He did the kata at dawn in the great court of the king's house because it was the only flat open ground he could find, and because he'd done it every morning for eight years and his body wouldn't let him not.
One-handed. His left arm bound across his chest. Slowly, because anything faster tore something. Even so, by the third movement there were people in the colonnades. Servants with water jars. Two of the king's men, leaning on their spears. The red-haired man from Ithaca, eating an onion.
"Each movement," said Helen's voice behind him, "looks like it's holding a storm. And it moves like water."
He finished the ninth before he turned round.
She was standing at the edge of the court in a plain dress, without gold, her hair in a single braid down her back, like a girl going to fetch water. Aithra was nowhere.
"Good morning, my lady."
"You promised you'd stop that." She came out onto the paving stones. "What is it? The movements."
"Practice. For fighting. You do the same nine things every day until your body does them without you."
"For how long?"
"For ever, I think."
She looked at him. Then she said, as if she'd decided it some time ago and was only now saying it aloud, "Teach me."
He'd half expected it. He still didn't know what to say.
"It's not an easy thing," he said. "It's not like weaving. Your hands bleed. You fall down a great deal."
"I've been falling down my whole life," said Helen. "Only nobody's ever let me see it." She took up a position opposite him, feet apart, the way she'd seen him stand. It was wrong in four places. "Show me the first one."
He showed her.
She was bad at it. Everyone was. She was bad at it the way Cleopatra had been bad at the foxtrot: for about a minute, and then she caught the shape of it, the idea underneath, and after that she was only clumsy. She was strong, much stronger than she looked, a Spartan girl who'd run races at the festivals with the other girls and swum in the Eurotas in spring. She asked questions he couldn't answer. Why does the weight go to that foot? Why not the other one? Why do you breathe out there? She did the first movement forty times without being asked, and her face was red and there was sweat in her hair, and she didn't stop.
"Ah," he said, at the fortieth, without thinking. Musashi's one word.
She stopped. "What does that mean?"
"It means better."
She stood there in the morning sun, breathing hard, and smiled at him. Not a court smile. A girl's.
* * *
Menelaus came into the court and stopped dead.
He took it in. Helen, in a plain dress with her braid coming loose and her feet planted on the stones. The stranger with his arm in a sling, a pace away. The servants in the colonnades, watching. The man from Ithaca with his onion.
"I see our guest," said Menelaus, "is making himself at home." It came out tight.
"The king's hospitality's been very generous, my lord," said John. He said it lightly. He didn't feel light. "Will you join us? It's good for the back."
Menelaus opened his mouth.
"Ah. Good. You're all here."
Tyndareus came out of the hall door with his councillors behind him, the old men of the valley in their good cloaks, and two priests, and looked at the four of them on the paving stones, and his hawk's face showed nothing whatever.
"Come inside," he said. "We need to talk about what you're for."
* * *
The king's council met in a small room off the great hall with a single window and benches round the walls, and it was crowded. The old men. The priests. Menelaus and three of the other suitors, by right of their rank. Paris, by right of being a guest of the house and a king's son, sitting by the window in his blue robe, very quiet this morning, with his hand going to his throat now and then, as if checking.
And Helen, on a stool beside her father, which nobody seemed to think was strange except John.
"Your display last night was very fine," said Tyndareus. "My people will talk about it till they die. But I didn't keep you in my house to frighten Trojans." He leaned forward. "What can you do for Sparta?"
John had thought about it all night, in seiza on the floor of his room, with the Branches starting to blur at the edges like the first breath on clean glass.
He'd thought about leaving. He'd thought about it very seriously. A ship from Gytheion to anywhere, and let the story run the way it ran in the books. And he'd thought about the Branches he'd seen at the foot of the wall: ships on a beach, a city burning, Helen on the wall in the wind over the dry plain. Ten years. Every king in Greece.
You came here by accident, he'd told himself. You owe this place nothing.
And then he'd thought about the village under the three pines, and the forty houses.
"With respect, my lord," he said, "I don't think the question is what I can do for Sparta. I think it's what Sparta and I can do for each other." He looked round the room. "I know things your people don't. About how to fight. How to farm. How to build. How to talk to other kings so they don't come here with armies. Things that could make Sparta strong enough that no one would think of attacking it. And rich enough that no one would need to."
"Bold words," said Paris, from the window. His voice was a little hoarse. "From a man who came out of nowhere. How do we know any of it's true?"
John looked at him. Paris didn't step back, this time. But John saw his hand go to his throat.
"You don't," said John. "So I'll show you. Not with tricks. With something real." He turned back to the king. "My lord. You've got raiders on your northern border. Up in the hills towards Arcadia. They've burned four villages since the spring. Your men can't catch them. Every time they go up into the hills, the raiders are somewhere else."
The room had gone very quiet.
"How do you know that?" said one of the old men.
"The whole valley knows it," said John. "The potter's wife's sister lives in the third village they burned." That was true. It was also true that he'd seen it the night before, in the hall, when the old man from the north border had clasped his arm: a village on fire, men in wolfskins, and a giant with an axe. "Give me command of a small force. A hundred men. I'll go up into the hills and I'll find them, and I'll drive them out. And I'll show your men how to hold that border so it stays held."
There was a long silence.
"A hundred." Menelaus was on his feet. His face had gone dark again. "You overstep, stranger. Command of the king's men is earned. With years. With blood. With loyalty. You don't walk out of nowhere in painted armour and ask for it like a cup of wine."
"Then come with me, my lord," said John.
Menelaus stopped.
"Come with me," said John again. "Be my second. Watch everything I do. If I'm a fraud you'll see it, and you can come back and tell the king, and he can throw me off the mountain." He paused. "Unless you're afraid of the comparison."
He hadn't meant to say the last part. It came out of his mouth the way it's going to snow had come out in Florence.
The room was absolutely still.
Menelaus stood in the middle of it with his fists closed and his face red, and John saw him understand that he'd been trapped, in front of the king and the council and Helen, by his own words. If he refused, he was afraid. If he accepted, he was the stranger's second.
"I'll come," said Menelaus. Very stiffly. As if each word were a stone.
* * *
They caught him in the corridor afterwards, one at a time. Menelaus first.
He waited until the others had gone, and then he came up very close, in the half dark outside the council room, and said in a low voice that didn't carry, "I don't know what you are, or what you want. But know this. Helen is promised to me. Her father's given me his word, in private, before the gods. He'll say it in public when the others have gone home. If you cross that line," he said, "no foreign trick will save you."
"I'm not playing a game, my lord," said John. "And I'd think hard about threats. They don't suit a man like you. You're better than that. I've seen it."
Menelaus stared at him. Then he turned and went.
Paris was next. He came out of the council room after Menelaus had gone, and leaned on the wall with his arms folded, and smiled. It was the old smile, the plaster one. He'd got it back.
"A piece of advice," he said. "From a guest to another guest. Sparta can be... unforgiving. To strangers who reach too high."
John laughed. He couldn't help it. "Thank you, prince. And here's some back. Be very careful which fights you pick. You may find you're outmatched in ways you can't imagine."
Paris's smile didn't move. His hand went to his throat.
He went.
* * *
Helen was the last.
She'd come out of the council room behind her father and then stopped in the corridor, and let the old men go past her, and waited. When the others had gone she came up the corridor to him, slowly.
"Promised," she said. "Did you hear him? Promised." Her voice was very calm. "My father has not promised me to anyone. Not in private. Not before the gods. I'd know. He'd have told me, because he knows I'd find out, and then he'd have to live with me." She looked at the door Menelaus had gone through. "He's telling himself a story. Men do."
"Yes."
"You're not what you seem," she said. "You're not anything like what you seem. You know things no man should know." She came closer. "Who are you really, John of the Far Seas?"
"A man who's seen more than most," he said. "And who's learned that what happens isn't fixed. It's made. By what people choose."
She looked at him for a long time. Then she reached out and put her hand on his good arm, above the wrist.
The Branches came. He hadn't wanted them. They came anyway, clear, bright, through her fingers. Too many to see. A wall in the wind. A ship. A hall with a hearth. A girl doing the first movement of the kata in a courtyard, forty times.
"Then let's make it," said Helen softly. "Together."
She took her hand away, and went down the corridor, and didn't look back.