Kichi sat on top of her leather pack with a codex in hand, legs crossed, and Bin, the squirrel cat, curled in her lap. She turned a yellowed page and glanced up but saw no signs of what was promised to come. She couldn’t remember the last time a premonition was wrong, and though her memory seemed a bit flaky of late, she anticipated a man who would bring a triad of unexpected things.
He would bring peace to Midbluffs, make her a knight, and tell a story that wasn’t a story but an accusation. Strangely, for the first, the area already seemed at peace, despite rumblings of discontent.
She thumbed to the next page and saw the list of ten rules of chivalry. She’d read the whole codex a few times over, and it only improved with age. A knight must:
I Cleanse unclean spirits
II Defend the Realm
III Defend the weak
IV Act with valor
V Never tell a lie
VI Be generous
VII Bring justice to the unjust
VIII Show humility
IX Gain strength using a pure sword
X Respect authority if it's not in conflict with the other codes
The sound of gravel alerted her, and she spotted a lanky framed man taking slow steps. The man was a sight for sore eyes. His boots flopped open with each step as if they were trying to speak. A fly buzzed around him. She didn’t need to get close to know how bad he smelled.
He halted at a farmhouse just across the road behind a row of flowering bushes. The enormously long sword at his back told Kichi this was the man she’d waited for, the one she had caught a glimpse of in the vision.
The elderly man who lived there leaned on his pitchfork. His eyelids were drooped down, and he gave a gap-toothed smile. “Whitebeard they call you know, huh? It can’t be you after all this time. You’re much like I remember you, but you have a few lines of worry. Could it be you’re getting old after all these years?”
Whitebeard’s shadow cut along the ground, over a stone wall, and onto the old man’s home of flaking paint. It was a shadow all the longer for the tall, wide-brimmed hat teetering on his head. “Very funny. Good to see you again. It has been so long, too long.”
“I heard about your return. Word spreads fast, doesn’t it? Folk say you’ve been given the gift of prescience. Said it before you left, too.”
“It’s no gift.”
“A curse?”
“Not that either.”
“Well then,” Digory said, and he put a gnarled hand on the tall stranger's arm and gave Whitebeard a long once-over. “Come, let me fix you some food. You could use a pair of boots as well.”
“Thank you.”
Kichi decided to introduce herself before they disappeared into the home, but before she got a word out, Bin lept high from her shoulder and spread its arms and legs to glide with its winglets. It beelined toward the stranger.
Whitebeard caught Bin in his palm and stroked the small head between floppy ears. “I’ve heard a squirrel cat can grant you a wish, but it splits back into its pair. Have you tried?”
Bin slipped from his grasp and bounded into the bush, scrambling up through the twigs.
Kichi stuck her arm into the bush to try and grab her pet but she fell in and had to retreat. “Of course not.” After a pause, she said, “You carry a sword as long as you are tall. Are you a knight?”
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“No.”
“It’s a pure sword? It’s got the green color of the wood spirits.”
“You’re observant, and it’s good to meet you, but I’m exhausted. I must be off early in the morning so good day to you.” He yawned and stepped away.
Kichi put her hands on her hips and glared at him. He was drawing this out. She should have her first lesson directly. “You will teach me the blade.”
His eyes were hard to read as the wide brim barred the sunset light and put his face in shadow, but his lips curled at the corner. “Didn’t you hear Digory? I’m the one with prescience. Shouldn’t I know if that were true?”
She wasn’t sure she liked this man, and she felt he was holding something back, which was mean and dishonest, but she knew as well as he did—if he truly had the gift—that he would turn her into a knight. He must know.
Before any more could be made of the exchange, he walked into the old man’s house.
Bin looked at her and sighed.
“Yeah, Bin, he’s kind of weird. And what an unimaginative name, Whitebeard. He’s too young to have a white beard.” She dropped her voice an octave to mimic him. “I wonder what my name should be.”
She slept under the oak near the house on a thin blanket. The air blew warm and humid until deep into the night, and in the morning, the wooly cows woke her as they mopped their way back and forth in the pastures before the sunlight doused the hills. The buzz of cicadas began in the trees and filled the air. The smell of the bakeries made Kichi’s stomach grumble, but she never ate breakfast, so her stomach was wasting its effort complaining.
A wooly cow chewed cud next to her seat on the wall. She perked up, but it was just Digory hitching a horse to a heavy plow.
Shoes thudded to the grass, and she walked over to Digory. “How do you know Whitebeard?”
“Why, he’s my brother. We grew up in this house with our folks long ago when this town was only a few farms.”
She nodded as he talked about the field and soil and walked away dazed. How old was the stranger? Digory looked two hundred. She waited for a long while. Whitebeard had said early. Was midmorning his idea of early?
An hour later, she sat again on the wall and listened to the windmills creak, and the birds worble before a figure stumbled from the farmhouse. Whitebeard looked like a man who slept in his clothes. He had on the same dusty black jacket with silver embroidery.
She didn’t know how a person could carry a sword with a blade of such great length, but it just stuck to his back like a magnet. No, it didn’t touch his jacket but floated an inch from it.
He stood slouched, opened and closed his mouth as if something tasted bad, and scratched. “You’re still here.”
She’d never met someone with such a terrible memory. “Yes, I’ve been waiting for you to wake up. Are you ready to train me?”
“I would remember if I made a promise like that. What makes you want to learn anything about knights?”
“Before my mom passed away, she spoke of my father’s order. She said he was the most chivalrous man she’d ever met and a brave knight.”
“Do you have any proof?”
Proof? He was lucky she was in a good mood. “If you must know, I have his sword.” She reached into her cloak and brought out a sword of red tint.
“Is that a sword or a dagger?”
She slid it back into the scabbard and raised her nose at him. “It’s a sword.”
He faced the woolly cows and bent back until his spine popped. “You wouldn’t be the first to get their sword passed down to them unexpectedly. I can help you find a proper knight to train with. But do you even know what you’re getting into? Do you know how a knight gains power?”
“From the sword.”
“Sort of. Do you know how?”
“No.”
He pulled his blade in a whip motion and made the air sing. “An ancestral knight acted so chivalrously that a purity spirit sacrificed its immortal life to lay on a forge and be hammered into a sword. At least, most of the time.”
She looked at her red hilt. “That’s terrible.”
“Perhaps. When an unclean spirit dies by a pure sword, it’s cleansed of its earthly corruption. It’s freed as a being of energy, at which point your sword absorbs and transfers a fraction to you. There are forty-seven known levels of knighthood.”
“What level are you?”
“Never disclose your level if you learn it. You may choose to reveal your focus, but know it may be used against you.” He froze and pointed. “Since when did Midbluffs have highwaymen?”
She followed his gaze and found them. A line of rough-looking men with horses and weapons marched toward the town center. “We should get inside,” she said.
“This is your moment to show valor.”
Kichi
Level: 0
Focus: Prescience
Secondary focus: unknown
Weapons: pure sword - 3% pure