CHAPTER 23: SAYA'S SPARRING
The crack of wooden bokken against wooden bokken echoed through the private training room.
Marcus blocked — barely — and felt the impact all the way up his arm. Saya was fast. Faster than he'd expected, and he'd expected a lot. Kuroki Syndicate heirs didn't learn from YouTube tutorials.
"Again," she said, resetting her stance. The training blade flowed back to guard position like water finding its level. "You're still holding back."
"I'm not—"
She attacked before he could finish. High strike, feint, reverse cut that should have taken his legs out from under him. Marcus's body moved without his permission — Takeshi's footwork carrying him out of range, repositioning him at an angle that would have been perfect for a counter-slash if he'd been thinking instead of reacting.
Saya's eyes narrowed.
"Interesting," she said. "Again."
They'd been at this for an hour. What had started as a casual request — "Show me what you can actually do" — had turned into something closer to an interrogation. Every time Marcus demonstrated a skill, Saya pushed harder. Every time he revealed a technique, she catalogued it with the precision of someone building a case file.
This was a mistake, Marcus realized, too late to matter.
"You're self-taught," Saya said, circling. "That's what you told me."
"That's right."
"The footwork you just used was developed in feudal Japan. Specifically, by the Shadow Monk schools of the Ashikaga period." She didn't sound angry. She sounded curious, which was worse. "They were wiped out four hundred years ago. How does a homeless boy from San Francisco move like a dead Japanese assassin?"
Marcus's grip tightened on his bokken. "Lucky guess?"
"I don't believe in luck." Saya lowered her weapon, studying him the way she might study a contract with hidden clauses. "You've demonstrated Florentine knife techniques. Ottoman defensive patterns. Now feudal Japanese infiltration footwork. That's not talent. That's not training. That's something else."
"Saya—"
"You have two choices." Her voice cut through his attempt at deflection. "You tell me the truth, or our arrangement ends today. I don't sponsor mysteries."
The training room felt very small. Marcus could hear his own heartbeat, too fast, too loud. Everything he'd built — the alliance, the protection, the fragile network of survival — all of it hanging on whatever came out of his mouth next.
Tell her the truth.
He couldn't. Transmigrator? Ancestral memories? Carrying dead people's skills inside his skull? Even if she believed him, the knowledge would make him a target. Make both of them targets.
Lie better.
He couldn't do that either. Saya would see through it. She was already seeing through him, watching the micro-expressions he couldn't control, cataloguing every hesitation.
"I don't have a good answer," he said finally. The words came out rough, honest in a way he hadn't intended. "I know things I shouldn't know. I can do things I shouldn't be able to do. It started recently. I don't fully understand it myself."
Saya was quiet for a long moment.
"Recently," she repeated. "Since you arrived at King's Dominion?"
"Before. But worse since I got here."
"Are you a threat to me?"
"No." That, at least, was completely true. "Whatever I am, I'm not your enemy. I'm not anyone's enemy except the people who are already trying to kill me."
Saya set down her bokken. She walked to a bench at the edge of the training room, picking up a towel and pressing it to her face. The silence stretched, uncomfortable and heavy with implications Marcus couldn't predict.
When she turned back, her expression had shifted. Not warm — Saya didn't do warm — but something like... acceptance. Provisional. Conditional.
"You're more useful than dangerous," she said. "That's enough for now."
"That's it?"
"That's it." She extended her hand — not for a handshake, not quite. An offer. A gesture that meant something more complicated. "Don't lie to me again."
Marcus took her hand, feeling the calluses on her palm, the strength in her grip.
"I'll try not to," he said, knowing he'd just lied anyway.
Saya's eyes said she knew it too.
"We're not done with this conversation," she said, releasing him. "But we're done for today."
She left without looking back. Marcus stood alone in the training room, surrounded by the echoes of wooden blades and questions he still couldn't answer.
She gave me time, he thought. Not forgiveness. Time.
He wondered how long that would last.