The Sword

by Jean Johnson

  “As you wish, Your Majesty.” With a little bow, he strode back, dropped the melon halves with the other decimated one, and put one of the remaining fruit on the stone surface.

  “You care for another demonstration, Your Majesty?” Lord Aragol asked as Dominor completed his task and came back. “My other son can demonstrate with his pistol as well, if you wish…”

  “Your flintlock pistols are very intriguing, Lord Earl,” Kelly stated, reaching behind her, under the back hem of her vest-tunic. “I confess it has been some time since I last saw such a weapon. But I must apologize at not being perhaps as impressed as you clearly hoped I would be,” she added gently, apologetically. Smiling, Kelly pulled out the 9-mm handgun Morganen had fetched across the dimensions for her in preparation for this event.

  Flicking the safety, Kelly checked the chamber. Along with kung fu lessons, her parents had insisted on a course in gun safety when she had gone to college. Now she lifted the weapon, aimed, and squeezed off four rapid rounds.

  BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

  As the echoes and the thinner cloud of smoke died away, Kelly was grateful to see she had hit the melon enough at this distance to tear it to chunks, rather than ignobly missing after being so long out of practice. As more of the acrid smoke cleared—though there was less with the use of her weapon than had been involved with the Mandarites’—she restored the safety and returned the gun to the back of her outfit, tucking it into the holster hidden there. “As you can see, we have long since progressed beyond that level of mechanical technology.”

  “May I see that weapon, Majesty?” Lord Aragol asked, holding out his hand. For the first time since his arrival, his tone conveyed nothing but full respect for her…and it was clearly astonished admiration for the superior gun she had used, not for herself, a mere female.

  “No, you may not, milord,” Kelly returned firmly, flatly. “Such things are not meant for the hands of those not yet mature enough to wield them responsibility. We hold enough knowledge of nonmagical technology to gouge this island right out of the sea, to reduce it to black slag, glass, and ash; we simply do not care to be so idiotic as to use such weapons.”

  “You have weapons that can reduce this entire, large island to rubble?” Kennal repeated. “Why do you not use those weapons to take over the whole of the world?”

  “If you pride yourselves on your intelligence, Lord Aragol, Sir Kennal, Sir Eduor, as you seem to want to impress us that you do, then you tell me—what do you gain from using weaponry on that scale of power?” Kelly countered, suppressing an impatient roll of her eyes. “Land? Food? Minerals? Subjects to rule over? The land itself is blackened beyond use, the soil burned of all nutrients, the minerals slagged into useless dross, the buildings reduced to rubble, the plants and animals and people seared to vapor—what, exactly, would you gain?”

  “You could simply threaten your enemies with the use of the weapon,” Lord Aragol pointed out. “If such machinery exists, it could terrorize a whole continent into your power.”

  “Or it could more likely frighten them into making a similar weapon of their own…and then they would use it against you. And then you would be very, very dead,” Kelly stated flatly. “The only way to gain anything in a war is to stop the war, before it starts. Before it goes any farther. The only way to survive violence is to end the violence. The best way to find prosperity is to encourage peace.”

  “The only way you can defeat these Natallians you fight,” Dominor added, joining her argument, “is to make peace with them. You say you developed nonmagical ways to fight these magic-wielding women of Natallia. Even now they could be working on a way to counter your machinery with more powerful magic, or even nonmagical machinery of their own…and then your land would eventually become a blackened crater. It is only a victory when both sides are still alive to realize it, after all.”

  “We know why you are really here,” Kelly stated, seizing on that much information with her quick mind and embellishing. “You came here seeking land to expand into, easy resources to conquer. As yet, your current level of technology prevents you from completely countering the level of these Natallians’ magic. You attempted to claim this island so that you could have a land far from their influence in which to raise men to believe that women are inferior to you in all ways. Women are created different, not inferior, nor superior. Just different.

  “We feel sorry for you,” she continued, “that you are so afraid of such insignificant things as the differences between men and women, you feel you must try and prove yourself superior in such infantile ways.”

  “Infantile ways!” Lord Aragol protested.

  “Yes. Your displays of immature arrogance, and your unjustifiable, barely veiled threats of violence and hostility,” Kelly reminded him. “You offered them, thinking we’d be stupid enough to not notice…but we have. I can only hope and pray that your intelligence saves you from the course of folly that you currently sail before it is too late, before you destroy yourselves. As you are now, you are blinded to the lethal shoals that currently await you, ahead and below the surface of the tossing waves that are all you let yourselves see,” she concluded.

  “Nightfall, and the land that lies beyond it to the west, Katan, do not care for your petty quarrels,” Saber added, resting his palms on her shoulders as he faced the trio of strangers. “You may come here to trade in peace, or you may go to Katan and trade in peace. But you would do well to not bring your troubles here to our lands.

  “It would be best if you left your antiquated weapons behind, when you do come to trade; we will barter peacefully with you, if you come peacefully before us, but if you choose to fight…you will not win. As it is, you would do well to tread carefully while you are here,” he warned the trio of men. “Nightfall is protected by its superior technology, its superior magic, and the Lord of Night, whose wrath is the most powerful of all when roused to the defense of this land. Katan, which lies to the west, has the combined might of the Council of Mages and its own vast array of resources, magical and otherwise, to defend itself with. Neither land will tolerate violence or aggression aimed its way.”

  “Do not mistake our words for a threat,” Dominor murmured as the trio of men glared at them in affront. “This is the most well-meant of advice only, garnered through ages of wisdom and experience, and offered to you freely in the hopes that you are citizens of a wise culture. One we wouldn’t mind trading with in the future, when you are invited to come back to Nightfall again.”

  “If you truly want to get the best of your foe, you must prove you are superior. Not by machines and technology,” Kelly warned them, “but by being smarter than they are and bringing an end to your conflict through honest, respectful peace. You must prove yourself superior by being willing to compromise at least a little, if others are too stubborn to bend. Otherwise you and your enemy both will break, wither, and die, like a tree that snaps under pressure when it refuses to sway in the wind.

  “And one more kind word. Do not make the mistake of thinking that the rulers of this other land, Natallia, think the same way that you do. If their rulers are women, then I tell you as a woman that they will not think as you do. Your weapons will not prove your superiority to females, as they might to a fellow male. The use of violence and brute force in the quest for superiority never impresses women.”

  Lord Aragol said nothing; he eyed her with a shuttered expression, eyed her husband where Saber stood behind her. His sons looked as doubting, wary, and skeptical as he did. Finally he spoke, looking at Saber, not at Kelly. “You would not be so lenient and forgiving if you had a foe as arrogant as the Natallians are. You would be at the whims and mercy of your wife, and you would not be accounted her equal. Men are not meant for such humiliation; we would have things restored to how they were in the ancient days, when we ruled the land—”

  “You mean the days when women were not allowed to learn how to read or to write,” Kelly interrupted, “or to own property, or to decide who the
y would marry? An age when they were sold to the highest suitor in exchange for land and goods in a dowry, in a humiliation that is nothing more than a pretty name for slavery, regardless of their feelings? When they were degraded by men and counted less important than sheep, because while women could produce children, sheep at least could produce lambs and wool?” Kelly bit back tightly. “When a woman’s choices were to spend her life on her back under her husband as a wife, an object, a thing used to clean the house and breed sons, or to spend her life on her back under strangers with the coin for it, being fu—”

  Saber clamped his hand over her mouth. “Please forgive my wife; she has a bit of a temper. Thankfully, it is only triggered by blatant displays of stupidity, so she does not unleash it often on our own populace.”

  Kelly peeled his hand away. She wasn’t done yet, though she did revert her language back to the polite-vocabulary kind. “It is a fact, Lord Aragol, of biology, built into the ways of their flesh as created by the very gods themselves, that while men are stronger than women, women are smarter than men, on the average. And brains will always defeat mere muscles, magic, or machinery in the end. So if you wish to stand on equal footing with a woman, open your fist and use it to pick up a book, not a weapon.

  “Your touted ancestors probably beat their wives with their greater strength, until the gods of your lands gave the minds of your women something even stronger to fight back with, that greater magic than your men possess—but therein lies your very problem,” she pointed out, striving hard to keep her tone and expression reasonably polite. “Your mind-set probably made them strike back at you. Violence begets violence, my lord. Arrogance breeds arrogance. Pain and humiliation begs only for a future revenge. You started the cycle; therefore you must be the ones to end it. And until you can end this vicious cycle in your own minds, you cannot end it in your lifetime, and you will not win. That is the lesson of history, if you are smart enough to learn it.

  “Until then, I suggest you pack up your ship and take your immature, arrogant selves back to your excuse of an ‘Independence.’ Because until you do, you are chained to your own blind hatred, as surely as if the manacles were right there on your wrists,” Kelly finished, jabbing her finger at his hands. “That is not true independence!”

  He flinched back from her finger, scowling at her harsh lecture.

  Saber tightened his grip slightly on her shoulders, and Kelly straightened and clasped her hands lightly in front of her. He addressed their visitors, taking over and playing the “good cop” to her “bad.” “I think you should return to your homeland, Lord Earl. And think—actually think, not just react—about the logic of what has been said here this day. If you come to a point where your people can visit here and leave your attitudes and your quarrels behind, you may come again one day and be welcomed in many ways.

  “Until then, Nightfall will have nothing to do with the Disaster that is you. And do not look to Katan, until you can stop being a cultural Disaster and be an intelligent people instead; until the day you can approach them, honestly and most civilized, they will want less than nothing to do with you. I’m afraid that they will not be as polite about dealing with you as we have been.”

  “You will not see us again, until we no longer see what we currently do, when we look at you. It is too ugly and immature a view,” Kelly added with a touch of disdain in her recomposed, neutral tone. “Lord Chancellor, arrange transportation for these three to be returned to the beach at Whitetide. Be certain they are on their way before nightfall; if we have low tolerance for the words these nobles speak, the Lord of Night will have considerably less so. The blood of fools is his favorite drink, after all. It would not be polite to detain them overnight.”

  “As you command, Your Majesty.”

  “Bekh!” Kelly asserted, flipping her hand in an imperious snap. A beat behind her, Saber blanked them from view with a hidden twist of his own wrist. A moment behind that, and all of the illusory courtiers and servants in the distance vanished from view, triggered by his and Dominor’s magics.

  Dominor stood alone with the three Mandarites in the garden, silent but for the splashing of the fountains around them.

  The third-born, blue-clad son of the island’s population sighed, glancing toward the palace as if that were where everyone had vanished to. “I keep forgetting to inform the guards to warn uninvited strangers of the foremost law of Nightfall—don’t get Her Majesty mad. She may have a bit of a temper, but that is mostly because she is fiercely protective of her subjects. Blunt though she may sometimes be, her insight into problems is as keen as a healer’s knife, cutting away all that is bad.

  “I do apologize for her vehemence,” Dominor continued diplomatically, “but as you can clearly see, her logic and wisdom are impeccable; that is why we choose to follow her and why we tolerate her occasional outbursts of…well, to be diplomatic, I’ll call it redheadedness,” he hedged politely. “Still, she is right in her summation of what our people will and will not tolerate from our uninvited visitors. As Queen, she simply has the right to express herself more directly than the rest of us would deem polite—the privilege of being a monarch, you know,” he added to the men still standing with him. “Now, as I choose to obey my queen, this is the way to the eastern courtyard, gentlemen, if you will kindly follow me…”

  “We’re actually being kicked off this island?” Sir Kennal exclaimed, outraged. “Right now?”

  His father held up his gloved hand, silencing him. “Inform Her Majesty that we will sail with the evening tide. But we will return, and when we do, our next meeting—”

  The foppishly clad man whirled, stumbled, and flipped, with no apparent reason for his odd behavior. Dominor blinked. His sons stared down at him. The man’s hat was askew, his cheek pressed to the paved pathway they stood on. It was a familiar position for Dominor; thankfully, he wasn’t the one being pinned that way. This time.

  “By the Rights of Man!” the earl exclaimed, startled out of his threat. If a bit mushily, since his upper cheek was pressing his lower cheek into the ground and his arm was twisted up in the air awkwardly behind him. “What is this that has me?”

  Dominor bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. His sister-in-law had done it again, and he couldn’t even see it this time to study the moves his brother’s mate had made! He managed to recover his composure and speak in a calm tone, rather than an amused one.

  “I believe your speech implied a threat toward the inhabitants of this isle, Lord Earl; that threat was most likely perceived by the Lord of Night in his sleep. He is dangerous even in his dreams…and you have clearly lost Her Majesty’s protection from his wrath, in being requested to depart the isle. Be glad he but only dreams about this moment and has not actually awakened. His terror then would be horrible to behold. His thirst for the blood of the unwelcome and the impolite is legendary in this land.”

  “Don’t just stand there—help me! How do I make it let go?” the frantic man demanded, struggling and gasping when his own movements only increased the pain pressuring him in place. His boots and hose-clad knees scrabbled against the paving stones, the edge of a nearby flower bed, but he couldn’t get enough purchase to free himself from the invisible hold pinning him to the ground. His sons hurried forward to help him up, but were thrust back by another invisible force, shoved back repeatedly from trying to even get within a couple feet of their father. Lord Aragol struggled harder, eyes wide as he squirmed around just enough to gaze up at Dominor, but not enough to get himself free. “Help me!”

  “I suggest, with nothing but absolute honesty and humble sincerity in your speech, that you apologize thoroughly for even thinking of threatening Nightfall…and state with the truth of it lodged firmly in your heart that you will do everything in your power to make certain that you and your fellow Mandarites, should you ever visit this portion of the world again, will behave with the utmost of politeness, respect, and civility,” Dominor offered smoothly as the earl’s arm bobbl
ed a little with his struggles, still caught in the invisible grip twisting it up into the air. The third-born of the brothers added blandly, “Sometimes the Lord of Night is known to extend his protection across the sea to the west, to the shores of Katan, our nearest and best-loved neighbor, if the source of his irritation is great enough to engender his personal attention. It is speculated that he may have come from there, originally, and still harbors some small, lingering affection for the mainland, though Nightfall is now clearly his domain. As you can unfortunately see.”

  “Apologize?” Lord Aragol managed to gasp through the pressure squeezing his head, and the jerk of his air-pinned arm. His sons gave up and stood a few yards away, unable to get close enough to help their father.

  “Apologize. With great sincerity,” Dominor confirmed soberly. “For all of your offenses.”

  “I…I apologize for ever thinking less than civilized thoughts about such a powerful island kingdom.” The pressure eased slightly, visible by the way his arm stopped being torqued as much. “I apologize…for being arrogant around this island’s…queen.” His head was released, though he was still locked on the ground by absolute nothing pressing on his shoulder. The earl worked his mouth, his mustached and bearded lips, then tried one more time. “I apologize most sincerely for implying Mandare would return in force to this isle…and I will accept the advice given to me by its people. I will even advise my people to conduct themselves most politely and peacefully, should they ever come here again.”

  Kelly, invisible even to herself, which was why she’d had an awkward moment in first trying to grab him, released him completely. She backed up, bumped into Saber, who had been holding off the annoying, foppish man’s sons, and they both backed up a few more steps to get out of the way. Lord Aragol flexed his arm and worked his neck, then pushed warily to his feet. His youngest son scooped up his broad-brimmed hat, holding it out to him while the earl brushed off his elaborate clothes.