“Why was that wrong?” I ask. Subtly, I put a bookmark in the middle of the Abelard book, and set it to the side. I'll finish it later, or not finish it and fake my way through the translation tomorrow in class. It’s not life or death, unlike some of my studies. “What's the difference?”
“Huh?”
“What you did in the tournament and just now,” I specify. “That's an illegal move. But sometimes you can smack people in the head?”
Kai snorts. “Uh,smacking people in the headis not exactly how we describe it. But yeah, sort of.” He scratches the back of his own head, hesitates a moment, then beckons me over.
I stand up, walk across the strips to the dummy, and look where he's indicating.
“See this?” He points at his sword. “The metal thing. Over my hand. This is the…” He pauses, waits for me to fill in.
“Hilt?” I guess.
“Try again,” Kai says. “It's shaped like a…” He spins a finger in the air, prompting.
I squint. “Bell, I guess?”
“Right,” he says. “And what does it do to my hand?”
“Protect it? Guard it?”
“Guard,” he confirms. “This part is the bell guard. So what I did was…” He moves his hand in slow motion toward the dummy, gripping the saber and moving the bell guard towards its cloth head. “I basically just clocked him with the bell guard, and you can't do that. You could give a concussion. Fuck, I probably did give a concussion.” He squints, rubs his temple. “Anyway, the bell guard doesn't light up when you're plugged in, so that's why it doesn't get a point.”
“So what's the legal move?”
“Here.” Kai extracts his hand, flips the sword in the air, and holds it by the blade, extending the handle toward me. “Take it.”
I do. Awkwardly. The handle isn't straight. It's some sort of antler-looking thing with a hook that I think my fingers go around.
“Oh yeah, it's ergo grip. Pistol. Here.” Kai steps to my side, tips the saber forward a little, and shows me. “You put your thumb here, index curled under like that—yeah, kind of brace it against the bell guard with your knuckle—and then the other three curled under here. Like shooting a pistol, kinda.”
“I wouldn't know,” I say darkly.
“Surprisingly, neither would I,” says Kai. “I got off the streets too fast to learn anything about modern weaponry.” He shrugs. “Anyway, come at it like this.” He gestures with his hand. I follow suit. He shakes his head. “No, no, more like…” He flattens his wrist, extends. “You need the blade to bend a little. Strong hand.”
“I see.” I try again, tightening my wrist, and sure enough, the blade flexes when I hit.
“Yeah, see? There you go.”
I untangle my hand from the grip and hand it back to him. “Jeez.” I shake out my fingers. “That hurts.”
“Takes a lot of finger strength,” Kai says. “But with this grip, if you can choke up enough?—”
Footsteps behind us. I turn around and almost jump back, practically knocking over the dummy.
It's Kingston, dressed in dark warm-ups and with a gear bag over his shoulder.
He sees us, lowers it to the ground. I don't know what to say. We weren't doing anything wrong, but whatever we were doing probably looks awfully strange and suspicious, especially to Kingston. And I feel the dual impulse to be defiant and insist on doing what I want and reluctant because I don't want to get Kai in trouble.
Not given what I saw raked across his back.
Fortunately, Kai speaks first. “We weren't?—”
Kingston cuts him off with a raised hand.
“As you were,” he says, smiling slightly. “She likes learning new things.”
TWENTY-TWO
