“Huh. I wonder why they didn’t stay. If they were right and you really were the last, you’d think they’d rest up before continuing. Especially since it sounds like they lost more soldiers in your fight than mine. They must have had something more important on the horizon.” Lyn paused, thinking. “I don’t know what it was, though. My scouts say they’ve seen the Croeli army mobilizing in different places, but they never attack anything. They’re just…waiting. Whatever they’re up to, they’ve had more than enough time to plan it.”
“How long ago did your monastery fall?” Kaiya asked just as the woman returned with her breastplate and leathers. Kaiya let out a sigh of relief as she stepped behind the changing screen and clawed her way out of the form-fitting dress, only too happy to leave it in an undignified heap on the floor. She stepped out again to receive Lyn’s answer as she belted on her fantoii.
“Two years ago.” Faoii-Lyn picked up the dress and corset and called another young girl over to her. “Take this to Emilia. She doesn’t have to give back the gold that the stranger paid her for it.” Kaiya almost blushed, but she refrained. She had bought the dress three days ago in a different town. Faoii-Lyn must have read the embarrassment on her face, because her eyes twinkled.
“Yeah. They’re pretty much all my girls. At least within riding distance. It’s one of the reasons I knew to look for you. Don’t know why you picked orange. Green would have matched your eyes.” Her dark eyes twinkled as she helped Kaiya tighten the leather straps on her breastplate. When she’d finished, her petite fingers glided over the bronze detailing and, for a moment, her eyes drifted away.
It was several seconds before Lyn spoke again. “I probably could have gotten to your monastery before they did. I probably could have warned you. But honestly, it didn’t even occur to me. We went to the king first, to the capital city. But something didn’t smell right in the air, so we kept moving. I just assumed that your monastery had already fallen, being so close. So I came here, started over from scratch. I don’t know. Maybe I was afraid of how the Order would judge me, but I never even thought of searching for other Faoii.”
“We wouldn’t have believed you anyway. Even if we had, what could we have done? We might have mobilized and sought to face the Croeli head-on, but they move so quickly . . . they would have eluded us until they were ready or ambushed us on unfavorable ground. And if we’d planned on the defensive . . . there were two years between attacks. We would have grown complacent again. In the end, the result would have been the same.” The words were bitter in Kaiya’s mouth, but they still rang true.
“Maybe that’s what the Croeli were counting on. Or maybe they were afraid of your monastery and had to gather more forces before . . . Hell, I don’t know. Does it even matter now?” Lyn paused, biting her lip. Her eyes traced the bronze breastplate again. “I . . . I never thought I’d see another woman worthy of wearing the ivy helm and breastplate. I . . .” She straightened her shoulders and met Kaiya’s eyes. “I’m honored. Really. It will be nice for the girls to have a true Faoii to look up to.” Her almond eyes glanced over to Kim and Mei, who were going through the simple steps of a battle dance on one side of the room. Their quiet song drifted through the throng of women that trickled their way into the warehouse.
“You were not offered ascension before . . .?” Kaiya trailed off, not sure how to finish. Lyn shook her head.
“No. I hadn’t yet earned my title when our monastery was attacked. I gave it to myself when I realized I was the last girl older than thirteen to survive the Croeli occupation. Someone needed to lead those few who were left.” She glanced over to the younger girls again. “Please don’t tell them that I am not truly ascended. I know that I should not hold pride in a lie, but . . . I told them that it was okay.” Kaiya gave the other girl a warm smile.
“Your secret’s safe with me.” She followed Lyn’s gaze. The two young girls had changed out of their short dresses and into the soft leathers of the unascended. They moved in complete unison, their voices and bodies in perfect harmony as they guided their blades through the air in front of them.
“Aren’t their blades a little large for their age?” Kaiya asked. The swords were twice the length of the girls’ arms.
“They are young, though growing quickly. They completed their sword ceremonies with a broader blade than that.” Lyn caught Kaiya’s glance. “Where we’re from, girls start with the largest blade and work their way up to the smallest.” She pulled a disk from one of the pouches at her waist. The dark metal glinted in the torchlight, its razor edges bright. With an almost lazy gesture, Lyn held it between her index and middle fingers. Then, with a flick of her wrist, it was buried in one of the wooden support beams halfway across the room. Kaiya murmured her approval.
“A frightening skill. Useful, I suppose, if your opponent is unaware of you.”
Lyn grinned. “Exactly. Why risk danger to yourself or your sisters when the threat can be eliminated without a struggle?”
“Maybe. But it seems . . . wrong. The Goddess praises courage and defense as well as the attack itself. There’s no opposition if you strike from the shadows. No . . . duality. And it denies your opponent the ability to please Illindria with her own strength.” Kaiya pulled her eyebrows together at the thought. Didn’t everyone deserve the chance to at least fight for their own glory?
“You talk like the opponent is Faoii. When would you ever fight a Faoii in true battle?” Kaiya was startled when she realized that Lyn was right. Her “battles” had always been against other Faoii, so they’d always been for show. A chance for fame and recognition rather than life or death. Here, in the real world, glory didn’t seem like much more than word.
She thought about the brute that had bullied Astrid and Ray in Resting Oak. She had not given him a chance to prove himself to the Goddess. Did she regret those actions now?
Mollie’s broken body flashed in her mind. A cold bitterness flooded Kaiya.
“No. You’re right. Sometimes it’s better if they never have a chance.” Kaiya went to the support beam that housed the metal disk. She yanked it out with one gloved hand and stood there, turning it over in her fingers. Her reflection stared back at her from the darkened mirror. The steel in her eyes was terrifying.
After a moment, Kaiya returned to where Lyn was leaning casually against the wall, still watching the young dancers. She took back the disk without taking her eyes from the girls, a slight smile coloring her features. Kaiya turned to watch the graceful circles, enthralled.
“They move like shield sisters.”
“That’s because they are. Isn’t it obvious?”
“But Mei is Faoii and Kim is Cleroii.”
“You don’t know much about our home, do you? The Monastery of the Unbroken Weave.” Kaiya did not deny her ignorance. She knew next to nothing about any of the monasteries besides her own.
“Well, pretend the Faoii were contacted by a sultan to the south that needed his harem protected but was afraid to have male guards. What would your monastery do?” Kaiya thought for a long moment as she watched the young girls dance.
“That’s not uncommon. I guess we’d send two to four Faoii. They would be trained in how to properly address the sultan and follow his orders, and in return he would have to agree that they were not a part of his harem. It wouldn’t be hard. Two sentries at each door. An easy but honorable position for an ascended.”
“See?” Lyn replied. “That’s where we’re different. While you would have two Faoii at the door, dressed in their breastplates and fantoii, our monastery would have Faoii dressed as harem girls themselves. In the harem, part of the harem, protecting the women from within and gaining all the secrets the royalty of that land had to offer.” She gave Kaiya a wink. “That’s what made the Unbroken Weave unique. We are warriors, like you, but our policy was never blades first and a fight to the death. We kill our enemies before the fight even begins. Masters of subterfuge and poisons. Infiltrators. Sweet smiles and sharp blades.
And we were never paired with another girl of the same class. A Faoii keeps her Cleroii sister alive with her sword, and the Cleroii keeps the Faoii alive with her song. Sometimes, depending on a situation, the roles must be reversed, so we all had to learn both parts. We need our sisters.”
Kaiya thought about Mollie and felt her eyes mist, but she batted the tears away quickly. She had always needed Mollie, too. “The same can be said for all Faoii, Lyn. We all need our shield sister as much as we need our fantoii or breastplate.” Lyn shook her head.
“Not like this. Look at them. Focus on the spell around them. Do you sense it?” Kaiya looked, and for a moment she did see it. There was a bond, a silver cord that wrapped itself around the girls. It stretched out between them, like a scarf in a dervish dance, constantly twirling as they spun their swords. “Some of the Preoii think that it makes us weaker. Neither girl is as strong as a regular Faoii, and neither can sing a song with as much power as a regular Cleroii, but there’s something about the bond between a Faoii’s will and a Cleroii’s spell. It’s strong. There’s a physical need to protect your sister, an aching when she is absent. But . . . it’s also that much more painful when it’s severed.” Lyn brought a hand up over her chest and visibly shivered.
Kaiya put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I am sorry for your loss.”
Lyn shook the tears from her eyes and straightened. Her shrug was not as casual as she probably hoped. “You deserve to hear the story, Faoii. I haven’t had a superior to report to since we left. There’s . . . so much I could have done differently.” Kaiya gave a soft smile.
“Look at what you’ve accomplished, Lyn. I am sure that there was little you could change and less still that you could have improved upon.”
“No, I know that. It’s just . . .” She rolled her shoulders and systematically began popping the knuckles on her fists. Kaiya wondered whether it was a nervous gesture. “Please, Faoii-Kaiya. If you would listen, I would… Well, I… It’s just that… Goddess’s girdle, Kaiya, I need to tell someone.” Lyn’s voice was harsh as she finally finished, though the whisper was too quiet for anyone else to hear. With another angry sigh, she brought her smoldering eyes up to meet Kaiya’s. The uncertainty there was almost tangible.
For a broken moment, Kaiya thought that Lyn’s strong façade would crumble in view of her gathered followers—something that could hurt the piecemeal army nearly as much as an outside attack would. Kaiya caught Lyn’s gaze and nodded. “Not here, Faoii. Is there somewhere we can go?”
With a look that could have been relief as easily as anxiety, Lyn straightened her shoulders and led Kaiya to a partially-enclosed section of the building. A pile of mismatched pillows was heaped in one corner, making the area look haphazard and ungainly while warm rugs and rich tapestries struggled to give it an air of authority and luxury instead. A curtain of dull peacock feathers that, ten years before, could have graced a sultan’s bedroom, hung awkwardly on the wall behind the “throne.” Keeping up her appearances with an intimidating skillfulness, Lyn sank into the cushions and motioned for the women nearby to clear a safe distance. Only after all the other women had moved off to do other things and Kaiya was settled on one of the pillows with her fantoii laid across her lap did Lyn’s cold eyes finally begin to soften again. It took several minutes for her to gather the courage to tell her tale.
14
It was dusk at the Monastery of the Unbroken Weave. A soft orange light filtered in through the high windows, giving everything a rosy color. I might have considered it pleasant if it wasn’t for the horrible stench of lye.
Blades, I hated laundry day. It would have been completely intolerable if not for Jade. Somehow, even in her silence, Jade always made things better.
I pondered the question that my Cleroii sister had asked a few minutes before. It had been a long-standing tradition that laundry day be passed with hypothetical questions of “who’s the better fighter?” and her most recent test had put me up against a lithe barbarian with a machete. Jade was an amazing warrior—more than capable of holding her own. I knew that if my response wasn’t perfect, she would know. And even without her saying anything, I would know, too.
Jade had the maddening quality of being able to say anything with just her eyes. She was too kind to outright say that she was disappointed in you, but you always knew anyway. Part of me wished that she would at least try false-facing sometimes, instead of just . . . staring. But Jade never lied. Everything was on the table for her. So I thought about her question and made sure to answer correctly.
“From that distance?” I chewed the inside of my cheek as I scrubbed harder. “Hmm . . . Maybe the jugular. Is he behind me or in front of me?”
Jade wrinkled her nose but spoke in her soft, lyrical voice, “Behind.”
“Hmm . . . Elbow to the sternum, then.” I paused in my task, keeping my face emotionless. I was not some untrained urchin; I knew that answer was a good one. But I waited anyway, afraid of the Preoii-worthy gleam in Jade’s eyes when I looked up.
Jade only nodded, smiling brightly as she straightened the thin, coarse sheet held out between us. I grinned.
“All right, Cleroii. My turn.” I handed my side of the sheet to Jade and moved to the small stove holding the iron. She followed, her graceful steps barely making a sound. “There are three of them. Average height, but about thirty pounds on the heavy side. Two behind you and one ahead. You have six strides of maneuverability. Plot it.”
Jade considered the situation for several minutes, pleating the sheets as I ironed them. I did not bother to repeat the question as the minutes lengthened. Jade always thought every word out before she spoke, never wasting a sound.
“I would—”
I still don’t know how Jade would have answered. She was cut off by a shattering crash that echoed through the monastery. We both froze. A single, high-pitched battle cry trilled its way through the halls, rising for a moment before being cut off suddenly. Its echo ghosted through the corridors before drifting into nothingness.
What can I say? We were Faoii. We acted instantly. The iron fell from my hand onto the newly-cleaned linen, forgotten. It took four running steps for me to reach the counter at the other end of the room, and I launched off it and into the crawl space above with a practiced ease. Jade followed after, using the wall as her springboard as she soared into the hideaway that had once been our playhouse. I crouched there, rigid and tense, as Jade jerked the access board back into place. Below us, the thundering crash of booted men rang up from the main floor.
“That came from the great hall.” I tried to keep my voice calm as I motioned toward the front of the monastery with one hand. Jade simply nodded and hummed a soft tune, her crystalline, all-knowing eyes staring at me from beneath heavy lashes. Courage and lucidity filled me, and my jittery limbs stilled. With a steadying breath, I pulled one of the edged disks from my belt as the thundering footsteps grew louder, closer. The disk was about the same length as my palm and weighted for throwing. Clean and sharp. I nodded once before easing my way toward the path that led to the entrance. Almost immediately, Jade grasped my wrist in protest and motioned for me to wait.
I wrenched my arm free, irritated and tense. My whisper was harsher than intended. “We can’t stay here, Jade. We have to find out what happened to—” I ground to a halt when Jade’s eyes met mine, and my stomach filled with dread. “Goddess’s girdle. Mei and Kim. All of the urchins are training with Mimi and Kiki.” Jade nodded silently. Frustrated, I flicked my eyes back and forth between Jade and the pathway that would lead to the front door. To the fight. The little ones (fondly referred to as “the urchins” by the rest of the Faoii) trained in the west wing—on the opposite side of the grounds. My limbs tingled as I was pulled between the two destinations.
With a hiss, I turned to the west, pulling Jade behind me as we scrambled down the pathway.
*~*
The entire monastery was laced with hidden passageways and secret rooms. The rat tu
nnels in the ceiling crisscrossed a dozen times between the laundry room and the west wing. More than once we passed other sets of women trying to repel the unexpected attack on our home. No one in the rafters spoke as dozens of Faoii and Cleroii wove through the ceiling passages, setting traps in their wake.
It wasn’t until we reached the dining hall that we caught sight of Faoii-Ming and Cleroii-Sung. Our superiors were busy directing younger girls with sharp, authoritative whispers. No one questioned their orders or made any move to slow the pace. It was imperative that we all achieve as much as possible before the invaders discovered the rat holes and passageways that offered us sanctuary. In the bustle of activity, we were barely granted the few seconds it took to ask about the urchins’ whereabouts.
“We haven’t seen the young ones.” Faoii-Ming had to raise her voice in order to be heard over the screaming coming from the dining hall below. She hardly looked at us as she knotted and reknotted a net coiled at her feet. Cleroii-Sung chimed a bit of wounding magic into the knots while Jade and I helped her to set the trap over one of the archways leading into the hall below. “I don’t know whether these horned bastards got to them or not, but I doubt it. Mimiko-Faoii and Keiko-Cleroii finished their sword ceremony last week, and your little sister is set to finish hers in a month. They can handle themselves, no matter how young they are.”
The Last Faoii Page 11
