The dirt road from the farm to the village was a five-mile argument, and Mordecai was losing.
"I'm just saying," Silas wheezed, adjusting the strap of the empty grain sack he'd insisted on carrying. "I'm just saying that if a man is going to walk five miles on a day when the wind is trying to peel the skin off his face, that man should have a better reason than 'we're low on feed.' We are never not low on feed, Cai. It's our natural state."
Mordecai just kept walking, his long, farmer's stride eating the ground. Silas, who was built more for comfort than speed, took three shuffling steps for every two of his. Silas was a mountain of a friend, round in a way that suggested he was hoarding rations for a winter that never came, and his face was already a bright, sweating red under a thatch of sandy hair.
"It's the market," Mordecai grunted, his eyes on the horizon.
"A-ha! The market!" Silas jabbed a thick finger in the air. "And what do we find at the market? We find feed. We find wire. And we find Esther, standing by the flower stall, pretending she doesn't know you've been staring at the back of her head for an hour. It's not Market Day, Cai. It's Esther-day. Just admit it. Admit your heart is a small, fluttering bird."
"My heart is a stone," Mordecai muttered, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips. "And you're a fool."
"I am a fool in the service of romance!" Silas declared to a passing crow. "You are a brooder. It's not attractive. You haunt that poor girl. You just... glower from behind the potato sacks. It's a thriller, not a romance. Go up. Say 'Hello.' Maybe 'my, what lovely... hair... you have.' Something!"
"And what do I say after that, Si? 'Hello, Esther, my name is Mordecai, and I'm the proud owner of five acres of dust and a barn full of my grandfather's failures'?"
The rare flicker of humor in Mordecai's eyes died, extinguished by his own words. His pace quickened.
"Cai, come on, that's not—" Silas's protest was cut short as he stumbled, catching himself before he fell. "Gods, man, slow down. You're trying to kill me before we even get to the shame."
Mordecai stopped. Not because Silas asked, but because they had come around the low, scrub-covered hill that marked the edge of the village proper.
And there it was.
The shame.
The "Rising Sun Karate School" was set back from the road, a wide, single-story building that had once been painted a hopeful white. Now, it was a monument to decay. The wind, which had been their enemy on the road, was a different kind of monster here. It hissed and whistled through the dozen broken windows. The front door was gone, probably stolen for firewood, and the boards that had been nailed over the entrance were splintered and hanging loose.
But it was the paint that held Mordecai captive.
The building was a canvas of humiliation. The Dragon's Claw had been thorough. Their sigil—a black, coiling dragon eating its own tail—was sprayed everywhere. But it was the words, scrawled in a vicious, dripping red, that were the true insult.
SUN'S SET, OLD MAN.
RISING SLUM.
YOUR GRANDFATHER DIED A COWARD.
Silas's jovial, wheezing breath turned into a low, angry growl. His whole body seemed to swell, his hands clenching into fists that were, Mordecai knew, surprisingly solid for all their softness.
"The bastards," Silas hissed, the word a small, choked explosion. "This is new. That last one. That's... new. It's evil."
Mordecai said nothing. He just stared, his face a mask of stone. He felt the old, familiar bile rise in his throat. This wasn't a dojo. It was a grave. And every day, the Dragon's Claw came to dance on it.
"We have to clean it," Silas said, his voice hard. He took a step toward the building. "Cai, we have to. It's a disgrace. Master Tani's competition... it's just weeks away. We can't let them see this."
"Let them see it," Mordecai said, his voice flat. He started walking again, his eyes fixed on the road ahead, as if he could bore a hole through the rest of the village and teleport to the farm.
Silas, for once, didn't move. He stood, his broad back to Mordecai. "No."
Mordecai stopped. "No?"
"No." Silas turned, and for the first time that day, his face wasn't red and jovial. It was pale and rigid with a loyalty that was so fierce it was almost terrifying. "I'm not going to let you do this. I'm not going to let you let them do this. That's your name on that wall, Cai. Our name. This village. He built this place with his own hands!"
"And he left it," Mordecai snapped, the words cracking like a whip in the wind. "He left it, Silas! Just like he left us. He left a pile of wood to rot, and he left that box in my barn to mock me, and he left... he left us with nothing."
"He left you a legacy!"
"He left me shame!" Mordecai roared, the sudden volume of his own voice shocking them both. He took a step toward Silas, his hands clenched. "You want to know what that is? That's a signpost. It's a billboard that tells Kael and his father and every other Grandmaster in this valley that this family is a joke. It's a broken-down, pathetic failure, and so is everyone who came from it."
He was breathing hard, his chest aching.
"You think... you think I can walk up to her," he spat, the romance and the rage finally colliding. "You think I can say 'Hello, Esther,' when this... this thing... is sitting at the edge of town? 'Hello, Esther, don't mind the graffiti, it just says my grandfather was a coward. Want to hold my hand?' They're right! He was a coward. He ran. He left."
"He did not—"
"He. Left."
The silence that followed was heavier than the wind. Silas just stared at him, his face a complex map of pity and anger. He knew, Mordecai realized, that this wasn't about the dojo. Not really. It was about Esther. It was about Kael. It was about the fact that Kael, who had probably paid for the paint on that wall, would be the one to buy Esther flowers at the market, and he would smile while he did it, and Mordecai... Mordecai would just be a boy of dust, standing behind the potato sacks, smelling of his grandfather's failure.
"You know," Silas said, his voice dangerously quiet. "You're a real idiot, Cai. You're so busy being angry at a ghost, you've turned into one."
"What did you—"
Bzzzz-whiiiiine.
The sound was thin at first, a metallic insect on the wind. But it was growing. Fast.
A thrill of something cold and sharp, an adrenaline of pure, animal terror, shot up Mordecai's spine. He didn't even have to look. He knew that sound. It was the sound of the Dragon's Claw patrols.
He grabbed Silas's arm, yanking him hard. "Get off the road. Now."
"But the dojo—"
"The dojo is what they want us to look at," Mordecai hissed, dragging his friend toward the shallow, weed-choked ditch that ran alongside the road. "It's a target. And they like to see who comes to mourn."
They half-fell, half-tumbled into the dry ditch just as the motorcycles crested the hill. There were three of them, sleek, black machines that spat gravel and fumes. The men riding them were broad and wore the black leather jackets emblazoned with the dragon sigil. They weren't just students. These were enforcers.
They slowed as they passed the dojo. One of them, the leader, stopped. He pulled down the goggles from his face and spat on the ground, right at the shattered front step of the Rising Sun. He laughed, a short, ugly bark that the wind carried right to them.
Mordecai's heart was a trapped bird in his chest. He was pressed into the dirt, the smell of dry weeds and oil in his nose. Beside him, Silas was, for the first time in his life, perfectly, absolutely silent. His breathing was a thin, terrified whistle.
The rider looked around, his eyes scanning the road, and for one heart-stopping second, his gaze locked right on the ditch where they were hiding.
Mordecai held his breath. He saw the rider's lip curl in a sneer.
Then, with a final, contemptuous kick of his engine, he sped up, joining his comrades as they roared down the road toward the village. Toward the market.
Toward Esther.
They lay in the ditch for a full minute, the smell of their exhaust hanging in the air like a curse.
Silas finally let out his breath in a long, shaky sigh. "Okay," he said, his voice ho-arse. "Okay. You were right. It's a trap."
Mordecai didn't answer. He climbed out of the ditch, brushing the dust and bits of dead grass from his shirt. But he couldn't brush off the feeling.
He looked at the dojo, a fresh wave of humiliation washing over him. He hadn't just been ashamed of it. He had been afraid of it. Afraid of what it represented, and afraid of those who would harm him for even being associated with it.
He had let them chase him into a ditch, like a rat.
"Come on," Silas said, clambering out, his face still pale. "Esther-day is... it's probably over, man. Let's just get the feed and go home."
"No," Mordecai said, his voice a low, rough growl he barely recognized. "You're right. It's Market Day. We're low on feed."
He started walking again, but his stride was different. The fear was still there, but it had burned into something else. Something hard and cold and heavy.
He had seen the look on that rider's face. The casual, arrogant contempt. The look of a man who had never been powerless. The look of a man who had never had to hide in a ditch.
It was the same look Kael had.
Mordecai's hand drifted to his own palm, his thumb unconsciously rubbing the faint, star-shaped scar.
He hated that dojo. But as he walked toward the village, toward the market, toward her, he realized there was one thing he hated more.
He hated, more than anything in this world, the feeling of being in that ditch. And he hated that the Dragon's Claw was already there, walking the same market square as Esther.