Two men faced Marroo for a week. They swung at him with swords and improvised weapons, tried to trick him, threw daggers at him, even powders meant to blind and incapacitate him. Eventually others joined them. One man with a jagged front and a leer Marroo found particularly unsettling, brought a net that he clearly knew how to use, another with a broken nose and a lazy eye wore a steel bar across his knuckles and refused the offered sword.

It didn’t matter.

Marroo used his fists to fight them, one at a time or all at once, without his breath this time. He disarmed those that took his father’s swords, dodged under the pugilists steel clad fist, leapt the net, knocked them down, one by one until he stood alone in the middle of the grass at the end of each session.

He wore a sword, each time, but he refused to draw it, and never needed to.

Then a man came, wearing a sword, who refused to fight Marroo as part of the group.

He did not come alone.

Three ragged old men accompanied him. They arrived in the middle of Marroo’s fight with the four who’d tried to kill him for several days now, and stood at the lip of the bowl to watch, like four carrion birds huddled together on a branch at twilight. The one with the sword at his hip was at least a head taller than the three oldsters that accompanied him and his eyes were disquieting even from a distance.

Marroo ignored them while he disarmed and toppled his four opponents again and again and again, but he noticed when the three old men descended to speak with his father while the swordsman stood apart and continued to spectate.

One of the men Marroo knocked over muttered something about Marroo’s mother as he scrambled back to his feet and Marroo gave the next strike he dealt to the man’s body just a bit of breath, not enough to send him flying, but enough to crack one of the his ribs. He stumbled away cursing and the other three backed off to circle him, glancing between Marroo and one another while Marroo assumed a relaxed stance in their midst.

He made no move to attack them, and when they finally swung in, he didn’t use his breath. Even so, the evening’s fight was over quickly, and the four, now three, returned their swords to Marroo’s father while the three old men waited quietly for his father to finish dismissing them.

The man with the broken rib glared at Marroo and wheezed as he clutched his side, then turned and followed the other three away like a beaten dog, no longer interested in its prey.

All were quiet as Marroo’s father cleaned the swords and buttoned them into the bag he’d brought for them. Marroo remained at the center of the bowl doing his best not to think about the ways his opponent had invoked his mother or the things Marroo could have done to him. The night plains passed overhead and roaches whistled back to life around him in the swaying grass.

“The half breed has cleared three of his meridians. Five hundred will not be enough.” The old man that spoke to Marroo’s father had the same grate to his voice as Darro, but softer, a hint of rust instead of the full blown corrosion in Darro’s throat.

At his distance from the trio the voices of the old men and his father as they negotiated were no more than a murmur to Marroo, distinct only when he focused his cultivation on sifting through the sigh of wind through the grass and the singing roaches that lived in them.

The swordsman descended while they negotiated until he stood across from Marroo near the bottom of the basin. His skin was dark, not like the people living in the shadows of the towers, but caught somewhere between his own pale skin and the color of night. His eyes were his most striking feature though, one silver eye that might have been Marroo’s reflection in the mirror, and it’s discolored twin, a crimson eye that only looked out at Marroo from memories, and nightmares, and now, from one side of the swordsman’s face.

The swordsman’s spirit touched Marroo’s aura as they looked at one another. He felt it slide over the contours of his external meridians like the groping hand of a blind-man.

“How old are you boy?” The half breed’s voice was deep and sonorous, caught, like his skin, between the accent of the city above the ground and the city beneath it.

Marroo didn’t answer. He just glared up at the man on the slope. The swordman’s spirit probed at Marroo’s like a blind man poking at the face of someone new, then it withdrew until only the half-breed’s aura remained to Marroo’s spiritual sense.

In the distance they could still hear the murmur of the old men’s voices as they negotiated over Marroo’s blood price.

The half breed smiled when they came to an agreement. “We will be fighting soon.” He said.

Marroo didn’t reply.

“I saw what you did to the man you injured.” The half breed told him. He inclined his head. “Broke his rib.” He smiled, a hard glint in the corners of his eyes. “I want you to know I won’t hold anything back.”

Marroo didn’t reply, and the half breed nodded. “Do you have a name?” He asked. He waited patiently, but when Marroo still wouldn’t speak he gave Marroo a slow, wry, smile.

“I think our fight will be interesting.” He said, then turned and wove his way through the shifting weeds towards the old men, “Until tomorrow then.” He added over his shoulder. “I hope you won’t hold back either.”

Marroo’s father put extra time and effort into the exercises meant to get Marroo to touch the sword icon the morning before he would face the half-breed cultivator.

“What does the sword do?”

“It cuts.”

When marroo still hadn’t touched the Icon after several hours of repeated mantras and spiritual exercises they stopped. Marroo’s father sat looking at Marroo for a long time across the mat. When he finally stood, he went to the sword cabinet. The blade he pulled out and offered to Marroo hilt first was sharp, not just physically but spiritually as well, touched by his father’s icon so that Marroo could feel the edge of it even through the scabbard in which it was sheathed.

Marroo looked at the offered sword, but made no move to replace the practice sword already strapped to his hip.

“You’ll have an easier time touching the icon with this in your hand.” His father grated.

Marroo met his eyes, but still did not take the sword. After a moment, Darro’s expression hardened and he stepped forward to yank Marroo’s practice sword from its sheath. He tossed it behind him then pulled the touched blade from its scabbard and slid it into the one at Marroo’s waist.

“Do not treat this as a game, boy.” He grated. “This one can keep up. Do you understand?” He shook the sword at Marroo’s hip. “Get him first.” He said. “And live.”

Marroo stared into his father’s scowl and said nothing.

They arrived at the bowl early that evening, just before the plains eclipsed the core so that the heavens stood above them like an umber sea, filled with aircars and barges and the leviathan shadows that swam too high in the sky for them to be seen. Marroo stood at the bottom of the bowl, looking up, and wondered what life was like for the billions upon billions who must inhabit the myriad shapes of the heavens.

The whistling of the roaches fell silent momentarily as the night plains eclipsed the core, then started up again as the shadow moved and the Plain itself proceeded to devour the sky.

Marroo looked around at the bowl. Two men he’d defeated the day before stood arguing with his father at the top of the pipe that let out into the basin but Marroo ignored them. The weeds were trampled and even cut in some places from the weeks of combat, but it was tough stuff, tough enough to work its roots into cracks that shouldn’t ever have formed in the baked concrete of the huge drain, tough enough to widen those cracks for future generations of weeds and tough enough to stand back up each time Marroo and his opponents stamped them down.

Marroo knelt in the weeds and put his hand to the cement. It was rough from years of exposure, still warm from the core. He touched the roots of one of the knee high weeds and a roach somewhere nearby fell silent. Marroo ran his hands up the root to the stem of the weed, then up the hard stem until they reached a bundle of miniscule white flowers at it’s tip.

He stripped the flowers off with two fingers and held them up so that he could examine them in the umber twilight, pretty, delicate things that stirred in the corrupted wind off the wasteland. When he brought them to his face, no perfume rose from their petals.

He pressed them together in his palm, then released them and watched them drift like ash into the cracks broken open by their roots.

He stood, and waited, as silent as the swaying weeds around him, until the half breed arrived.

When he entered the bowl, the half-breed dismissed the two who’d waited to see if they could join him in facing Marroo.

“You told us not to bring an audience.” The old men told Marroo’s father. “Now we’d like to see the thousand Drachma you promised if he wins.”

“A thousand for him.” Marroo’s father grated. “Five hundred for each of you.” He pulled out two purses filled with silver coins that glinted the same color as their eyes. The men grinned and nodded solemnly to their champion.

The half breed waited for Marroo’s father to nod in approval before he moved slowly to the bottom across from Marroo. He looked at Marroo across the bowl, and Marroo could feel the other man’s breath probe at his aura as he had when they met. Marroo felt the half breed’s spirit churn through the three open meridians. The half breed pulled his sword from it’s sheath and Marroo felt the spirit pressed into the sword like an echo of his father’s Icon, a razor pressed to the spiritual sense of the world granted by Marroo’s external meridians.

Marroo hesitated, then pulled his own sword from its sheath.

“I’m told that in proper duels, men bow.” The Half Breed said.

He did so, and Marroo returned the gesture, feet planted in the ready stance he’d practiced since the age of six.

When he straightened, he met the mismatched eyes of his opponent, and felt the man’s eagerness through the breath that leaked from his soul.

“Fight well.” The half breed said, then flew at Marroo with a swing of his sword.