Sword (9 page)

With an effort of will, she transferred her attention to the couples on the floor. They danced in her honor: she was seventeen today, newly confirmed, consecrated, and anointed as the official heir of House Marsadron.
Implied
heir to the throne.

Never mind that it went so smoothly only because the two other candidates for succession were not present: one had taken a suspiciously well-timed holiday to Orin, and the other had hied herself off to the Fraonir in secret not two years past, and had not been heard from since.

She straightened her fingers, smiling at the twirling petticoats, the flushed faces. Though her hands were still beyond her governance, in the years since Ky’s abrupt departure, she had at least learned to manage her expression.

More useful to carry a sword
, she thought dourly.

The past two years had seen a steady swell in the ranks of the Western lords that visited the capital. They wandered the halls, complained about their residences, and drove the cooks to distraction with demands that never seemed to be satisfied. They spoke out of turn when her father held court and spread rumors in the town that panicked the markets. More than one had asked for her hand in marriage repeatedly, as though her politely phrased refusals were no real answer.

And they watched—mostly that. They watched and whispered among themselves.

Just dance endlessly with that prig Anders,
Devin had written in his last note, when she had sent him a long, despondent letter.
He'll make you both looks fools
(true: Anders couldn't put a foot right under threat of death)
and all their ire will be aimed at him for a fortnight.

Someone who knew less of Devin might miss the shrewdness of that advice. It was a pity she couldn't take it.

She missed him, missed his outrageous humor and his steady, if occasionally maddening, presence—missed feeling like she had a brother to watch her back, to laugh with her and at her, and see the things that escaped her.

Mostly, though, she missed hiding in the servants' secret passages with his sister, who Devin insisted sent her love by letter—but Kyali would never say such a thing, even if she did mean it. And if it hurt too much for her to write, surely it hurt Kyali too, who had been left with as little choice in the matter as she—and, if she knew Ky, had dodged a leave-taking because she hated to weep in front of people.

I am not angry
, she would write, if she could only find the courage to.
I was. But
y
ou were right to leave the way you did. I would only have come with you had I known, and I have no Gift of my own, nor can wield a sword. Either would serve me better than this ridiculous dress does, or the careful words I hardly dare utter to these barons.

But gods, Kyali, I miss you so.

Pointless to think of it; it only made her hands clench, drawing more of the attention she worked so hard, these days, to avoid.

What a wretched birthday.

The High Chancellor, robed in blue and carrying, as he always did, a handful of court documents rolled and tied with ribbons, leaned toward the king to whisper something—Taireasa caught the word
trade
and had to squash a grimace. People around the hall eyed this, too: Maldyn's whispers often produced decisions. But her father only waved a hand, indicating that the dancing should not stop. The Western lords watched, their eyes hungry, demanding. Taireasa turned her head, keeping her expression peaceful, trying to see every part of the room at once. She felt like she was missing something, but had no notion what.

Down in the kitchens, the serving staff would be well on their way to drunken oblivion by now, the meal served and only the court glasses to be filled by the haughtier maids and squires. They slipped among the tables, mute and unusually timid among such a tense gathering of nobility, topping glasses with wines from the Western vineyards. The kitchen staff drank better than the nobles of the kingdom tonight: Western wine was as dry and acrid as a wind off the Cruxi desert, and lodged unpleasantly in the back of the throat.

Much like Western demands did of late.

The heir to House Marsadron thought longingly of the celebration ensuing among the pots below and briefly wished to be a plate-washer, whispering gossip to spit-boys and undercooks. She wished to be two years younger and wide-eyed at Kyali's boldness, Devin's appallingly bawdy lyrics. She wished to be anywhere but where she was now, stiffly uncomfortable and increasingly worried, waiting for her father to produce a solution to an obvious and growing threat to the peace. A frown slipped past her carefully guarded expression, and a volley of glances sailed across the room like arrows.

* * *

"Balance. Breathe in. The blade is your mirror. It only reflects you. Breathe out. This is the beginning of real—stop twitching, girl. Breathe in. Follow—no. Breathe. Follow my hand with the point. Be the reflection. Be—gods, straighten up, you look like a felled tree. Better. Now. This is about
flow
. Be a still pool. Your movements must be smooth. Again. Follow—
no
, Kyali."

"I am not a
still pool
!"

"It's a thing to think about. It's supposed to help you concentrate."

"It's not bloody well working!"

"I see that." Arlen shrugged, expressive as a tree, and folded the little quartz ball, latest and by far the worst of the trials he had inflicted on her, inside a fist. Kyali clenched her hands, too flustered even to scowl. "So. We've found something you're not good at."

Her sullen slouch unbent itself in a hurry. Her teacher matched her stare for stare, an uncommon amusement crinkling his dark eyes, which sparked gold with reflected light. The realization that it was her own eyes his mirrored cooled her temper.

I'm as transparent as Taireasa
, she thought despairingly, and schooled her expression with fierce concentration, though she had to turn away to manage it.

A pebble soared past her ear. Sword came free of sheath without thought. She glowered, her blade far too close to Arlen's throat, fighting to keep her face smooth.

"Like that," Arlen remarked, as casually as if they were discussing last year's barley crops.

A tic began under her right eye. "Like what?" Kyali said, careful not to let her voice get to the volume it wanted to.

He might not have noticed. Except, of course, he had. Sometimes it seemed Arlen spent his days coming up with new ways to make her shout, or pitch something into the brush where she would be obliged to spend a prickly half hour trying to find it.

"You should move like
that
," he explained, infuriatingly calm. "The ball won't stay on the blade unless it's either moving flawlessly or held perfectly still, girl—a concept worth more than a few thoughts from you, I might add. You do well enough when you're surprised into it, at least. I was starting to think I might have found your limits after all."

Words failed her. Again. Something like a growl crawled out of her throat. All she had was the sword in her hands, and that she could hardly throw.

Arlen tilted an eyebrow. "Not giving up, were we?"

Her anger cooled abruptly, as it always did when goaded long enough, into a composed and hostile precision of thought. Eyes narrowed, she twisted the sword up and arranged her limbs. Arlen lobbed the ball in a gentle arc, reading her intention better than she would have liked him to. It landed on the flat of her blade and her hands tilted the steel in tiny, frantic increments until it caught in the center groove and held... held—

Stilled, sitting on her sword.

All the breath left her body. Her eyes met Arlen's over the flash of trapped sunlight in the crystal. Kyali clung fiercely to a startling upwelling of confidence and began breathing in pattern. Without allowing herself to think about it, she brought the sword up and around in the first of the Forms, listening in distant amazement to the soft grind of stone on metal.

The ball stayed, sliding smoothly in the groove of her sword, a strange new weight on her blade that nonetheless felt as though it should have been there all along. Her blood hummed in her veins. Her head began to ache and her eyes to burn, a sure sign that she was doing magic—though of what sort, she had no idea.

There was a strange shimmer in the air, and a stranger feeling in her middle, like something was pulling gently on her insides.

Second, third, and fourth Forms, done as carefully as she had ever done anything in her life. It went on. She lost count. Her muscles remembered what to do, her mind was occupied. She placed her feet exactly in the steps, feeling the weight of ball on blade, the weight of magic and of the strange pulling, as sensations suddenly and inexplicably familiar, utterly
right
, like a door she'd never seen before opening onto her own room.

The perception was alarming. She wobbled off balance and sent the ball sailing off into the brush. The warmth of confidence and of magic fled instantly, leaving behind only the desperate certainty that this was important, and she couldn't do it, and she had less time than she knew.

"Damn," Kyali murmured, and flushed hot when she heard the ragged edge of fear in her own voice. Her belly hurt. Her muscles were shuddering from the effort and the strange sensations. She sheathed her sword, unable to look Arlen in the face, and then didn't know what to do with her hands.

Her teacher walked off without a word and crouched in the brush where the ball had flown off. Kyali stared at the dirt, struggling with a sudden impulse to bolt into the trees like a spooked horse.

Arlen's worn leather boots appeared in her view, their toes scarred and scuffed. Kyali bit her tongue and tried to muster the courage to raise her chin, to meet that cool, scornful gaze. Courage seemed to have left her along with magic, though, and for a mortifying moment she couldn't make herself move.

Arlen's big hand closed over her shoulder, hard enough to make her wince.

"Damn?" he said. The frustration in that one word made her head snap up with a painful jerk. She met his eyes and the apology that was weltering up out of her froze in her throat at the intensity of his expression. "
Damn
?" he said again. "You young idiot, have you any idea how long it takes to learn what you just did? How few of us ever manage it?"

Kyali opened her mouth. Nothing but a sad little squeak fell out of it, and she shut her teeth over that sound before another one like it could emerge. Arlen's free hand fell on her other shoulder and she sucked in a harsh breath, feeling suddenly trapped.

"I… I don't…"

He shook her, not hard, but enough to make her teeth rattle. "One thing you've yet to achieve—one thing you'll need badly, soon enough—is a dispassionate judgment of your own skill. You'll have more than enough people underestimating you in your lifetime, Kyali Corwynall. You
cannot
afford
to be one of them."

Kyali jerked away, wishing, for once, that her hair was free to hide her face. She had no idea what expression was on it, but she was sure it wasn't something she wanted there. "I don't know what you mean," she said, her voice quivering badly now.

"Stubborn child, do you not? You, who've spent more years studying the arts of war than many of the officers of your kingdom's court? Who knew the use of a blade and the feel of shed blood in a year when your agemates were all learning how to dance and ride? Who could—"

"I
don't know
!"

She turned full around on the tail of that outburst, lonely and shaken and furious with herself, fighting the desire to run away, all the way down the mountain if necessary, to get away from this discussion. A strange panic caught at her. Her heart was pounding in her chest like it wanted to get out. Her belly still hurt, that inexplicable pulling waxing and waning like a cruel tide. Arlen gave her no grace, though.

"I think you do know, general's daughter. A girl who could master all the Sword Forms in two years ought to know. A girl who could command a party of rangers in battle
must
know… and a girl who could do what you just did now, wielding your magic and your blade together as one weapon—such a girl cannot help but know what it is to hold power."

Kyali gasped as though he'd knocked the wind from her; it surely felt that way. She couldn't make herself turn around. "I am not that girl," she said, and, hearing how stupid that sounded, put her hands to her face and breathed through her fingers.

Arlen was right behind her. She could feel him standing too close. Her shoulders twitched. "You are."

"I don't
want
to be that girl," she whispered, the awful, humiliating truth.

His hand settled back on her shoulder, but it was kinder now, too kind. Her burning eyes spilled over and it got harder to breathe. She stood there like a fool, weeping and trying to stop. "But you are," Arlen murmured, soothing and low, like he was talking to a panicked horse. "There's no fighting that. You were when you came here. You'll be more so when you leave here to do—"

There he stopped.

Right where she most wanted him to go on. As always. He had that in common with her father.

She turned, no longer caring that there were tears streaking her face and her chin was quivering. "To do
what
? What shall I do with this—this—" she waved a hand, lacking a word to encompass everything this mountain held for her: all the sweat, all the work, all the love, all the fierce satisfaction of learning something so hard.

Arlen's expression grew even more intent. He opened his mouth and Kyali held still, feeling like she was close to a real answer for the first time in two years.

"Whatever you must do," her teacher said finally.

Kyali spun back around with a growl. For a long moment there was only the sound of them both breathing too hard. "You know far more than you say."

"It's the way of teachers," Arlen agreed.
His
voice was shaking now. Kyali straightened, still refusing to look at him, but thinking hard about that.