by Sharon Green
"Since you asked, I'll tell you how good a protector he is," I said, causing the two with swords to turn their heads, and the aproned one to took up. "I've found him excellent as a protector, and we've come a good long way. If anyone should know, I should."
The one behind the counter grinned and glanced at his friends, expecting them to be sharing his amusement, but apparently they'd traveled a little more widely than he had. The two toughs were staring at my black leathers and silver medallion, and their faces had turned sober and the least bit pale. They watched carefully as I moved closer, then the one who had done the talking raised his hand to point.
"The Silver Gleaming Company," he said, drawing a nod from his friend, his voice softer than it had been. "I'll say they've come a long way."
"What's wrong with you two?" the one in the apron demanded, unhappy about being done out of his fun. "Why would we care what a rag in man's clothes has to say?"
"Shut your mouth, fool!" the first bravo hissed while the second winced, both of them suddenly nervous. "Don't you know a Blade of a Sword Company when you see one? Don't you know what it takes to be a Blade of a Sword Company?"
"Not as much as it takes to be a member of a Fist," the second one said, staring hard at my medallion as he swallowed. "Gist and me joined a Company green, so we know what it's all about. Female Blades gotta be better'n the males, or they can't handle it. You talk loud to her, you do it alone."
The one behind the counter had gone wide-eyed and even pastier than his friends, and seeing my thumbs in my swordbelt really seemed to bother him. As far as being loud goes he no longer seemed to have the inclination, but there was still something left to say.
"I think you gentlemen owe my friend an apology for bothering him," I observed, keeping the suggestion calm and quiet. "If he wasn't more easygoing than I am, he'd be the one needing to apologize to you - or what was left of you."
The three tough types couldn't get the words out fast enough to Timper, all of it running together in a gabble, and then they were interrupted by the arrival of an older, heavier man in an apron. He waddled up and sternly shooed away the two loafers and their friend, then turned a warm smile on Timper. The courier repeated his requirements in a very subdued way, paid over the gold he was courteously asked for, then led the way to the right into the dining room where the innkeeper had directed us. Our meal would be served as quickly as possible, we'd been assured, and until then we were invited to make ourselves comfortably at home.
A good decade of tables were already filled with diners and drinkers, but we had no trouble finding one in a corner that afforded some small amount of privacy. Timper stood until I'd taken the chair near the wall, his face oddly expressionless; once he sat, however, the look in his eyes made up for what was missing elsewhere.
"I must ask you to forgive me," he said in a low, intense voice. "I'm forced to admit I'd begun doubting your nobility, my lady, but now I can see how wrong I was. You are a true daughter to your noble father, and I shall never forget what you did for me."
"What I'm going to do is get violent if you call me that again," I answered just as softly, trying not to let more than a corner of my annoyance show through. "Or if you mention my father again. Can't you find anything else to talk about?"
"I'm no longer fooled by the brusqueness of your manner," he said with a superior sniff, an unaccustomed smile curving his lips. "It was you those ruffians feared, and yet it was to me you made them offer apologies, and me you made larger than life in their eyes. I would not have expected such generosity from one of your tender years, and the attitude does you great credit. You may be certain the effort will be returned to you a hundredfold."
I gave my attention to the serving girl who was approaching, and not only because I wanted a drink. Timper had been the "older and wiser head" from the day we'd left Fyerlin and on through the rest of the trip, and I had long since run out of patience with the attitude. A tenth of a decade more of life hadn't taught him anything worth knowing, but he wasn't the sort to understand or believe that. Treating him at times like a green recruit had been the only way of fighting back, especially since he had the tendency to jump when I barked.
Timper ordered a cup of very sweet wine and tried to get me to take the same, but I simply shook my head and told the girl to bring the house brew and keep it coming. I was in the mood for something raw rather than refined, and for once the courier didn't argue very hard. He waited the five minutes until our drinks were in front of us and the girl was gone on her way, and then he looked at me with more curiosity than he'd shown at any time during the trip.
"The black leathers, I take it, were what told those two of your - ah - calling," he said, holding his cup with the fingertips of both hands. "It was also obviously your medallion that gave them your Company name, but I fail to understand how they knew you to be a member of a Fist."
"They saw the sapphire," I explained, tasting my brew and getting a pleasant surprise. The inn's product wasn't bad at all, cold and crisp and well-balanced, considerably better than what northern inns usually offered. "When you become a member of a Fist, you have the Fist's stone added to your medallion. That tells everyone you are part of a Fist, and also which one you belong to. I would say those two didn't stay around long enough to learn one from the other."
"I have also been wondering about the names of the Companies," he said with a nod, obviously having decided to get all his questions answered at once. "I have very little knowledge about Sword Companies, but shouldn't their names be a bit more … boastful or complimentary? If anything, they sound insulting."
"They're supposed to be insulting - to whoever the Company fights against," I said, stretching out long in my chair to hide the amusement I felt at his ignorance. "My Company was the Silver Gleaming, meaning we were so much better than anyone we fought that all they would end with was silver-gleaming steel, not a single streak of red marring it. The Crimson Rush and the Opened Throats mean the same, what their Blades will do to whoever they're pitted against. It's boastful enough, if you look at it properly."
"Opposites, in a manner of speaking," he said with another nod, sipping at his wine. "Just as my impression was of the name those others called you. Soft and Gentle, indeed."
His amusement was more of a smirk than a chuckle, the outsider being part of insider secrets, but the comment brought me memory of things I hadn't allowed myself to think about until then. We'd ridden hard these past weeks, supposedly to get where we were going sooner, but riding quickly toward some place means you're riding just as quickly away from somewhere else.
I didn't need to look down at the silver medallion I wore to know it was there, just as I didn't need to stop to think about it to know it shouldn't have been. I'd resigned from the Silver Gleaming before leaving Fyerlin, which meant the medallion picturing a shining sword ought to be packed away among the things in my saddle bags. That I still wore it was not simply a matter of habit, or precisely the fact that I wanted my father to see everything I'd been a part of. One thing I'd been a part of, the most important thing, was now only technically over; once I took off that medallion, though, it would be over for ever and ever.
I stared down into the tawny depths filling my goblet, thinking about the name Timper had mentioned. Rull had been the first to call me Soft and Gentle, when I'd formally met him and the others of the Fist, almost five years earlier. I'd just returned from a visit home, the last I'd made, as a matter of fact, and hadn't had the faintest idea that I was under consideration for healing a broken Fist. At one time or another I'd met and spoken with all four of them, but only in passing conversation or after a fight, just talk that Blades of the same Company engage in. A couple of them had teased me and the others had given me pointers, and although I gave as good as I got with the teasing, I listened carefully to the pointers and remembered them for next time. When a Blade of a Fist makes a suggestion on how to improve your sword technique, you ignore it only if you're interested in a very short
career with your Company.
And I hadn't been interested in a short career.
The second swallow of brew went down my throat as smoothly as the first, but I discovered then that I was losing the desire to drown painful memories and anticipations. Getting sloshed doesn't solve your problems; all it does is give you the added chore of having to face those problems while struggling with a hangover. I could just see myself staggering into my father's castle, trying to get everyone to keep their voices down, trying to keep my ears from failing off, getting ready to announce that I was there to accept being named my father's heir. . . .
Timper asked if I would share what I found so amusing, possibly thinking I was laughing at him, so I told him about one of the funnier incidents that had happened some years ago to another Company. He smiled politely at the end of the story, showing again the sort of sense of humor he had, then cleared his throat before leaning forward a little.
"So that, you say, is the reason why most male Blades hesitate over joining a predominantly female Fist," he remarked in a casual way, trying to be worldly but at the same time keeping his voice low to hide embarrassment. "I do suppose one man with four females would be rather … fatigued. Just as fatigued, perhaps, as one female with four males? With just as much danger of an undesirable … occurrence?"
He wasn't quite meeting my eyes as he said that, and although he was tiptoeing around the barn, it was fairly clear he was asking a couple of very pointed questions. Under other circumstances I might not have answered them, but if I were going to be my father's heir I was going to have to get used to questions like that - without getting angry over misconceptions and half-truths.
"Timper, what went on with that Fist was the exception rather than the rule," I said, trying to keep the words gentle. "What made their problem so funny was the fact that most mixed Fists have more sense than to get that deeply involved in just that way. The female Blades all came from the eastern mountains, where they were taught to use a sword as soon as they could walk, but where they learned nothing at all about men. The male Blade was the sort who didn't belong in a Fist, but who joined theirs because he also didn't understand that a Fist's first purpose is fighting, not blanket-warming. He also didn't stop to ask any questions, and the four girls had kept too much to themselves after they came north to have gotten the right answers before it was too late."
I'd thought I was being clear and concise in my explanation, but the confusion showing on Timper's face said I was taking too much knowledge on his part for granted - especially concerning male-female relationships. I wasn't used to knowing more about that sort of thing than the men around me, most especially not with men who were also older, and for the first time in a number of years I began feeling uncomfortable.
"Maybe it would he easiest if I told you about my own experience," I said, sitting up straighter in my chair after clearing my throat. "Rull and Foist and Jak and Ham got to know me one at a time, and then they came together to offer me a place in their broken Fist. Their first consideration was my ability as a Blade and how well I took helpful advice, and their second was how we all got along together, how well our personalities blended. They told me that when they first began looking they weren't even considering female Blades, but meeting me had made them change their minds."
Very briefly an expression flickered across Timper's face, the sort of dirty-laugh skepticism most outsiders showed when they were told something like that, and just as briefly the surge of anger I felt got the better of me.
"It happens to be true!" I snapped, nearly to the growling point, and then I had control of it again. "When a Fist fights, their lives depend on how good each of their Blades are; choosing a fifth that will do nothing more than save them night house fees would make them too stupid to survive very long. I joined the Fist on the usual conditional basis until we'd been through the first battle together, and then we all declared ourselves well-enough pleased to make the arrangement permanent. It wasn't until then that they made sure I'd had my Blue Juice."
"Blue juice?" the courier echoed, trying very hard to keep his skepticism to himself. "What in Home's name might that be?"
"It's what those four from the eastern mountains hadn't had," I said, hoping the general comment would do it, but no such luck. I could see he still didn't understand, so I gestured vaguely with one hand. "It's what all female Blades and a large number of other northern women make use of, a blending of Zil fruit and shore berries, which together make a bluish mash. If a female strains it and drinks the juice, she's safe from - accidents - until she drinks it a second time. It's so old a tradition in the north that most northern marriage ceremonies have provision for the second drinking, so that the newly married couple will be able to have children - "
"What?" Timper exclaimed, so loud and outraged that most of the other people in the room turned to stare at him. He noticed their looks and lowered his voice again, but his outrage was still firmly in place even though he fought to keep it down.
"I hope you will excuse my outburst, but I find myself rather shocked," he said, as though shocking him wasn't very easily done. "I had no idea those of the north were quite that depraved… Well, it makes no never mind. We are returned home now to the south, praise be to all we hold holy, and need no longer concern ourselves with the doings of the lost. Ladies of the south would never dream of indulging in such scandalous behavior, and you, of course, are at heart a lady of the south. You need only be reminded of the thing - which I'm sure your father will do for you - and we will consider the matter merely as an aspect of a blessing. With no possibility of an awkward … remembrance of the time, it will all be rather quickly and thoroughly forgotten."
He sat back as two inn girls and a serving man reached us, the man carrying a heavily-laden board, the girls there to serve us from it. Breads and cheeses were transferred to our table with a large lump of butter, and then we were being given the bowls of fish soup, thin tendrils of steam still rising from them. This part of our meal hadn't needed much preparing, and I was glad it was there even if I did hate fish soup. Timper was already stuffing his big mouth, ending our conversation in a much more pleasant way than I had been about to end it, totally unaware of how close he had come to the real shock of his life. What I'd been so happily a part of was depraved, and now that I was returned to the bosom of my loved ones it would all be magnanimously forgotten? I was much more ready to forget Timper, and planned on doing exactly that at the first opportunity.
The rest of the meal was brought rather quickly, and was tasty enough to keep us occupied with something other than talk. Timper stuffed himself to near-bursting, then had to excuse himself rather abruptly which, in my opinion, he more than deserved. Once he was gone I finished my latest brew, refused another, then left the house to visit the stable. My stallion had been put in a reinforced stall a short distance from the other horses, and once I'd seen that he had everything he needed I took my saddlebags and went back to the inn to find my room.
When the door was barred and I had gotten out of my leathers, I lay down on my back on the narrow bed without blowing out the lamp, holding my medallion up so that I could stare at it a while. Timper would never know how close I'd come to telling him about something very important to me, so important that if he'd gone all stiff-necked and insulting after hearing it I probably would have done something very - unladylike - to him. I'd only been a matter of words away. . . .
When I'd become a full member of the Fist I'd been very young, not much experienced, and silently bracing myself for whatever my Fistmates would come up with in the way of extra-battle activities. I'd known from the start that I wanted to be one of them no matter what I was called on to do, but when all of them asked at once whether I'd had my Blue juice, I felt the sort of nervousness I'd only felt before when my unit of the Company stood as reserves in an important fight. I'd wanted to do what was expected of me, but I'd been afraid I wouldn't do it well enough and they'd be disappointed.
What
had been expected of me at that point was going with them to a night house, just the way any other new addition to the Fist would have done. None of them quite laughed out loud at my flustered surprise, but they'd all known what I was thinking and had decided to show me I was just as much a member of the Fist as they were. Member, not blanket-warmer. It had been months before I'd gotten a taste of one of them, and by then it was a matter of mutual curiosity with no "must" about it. I'd enjoyed Jak, and then Ham, and then Foist, but we were all more likely to use the night house workers than pair off together, and then I'd almost casually tried Rull. . . .
The medallion swung in a very small arc as I stared at it, the tiny sapphire glinting warmly, or at least warmly to my eye. Rull was the one who had started our Fist, and continued to be the best Blade in it. If any man was ever born to lead a fighting unit and give pleasure to women without number he was it, and he'd been wise enough to know better than to try settling down. He didn't really mean more to me than the others did - even though he was different - but the last couple or three weeks before I'd left he'd become … distant but not unfriendly, removed despite being where he usually was. I'd thought I could jolly him out of whatever was bothering him, but he'd stubbornly refused to respond - and then he'd said what he had -
I dropped the medallion on the bedside table, got up to blow out the lamp, then lay down again and covered myself despite the continuing warmth of the air. If I hadn't had a place to go and something to do I would have felt terribly lost and more hurt than if my family had been wiped out. Most people don't choose death, and if it comes to them you can only mourn them, not blame them for leaving you all alone. In that way death can be thought of as kinder than life, in that it doesn't withdraw part of your soul to where it continues on, only without you.
