Fortune and Fate

by Sharon Shinn

  Karryn returned the sword and took the knife, examining it with real interest. Davey’s was plain but exceedingly sharp; Wen resigned herself to the fact that Karryn would cut herself, which she did almost instantly. But the sight of her own blood seemed to make her more intrigued, not less. “I might be able to learn how to use this,” she said presently. “If someone showed me.”

  “I’d be happy to,” Davey said.

  Wen had a sudden intense, painful memory of a day spent at Ghosenhall. She and Janni were inside the palace, teaching the young princess how to hold a weapon. Both of them had relished the chance to get to know Amalie, who had always been so reclusive and shy. Not on that particular afternoon, though—Amalie had been friendly, determined to learn, and completely free of snobbery, and Janni and Wen had both found themselves delighted with their princess’s openness. Cammon had been there, too, and they had laughed away the afternoon, despite the gloom that hung over Ghosenhall in those days. The princess needed to learn to fight because everyone was convinced that war was coming. They’d known they wouldn’t have too many more carefree days.

  “Willa?” Karryn asked, because clearly she had been silent too long. “Do you think it would be all right if he showed me how to handle a knife?”

  “Of course it would,” Wen said briskly. “Or someone! You don’t have to take lessons from Davey if you think he’s too forward.” She gave him a heavy frown.

  His expression was virtuous. “I will treat serra Karryn with the greatest respect!”

  Karryn giggled. “I don’t mind if Davey shows me. If he gets fresh, I’ll just twist his hurt wrist.”

  “Serra!” he protested.

  Wen reflected that Karryn probably could take care of herself after all.

  “You might want to wear something a little less fancy,” Wen said, indicating Karryn’s dress. It was a simple enough style, but made of material that looked extremely expensive, and the lace at the throat would probably cost Wen her salary for the month. “Something old and tattered, if such a thing hangs in your closet.”

  Karryn glanced down as if to remind herself of her attire. “Hmm. Maybe tomorrow morning, then. I’ll find an old castoff to wear.”

  She left soon afterward, and Wen took the first opportunity to crowd Davey against the fence. “If you touch her,” she said in a pleasant voice. “If you make her nervous. If I look over and see the first sign of worry on her face. I will break your other hand. I will break your jaw. I will cut out your eyeballs with your own knife.”

  “Good,” he said. “I was afraid you’d expel me from the guard.”

  She gave him a look of unspeakable disgust, and he laughed and poked her in the ribs. She was tempted to grab his arm, flip him to the ground, and batter his face just to underscore the seriousness of her threat. “You know I can kill you,” she said.

  “And you should know that I wouldn’t give you any reason to,” he replied, some of his laughter fading.

  “She’s just a girl.”

  “She’s a pretty girl,” he said. “She ought to get a chance to enjoy that.”

  Since Wen didn’t know how to answer him—because she didn’t know much about what it was like to be a pretty girl—she just gave him another darkling look and strode away. She took out some of her confusion and irritation in a hard bout against Eggles, but she was distracted. He bested her once when she made a careless mistake, and he almost caused her mock death until she beat him back with a sudden desperate frenzy. In the end, he was lying on the ground, winded and a little stunned, and she stood over him, breathing heavily and feeling like she had been pounded by rocks and hammers.

  “I didn’t think you ever had an off day,” he observed from his position in the mud.

  “Just want you to gain a little confidence with a near-win now and then,” she said. His expression was skeptical, but he didn’t bother to contradict her.

  While they packed up the equipment after the morning’s training session, Wen maneuvered a little to end up in the tack room along with Orson and Moss, the two guards she trusted the most. She laid out the situation—the serramarra interested in defense, the flirtatious young guard offering to be her tutor.

  “Should I keep him away from her? She seemed pleased at the notion of learning from him, but—”

  “Davey won’t cross the line,” Moss said, sounding certain. “Do you ever watch him with Ginny? He teases her and tells her she’s pretty, but he never makes her uncomfortable.”

  “Ginny is pretty,” Orson said in an admiring voice. “That hair alone! No wonder no one’s ever late for dinner at the barracks.”

  Wen gave him a hard and level look. “If you touch her, I will cut your parts off,” she said.

  He burst out laughing and even Moss smiled. “I don’t know how you ever find time to sleep,” Orson said at last, “since you have to spend so much time taking care of everybody in the world.”

  “Not everybody, but Karryn, yes, it’s my job, and Ginny certainly,” Wen said grimly. “I’m the one who brought Ginny here and if something happens to her—”

  Moss stopped her with a hand on her arm. With her other hand, she was brushing her pale hair away from her wide face. “Willa. He’s just trying to get a reaction from you. If any of the men tried to seduce Ginny, Orson would kick them all the way through Forten City to the sea itself. He wouldn’t let anyone hurt a young girl—and he’s certainly not interested in one himself.”

  “Prefer me a mature woman,” Orson said with a drawl. “One who knows a bit about pleasing a man.”

  Moss gave him a quick look accompanied by a faint flush and Wen thought, What have I missed here? Moss and Orson? They seemed an unlikely couple, she so odd and reserved, hardly any more feminine than Wen herself, and Orson so masculine and tough. Yet Wen had seen stranger pairings whenever women joined the ranks of soldiers. Throw men and women together in any situation, she supposed, and some kind of attraction would result.

  “Well, we’re not discussing Ginny anyway,” Wen said shortly, since she didn’t want to appear curious. “We’re talking about Karryn. If you think Davey can be trusted to coach her, I don’t see any reason she shouldn’t learn a few moves. I doubt Karryn will ever be able to do much to defend herself—but she’s surprised me before. And it never hurts to be able to unsettle an attacker with a weapon he didn’t think you had.”

  “I’ll watch him,” Orson said. “He’s even more afraid of me than he is of you. He won’t get out of line.”

  “She’ll be back tomorrow morning,” Wen said. “Ready to fight.”

  INDEED, Karryn was at the training yard the next day, garbed in a shapeless gray dress that she had to have borrowed from her abigail, since it had obviously never hung in her own closet. She was also wearing thick boots to protect herself from the mud, and she’d tied back her thick hair in a style that was unflattering but eminently practical. Wen was impressed. Karryn was here to do business.

  She was accompanied by her guardian, which Wen noted in utter amazement. He had strolled down from the house with Karryn, and now he leaned against the fence, examining the yard with his usual curiosity. For a moment, he looked strange to her, and she wondered why. He wore the same loose-fitting jacket and unfashionable trousers that he always did; he had not trimmed his hair or his beard. It finally occurred to her that she had rarely seen him outdoors, in direct sunlight. This was an unfamiliar setting for him and she wondered if his behavior would change now that he was in it.

  Almost immediately, something distracted his attention from the yard. “Gods, what a remarkable smell,” he said, swinging his head to sniff the air. “Every year, I forget what a treat we are in for.”

  Indeed, the entire yard was heavily scented because, overnight, the hedge that surrounded Fortune had burst into ecstatic bloom. The gaudy white blossoms were so thickly clustered on the branches that it was difficult to see any green at all; standing beside the hedge was a little like leaning against a deeply perfumed cloud. Wen
didn’t wonder that Jasper was distracted. She herself had been drawing in deep lungfuls of air ever since she stepped outside.

  “I’ve never smelled anything like it anywhere else,” Wen said.

  “And you won’t,” Jasper replied. “The story goes that Rintour Fortunalt—the man who built Fortune—imported seeds from some country whose name has been lost to memory. He planted them around his estate and coaxed the hedge to grow, but no one has ever been able to successfully transplant a cutting to any other patch of soil in Gillengaria.”

  “Is that true?” Karryn asked, looking pleased.

  He smiled at her. “I don’t know. But I’ve never encountered these blossoms anywhere except Fortune.”

  “No time to look at pretty flowers,” Wen said briskly, because Orson and Davey had jogged up. “Is everyone ready?”

  Karryn ducked between the railings of the fence to stand inside the yard. But she hovered close to Jasper, as if afraid of wandering too far into unknown territory. Still, her voice was firm when she said, “I am.”

  “Good. Let’s get started.”

  They spent the morning showing Karryn various holds and moves that would frustrate an attacker and give her an advantage, however slight. Whenever Karryn didn’t understand their instructions, Wen and Orson would demonstrate, and then Karryn and Davey would mimic their actions. Wen noticed that Davey didn’t allow his injured arm to hamper him much, and she also noticed that he was very careful about where he placed his hands on Karryn’s body. That might have been because Jasper, Orson, and Wen were all two paces away, watching intently. Or it might have been because he really would offer the serramarra no insult, even if he were alone with her. Just like Moss said.

  Wen was proud of Karryn, who gamely tried any maneuver they described. Within fifteen minutes, the girl was spattered with dirt, and within half an hour, she’d been thrown to the ground and rolled in the mud. She had a smear on her cheek and her dark hair had come loose to hang in her face, but she just pushed it back impatiently and went to work again.

  Wen tried not to spend too much of the morning glancing over her shoulder to gauge what Jasper thought of the whole engagement. She supposed that watching soldiers fight had never been the lord’s idea of entertainment, and witnessing his ward trying to fend off an attacker could only make him shudder. Jasper Paladar was made for drawing rooms and libraries, not training yards and battlefields.

  He was made to keep company with women who danced and read books, not women who scrapped and fought.

  After about an hour and a half of a pretty vigorous workout, Karryn pulled herself to her feet and shook her head. “I can’t do any more, not today,” she said. “I feel like my arms are breaking! And I just can’t think clearly.”

  “I can’t believe this is your first time trying to hold a knife,” Davey said. Wen had noticed that the young guard flirted outrageously only when he wasn’t actually touching Karryn. With his hand on her back, he was very professional; with his arms crossed on his chest, his whole demeanor changed. “Girl as beautiful as you should be meek and helpless, but you’d have disemboweled me there if that knife was real.”

  Karryn was pleased. “I would have, wouldn’t I? I wanted to!”

  Jasper spoke up for almost the first time this morning. “It’s still hard to believe that someone like Karryn could reasonably fend off someone like—well, Orson here. She’s so much smaller and more fragile.”

  “Karryn couldn’t,” Davey said. “But Willa could.”

  Jasper looked at Wen with his eyes narrowed, as if trying to judge whether that could possibly be true. Wen had the peculiar sensation that that had been his real question all along. Can someone as little as Willa protect herself from the hazards of the world? “Could she?” he said.

  “You never saw her fight, but I did,” Karryn said, climbing back through the fence rails and then leaning against them as if unable to support her own weight. “I don’t know if Tover and Darvis were as good as Orson, though.”

  “They weren’t.” Wen laughed. “I’d have had a hard time fending off both of them if they were.”

  “He doesn’t believe you,” Orson said, glancing between Wen and Jasper. “Shall we give a demonstration?”

  This was her punishment for tempting the gods the other night, Wen knew. Oh, Lord Jasper, why don’t you let me teach you to hold a sword? And the gods had replied, Even better. Why don’t you let him watch you do the thing you do the very best? No matter that now she was self-conscious and ill at ease. She would have to perform, and perform well, for the sake of her own pride and the honor of all women.

  “Why not?” she said coolly.

  Davey leaned back against the fence, close to Karryn. “Use knives,” he suggested. “Show the serra how much damage you can do if you really know how to wield such a weapon.”

  Orson gave a wicked grin and drew his own knife, slim and deadly. “Excellent idea.”

  “Practice blades,” Wen said firmly. When she and Orson worked out against each other, neither of them held back. The last thing she wanted was to give or receive a major wound while Jasper and Karryn watched.

  “Afraid I’ll hurt you?” Orson said in a taunting voice, but he tossed the knife aside and accepted the practice blade from Davey. Wen borrowed Karryn’s weapon.

  “Wouldn’t want to completely embarrass you in front of the man who pays your wages,” Wen responded. “I need you strong and confident, not whipped and hangdog.”

  Orson and Davey laughed. Jasper looked appalled. Wen didn’t have long to fret over Jasper’s expression, because Orson lunged straight for her with his blade extended.

  She jumped back, ducked low, and bored in, right at his stomach. He spun away and hacked at her exposed neck, but she had anticipated the move and rolled aside. She managed to clip him pretty hard on his right knee, but he caught her shoulder with a glancing blow, spoiling her momentum and making her rethink her next two moves. And again, for he caught her from behind and sent her sprawling in the dirt. From her back, she bucked her hips and caught him in the groin with her heavy boots. Not enough impact; he staggered back, in pain but not incapacitated. She scrambled to her feet and attacked, slicing away at his ribs and his kidneys as he bent half-double and tried to fend her off with one hand. If she’d been wielding a real knife, he’d have been bleeding copiously by this time.

  But he wouldn’t have been dead, and there was plenty of fight left in him now. He straightened, whirled, and came right at her, trying to get in an underhanded strike that would allow him to rip his dagger from her belly up to her throat. He made contact. She could feel the tip of the blade through her protective vest, forcing a bruise right above her belly button. He closed the fingers of his free hand in the cloth at her neck and twisted, trying to strangle her enough to keep her from fighting off the motion of his knife hand. It was working; her breath caught and her vision darkened and she had that clear and frequent vision of what it would be like to die.

  She dropped her blade, clasped both hands around the arm that was strangling her, and swung up her feet, kicking him in the gut with all her strength. He grunted and released her, wheezing for air. In a single motion, she fell to the ground, rolled, retrieved her weapon, and knocked Orson’s feet out from under him. He tumbled heavily and she pounced, landing in a straddle across his back with her knife under his ear.

  “If this was metal, I’d cut your throat,” she said. She was breathing heavily and she felt his ribs working under her knees as he dragged in great gusts of air. “You’re dead, my friend, and you’d better admit it.”

  She heard Davey’s voice behind her, excited and admiring. “Did you see that? Did you see what she did with the dagger? She had to throw it away to make her move, but she knew exactly where it went, so she could snatch it up again as soon as her hand was free.”