The Sword

by Jean Johnson

Some of the brothers choked on laughter, while others blinked in bemused shock at the possibility.

  “Oh, ha ha, very funny,” Kelly retorted, though her mouth twitched up involuntarily on one side. Behind her, Saber stiffened. “If you really want to know how to survive ‘Disaster Kelly,’ shape up or ship out! As the ranking female of Nightfall, I intend to order you about until this place is up to my standards of living. A woman’s standards, gentlemen, not those of a bunch of lawless, lazy bachelors. This place is to no longer be kept under the grime of your own ‘ideals,’” she added firmly, looking at the men around the table. “You have half an hour to attend to your affairs and report back here for cleaning detail.”

  “You will be going back to your chamber! You will not be ordering my brothers about!”

  Kelly piled scrambled eggs between two slices of cheese and two slices of toasted brown bread. “Wolfer, kindly inform your twin that I refuse to listen to anyone who shouts at me. Rule number four, you know.”

  Those golden eyes studied her a moment speculatively…then gleamed, just a little bit. He was apparently enjoying the humor of the situation. “Saber, the Lady Kelly wishes me to inform you that she is not listening to you, because you are shouting at her. That’s rule number four, you know.”

  “What?—Get up! You’re going back to your room!” He reached down over the back of her chair to grab her under the arm and haul her out of her seat.

  “Rule number six!” Kelly asserted, quickly swallowing her mouthful of makeshift egg and cheese sandwich, refusing to cooperate. “No one grabs me without it being absolutely essential, such as to protect my life! Not to maul me around like a brute. Wolfer, tell this brute to let me go!” she added, clinging hard to the arm of her chair with her free hand, doing her best to keep her makeshift sandwich together with the hand of the arm he had ahold of.

  “Saber, the Lady Kelly requests that I convey her wish that you let her—”

  “I heard her!” Saber dropped her arm, thumping her back down the few inches he had managed to lift her. For such a lightweight woman, she was rather strong. Or rather, very determined. Slapping a hand on the tabletop, the other gripping the back of her seat, he loomed down over her. “You are going up to the master chamber, and I am going to lock you in there!”

  “Wolfer, inform your brother that he is attempting to violate rule number two. Oh, and gentlemen, rule number seven: Anyone who breaks the rules four times in one day eats dirt.”

  “Brother,” the largest of the eight men around her recited as solemnly as he could, with those wolf-gold eyes gleaming openly in amusement, “you are attempting to violate rule number two.”

  “What in Jinga’s Name are you two talking about?” Saber demanded, glaring first down at her, then looking up at his twin. The others were clearing the table quickly and silently, staying out of the verbal field of fire between the three of them, yet clearly too drawn by this three-way argument to leave without seeing it to its conclusion.

  Wolfer said nothing to his twin for a moment, then almost as an afterthought turned to Kelly, who had deliberately not acknowledged Saber’s demand. “Lady Kelly, one of my brothers wishes to know what we are talking about. What would you like me to tell him?”

  “Inform Mister Grumpy that my number one rule is no rape; my number two rule is no locking me up anywhere; number three is I intend to work at sewing and other various skills to pay for my room and meals during my stay; number four is that no one is to yell at me; number five is that I reserve the right to make up more rules as situations warrant; number six is that no one grabs me gratuitously; and number seven, so far, is that anyone who breaks the rules four times in any combination in one day gets his face pinned to the floor, so that he is forced to ‘eat dirt,’ as I like to call it.”

  “Brother, the Lady Kelly wishes to inform you that her first seven rules are—”

  “I heard her!” Saber grunted darkly, scowling at her.

  “Do inform your eldest brother that he has already violated three of the rules, but as rule seven has just come into effect, he has been granted leniency this one time. Also, inform him that, as he is being graciously given a second chance to start over”—her chair skidded across the floor as Saber hauled it around so that she was facing him—“he should take this opportunity to start off on the right foot,” she continued blithely, staring past his shoulder, “and act from this moment on as a perfect gentleman.”

  “Saber, Lady Kelly wishes to infor—”

  “Shut up, Wolfer.” Saber stared down at her, his hands braced on the ends of her armrests. She refused to look at him, peering deliberately over his shoulder as she ate her strange meal of cheese, crumbly eggs, and bread slices. “Look at me. Look at me, Kelly!”

  “Lady Kelly, I believe my brother has conveyed a request for you to observe him directly.”

  Kelly cleared her mouth, calmly reaching for her mug of juice and sipping from it, ignoring the cage of his arms. “Did your brother say ‘please’ in this request?”

  Saber tightened his grip on the armrests of her chair, but played along. To have wrestled all night long with his hard-awakened desire for her, with his fear—yes, fear—of the Curse hanging over their heads, to have finally given in and gone to fetch her breakfast from the kitchen to take to her, however belatedly…only to find her gone, completely gone, with no clue of where she had gone or how, had made him sick with dread.

  Any mage familiar enough with Nightfall and strong enough to have sent so many of the mekhadadaks and other creatures to plague them over the past three years could have used memory, or even a painting, to scry and spy with and look in upon their activities. If they were strong enough, that same enemy-mage could have somehow discovered her presence. His brothers and he made damned sure all of the mirrors in each and every room, even the ones they never used, were enspelled against scrying to prevent such attempts on their lives…but two hundred years ago, Nightfall had been a thriving duchy, and not just an island used to exile the most unwanted of Katan. Someone clearly had a painting or two of the castle left over from that time, one marked with identifying images still good enough to transport creatures via spells.

  Good enough to maybe realize there was a woman in the castle and snatch her away…or perhaps even kill her. Finding her gone when Saber had expected her to stay put had nearly stopped his heart. So, faced with her obstinate, incomprehensible female behavior, he played along with it.

  “Wolfer, would you kindly pass along my request to the Lady Kelly, here, that she please look at me?” he asked graciously as she finished her sandwich and drained the last of her juice.

  “Lady Kelly, my brother waxes eloquent in his request, replete with a most courtly ‘please,’ that you favor him with your full attention.”

  “If he is gentlemanly in his behavior, then naturally I shall acknowledge him,” Kelly allowed, wiping the corners her mouth with her fingers, since there were no napkins—another oversight she would have to correct as a part of her womanly duty to more or less uphold civilized behavior wherever she was. She shifted her gaze from one of the abstract stained glass windows of the hall to the man whose shoulder blocked half of that windowed view. “See how easy it is to get my attention, Saber? Even I deserve some display of kindness.”

  Her words, accompanying that shift of aquamarine blue into his steel gray, pierced him with her simplicity. With her soul. Saber forgot how to breathe as he drowned in that clear blue green gaze, as the world shifted around him abruptly, primed by his unwilling proximity to her and nudged by the sudden fear she had left. He didn’t want to breathe; not on his own. Not looking into her eyes.

  There was a tie between them that made each of her exhaled breaths an indrawn one of his own, each exhale of his, her inhale. The scent of her body, musky and feminine, and the faint aroma of tisi flower oils mingled exotically with each breath she gave him, drew him far more than any need for oxygen could. He had been drawn to her from the first, against his will, in spite
of his will…because of his will. Just a shift of his hands, and he could touch those blue-clad arms, where her elbows rested on the armrests and her forearms draped into her lap. An inch, maybe two, and he could touch her.

  Claim her, in the ways his imagination had come up with, despite his resistance to everything she stood for. Sitting there, still too hardworn and thin but ripe with curves, blatantly woman, with a will as strong as his own and a determination to face the disasters of her own life head on, Kelly of Doyle was worth risking the Curse for. Worth loving and caring for…and Saber was a world-class idiot for ever thinking otherwise.

  She was right, though. He had treated her like a brute. He didn’t deserve her, and not just because of the Curse. Because he ran from his fears, while she did her best to face hers. If he loved her, she could be killed by the other Katani in fear of the Curse, by the Disaster foretold and now quite possibly linked to her, or taken from him by his youngest brother and returned to her rightful home. Because there was most likely nothing she wanted here.

  Not even him. A base brute.

  “You wish to ask me something, Saber?” the outworlder woman prompted him as he continued to stare at her, keeping his expression completely unreadable and everything he was feeling carefully on the inside, where it could freely reel and shift everything into a confused mess he knew he would have to climb out of somehow.

  There was no escaping one’s Destiny; Saber realized that now.

  He shifted away from her and her chair, unable to meet her gaze anymore. “Never mind.”

  Confused, Kelly watched him turn and walk away. She arched a puzzled brow, but he didn’t explain his actions. He just left the hall.

  “If you will not be needing me until the assigned time in half an hour, Lady Kelly,” his slightly younger, more muscular twin rumbled in that deep voice of his, “I’ll need to attend to a couple of things before I report for housecleaning duty.”

  She craned her head over the back of the chair and looked at him. “Thank you, Wolfer. I think I got through to him finally…but I’m not sure.”

  “Perhaps you did. Perhaps he is the one who is not sure,” the second eldest of the Eight murmured, his golden eyes wolf-wise. Of all of the brothers, he was the one who knew his own twin best, after all.

  The others wisely said nothing.

  NINE

  Even Dominor cooperated. Reluctantly and with the assertion he was doing it because it was his opinion that the castle needed cleaning, and thus needed the strength of his magic to help…but he cooperated. The first day, the brothers, under her direction, scrubbed the floor of the great hall, eradicated its cobwebs and dust, scrubbed and polished the table, cleaned and polished the chairs, and made the large kitchen a short distance away positively sparkle—a chore greatly enhanced in its ease and success by the application of their version of magical elbow grease.

  Cleaning the kitchen was her biggest priority, once the main hall was done. That at least ensured that their meals would be up to Kelly’s otherworldly standards of hygienic preparation…which was a big relief to her. Once it was all done to her satisfaction, Kelly delivered a lecture to all of them about frequent hand washing and safe cooking practices while handling and preparing different kinds of foods. The last thing she needed was a bout of Montezuma’s revenge, or worse.

  On the second day, counting from the point she escaped her room and joined the household in full, the six of them—minus Saber and Rydan—marched behind Kelly, accompanying her back up to her given chamber after breakfast. They not only cleaned her rooms more thoroughly than she already had with the aid of their magic, they redecorated, stripping away the not-exactly-inviting scheme the room originally presented. At Evanor’s suggestion, and under the most domesticated brother’s direction, they cast several spells in her chambers to alter colors and lighten the overall feel.

  It was fascinating to watch them work their magic. A flick of a wrist, a mutter of strange syllables that her ears couldn’t translate, and they methodically altered everything in the room. From the dark, dirty red velvet curtains, which were replaced with shades of pale blue and green, heavyweight linen rescued from a storeroom by the fourth-born brother and cleaned with their ubiquitous cleaning cantrips, to scrubbing and painting the stone walls a room-brightening shade of chalk white, it was all done with sparkling lights and shimmering waves, and the occasional sizzling sound.

  Painting and dyeing literally with magic, the six brothers enthralled their nonmagical guest with this display of their powers. They quickly took some pride in competing with those powers, too, as she stared, wide-eyed and wondering. Her amazement even drove them into cooperating in rearranging the furniture and removing some of it so that it wasn’t as cluttered with chests and tables as before, but rather had better flow around the largish room. Amazing, she thought as she watched them working on restoring the suite to its former glory, what one can do with a properly appreciative audience to spur them onward…

  They left the bed where it was, though they moved the massive piece of furniture via magic just enough to make sure the wooden floor was scrubbed and wax-polished directly underneath it, at Kelly’s insistence. The head of it faced to the east, and the foot to the west, leaving the entry door to the north and the refreshing door to the south. To the right of the bed, they removed a moth-eaten tapestry from the wall and uncovered a modest fireplace set in the corner of two of the eight-sided walls, over by the refreshing room door.

  They made that corner into a sort of sitting area, with a carved and cushioned loveseat couch Trevan located from somewhere else in the palace. Kelly admired it; the small couch had just the right kind of leather-padded, curved arm perfect for leaning on while curled up with a book. Not that she expected to be loaned a lot of books, but what was good for reading was also good for sewing.

  Wolfer added a matching chair from somewhere. Both the chair and the loveseat were scrubbed soundly with more cleaning spells to remove the dust, and the dark, cherry-like wood was polished with beeswax to restore its shine. The hearth and its furniture stood on the left of the refreshing room door. To the right of that door, clockwise, was the bathing tub in the southwestern corner, which Saber had already cleaned. Of course, Dominor—ever the perfectionist—gave it a second going-over just to be sure it was up to his standards…once his standards had been roused by the challenge of Kelly’s own exacting level of cleanliness.

  Koranen brought up two folding screens, silk painted with snow capped mountains and flying birds, for an illusion of privacy, once they were positioned between the door and the bed and bathtub. When Kelly described what terry cloth was like, compared to the plain, sheet-like cloth they used for drying themselves, Evanor disappeared for two hours and came back with cotton cloth he had magically rewoven to approximate what she had described. He then promptly found himself promising his brothers, on threat of torture, to make more of the marvelous material for each of them. It was an immediate hit when Kelly demonstrated how much more effective the loop-nubbed, cotton cloth was at mopping up water, compared to what they had been using.

  By the time he came back with the first try at the new cloth, the others had shoved the desk out of the middle of the room and into the northwest corner between the tub and the entryway door, clearing out some of the dusty chests that had cluttered that area. The brothers then helped her fix up the northeast corner between the door and the bed as a working nook for her various sewing projects. Well, helped was a misnomer. Wolfer picked her up and set her aside, insisting on doing all of the physical labor after a pointed look from Morganen, when she tried dragging around one of the tables herself.

  When most of the room was settled, the six brothers brought in piles of clothing for her to mend. They did so while mock-complaining that now they had nothing to wear worthy of the fancy donjon below her chamber, now that the main hall had been cleaned. Joking with each other, the six of them started competing to see which one had the garment with the most holes in need of re
pair. Kelly had begun to take note of each brother’s personality in her observations over the past two days, and she noticed that Dominor was not only arrogant, but competitive as well.

  The third-born brother bested the others by finally dipping his hands into his sack of laundry, bringing out his fingers so that they were partially pinched together, and holding his hands up in the air about a foot apart. With nothing dangling between them but his smirking expression, he smugly explained, “Your shirt is mayhaps second worst, Wolfer, but I defy this woman to fix my undertunic! Why, even the holes clearly have holes of their own!”

  As the others gave the arrogant mage dirty looks and laughed, Kelly tossed a cushion at him. “I’ll have to stitch your very hide, then, you utter fraud! Come here, so I can set my needle!”

  The amount of sewing they had brought was overwhelming, a rounded mound on the floor almost as tall as Kelly herself. She complained that she didn’t think she had enough thread and such, and they listened. The six of them trooped down the stairs, cleaning the stairwell as they went, promising good-naturedly to tackle the sewing room next on their list of chores.

  True to their word, that was the thing they did the very next day, Kelly in tow. She came up with a list of how she wanted the longish room remade once she saw it, then the rest of that floor in that section of the palace wing. Each brother attended to his best-suited task. Koranen cleaned every hearth in the room and tended to all of the lightglobes, making sure they were still good, and polishing their stands. Trevan polished all of the wooden furniture, and Wolfer took care of bringing down and setting up the curtains and tapestries between laundering them with Dominor’s help, being the tallest and most muscular of them; he also worked on restoring the cracked leather coverings of those furnishings that were not cushioned in cloth.

  Dominor polished the windows and replaced the cracked and missing panes, removed the grime from the oil paintings, and tackled those cushions that were made from fabric. Evanor scrubbed the floors and walls quite cheerfully, even scrubbing at the ceilings with the aid of a levitating mop, humming as he worked. Morganen did most of the wall-painting. He was faster and neater at it than the rest, and seemed to have an endless supply of whitewash paint to cover the plaster, as well as plaster to repair the occasional crack or flake.