Chapter 12: Training

Uncha had listened to Lady Sukanu explaining her plan. She even agreed with most of it. It was a sound use of resources, and like she had been taught in her strategy classes, a path from a difficult dead end to one where glimpses of open roads shone far ahead. Sukanu was an acknowledged master at her art, and Uncha knew she should be grateful to work with her and learn from her.

It was her decision to make Uncha one of Utore’s primary trainers that puzzled her. Why? The Jiyo family had no dearth of prann trainers, and granted, Uncha was talented, but she hardly had any seniority. She was a prior bearer of the Blessing, which was a requirement, but again, Jiyo had several others who were better trainers. Uncha could have asked Lady Sukanu for a reason, but something told her that it was better not to. Her standing in the family was about the lowest that it could be. Perhaps this was an attempt from her father at a reconciliation? Whatever the reason may be, she had agreed, and now duty called.

Whatever the other jealous families in the Empire might say, the Jiyo didn’t become one of the Empire’s premier martial families without an intense dedication to prann warcraft. They had experimented with almost everything to do with prann combat, and had devised many of the small unit tactics that were now accepted as doctrine and custom in the Empire’s armed forces. Much of their fame came from their expertise in using prann as a deadly weapon on the battlefield, so it was a puzzle to Uncha why her father decided to enter a candidate in the Emperor’s games.

The Emperor’s games were always an exhibition of individual skill in the prann: a sort of solo showmanship that Jiyo never subscribed to. Granted, there was a need for individual excellence, and the Jiyo family had produced many scions that had exemplary control and stamina, but they had always excelled at the head of their squad, with a support team in place or with multiple prann warrior-artists working together. Even when she herself was supposed to be their candidate to the games, there had been a nagging worry in her mind that even their Blessing wouldn’t be an equalizer to prann users who train their whole lives to win at the contest.

And now, the news of a wager that her father had put on these games was worrying. Lady Sukanu had tried to downplay it, but even as young and inexperienced as she was, Uncha was still heir to the Jiyo, and could realize the danger. The money that father wagered wouldn’t be as important, not that Jiyo was a rich family, and a loss as big as she imagined father would wager would definitely hurt. No, it was more the prestige. There were several families in the Empire who would circle like vultures around a Jiyo defeat. Especially one in the martial field like the games, where Jiyo was supposed to excel. Suddenly, what looked to many a simple wager, became much more than that.

Jiyo’s training was difficult and exacting. There were punches into haystacks, long runs through crude training tracks, open rounds of focused meditation, and countless hours of combat training. Between it all, when I had small bouts of free time, I kept thinking about why I had accepted Lady Sukanu’s offer. It was clear that she wasn’t doing anything out of the goodness of her heart. If the supposed test hadn’t convinced me, her mercurial moods swinging from ever-bright, cheerful and optimistic, to slightly threatening and back, and how her words and questions teased answers out of me definitely had. This was a woman who had experience in getting her way, and in things that I did not even have words for.