Strategists will claim the knife is a dishonorable weapon, wielded by criminals, torturers, and spies. To which I say: so what? Honor is an illusion.

  As with all illusions it must be discarded on the path of enlightenment. Honor is a gold band around the trunk of a yellow meranti; for all its gleam, the tree will never achieve its full potential while constrained by it.

  The first sentences of Jian’s gift would have led to the manuscript being restricted, or even burned, in many places. Honor was central to a warrior’s life. But I was, and had been raised as, a woman. Women had no honor. We reflected honor. We could taint our family’s honor, or we could enhance it through our behavior, but we could not create it for ourselves. No one would say, ah, there walks the honorable Zhou Hui Ying, in the same way they would have my father or my brother. But for an assumed man, it was a peculiar gift. Most warriors I had ever known were very vocally concerned about honor. At least, their own.

  It had taken a week for the qi sickness to purge itself from my body, and this was the first day I’d felt up to diving into the manual on my own. I’d gone to practice every day, sweating out the toxins and my illness, but it hadn’t left me much energy for anything else. I would have sucked up my pride and gone to Yuanshu but the healer had been absent since we returned from the cave. I had a suspicion that he did it on purpose. After all, he’s the one who gave me the pill. He had to have known it would make me sick as a dog.

  Even Zhuzhu had noticed and generously given me leave from any further nights of drinking until I felt better. It was a kindness, but not one I could extend to myself. Time was running out. I had to lay my spiritual foundations, and I had to be someone the sect could take seriously as a cultivator.

  I hoped this gift from Jian would help, and turned the page.

  On one side, a diagram of a knife stance for drawing from concealment. On the other, brief lines of elegant writing. With my background being what it was, I couldn’t help but notice the ink used; it was a blend heavy with cinnabar, poisonous to mortals but often used in talismans and spells. It read,

  The knife wielder must aspire to be as the crescent moon,

  Brilliant and sharp in the winter sky.

  It shows only its edge.

  Its substance is concealed, unfathomable.

  So it should be with a knife.

  Hidden until needed, the edge curves and cuts

  Then, like the new moon, it disappears.

  The next page held two diagrams, illustrating a thrust and cut. With the first, they made a three-part technique. It was basic, as Jian had said. But as I rose to my feet and began to copy each, I pictured in my mind the sharp and shining crescent of the full moon. It felt good. Natural. Sliding the small knife from the place the manual suggested for concealment, then to a wide, curving cut that flowed to a quick jab before collapsing back to either a ready stance or a return to concealment.

  I couldn’t help but notice that it served better for an ambush or a murder than a duel between cultivators. I closed my eyes, breathing deep as I concentrated on the feel of the knife in my hand. I did my best to place the new technique within the moves he had been teaching us.

  This is an opening move. It just doesn’t work if you’re not showing the blade for the first time. But if I’m in a duel, I’ve already lost the element of surprise this needs.

  Unless…

  The first duel I’d fought, I’d had my blade on me, but I’d never drawn it. Many of the basic moves that Jian was teaching worked equally well with a blade of steel or a blade made from a particular formation of the hand. If the hand was expected, the blade could still be the surprise, unveiled at the right moment.

  With that in mind, I rearranged my kata practice. Start with bow and salute, move to defensive posture. From there I had three or four possible strikes at my disposal, although we hadn’t been taught any real blocking techniques.

  Jian’s voice sounded in my head, Be where the strike is not. That’s more effective than any block.

  Which might be true. But it was more difficult to practice. I tried anyway, incorporating dodges into my cycle. I tried to picture a sparring partner. No surprise, the shadowy figure my mind conjured was hairless and scornful, moving so fast that even here, in my head, I had to concede that he struck more often than I dodged.

  But it gave me a thrill to imagine the one time where I might slip under his guard, and release the Crescent Moon Strike, cutting up and across his chest the way he’d done more than once on me. Then I danced backwards, concealing the blade with as little fanfare and much speed as possible.

  The Kai in my head narrowed his eyes and made a silent tch before taking up a stance. He twitched his own blades in an unmistakable taunt. I circled the space where I imagined him, considering the angles. Once the blade was bared, I couldn’t rely on the same sort of surprise. It was a nice trick – but it would only work once.

  Panting and feeling sweat mingle with the mist, I paused to take another look at the manual. From this angle, the light from the nearby lantern hit the cinnabar-infused ink at an angle. It shimmered. But my eyes were drawn to something else.

  There were hidden letters in the spaces between the lines. I couldn’t make them out from here, and they were so faint, wavering in and out of my vision in such a way that I suspected most people would have dismissed it as just a flaw in the manuscript paper. But the Zhou were scribes. Not just scribes, but inkmakers, papermakers, and bookbinders.

  We had our own secret arts. I remembered my mother’s voice explaining how ink could be infused with exotic ingredients to form something nigh invisible once it dried. With the addition of qi and a strong will, even more occult concealments were possible, making ink that only showed up when read by the right person, or under the light of specific stars or phases of the moon. I knew some of the formulas and spells for that sort of construction, but neither I nor my mother (nor her mother, for that matter) had the gift for manipulating qi or access to the materials required to make the ink and paper to be enchanted. It was all theory and lore passed down from mother to daughter.

  Until now.

  I grabbed the lantern and brought it closer to the book. It wasn’t entirely surprising (but still disappointing) to see that the shimmering letters disappeared entirely under the stronger light. I moved it away, tried different angles for both how I looked at the text and the position of the light. It seemed strongest when the lantern was far enough away that it was no longer chasing away the mist, and my angle of view was almost looking through the mist.

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  Was it the mist itself? It was evening, and I was in a small, abandoned building on the edges of the sect, so the mist was thick and less disturbed than it would be closer in. But I had no way to thicken it beyond that point. Is it just water? Could I dunk it in–

  No. Dumb. Think about the manual. The crescent moon. Avoidance, concealment. It’s not because it’s water, it’s because it’s mist. It conceals.

  Outside the building, the moon was quite well-concealed behind the veil of storm and mist that sheltered the sect. I had no idea what phase it was in, but I bet that if moonlight was part of the key, it needed to be a crescent moon, filtered through mist or some other veil. Just in case, I brought the manual out under the sky.

  No luck. At least, none that I could make out, because without some light from the lantern, I couldn’t even read the regular text, much less the hidden. The only thing that stood out at all were the line drawings, because those lines were simple and bold.

  Jian had warned me. He’d said that I wouldn’t be able to comprehend all the manual could teach me in my current state. If I could control qi, I was sure I could figure out the conditions necessary to unearth the ink, and recreate them. And I’d only just scratched the surface of what the manual offered to even the plain, mortal fighter. I could read that, practice that, and learn from it. Once I could perceive and manipulate qi, I could go deeper.

  A solid plan. But as I trudged back inside the building to continue learning and practicing, curiosity burned inside of me at the thought of what secrets waited to be revealed.

  *

  “Tch.” It wasn’t in my head, this time. A week later, I used what I’d learned to score a hit on the real Kai during morning training. A real hit, a solid slash along his chest just as I’d imagined, deep enough to cut through his robes and leave a red line down his skin. It was the first time I’d struck true enough to draw blood and he hadn’t been able to stop me.

  We all stopped as one. Then, Kai tched and Jian chuckled. Kai narrowed his black eyes at the instructor. “It was luck.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” Jian and I said the words in concert, but in very different tones. My indignation carried the day, and I added, “You overextended when you chased the feint I dropped. It left you open. I saw it. I struck. Nothing lucky about it.”

  He let out a rattling hiss of irritation. Jian smiled. “Brother Zhou is correct. He taunted you into overextending. You took the bait, and he followed up with a solid blow. You’re underestimating your opponent, and that will get you killed.”

  Kai’s face flushed. “It won’t happen again.” He raised his daggers, two blades to my one, in a quick and angry salute. Even so, I grinned: it was the first time he’d given me such a salute unprompted by Jian or the forms of the practice grounds. I quickly returned it, and we squared off again.

  He was clearly trying to punish me with the series of fast and deadly strikes that he led off with. Oddly, I no longer feared him killing me–but that didn’t mean he didn’t take a peculiar pleasure in cutting me to ribbons. But it was getting harder. Every technique I explored in the manual increased my knowledge of how to slide away from even furious attacks. I danced around him, never trying to touch blades–he was stronger than I was, taller and with longer arms–but just trying to make sure I was never where he needed me to be. And when there was an opening–

  CLANG!

  My arm went numb to the elbow as he whirled to meet the strike I thought I’d concealed, teeth bared. He countered; I threw myself out of the way. Kai gave chase, his blades scything through the air in wide slashes that caught me almost any way I dodged. Except backwards. He was driving me towards a wall. I knew it, but I couldn’t see how to get out of it. I bared my teeth, a growl of frustration slipping past them.

  Kai smiled, smug and sharp. I would not let him turn my victory into the humiliating defeat he had planned. My mind flickered through options while my body retreated. I had very little time before I hit the wall, and every time I even twitched, he countered, driving me back. The only way he let me go–

  Hmm. I leaped backwards and kept going, twisting around so I could see the wall. Kai made a startled noise behind me. And gave chase, just as I’d hoped. Now he was following me, not driving me. Now I was in control.

  Now I was facing a wall. Small problem in an otherwise great plan. There was a small window ledge, its window shuttered. I looked up, and grinned. It wasn’t a fantastic idea, but had the advantage of being surprising.

  We reached the wall. I bit the hilt of my dagger so I’d have both hands and leapt up and forward. My feet hit the window ledge and, trying not to picture Kai’s knives in my back, I bunched and jumped, grabbing the edge of the roof and scrabbling up. To my relief, the tiles held; I rolled to look down, taking back my blade with the motion.

  Kai glared upwards. “Coward! If you planned to flee, you might as well surrender.”

  “I never said I planned to flee,” I pointed out, right before I pounced.

  Surprising, see? I flung myself at full speed off the roof, dagger out. Kai couldn’t get his own knives up in time, but twisted with inhuman grace. I missed the stab, but rolled in mid-air to crash into him. We both went down into an untidy, decidedly ungraceful heap. We flailed and rolled, trying to get the upper hand on each other.

  Unfortunately, Kai was larger and stronger, and I soon found myself on the losing end. Panting and hissing, he brought one of his knives to my throat. “Concede.”

  My dagger rang as I dropped it to the stones. “I concede,” I said, immediately. My objective hadn’t been to win, exactly. It would have been a nice bonus. But I felt I proved my point, so I grinned up at him.

  From nearby, Jian’s voice was dry. “Well, that was entertaining.” Kai made a disgusted noise and rose to his feet, offering me a hand up once he’d sheathed his knives. Jian nodded his approval at the gesture. “Brother Hou, I don’t believe anyone, ever, has trained you in that particular move. Why do you think that is?”

  I tucked my knife away and cleared my throat. “Because it’s kind of stupid in most situations?”

  There was a blink from Jian, then one of his slow smiles. “Correct. So why did you do it?”

  “Kai had me in a bind.” I nodded to him. It was always difficult to read anything except annoyance and disgust from him, but I thought he might have been surprised at the concession. “I can’t overpower him and his arms are longer. Those sweeps had me where he wanted me. I needed to try and change the dynamic–make him follow me, instead of driving me.” My tone turned sheepish. “Everything after that was just, uh, desperate improvisation, though.”

  Kai made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh swallowed into a cough. Jian didn’t bother to hide his chuckle. “I’m glad that you know that, Brother Hou. Sometimes a battle requires it. And you, Brother Kai, fell for the bait. Did you really believe Brother Hou had simply decided to break and run?”

  “I…” Kai grimaced, ducked his head. “Didn’t think about it. He ran. I gave chase.”

  Jian nodded. “There is a reason I wished to pair you two up for sparring, you know. One, I find you both interesting. But your weaknesses are also complementary. You, Kai, have many advantages, including rigorous formal training. But that same training can lock you into your own expectations, and your tendency for aggression and force often encourages you to neglect technique and strategy in a battle. Your enemies will come to learn that you can be controlled by those expectations, baited into using your force unwisely.” His eyes turned to me, not waiting to see Kai’s reaction. “You, Hou, aren’t afraid to try new things and you refuse to let your weaknesses stop you or define you. But physically, you are well below average in height, weight, and conditioning. You have no formal training, and under pressure you tend to improvise. Which, in time, your opponents will expect and compensate for. Creativity is no substitute for skill and power.”

  I didn’t know about Kai, but I felt uncomfortably seen. I tried not to squirm under the Inner Disciple’s gaze. He let the critiques sink in for a moment, then said, “But that’s why you’re training together. You can, if you choose, learn from each other. Compensate for your weakness. Or don’t. Either way, your time grows short–and I have been called away on sect business. I may not be back for a while. You may train together, or find new classes to take during this time. I know which I would recommend, but…” he shrugged and smiled. “Who am I to dictate your path. I should be back for the sect trials. I hope to see you both there.”

  Jian stepped to one side and disappeared into thin air.