The fan flies faster and faster, each combatant hoping that the other will make a mistake and miss the return. By the seventh circuit, the fan is spinning with such speed and traveling with such velocity that the air is ringing with the high hum of singing metal.
After the completion of the tenth circuit, the metal is flying so quickly that I can barely see it. As Doi receives it, instead of catching it with her hands, she kicks it into the air, causing it to roll on its axis as it travels back toward Suki. Each roll causes it to wobble in its flight path. The spinning fan weaves in and out between the girls as if they’re an obstacle course, cutting the straps that bind their face, breast, and gauntlet armor in place.
As the blade finally buries itself in a mannequin, pieces of armor fall to the pearl in a great clatter. The attackers are unmasked and unarmored, down to their pearlsilk underclothes. The senseis haven’t tallied the points and Multipliers yet, but they don’t have to.
We all know that that girl, standing there heaving with exhaustion, has not just finished first at this Motivation.
That girl, uncovered but unharmed, has just done something legendary.
That girl, stripped but unashamed, has just made academy history.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
After the luckieth Motivation, Doi’s ranked first, I’m second, and Suki’s sixth. The first-year boys’ Motivation will be delayed a day longer than last time. I guess that this is because the damage to the Palace of the Eighteen Outstanding Pieties was much worse than what happened to the Pagoda of Filial Sacrifice.
I wish it were delayed even longer, because I know that when the New Deitsu team comes, Chairman Niu will want to see me.
Suki continues whispering to the other students at every opportunity about the attack on the palace. “You see! The Empress Dowager won’t stop until she has the secret of the pearl, no matter how many hostages’ feet she binds or how many structures her spy destroys!”
However, it appears that she still hasn’t taken her claims to Pearl Shining Sun yet because I don’t see my name or Cricket’s written in birds. Maybe she knows that she doesn’t have enough evidence. Maybe she believes that I have evidence about her cheating at the first Motivation. Or maybe it’s simply that it’s usually too cloudy during the Season of Spirits for Sensei Madame Phoenix and her birds to do the Pearl Shining Sun headlines.
Or worse, perhaps it’s because Suki’s too busy with her new favorite target. Doi can’t seem to go anywhere without Suki and the House of Flowering Blossoms girls spewing comments after her.
“Some girls will do anything to get attention!”
“Did your father finally realize you exist?”
During literature class, Suki recites her essay about Princess Eyun Dei-Bwun. She tells us that during her reign, Princess Eyun Dei-Bwun, commonly known as the Mad Seductress of Pearl, wreaked havoc on Pearl’s system of measures by constantly revising the standard unit of measurement to match the length between her hips and the hem of her dresses, which became shorter and shorter throughout her reign, until her sister had her drowned in a well for her depravity. Since the assignment was to write an essay about famous speeches by military leaders on the eve of battle, it’s clear that Suki’s just using this to humiliate Doi again.
During architecture class, Sagacious Monk Goom calls Doi to the front of the class to take her turn at another weird counting exercise with Chingu, the oracular monkey. As Doi skates up the aisle, Suki leans out to yank at her length of waterfall hair. Before her fingers brush a single strand, Doi has spun around and is frozen in position with her skate blade at Suki’s throat.
“She’s attacking me outside of wu liu practice again!” squeals Suki, and the House of Flowering Blossoms girls all shriek like starved hatchlings.
The squealing sets off Chingu, who starts jumping from desk to desk, screeching and chopping at them with her cleaver. We cower underneath the desks as this spoiled, deranged monkey hacks at them. I don’t need to be an oracular monkey to predict that the price for getting close enough to Chingu to receive an oracle is a hand, or at least a few fingers.
Doi never says anything in response to the abuse. I don’t say anything, either, because I’m too ashamed to say anything. And I’m only more ashamed that I don’t say anything.
There is so much rage in her. And such willingness to do things that everyone else would call too reckless, too extreme. I still don’t know whom she’s talking to at the Courtyard of Supreme Placidness about “hostages.” All I know is that I don’t know how to talk to her, because I’m a little afraid of her.
* * *
As announced, the New Deitsu team is soon here. Supreme Sensei Master Jio tells us that we’re not to face south while they repair the Palace of the Eighteen Outstanding Pieties. The boys and girls are put together in a joint wu liu practice session on the Conservatory of Wu Liu. Since no one can do a complete spin or flip without facing south at some point, we’re simply given the task of speed racing. Sensei Madame Liao and Sensei Master Bao have us form ten queues and skate as quickly as we can northward, and then skate back southward to return to where we started. It’s a boring but dangerous exercise because it’s easy to collide with another student in these tight lanes of speed skaters going in opposite directions.
Cricket accidentally hooks his arm with the arm of another student going in the opposite direction. They twirl each other around like dancing partners before taking out two more skaters with them in a terrible crash. Ten thousand years of stomach gas. All of them are made to sit out the rest of the session. Fortunately,
