31 – Evidence
I woke up with the taste of wine and lipstick still in my mouth and the recruit above me snoring and the barracks smelling like sweat and boot leather and the morning bell hadn't rung yet.
The lipstick. I rubbed my mouth with the back of my hand. Checked. My fingers came away clean enough. I'd slept with it on and my pillow probably had a smudge but nobody was inspecting my pillow. I splashed water on my face at the basin. The cold helped. Face clean. Mouth clean. Hair a mess but my hair was always a mess. I pulled on my uniform shirt and buttoned it and adjusted the collar.
The collar.
A smudge on the left side, below the fold, where her mouth had been near my neck on the steps. Red, waxy, faint. I rubbed at it and it smeared instead of lifting and the smear was worse than the smudge and I rubbed harder and it faded to a pinkish stain that could have been anything. Sauce. Dirt.
I adjusted the collar higher. The stain was mostly hidden. The bell rang. Recruits around me were getting up, groaning, pulling on boots. I laced mine and went to breakfast.
The mess hall was loud and crowded and smelled like rice and grilled fish and the coffee that nobody drank willingly but everybody drank anyway. I got my tray and sat at the usual table.
Tashigi was already there with a stack of notes beside her plate. The tactics exam. She was eating with one hand and reading with the other and her glasses were slightly crooked and she didn't look up when I sat down.
"Morning."
"Mm." She turned a page. "The third scenario has a harbor approach from the northwest and I think the current modeling is wrong because the tidal data they gave us assumes spring neap cycles but the scenario is set in autumn and the drift coefficient would be-"
"Good morning to you too."
She looked up. Smiled. The glasses shifted. "Sorry. Good morning, Vance-san. How did you sleep?"
"Fine."
"You have circles under your eyes."
"I said fine, not well."
She went back to her notes. I ate my fish.
Isuka sat down across from me. Her tray hit the table harder than it needed to. Her hands were bandaged, the knuckles wrapped in clean white tape, and she was holding her chopsticks carefully around the wrapping. The training post. Two nights ago.
"Morning," I said.
She didn't answer. She picked up her rice bowl and ate and her jaw was tight and the bandage on her cheek was fresh and her eyes were on her food.
Her eyes came up. To my collar.
She looked at the stain. The pinkish smear on the left side below the fold. Her eyes stayed there. One second. Two. Three. Then her gaze moved to my mouth. Clean. Back to the collar.
She looked at her rice.
The mess hall was loud. Tashigi was reading about tidal coefficients. A recruit at the next table spilled his coffee and swore. Isuka ate her rice and didn't speak.
She stood. Took her tray.
"Training ground. Twenty minutes." She walked away.
Tashigi looked up from her notes. "Is she okay?"
"I don't know."
"She's been..." Tashigi's mouth pressed together. She adjusted her glasses. "Strange. Lately."
"Yeah."
She looked at me for a beat. Then she went back to her notes because the exam was in two hours and Tashigi had priorities.
I finished my fish. The coffee was bitter and bad and I drank it anyway.
She was already on the sand when I got there. Rapier drawn. No warm-up. Standing in the center of the training ground in the morning sun with the rapier at her side and her bandaged hands wrapped around the grip and her feet set and her eyes on me.
"Isuka-"
"Draw."
I drew.
She came in fast. The first exchange was harder than anything she'd thrown in our daily spars and the rapier found my guard arm and the impact rang through the bone and I reset and she was already coming again. The doubled-back pattern, transitions sharp, the finish aimed at my ribs. My ribs that were still bruised from two days ago. She knew they were bruised. She aimed there anyway.
I blocked. Barely. She drove through the block and the force pushed me back and my boot slid in the sand and she was in my space, rapier striking my shoulder, my forearm, my hip. Full force. She wasn't pulling any of them.
I countered. She ate the counter on her bandaged fist and didn't flinch. The tape on her knuckles was already showing pink underneath from the reopened splits and she was fighting through it with her jaw set and her body forward.
She caught me in the ribs. The bruised ones. The pain was sharp and I could have blocked it. I saw it coming. I let it land.
She knew. Her eyes went flat.
She came in harder. A combination I hadn't seen before, half her established style and half something else, and the finish was a drive straight at my center that I tried to sidestep and she adjusted mid-strike and the rapier hit my sternum and I went back and she followed and I was on the ground and she was on top of me.
Her forearm across my throat. Her weight on my chest. Her face close. The bandage on her cheek, the vermilion hair dark with sweat, her brown eyes close enough that the lighter flecks were visible near the pupil.
"Who."
One word. Her forearm pressed harder.
I looked at her. Her jaw was trembling. The tremor was small, in the hinge, and she was clenching against it. Her bandaged hands were tight fists in the sand on either side of my head.
"I can't tell you."
"Can't or won't?"
"Both."
She stared at me. Her forearm on my throat and her weight on my chest and her eyes searching my face. The tremor in her jaw spread to her lower lip and she pressed her mouth shut against it.
She pushed off. The weight left my chest. She stood, picked up her rapier, and walked toward the equipment rack. Racked the rapier. Collected her jacket from the bench. Walked toward the barracks entrance.
She didn't turn back.
I lay on the sand. The sky was blue and the morning sun was warm and my throat ached and my ribs were on fire and the sand was gritty under my head.
Tashigi found me on the ground.
She was carrying her exam notes in one hand and Shigure in the other and she looked down at me and her eyebrows went up.
"What happened?"
"Sparring."
"You're on the ground."
"I noticed."
She set her notes on the bench. Held out her hand. I took it and she pulled me up and my ribs protested and the sand was in my hair and on my back.
"What happened with Isuka?" she said.
"We sparred."
"Vance-san." She pushed her glasses up with one finger. "She's been angry for days. She was hitting the training post until her hands bled. And now she just walked out of a spar without saying goodbye and you're lying on the ground looking like you lost a fight on purpose."
She was too smart for her own good sometimes. Or for mine.
"I can't explain it right now."
"Whatever it is," she said, "fix it."
She picked up her notes. Tucked them under her arm. Adjusted her glasses.
"My exam is in forty minutes. I'll be back after." She walked toward the academic wing. At the door she paused. "You have sand in your hair."
I brushed the sand out. The training ground was empty. The sun was bright and the equipment rack had Isuka's rapier on it, racked neatly, because even furious she was precise about her blade.