Sword

by Amy Bai

  "A little more control would be prudent, I think."

  "I try."

  "Try harder. The last time you played the flute, we lost another window. Do you think glass grows in the fields?"

  "I haven’t got anyone to teach me," Devin said reasonably. "The last tutor you sent me to made me eat flower petals and told me all I needed to do was plant the magic in the earth, for the gods' sakes. I think he was actually a confused farmer. If that's the best the kingdom can offer in the teaching of magic, we're in trouble." He took a bite, waving his fork lazily in his sister’s direction. "Wait till Kyali comes into her own. Then you can blame us both for the broken glass."

  "I doubt she’ll break glass with her Gift."

  "What, then, iron? Bones? The hearts of swooning noblemen from here to Madrassia?" Devin brightened, warming to this speculation. "Do you suppose she’ll call lightning from the skies?"

  Their father seemed to find this subject interesting in spite of Devin's gleeful foolishness. They both looked at her thoughtfully, in identical poses of contemplation, and Kyali rose and plucked the spoon off the floor, escaping to the kitchen.

  Useless. Devin's voice, trained by years of singing, carried easily.

  "I expect you’ll have to bring some dried-up old wizard from the provinces here to keep her from bringing the house down around our ears. It will be a nice change of pace. I can offend him with bawdy lyrics and Kyali can frighten him into an attack of nerves hacking about with that chipped hunk of steel. Perhaps we can even invite some of the cousins in for some real sport. I haven’t seen Bran and Conall and Bryce in years."

  "There won’t be a wizard, at least not one to come here. You’re both well beyond the hedge-witches. And the last time that lot was here, you disarranged half a battalion."

  Kyali shut their voices out, concentrating on her plans. It would be a long walk to the mountains, and horses were too precious to take one. Gods knew she wouldn't miss the hard-mouthed, spiteful gelding she'd been stuck with for the last year; walking seemed peaceful next to that gait. She wouldn’t need much. A pack with bread and cheese, her practice sword and a few daggers. She would wear her leather armor under a peasant’s dress and hide the sword in the skirts. It was a pretense she had managed more than once, couriering messages in secret in her father's service.

  She debated leaving a note and decided against it. There was little she could think of to say, and her father clearly knew enough to tell where she had gone. And there was nothing at all she could say to Taireasa. Just thinking of that made her throat hurt, a hard lump of self-pity that she swallowed fiercely. She couldn't afford such things anymore: they belonged to children, and she was, after tonight, on her own path.

  Whatever that was.

  "What say you, sister mine?" Devin shouted from the dining room, conveniently interrupting a chain of thought that was beginning to tend toward panic. "Will you make the ground tremble or burn the forest down?"

  "Leave me out of this," she hollered back.

  Their father finally raised his own voice, sounding dryly annoyed. "Keep shouting, the both of you, and we will likely have one or the other."

  Devin’s generous laughter rang out, and in the kitchen Kyali felt that ache come back to her chest, a perilous slide toward sentimentality that she smothered in a reach after a wine bottle. Her father cast her a sardonic glance as she emerged and set it on the table.

  "No goodbyes for your family? That seems cold."

  Devin’s laughter came to halt so abruptly she had to fight an unwilling smile, bowing her head to hide it. For a long, uncomfortable moment, nobody spoke. Their father calmly poured the wine for the three of them, the clink of glass the only sound in the house. Kyali looked up, feeling that dratted heat in her eyes undoing all her efforts at poise.

  "There seems no use for them," she said. "You already know, and you would have guessed anyway."

  Devin exploded, slapping both palms on the table edge. "I knew—I knew it! Where are you going this time, you secret-loving little wretch? I hate it when you two do this. Damn you both. Kyali, you’re as bad as he is."

  The general leaned and righted an empty water pitcher. "She’s going to the mountains, a course you've suggested often enough yourself. Sit down."

  "I will not sit down!"

  "I sent to the Fraonir yester-eve." Her father turned a bland face to her as he collected several forks on their way to the floor. "You’ll be meeting a party on the road, I expect."

  Several comments sprang to mind. She bit them back with an effort. "Aye," Kyali said tensely, almost as outraged as Devin was now.

  "Aye! Aye, she says!” Devin snapped. “How long have these plans been going on under my nose?"

  "I imagine it’s about two days, boy, roughly since a young man died on the point of your sister’s chipped hunk of steel. I would have thought a Bard would be a bit more observant."

  "Well, I'm not one yet, am I?"

  "If you're waiting for the affirmation of the court before you learn to marry your mind to your mouth, it will be some few years. Do us all a grace and get an early start."

  "Enough, you two. Father, don’t make this worse, we’re running out of cups again. Gods bless."

  Devin made an inarticulate sound of frustration and wilted back into his chair. The general merely raised an eyebrow. Then the table itself shivered and they all eyed it warily. "Don't break a single cup, Devin," their father murmured.

  Her brother sighed and rested his head in a hand with a look of intense concentration. Kyali sipped at the wine and watched him as he recovered. "The countryside will be remarkably free of bandits along your path, I imagine," he said mildly, which was Devin at his absolute worst, and the wise braced when they heard that tone from him. "When are you going?"

  Kyali met his eyes, cautious.

  Her brother blinked once. "Not tonight, then, is it? Gods, stay till morning, at least get a decent breakfast in you."

  "Mmm, and leave under the fieldhands’ watchful stares. Why don’t I just have it proclaimed?"

  "I could write a song about it."

  Devin’s eyes did not change color, announcing his state of mind to the world. His mother had been a quiet, un-magical baron’s daughter, unlike her own. She glared across the table at him, and their father cleared his throat.

  "It’s settled. Enough bickering. Devin, you know perfectly well why she’s going and if you’d use half the wit you were born with, you’d know why it has to be now. Don't throw anything, and if we lose so much as another cup, you'll muck stalls till dawn. Kyali. Kyali."

  She moved only her eyes, keeping her brother in her periphery. "Don't hit him," was all their father said, dry as a bone. "I’m going to see to the horses."

  He left with admirable indifference. Devin watched him go and then blew a slow breath out, staring fire at her. Kyali held his gaze, feeling the heat in her eyes ruin all her effort at keeping her face schooled.

  "I can be just as stubborn as you, sister."

  "I don’t doubt it. It’s my practicality you’re lacking, not pig-headedness."

  "Oh, I can be practical enough when I want."

  Crockery was in danger. Again. And she was having a difficult time keeping the smile off her face. "We should be past such things by now. Aren’t you supposed to be the eldest? Act like it now and then. It would be far more shocking than any of your feeble pranks, I assure you."

  "Ah, but this is so entertaining. And you shrieked like a banshee when you saw those spiders, don't deny it."

  "Sad to be reliving past glories at seventeen, brother."

  They leaned back at the same time, never looking away—one didn’t, with Devin in this mood. Not twice, anyway.

  "Changeling," her brother accused, unoriginally. "Síog child, with your hair and your sparking eyes and your sword, you belong in some bedtime faery tale... yes, I do think I could make a very nice ballad out of you. Ought I? Would you enjoy that?"

  She blushed in spite of herself, a
nd he smirked.

  "And what does that make you, I wonder?" she retorted. "An ogre, perhaps."

  "The storyteller, of course. Silly girl."

  "Court jester, rather." The insult brought a matching flush to Devin's cheeks. She did smile this time. Devin grinned back at her, all teeth, and Kyali braced both feet under the table and eased the chair back as her brother toyed with his wineglass in an obvious parody of disinterest.

  "A wandering mendicant," she suggested, to have it over with—and ducked under the table as Devin launched himself over it without warning. She heard glass break (mucking stalls it was, and never did a brother deserve it more) and scrambled on her knees for the other side as Devin tried to untangle himself from her chair, cursing and laughing. His hand closed over her ankle. She kicked. He pulled. She slid backwards, inadvertently gathering carpets. By now, she was laughing too hard to fight, and emerged breathless and sneezing in a rumpled mess of rugs and dust.

  Devin leaned against the chair and wiped at his eyes, shoulders shaking with silent hilarity. "I ought to give you a sound thrashing for that," he declared, grinning at her outrage. "Alas, I’m not completely certain I’d win. Now that I have your undivided attention, dear sister: what is our father talking about?"

  "As if you could!" Kyali struggled back to her knees, spitting grime and horsehair, her hair having escaped its braid to fly in her face as it always did when freed. "Devin," she said, trying not to struggle too obviously for breath. "What do you think that man was doing in our cellar? I killed Alusyn of Arumilia, brother mine, not some common thief. It’s not going to go unnoticed."

  "I just assumed he was looking for Father’s maps, or the House heirlooms, or some such." His wry glance made a jest of the words. House Corwynall held lands and arms as old as the kingdom itself; it was rich in history and nobility, but little else. Their comfort was at Crown grant, as it had been for as far back as memory went. It was how the kingdom was run: Marsadrons ruled, Corwynalls held the borders. Except for the rare times when Corwynalls ruled, and Marsadrons lived on these lands and trained the soldiery—but the barons hadn't voted a Corwynall heir to the throne in so long nobody alive remembered it happening. Her House was made for war, and Lardan was not. She huffed at the humor and wiped the hair out of her eyes.

  Then Devin frowned. "Wait. Alusyn? Alusyn? Isn’t he—"

  "Baron Walderan’s lackwit nephew? Yes."

  Her brother paled, his customary silliness giving way to horror and a shrewd, startling cleverness. Few had seen that, and fewer still suspected it existed—more fools they. He was a Corwynall, after all, raised by a man reputed to be the most brilliant strategist the kingdom had seen in centuries.

  Devin’s brow furrowed deeper. He stared at her, waiting.

  "I’m too young to hold my own," Kyali said, unable now to meet her brother's gaze. She found a spot on her dress and rubbed at it, until the memory of Taireasa's hands twisting silk made her cringe. "I need training. The kind no one will question and few will dare try. And a few years in the hills will cool tempers here."

  "What tempers? The barons can hardly acknowledge that he came here, sister… do you expect duels at sunrise? No one’s going to be that straightforward about it."

  That was the general’s son, though still a bit naïve, which she was not, after nearly a decade of study with her father and his highest officers. The weight of her isolation from all others of an age with her struck her suddenly. When she thought about it—about couriering messages to troops dressed as a peasant, about learning the sword in a way none of the soldiers did—it didn’t seem ordinary at all. But she had lived like this for as long as she could remember.

  And now, would she would learn to live a different way, and put all this odd teaching into practice?

  She stared at the floor until she could speak past the tightness in her throat. "Precisely," she said at last: there was a quiver in her voice. "They won't."

  Devin’s eyes widened. "You think they'd try—you think the barons would send an assassin? No, Kyali. They—" he stopped, frowning, and sighed suddenly. "They already did. It wasn’t maps at all. He was here for you."

  "Or you."

  Devin huffed, looking startled at the thought. Kyali shrugged. "But likeliest me, yes. Father thinks so. Unfortunately, so do I."

  This conversation had gotten well past what she wanted to speak of. She stood, brushing at her clothes, and righted her chair. Devin made his way back to the other side of the table and sat, absentmindedly gathering the shards of his broken wineglass.

  "But why now, when—"

  He stopped again, cutting off the question. His eyes were suddenly intent on hers. The silence stretched out awkwardly between them and Kyali fought a flinch that seemed to start somewhere deep inside her. The old rhyme they had both heard and disregarded all their lives was suddenly weighing down the air between them, so plainly present she could almost hear it, and, in fact, Devin's lips shaped the first few words.

  He did guess it.

  She raised a hand, stopping his words.

  "Let’s not speak of... it. Let's just say I feel that instruction with the Fraonir would be useful." Devin closed his lips over his words and silently mouthed “useful.” She could almost hear the doubt. "And see that you don’t get caught alone with any Westerners," she added under her breath.

  They were still sitting in silence when their father came back in, carrying a sword in a plain leather scabbard. He handed it to her without ceremony. If he noticed the state of the room, or the dust in his children’s hair, he gave no sign. "You’ll wear it belted until they’ve determined you’ve earned the baldric, mind," he said, looking at the sword instead of at her. "I don’t think you’ll grow much taller, but it ought to stand you in good stead for a few years even if you do." He set a pair of daggers, sheathed and bound in a belt, atop the sword. "You’ll learn these before you learn the sword, I expect."

  Kyali blinked up at her father wordlessly, arms full of weapons, and he looked impatiently about the room. "Right. Bread, cheese, water… and I suggest you get out of that silken target. Wear one of the roughspuns. And put a scarf over that hair of yours."

  "Are you so eager to be rid of me?"

  Gold flashed briefly in his eyes, then sank like a stone in a stream. I must learn how to do that, Kyali thought. His hand came up and smoothed briskly over her head, dislodging a drifting cloud of horsehair. Across the table, Devin's jaw had dropped.

  "You’ve a lot of hard work ahead of you, girl," her father said. "Now’s as good a time to start as any."

  CHAPTER 3

  Leaves had invaded the castle in large numbers and they skirled through the halls like frightened mice, rattling and crunching underfoot. Some crunched under his feet, and Devin grimaced as the noise drew the attention of Baron Cian, who was passing by with his lady on his arm in what looked to be the direction of the great hall. He leaned back against the tapestry-covered stone wall.

  Then he smiled, with conscious charm, as Cian and Alys turned to face him, stately as ships, stalling the passage of servants and guards trying to pass by.

  Master Emayn would be turning the corner any minute now, out of breath and furious, and it felt like half the people in the hall were looking at him. He thought briefly of just throwing the tapestry behind him over his head and holding very still, but he'd probably choke to death on the dust it hid.

  "My lord Cian," he said, bowing. "Lady Alys."

  She had a lovely smile. And she looked younger than Cian by a decade. His bow in her direction was a little lower that he'd intended, and his smile got wider and crooked as she held her hand out for him like he was a lord, instead the wayward son of one. With Cian's gimlet gaze boring a hole in the top of his head, Devin only held her hand for a moment and bowed slightly over it, though she seemed as though she wouldn't mind if he kissed it.

  Get caught leaving a lady's bedroom once and you were added to some list at the back of everyone's minds, like a reformed thie
f in a treasury.

  At the other end of the hall rose a commotion of raised voices and footsteps. Lady Alys craned her neck to see, retrieving her hand. Devin cast a panicked glance that way and saw Master Emayn's wispy white hair flying like a flag in a high wind above a small cluster of servants bent over a spilled bowl of apples. He sucked in a chestful of air.

  "Just come from lessons, then," Cian said, not missing that.

  "Ah—yes, actually. My lord, Lady Alys, if I could—"

  "Would serve you right if I held you here for him to catch up to, you young rascal. What did you do to him this time?"

  "Nothing, my lord!" Cian had hold of his arm; he couldn't escape now without insulting a baron, which the man clearly knew and, by the flicker of humor in his eyes, enjoyed. He met Devin' s best look of innocence with a stern frown.

  Emayn was closing in, robes askew, his hair wafting up wildly with every stride forward. He could move amazingly fast for such an old man. "Devin Corwynall!" he shouted, his wrathful voice bouncing off every stone in the walls and the ceiling, and hells, now everyone was looking at him.

  "He just found out about the Hedgewizard's Gavotte," Devin said, desperate.

  Cian's grip grew tighter as he looked from Devin to Master Emayn and then back. Lady Alys made a surprised sort of noise, then put one hand over her lips and began to laugh, shoulders shaking. Cian sent her an irritated look, but a grin was spreading slowly over his craggy face.

  "I knew that was your work," the baron of Maurynim said. "Your rhymes are hard to mistake. You're going to have to face him someday, Devin."

  "Indeed, my lord. Some... other day, perhaps?"

  Cian snorted, but let him go. “Good luck,” he grunted.

  "Thank you!" Devin said fervently, and bolted as Emayn came skidding to a halt in front of Cian and Alys. Two maids carrying linens leapt aside as he barreled past. Behind him, Devin could hear Cian asking his magic tutor something about the moon phase, bless him, followed by Emayn's slightly frantic reply. He threw himself around a corner, nearly collided with a footman, and raced down the next passage that offered itself without a thought except away.