The Sack of the Summer Palace

The brief and ill-fated fighting career of Chatang Catskinner

When Chesa returned to the succulent garden, the crowd had tripled in size, and the Cat Who Swats at Thunderheads was boxing, bare-handed, with Lin Aden. The young brother was quick and precise, and the Cat could not evade him as easily as he had Gawang, for Lin Aden also knew the rudiments of the Crane's Migration Step, although his leaps were neither as high nor as far as the Cat's. Still, there could be no mistaking who would prevail; for, after who knew how many fights, the Cat had yet to break a sweat, and each of Lin Aden's moves was just slightly slower than the last.

Chesa looked around at the casualties. Marshal Gawang was sitting with Mme Jampa, who had a cup of broth for his lips and a compress of some kind for his head. Brugmey the stableboy had a black eye and a split lip; Lin Tsawa nursed a cut near his hairline; the Azure Wind and the two Demon Guards were nowhere to be seen, but Chesa picked up murmurs of missing teeth and broken bones tearing through skin. More than one scullion whispered “Cloudcutter” to a comrade, and more than one comrade laughed, only half-scoffing.

The thought of such injuries turned Chesa's knees to water. She watched the contretemps for a moment, the Cat Who Swats at Thunderheads gradually, teasingly demonstrating his mastery over the good-looking youth whose comrades called him the Bear in Winter. The Cat's skill was consummate, it could not be denied; but did that make him a wer-tiger? Surely there were men as good with the sword, and better, and nothing she had seen could possibly suggest he was a cannibal, still less a mass-murdering one. But what else can one do, when a figure from a story presents himself in the world, but credit his reputation? Lin Ben could surely do no better against the Cat than she could—but no Green Morning brother would stoop to monomachy against the Cat after he had hit a woman. She had only to survive one strike.

There was a great thump, as of a ram hitting a gate; Lin Aden fell, and the Cat Who Swats at Thunderheads brought his head up from its impact with Lin Aden's chest, his arms coming up in the familiar supplication of the crowd, his strides falling into that familiar strut. “Come, Lin Ben!" he called. “I require an apéritif!”

"Lin Ben is indisposed," called Chesa. "Lin Chatang stands for him." With the words, she summoned back the northern accent that a year and more in Rassha had polished away, hoping it would mask the voice that the palace staff knew. She could hear the Green Morning brothers murmuring among themselves, wondering who this interloper was. "A brother of Drogmo colony. I look forward to meeting my brothers when I have stood for Lin Ben."

The Cat smirked. "It is all one to me. Will you use the straightsword, as he stipulated, or go bare-hand, as these other cowards have seen fit to do?"

Chesa nearly said "bare-hand," as she had planned to do, but thought at the last moment of the scenario in which two boxers go to the close range, grappling and gouging. He could not mistake her sex then, and might end the encounter before a hit. "The sword," she said, "as my friend agreed."

"Good man." The Cat grinned a strange grin—for his teeth were flat and straight enough, a credit to any mouth, yet somehow also gleaming and needle-sharp, as it seemed to Chesa. “But you seem to have mislaid your sword."

“I do not carry one,” said Chesa. “Is there a spare?”

Someone from the crowd tossed a blade; luckily, it landed far from her, so that she had no reason to try to catch it. She walked over to it and raised it. It was a heavy thing for all its delicacy, ugly for all its grace.

"Chatang of the North!" someone called, and "Catskinner!" Both epithets echoed in the crowd, though it seemed the latter was more popular. This visibly nettled the Cat, and Chesa's heart, unmoored of reason, soared. 

"Come, little tiger!" she cried. "Come and go home hungry!"

If the Cat's leap was quick to a spectator, to an opponent it was nearly invisible. Chesa fumbled with the sword, not sure quite where it ought to be to block the Cat's plummeting stroke; in desperation, she swept it through the air in front of her.

There was no ring of steel on steel, only an impact like a dragon's paw in the middle of her chest. There was something new inside her body, where it should not be, and there was cold, and pain. But not for long.