We R Igors 4 страница

“Yes, I thought you might, ” said Dr Hopkins, as if the level of the bottle on Jeremy's shelf wasn't something the clockmakers kept a very careful eye on. “Well, I shall be going, then. Well done with the crystals. I used to collect butterflies when I was a boy. Wonderful things, hobbies. Give me a killing jar and a net and I was as happy as a little lark. ”

Jeremy still smiled at him. There was something glassy about the smile.

Dr Hopkins swallowed the remainder of his tea and put the cup back in the saucer.

“And now I really must be on my way, ” he mumbled. “So much to do. Don't wish to keep you from your work. Crystals, eh? Wonderful things. So pretty. ”

“Are they? ” said Jeremy. He hesitated, as though he was trying to solve a minor problem. “Oh, yes. Patterns of light. ”

“Twinkly, ” said Dr Hopkins.

Igor was waiting by the street door when Dr Hopkins reached it. He nodded.

“Mm… you are sure about the medicine? ” the doctor said quietly.

“Oh yeth, thur. Twithe a day I watch him pour out a thpoonful. ”

“Oh, good. He can be a little, er… sometimes he doesn't get on well with people. ”

“Yeth, thur? ”

“Very, um, very particular about accuracy…”

“Yeth, thur. ”

“…which is a good thing, of course. Wonderful thing, accuracy, ” said Dr Hopkins, and sniffed. “Up to a point, of course. Well, good day to you. ”

“Good day, thur. ”

When Igor returned to the workshop Jeremy was carefully pouring the blue medicine into a spoon. When the spoon was exactly full, he tipped it into the sink. “They check, you know, ” he said. “They think I don't notice. ”

“I'm thure they mean well, thur. ”

“I'm afraid I can't think so well when I take the medicine, ” he said. “In fact I think I'm getting on a lot better without it, don't you? It slows me down. ”

Igor took refuge in silence. In his experience, many of the world's greatest discoveries were made by men who would be considered mad by conventional standards. Insanity depended on your point of view, he always said, and if it was the view through your own underpants then everything looked fine.

But young Master Jeremy was beginning to worry him. He never laughed, and Igor liked a good maniacal laugh. You could trust it. Since giving up the medicine, Jeremy had not, as Igor had expected, begun to gibber and shout things like “Mad! They said I was mad! But I shall show them all! Ahahahaha! ” He'd simply become more—focused.

Then there was that smile. Igor was not easily frightened, because otherwise he wouldnl be able to look in a mirror, but he was becoming a little troubled.

“Now, where were we…? ” said Jeremy. “Oh, yes, give me a hand here. ”

Together they moved the table aside. Under it, dozens of glass jars hissed.

“Not enough power, ” said Igor. “Altho, we have not got the mirrorth right yet, thur. ”

Jeremy pulled the cloth off the device on the workbench. Glass and crystal glittered, and in some cases glittered very strangely. As Jeremy had remarked yesterday, in the clarity that was returning now that he was carefully pouring one spoonful of his medicine down the sink twice a day, some of the angles looked wrong. One crystal had disappeared when he'd locked it into place, but it was clearly still there because he could see the light reflecting off it.

“And we've thtill got too much metal in it, thur, ” Igor grumbled. “It wath the thpring that did for the latht one. ”

“We'll find a way, ” said Jeremy.

“Home-made lightning ith never ath good ath the real thort, ” said Igor.

“Good enough to test the principle, ” said Jeremy.

“Tetht the printhiple, tetht the printhiple, ” muttered Igor. “Thorry, thur, but Igorth do not ‘tetht the printhiple’. Thtrap it to the bench and put a good thick bolt of lightning through it, thatth our motto. Thatth how you tetht thomething. ”

“You seem ill at ease, Igor. ”

“Well, I'm thorry, thur, ” said Igor. “It'th the climate dithagreeing with me. I'm uthed to regular thunderthtormth. ”

“I've heard that some people really seem to come alive in thunderstorms, ” said Jeremy, carefully adjusting the angle of a crystal.

“Ah, that wath when I worked for Baron Finklethtein, ” said Igor.

Jeremy stood back. This wasn't the clock, of course. There was still a lot more work to do (but he could see it in front of him, if he closed his eyes) before they had a clock. This was just an essay, to see if he was on the right lines.

He was on the right lines. He knew it.

Tick

Susan walked back through the motionless streets, sat down in Madam Frout's office and let herself sink back into the stream of time.

She had never found out how this worked. It just did. Time didn't stop for the rest of the world, and it didn't stop for her—it was just that she entered a kind of loop of time, and everything else stayed exactly as it was until she'd finished what she needed to do.

It was another inherited family trait. It worked best if you didn't think about it, just like tightrope walking. Anyway, now she had other things to think about.

Madam Frout turned her gaze back from the rat-free mantelpiece. “Oh, ” she said. “It seems to have gone. ”

“It was probably a trick of the light, madam, ” said Susan. Mostly human. Someone like me, she thought.

“Yes, er, of course…” Madam Frout managed to get her glasses on, despite the fact that the string was still tangled with the button. It meant that she'd moored herself to her own chest, but she was damned if she was going to do anything about it now.

Susan could unnerve a glacier. All she had to do was sit quietly, looking polite and alert.

“What precisely was it you wanted, madam? ” she said. “It's just that I've left the class doing algebra, and they get restless when they've finished. ”

“Algebra? ” said Madam Frout, perforce staring at her own bosom, which no one else had ever done. “But that's far too difficult for seven-year-olds! ”

“Yes, but I didn't tell them that and so far they haven't found out, ” said Susan. It was time to move things along. “I expect you wanted to see me about my letter, madam? ” she said.

Madam Frout looked blank. “Wh—” she began.

Susan sighed and snapped her fingers.

She walked round and opened a drawer by the motionless Madam Frout, removed a sheet of paper and spent some time carefully writing a letter. She let the ink dry, rustled the paper a bit to make it look slightly second-hand, and then put it just under the top of the pile of paperwork beside Madam Frout, with enough of it peeking out so that it would be easy to see.

She returned to her seat. She snapped her fingers again.

“—at letter? ” said Madam Frout. And then she looked down at her desk. “Oh. ”

It was a cruel thing to do, Susan knew. But while Madam Frout was not by any means a bad person and was quite kind to children, in a haphazard way, she was silly. And Susan did not have a lot of time for silly.

“Yes, I asked if I might have a few days' leave, ” said Susan. “Pressing family matters, I'm afraid. I have prepared some work for the children to get on with, of course. ”

Madam Frout hesitated. Susan didn't have time for this, either. She snapped her fingers.

“MY GOODNESS, THAT'D BE A RELIEF, ” she said, in a voice whose harmonics went all the way into the subconscious. “IF WE DON'T SLOW HER DOWN WE'LL RUN OUT OF THINGS TO TEACH THEM! SHE HAS BEEN PERFORMING SMALL MIRACLES ON A DAILY BASIS AND DESERVES A RAISE. ”

Then she sat back, snapped her fingers again, and watched the words settle into the forefront of Madam Frours mind. The woman's lips actually moved.

“Why, yes, of course, ” she murmured at last. “You have been working very hard… and… and, ” and since there are things even a voice of eldritch command can't achieve and one of them is to get extra money out of a head teacher, “we shall have to think about a little increment for you one of these days. ”

Susan returned to the classroom and spent the rest of the day performing small miracles, which included removing the glue from Richenda's hair, emptying the wee out of Billy's shoes and treating the class to a short visit to the continent of Fourecks.

When their parents came to pick them up they were all waving crayoned pictures of kangaroos, and Susan had to hope that the red dust on their shoes—red mud in the case of Billy's, whose sense of timing had not improved—would pass unnoticed. It probably would. Fidgett's was not the only place where adults didn't see what couldn't possibly be true.

Now she sat back.

There was something pleasant about an empty classroom. Of course, as any teacher would point out, one nice thing was that there were no children in it, and particularly no Jason.

But the tables and shelves around the room showed evidence of a term well spent. Paintings lined the walls, and displayed good use of perspective and colour. The class had built a full-size white horse out of cardboard boxes, during which time they'd learned a lot about horses and Susan learned about Jason's remarkably accurate powers of observation. She'd had to take the cardboard tube away from him and explain that this was a polite horse.

It had been a long day. She raised the lid of her desk and took out Grim Fairy Tales. This dislodged some paperwork, which in turn revealed a small cardboard box decorated in black and gold.

It had been a little present from Vincent's parents.

She stared at the box.

Every day she had to go through this. It was ridiculous. It wasn't even as if Higgs & Meakins did good chocolates. They were just butter and sugar and—

She scrabbled amongst the sad little scraps of brown paper inside the box and pulled out a chocolate. No one could be expected not to have just one chocolate, after all.

She put it in her mouth.

Damndamn damndamn! It was nougat inside! Her one chocolate today and it was damn artificial damn pink-and-white damn sickly damn stupid nougat!

Well, no one could be expected to believe that counted. [9] She was entitled to another—

The teacher part of her, which had eyes in the back of its head, caught the blur of movement. She spun round.

“No running with scythes! ”

The Death of Rats stopped jogging along the Nature Table and gave her a guilty look.

SQUEAK?

“And no going into the Stationery Cupboard, either, ” said Susan, automatically. She slammed the desk lid shut.

SQUEAK!

“Yes, you were. I could hear you thinking about it. ” It was possible to deal with the Death of Rats provided you thought of him as a very small Jason.

The Stationery Cupboard! That was one of the great battlegrounds of classroom history, that and the playhouse. But the ownership of the playhouse usually sorted itself out without Susan's intervention, so that all she had to do was be ready with ointment, a nose-blow and mild sympathy for the losers, whereas the Stationery Cupboard was a war of attrition. It contained pots of powder paint and reams of paper and boxes of crayons and more idiosyncratic items like a spare pair of pants for Billy, who did his best. It also contained The Scissors, which under classroom rules were treated as some kind of Doomsday Machine, and, of course, the boxes of stars. The only people allowed in the cupboard were Susan and, usually, Vincent. Despite everything Susan had tried, short of actual deception, he was always the official “best at everything” and won the coveted honour every day, which was to go into the Stationery Cupboard and fetch the pencils and hand them out. For the rest of the class, and especially Jason, the Stationery Cupboard was some mystic magic realm to be entered whenever possible.

Honestly, thought Susan, once you learn the arts of defending the Stationery Cupboard, outwitting Jason and keeping the class pet alive until the end of term, you've mastered at least half of teaching.

She signed the register, watered the sad plants on the windowsill, went and fetched some fresh privet from the hedge for the stick insects that were the successor to Henry the Hamster (chosen on the basis that it was quite hard to tell when they were dead), tidied a few errant crayons away and looked around the classroom at all those little chairs. It sometimes worried her that nearly everyone she knew well was three feet high.

She was never certain that she trusted her grandfather at times like this. It was all to do with the Rules. He couldn't interfere, but he knew her weaknesses and he could wind her up and send her out into the world…

Someone like me. Yes, he'd known how to engage her interest.

Someone like me. Suddenly there's some dangerous clock somewhere in the world, and suddenly I'm told that there's someone like me.

Someone like me. Except not like me. At least I knew my parents. And she'd listened to Death's account of the tall dark woman wandering from room to room in the endless castle of glass, weeping for the child she'd given birth to and could see every day but could never touch…

Where do I even begin?

Tick

Lobsang learned a lot. He learned that every room has at least four corners. He learned that the sweepers started work when the sky was light enough to see the dust, and continued until sunset.

As a master, Lu-Tze was kind enough. He would always point out those bits that Lobsang had not done properly.

After the initial anger, and the taunting of his former classmates, Lobsang found that the work had a certain charm. Days drifted past under his broom…

…until, almost with an audible click in his brain, he decided that enough was enough. He finished his section of passageway, and found Lu-Tze dreamily pushing his brush along a terrace. “Sweeper? ”

“Yes, lad? ”

“What is it you are trying to tell me? ”

“I'm sorry? ”

“I didn't expect to become a… a sweeper! You're Lu-Tze! I expected to be apprentice to… well, to the hero! ”

“You did? ” Lu-Tze scratched his beard. “Oh, dear. Damn. Yes, I can see the problem. You should've said. Why didn't you say? I don't really do that sort of thing any more. ”

“You don't? ”

“All that playing with history, running about, unsettling people… No, not really. I was never quite certain we should be doing it, to be honest. No, sweeping is good enough for me. There's something… real about a nice clean floor. ”

“This is a test, isn't it? ” said Lobsang coldly.

“Oh, yes. ”

“I mean, I understand how it works. The master makes the pupil do all the menial jobs, and then it turns out that really the pupil is learning things of great value… and I don't think I'm learning anything, really, except that people are pretty messy and inconsiderate. ”

“Not a bad lesson, all the same, ” said Lu-Tze. “Is it not written, ‘Hard work never did anybody any harm’? ”

“Where is this written, Lu-Tze? ” said Lobsang, thoroughly exasperated.

The sweeper brightened up. “Ah, ” he said. “Perhaps the pupil is ready to learn. Is it that you don't wish to know the Way of the Sweeper, you wish to learn instead the Way of Mrs Cosmopilite? ”

“Who? ”

“We have swept well. Let's go to the gardens. For is it not written, ‘It does you good to get out in the fresh air’? ”

“Is it? ” said Lobsang, still bewildered.

Lu-Tze pulled a small tattered notebook out of his pocket.

“In here, it is, ” he said. “I should know. ”

Tick

Lu-Tze patiently adjusted a tiny mirror to redirect sunlight more favourably on one of the bonsai mountains. He hummed tunelessly under his breath.

Lobsang, sitting cross-legged on the stones, carefully turned the yellowing pages of the ancient notebook on which was written, in faded ink, “The Way of Mrs Cosmopilite”.

“Well? ” said Lu-Tze.

“The Way has an answer for everything, does it? ”

“Yes. ”

“Then…” Lobsang nodded at the little volcano, which was gently smoking, “how does that work? It's on a saucer! ”

Lu-Tze stared straight ahead, his lips moving. “Page seventy-six, I think, ” he said.

Lobsang turned to the page. “‘Because, ’” he read.

“Good answer, ” said Lu-Tze, gently caressing a minute crag with a camel-hair brush.

“Just ‘Because’, Sweeper? No reason? ”

“Reason? What reason can a mountain have? And, as you accumulate years, you will learn that most answers boil down, eventually, to ‘Because’. ”

Lobsang said nothing. The Book of the Way was giving him problems. What he wanted to say was this: Lu-Tze, this reads like a book of the sayings of an old lady. It's the sort of thing old ladies say. What kind of koan is “It won't get better if you pick at it, ” or “Eat it up, it'll make your hair curly, ” or “Everything comes to he who waits”? This is stuff you get in Hogswatch crackers!

“Really? ” said Lu-Tze, still apparently engrossed in a mountain.

“I didn't say anything. ”

“Oh. I thought you did. Do you miss Ankh-Morpork? ”

“Yes. I didn't have to sweep floors there. ”

“Were you a good thief? ”

“I was a fantastic thief. ”

A breeze blew the scent of cherry blossom. Just once, thought Lu-Tze, it would be nice to pick cherries.

“I have been to Ankh-Morpork, ” he said, straightening up and moving on to the next mountain. “You have seen the visitors we get here? ”

“Yes, ” said Lobsang. “Everyone laughs at them. ”

“Really? ” Lu-Tze raised his eyebrows. “When they have trekked thousands of miles seeking the truth? ”

“But did not Wen say that if the truth is anywhere, it is everywhere? ” said Lobsang.

“Well done. I see you've learned something, at least. But one day it seemed to me that everyone else had decided that wisdom can only be found a long way off. So I went to Ankh-Morpork. They were all coming here, so it seemed only fair. ”

“Seeking enlightenment? ”

“No. The wise man does not seek enlightenment, he waits for it. So while I was waiting it occurred to me that seeking perplexity might be more fun, ” said Lu-Tze. “After all, enlightenment begins where perplexity ends. And I found perplexity. And a kind of enlightenment, too. I had not been there five minutes, for example, when some men in an alley tried to enlighten me of what little I possessed, giving me a valuable lesson in the ridiculousness of material things. ”

“But why Ankh-Morpork? ” said Lobsang.

“Look in the back of the book, ” said Lu-Tze.

There was a yellow, crackling scrap of paper tucked in there. The boy unfolded it.

“Oh, this is just a bit of the Almanack, ” he said. “It's very popular there. ”

“Yes. A seeker after wisdom left it here. ”

“Er… it's just got the Phases of the Moon on this page. ”

“Other side, ” said the sweeper.

Lobsang turned the paper over. “It's just an advert from the Ankh-Morpork Guild of Merchants, ” he said. “‘Ankh-Morpork Has Everything! ’” He stared at the smiling Lu-Tze. “And… you thought that—”

“Ah, I am old and simple and understand, ” said the sweeper. “Whereas you are young and complicated. Didn't Wen see portents in the swirl of gruel in his bowl, and in the flight of birds? This was actually written. I mean, flights of birds are quite complex, but these were words. And, after a lifetime of searching, I saw at last the opening of the Way. My Way. ”

“And you went all the way to Ankh-Morpork…” said Lobsang weakly.

“And I fetched up, calm of mind but empty of pocket, in Quirm Street, ” said the sweeper, smiling serenely at the recollection, “and espied a sign in a window saying ‘Rooms For Rent’. Thus I met Mrs Cosmopilite, who opened the door when I knocked and then when I hesitated, not being sure of the language, she said, ‘I haven't got all day, you know. ’ Almost to a word, one of the sayings of Wen! Instantly I knew that I had found what I was seeking! During the days I washed dishes in an eating house for twenty pence a day and all the scraps I could take away, and in the evenings I helped Mrs Cosmopilite clean the house and listened carefully to her conversation. She was a natural sweeper with a good rhythmical motion and had bottomless wisdom. Within the first two days she uttered to me the actual words said by Wen upon understanding the true nature of Time! It was when I asked for a reduced rate because of course I did not sleep in a bed, and she said ‘I was not born yesterday, Mr Tze! ’ Astonishing! And she could never have seen the Sacred Texts! ”

Lobsang's face was a carefully drawn picture. “‘I was not born yesterday’? ” he said.

“Ah, yes, of course, as a novice you would not have got that far, ” said Lu-Tze. “It was when he fell asleep in a cave and in a dream saw Time appear to him and show him that the universe is recreated from second to second, endlessly, with the past just a memory. And he stepped out from the cave into the truly new world and said, ‘I was not born—yesterday’! ”

“Oh, yes, ” said Lobsang. “But—”

“Ah, Mrs Cosmopilite, ” said Lu-Tze, his eyes misting over. “What a woman for keeping things clean! If she were a sweeper here, no one would be allowed to walk on the floor! Her house! So amazing! A palace! New sheets every other week! And cook? Just to taste her Beans Baked Upon the Toast a man would give up a cycle of the universe! ”

“Um, ” said Lobsang.

“I stayed for three months, sweeping her house as is fitting for the pupil, and then I returned here, my Way clear before me. ”

“And, er, these stories about you…”

“Oh, all true. Most of them. A bit of exaggeration, but mostly true. ”

“The one about the citadel in Muntab and the Pash and the fish bone? ”

“Oh, yes. ”

“But how did you get in where hall a dozen trained and armed men couldn't even—? ”

“I'm a little man and I carry a broom, ” said Lu-Tze simply. “Everyone has some mess that needs clearing up. What harm is a man with a broom? ”

“What? And that was it? ”

“Well, the rest was a matter of cookery, really. The Pash was not a good man, but he was a glutton for his fish pie. ”

“No martial arts? ” said Lobsang.

“Oh, always a last resort. History needs shepherds, not butchers. ”

“Do you know okidoki? ”

“Just a lot of bunny-hops. ”

“Shiitake? ”

“If I wanted to thrust my hand into hot sand I would go to the seaside. ”

“Upsidazi? ”

“A waste of good bricks. ”

“No kando? ”

“You made that one up. ”

“Tung-pi? ”

“Bad-tempered flower-arranging. ”

“Deja-fu? ” That got a reaction. Lu Tze's eyebrows raised.

“Deja-fu? You heard that rumour? Ha! None of the monks here knows deja-fu, ” he said. “I'd soon know about it if they did. Look, boy, violence is the resort of the violent. In most tight corners a broomstick suffices. ”

“Only most, eh? ” said Lobsang, not trying to hide the sarcasm.

“Oh, I see. You wish to face me in the dojo? For it's a very old truth: when the pupil can beat the master, there is nothing the master cannot tell him, because the apprenticeship is ended. You want to learn? ”

“Ah! I knew there was something to learn! ”

Lu-Tze stood up. “Why you? ” he said. “Why here? Why now? ‘There is a time and a place for everything. ’ Why this time and this place? If I take you to the dojo, you will return what you stole from me! Now! ”

He looked down at the teak table where he worked on his mountains.

The little shovel was there.

A few cherry blossom petals fluttered to the ground.

“I see, ” he said. “You are that fast? I did not see you. ”

Lobsang said nothing.

“It is a small and worthless thing, ” said Lu-Tze. “Why did you take it, please? ”

“To see if I could. I was bored. ”

“Ah. We shall see if we can make life more interesting for you, then. No wonder you are bored, when you can already slice time like that. ”

Lu-Tze turned the little shovel over and over in his hand.

“Very fast, ” he said. He leaned down and blew the petals away from a tiny glacier. “You slice time as fast as a Tenth Djim. And as yet barely trained. You must have been a great thief! And now… Oh dear, I shall have to face you in the dojo…”

“No, there is no need! ” said Lobsang, because now Lu-Tze looked frightened and humiliated and, somehow, smaller and brittle-boned.

“I insist, ” said the old man. “Let us get it done now. For it is written, ‘There is no time like the present’, which is Mrs Cosmopilite's most profound understanding. ” He sighed and looked up at the giant statue of Wen.

“Look at him, ” he said. “He was a lad, eh? Completely blissed out on the universe. Saw the past and future as one living person, and wrote the Books of History to tell how the story should go. We can't imagine what those eyes saw. And he never raised a hand to any man in his life. ”

“Look, I really didn't want to—”

“And you've looked at the other statues? ” said Lu-Tze, as if he'd completely forgotten about the dojo.

Distractedly, Lobsang followed his gaze. Up on the raised stone platform that ran the whole length of the gardens were hundreds of smaller statues, mostly carved of wood, all of them painted in garish colours. Figures with more eyes than legs, more tails than teeth, monstrous amalgamations of fish and squid and tiger and parsnip, things put together as if the creator of the universe had tipped out his box of spare parts and stuck them together, things painted pink and orange and purple and gold, looked down over the valley.

“Oh, the dhlang— ” Lobsang began.

“Demons? That's one word for them, ” said the sweeper. “The abbot called them the Enemies of Mind. Wen wrote a scroll about them, you know. And he said that was the worst. ”

He pointed to a little hooded grey shape, which looked out of place among the festival of wild extremities.

“Doesn't look very dangerous, ” said Lobsang. “Look, Sweeper, I don't want to—”

“They can be very dangerous, things that don't look dangerous, ” said Lu-Tze. “Not looking dangerous is what makes them dangerous. For it is written, ‘You can't tell a book by its cover. ’”

“Lu-Tze, I really don't want to fight you—”

“Oh, your tutors will tell you that the discipline of a martial art enables you to slice time, and that's true as far as it goes, ” said Lu-Tze, apparently not listening. “But so can sweeping, as perhaps you have found. Always find the perfect moment, Wen said. People just seem so keen on using it to kick other people on the back of the neck. ”

“But it wasn't a challenge, I just wanted you to show me—”

“And I shall. Come on. I made a bargain. I must keep it, old fool that I am. ”

The nearest dojo was the dojo of the Tenth Djim. It was empty except for two monks blurring as they danced across the mat and wrapped time around themselves.

Lu-Tze had been right, Lobsang knew. Time was a resource. You could learn to let it move fast or slow, so that a monk could walk easily through a crowd and yet be moving so fast that no one could see him. Or he could stand still for a few seconds, and watch the sun and moon chase one another across a flickering sky. He could meditate for a day in a minute. Here, in the valley, a day lasted for ever. Blossom never became cherries.

The blurred fighters became a couple of hesitant monks when they saw Lu-Tze. He bowed.

“I beg the use of this dojo for a short period while my apprentice teaches me the folly of old age, ” he said.

“I really didn't mean—” Lobsang began, but Lu-Tze elbowed him in the ribs. The monks gave the old man a nervous look.

“It's yours, Lu-Tze, ” said one of them. They hurried out, almost tripping over their own feet as they looked back.

“Time and its control is what we should teach here, ” said Lu-Tze, watching them go. “The martial arts are an aid. That is all they are. At least, that's all they were meant to be. Even out in the world a well-trained person may perceive, in the fray, how flexible time may be. Here, we can build on that. Compress time. Stretch time. Hold the moment. Punching people's kidneys out through their nose is only a foolish by-product. ”

Lu-Tze took down a razor-edged pika sword from the rack and handed it to the shocked boy.

“You've seen one of these before? They're not really for novices, but you show promise. ”

“Yes, Sweeper, but—”

“Know how to use it? ”

“I'm good with the practice ones, but they're just made of—”

“Take it, then, and attack me. ”

There was a rustling noise above them. Lobsang looked up and saw monks pouring into the observation gallery above the dojo. There were some very senior ones among them. News gets around quickly in a little world.

“Rule Two, ” said Lu-Tze, “is never refuse a weapon. ” He took a few steps back. “In your own time, boy. ”