"Your presence in my small dojo pleases me. I am much in your debt.

Your invitation to Sifu Hong has lifted a burden from my spirit."

I was tempted to shuffle my feet and mumble, Aw, shucks. A side effect of being so pissed off, I suppose. The anger blowing through my head urged me to insult his thanks by mocking it.

Instead I muttered, "Just doing my job. We'll all be better off with a little less tension around here."

He didn't reply to that.

"I have observed your actions with interest, Mr. Axbrewder," he went on as if I hadn't spoken.

"Now I wish to teach you. You will spar with me, please."

I gaped at him I couldn't help it. Spar with him? He wasn't serious.

He may've been a great martial artist, but this was ridiculous. For one thing, he was hardly two thirds my size. If I sat on him, he'd never get up again. And for another, he had more than a decade on me.

Occasionally his air of unrelieved mourning made me feel almost young.

And I'd just backed down from a fight at Soon's school, despite a hell of a lot more provocation.

"Sensei " I groped for a response.

"You natter me." Or maybe he insulted me. I wasn't sure there was any difference.

"They asked if I wanted to study with them. At Sifu Hong's school.

Yesterday." I must've sounded like an idiot.

"I turned them down. I've got a job to do. I don't have time to study a martial art."

Nakahatchi dismissed all that. It seemed to run off him like water.

"Sifu Hong is a great master," he stated as if that answered my objections.

"But Wing Chun is not for you. For you, Shotokan is best."

"Well, now," I replied, procrastinating shamelessly, "I'm not sure about that." I needed time to think.

"What I've seen of Wing Chun looks pretty impressive. And " You're too short. You're too old.

I bit down on the inside of my cheek to make myself shut up.

"Much of Wing Chun is oblique," he said. Explaining something he thought I needed to understand.

"It's purposes are likewise oblique. Shotokan is direct. For you, to be direct is necessary."

As if I needed the benefit of his wisdom on that point.

Exasperated now, and too angry to be polite about it, I countered, "Listen to me, Mr. "

With no warning at all no flick of his eyes, no catch in his breathing, no hint of intensification he stepped toward me.

The room whirled, and I found myself on my hands and knees. The hardwood in front of my face had a long grain like flowing veins. It seemed full of remembered sunlight, too warm for ordinary wood. The lines between the boards looked deep enough to reach the center of the world, the center of reality. Shock paralyzed my solar plexus. That's how I knew he'd hit me. I certainly hadn't picked up any other clues.

Until the room stopped moving I couldn't imagine how he'd swept me off my feet.

When I finally raised my head, I saw him standing several feet away far enough for safety, too far to threaten me if I wanted to get up.

The paralysis in my chest eased. My lungs sucked small gusts of air. A distant roar in my ears sounded like advancing rage, a tornado gathering its forces on the horizon.

Unsteadily I pushed my legs under me and stood up.

Trembling, I went back to the place where I'd left my shoes, emptied my pants pockets into the pockets of my jacket, did the same with pens and notes from my shirt pocket, then pulled my jacket off and dropped it beside my shoes. I undid the straps of my shoulder holster, set the .45 on top of my jacket. Despite the way my knees shook, I crouched down to strip off my socks.

Ginny'd have my hide for this. If we were still partners.

If I still cared.

The roaring grew louder. It filled my head. Anything that might've objected to what I was doing couldn't make itself heard. I'd already had all the cowardice I could bear. While that wind tore through the room, nothing else mattered.

Deliberately I walked back into the center of the dojo. The center of the world. Toward Nakahatchi.

Evaluate my character? Mine? I wasn't the one who wanted to steal those chops. I hadn't killed Bernie.

Tremors mounted through me, hints of crisis.

He stood ready for me, waiting. This time he assumed what he seemed to consider a sparring stance, left foot forward, left hand open near the level of his chin, right fist relaxed on his hip. Somehow he conveyed the impression that he floated a fraction of an inch off the hardwood, impervious to such mundane concerns as gravity and mass.

Well, fine. Just stand there.

If he wanted direct, I'd show him direct.

Timing it in stride, riding the storm, I wheeled a punch at his head hard enough to stagger a lamp post.

Except that my bicep found the point of his elbow before my fist reached his head. A shredding pain like the path of a bullet ripped at my arm while Nakahatchi cross-stepped past me. His right hand touched my groin. I felt his fingers skim my crotch before they reached the underside of my thigh, but I couldn't do anything about it, it was happening too fast, lightning strikes of pain had burned their way through the gale inside my head, when he pinched the nerve center of my hamstring a cattle prod went off in my thigh, and all my muscles spasmed, flinging me backward across his hip. If he hadn't caught me at the last second, slowed my fall, I would've landed like a load of cinder blocks.

A warning. Komatori had warned me. Nakahatchi had just warned me twice. Evaluate my character. My damaged bicep wailed along the wind.

The back of my thigh felt like the kiss of a high-tension line.

Rolling through the rest of the fall, I staggered upright. For some peculiar reason, my chest strained for air as if I'd just run the mile.

Nakahatchi seemed to stand at a slight angle. Or, no, it was the floor tilting Hell, even Parker Neill had warned me. Sternway had practically jumped up and down on my head about it.

Barely audible through the howl in my ears, Nakahatchi announced, "It was written by Gichin Funakoshi sensei, "If your hand goes forth, withhold your anger. If your anger goes forth, withhold your hand."

" All right. If that's the way he wanted to play. I'd show him what "goes forth" really meant.

I went at him again, exactly the same as before. If you didn't count the weakness in one arm, or the involuntary hitch in my opposite leg.

Or the fact that I couldn't tell the difference between rage and pain.

This time, however, I didn't try to punch him. Instead I swung up a kick from the pit of my stomach, aiming to punt the little shit out of the stadium.

He slid aside effortlessly. I missed so hard that I would've smashed down onto my back if my pinched leg hadn't collapsed under me, pitching me forward.