boy shuffled back, and he took it. With five seconds remaining, Hoja leaped forward in a wild lunge, foil extended fully.

He was short by no more than a centimeter, but Enrique was hunched forward and his arm hid the miss from where their fathers stood watching.

"Touche!" Hoja yelled.

The timer chimed and the match was over. The boys saluted each other, then the fencing master.

Enrique removed his face mask and shook his head. "I did not feel it. Are you sure?"

"Si, can you not see the mark on your suit where the button hit?" Hoja pulled his own face guard off and shook his hair. Sweat flew.

Enrique looked down. "No, but if you say so, then it must be. Congratulations."

Hoja felt a stab of guilt. but only a small one. The hardwired fencing suits were capable of recording each touch so that there could be no doubt, but the Patron had disabled this aspect of the electronics as a matter of routine-and of honor. Lesser men might need such things to assure truth, but the Casa del Acero Negro did not. To imply otherwise would be an insult to the duelists.

Hoja's triumph soured when he looked at his father, who wore a frown. The Patron was watching a holoprojic replay of the match, and the ceiling camera's eye had not been blocked by Enrique's position.

The image shifted to a closeup of the foil approaching Enrique's chest, slowing as the Patron commanded. It was clear that Hoja's weapon had stopped short of the touch.

The Patron waved one hand in anger and the image vanished. He looked down at his son. "Hoja. Come here."

The boy swallowed, fear thick in his throat. "Si, Patron?"

The senior Cierto wore the sword of his grandfather, the magnificent weapon that would someday pass to Hoja, the finest blade in all the galaxy. He pulled the sword from its sheath and turned it so that the edge was up. "You claimed a touch," his father said.

"Si, Patron, I thought it so."

"No, you did not. You cheated."

"But-Patr6n

"Hold out your right arm."

"Patron-?"

"Now!"

Trembling, Hoja did as he was told, the foil pointing straight ahead.

His father lowered the thick spine of the sword slowly so that its full weight rested upon Hoja's forearm just above his wrist. The blade was heavy, and it took more than a little effort to hold his arm steady.

How long would he have to hold it up? Already his arms were tired from the match; surely the Patron could not expect him to support this heavy blade on his outstretched arm for very long. He could feel his shoulder starting to burn from the combined weights of the sword and foil. How long?

He needn't have worried about that. Moving so quickly that the black steel was only a blur, Hoja's father whipped the sword up and down, smashing the thick spine of the blade into his son's arm.

Hoja could not stop his surprised yelp as the ulna and radius snapped. His arm actually bent upward around the dull edge, as if the hard bones were made of flexcord. The sight and sensation filled him with nausea. He barely stopped himself from vomiting.

For some reason, he did not drop the foil, but managed to keep his grip on it. He reached over and clutched at the broken bones with his other hand, squeezing them. He felt them grate together under his fingers and almost passed out from the fiery pain. Ah-!

"Thus do you pay for staining our honor," his father said. His voice was cold, without anger, and that made it worse. "Do you understand?"

Hoja wanted to cry, but he held the tears back. Tears were for the weak. "S-Si, P-Patron." Bile burned in his throat.

"Go and have your arm orthobonded. And consider yourself fortunate that you did not drop your weapon, for if you had, I would have broken the other arm, too."

With that, his father turned and strode away.

The pain had been sharp, piercing to his depths, but the medics repaired the damaged bone and took away the hurt. The mild swelling subsided after a few days and the arm was as good as before, but the shame and the lesson would never be forgotten. Never.

Cierto even now felt shame at the old memory. Ah, yes, the lessons had been hard, but they had taken root and grown, making him into a man. It was time to begin thinking about having a son of his own. He had select sperm and ova frozen in his private bank that could be grown to provide an acceptable child.

Of course, he would prefer to meet a woman with fire as bright as his own to be the mother of his son.

The old ways had some merit. Certainly it was more pleasurable to implant his seed in a hot and living receptacle, be she willing or not, than to have his semen mixed with an egg in a Healy chamber to be grown to term. A baby grown in the natural way might not be chemically distinguishable from one raised in a machine womb but Cierto was convinced that children with biomothers inherited some of their spirit. And spirit was an important part of honor.

Yes. After the family honor was cleansed, it would be time to select the proper mother for his son. To assure that the House of Black Steel would have the correct heir. To teach him the ways of honor and the sword, so that he might become, as Hoja Cierto had become, a man among men. But first there was this thief to slay. And his matador along with him.

Kildee Wu walked behind the line of kendo students with her split-bamboo sword, the straight shinai, watching as they exchanged shomen, cuts to the center of the forehead. The line shuffled forward and with feet still in motion, snapped their bamboo blades down on the padded men helmets of their opponents, giving loud and simultaneous kiai! with their strikes.

Passing through, they would pivot, and wait as the other line repeated the action. There were only eight valid strikes in this mostly classical style of academic ryu-hai, seven cuts and one thrust. It was all very precise and very limited and that was what attracted so many of the students.

Kendo per se was not a battlefield free-for-all, but as rigid as the rules for classical haiku. Most of these students would not go beyond the bamboo shinai or the bokuto, the wooden sword. A few might progress to the live blade, but not many. The advanced classes were more interesting, but it was only when those students went beyond even that that Wu was truly engaged.

Classical kata had its proper place, certain basics were the same-the laws of motion only allowed so many efficient ways for a human to behave-but until zanshin was reached, it was all play. To be a true warrior with the sword required total unity of body and spirit and blade. Anything less was not enough.

"Hee-yo!" the second line yelled, bare and callused feet scooting across the flame-patterned wood.

Wu nodded, opening her perception to the students, seeking as always that spirit, the ki which would identify one of them as worthy for higher teaching. These were her beginners, but they ranged in experience from a few weeks to two years. A spiritual breakthrough could happen at any time for a number of reasons and she kept herself alert for such. A master of the sword could be born in an eyeblink, and she did not want to miss the birth if it happened near her. It had been her sister who had aided in her own transformation, and had she not been there, Kildee Wu could have wasted years floundering.