Silk & Steel

by Ellen Kushner

  Nik stared. Astrid stared. Behind those blue eyes, suspicion kindled. Finally Nik said, “If you pretend you don’t know me, I’ll buy you the most expensive wine you’ll ever taste in your life.”

  Astrid scooted over and let Nik drop onto the bench beside her. Warmth flushed over that side, as though Nik carried a sun in her belt pouch. Nik nodded to the manservant, who shot Astrid a black look and disappeared upstairs. Astrid pretended to look through her notes, though they seemed slick and uncooperative in her hands. Nik smelled like wildflowers and sweat. And she was looking at her.

  “I’ve seen you before,” Nik said.

  Astrid’s tongue stuck to the top of her mouth and nothing she did could unstick it. The Princess Nikhilde had always seemed so far away at court, so bright and charming and ready to laugh with her friends and acquaintances—the sort of people Astrid could never hope to stand among as equal. And now Nik was here, turning that bright look on her, turning her mouth up like she was ready to be charmed. Her hair looked burnished in the candlelight, the sort of color Astrid longed to see on a bolt of silk. “You’ve been at court,” Nik guessed.

  Astrid nodded. At court she would have curtsied and presented herself, as though she had any names or titles worth offering. But if Nik wanted to be at court, she’d be there, so Astrid said thickly, “I study. Courtly etiquette. And, um. Nonverbal court language.” Her tongue fumbled on nonverbal. Those blue eyes were wide, amused, brimming with some kind of mischief, and entirely focused on her. How was she supposed to think about anything else?

  “You’re not one of the first five families?” Nik said.

  Astrid was tempted to laugh, but she’d have to force it and it’d come out bitter and uncomfortable. “Just a student,” she replied.

  The manservant reappeared with a black glass bottle and poured bright orange wine into two glasses. As he slid them across the table, Astrid did not miss the warning look he gave his mistress, slightly aggrieved with his head tilted toward Astrid. Nik only smiled, showing off lovely, even teeth.

  “And you study... court language.”

  “Nonverbal court language,” Astrid corrected before she could stop herself. Heat flushed her cheeks, but Nik didn’t seem to mind the contradiction. “Mostly fan language. And flower language.”

  Nik took a sip of wine. “Fan language is mostly gossip, isn’t it?”

  Astrid felt a small sting at the words. They always came with an unspoken question: why? Why study something so unabashedly feminine, so synonymous with frivolity and pointlessness? Why not study something useful, like which kingdoms went to war five hundred years ago because two kings couldn’t settle who had the larger prick in a more civilized manner?

  But she wasn’t about to lecture Jotunheim’s princess on women’s standing in the world. The princess already knew. She was famous for picking up every martial art for which she could find a tutor, and she’d risen to the rank of captain in the Jotun high guard. She wore her ceremonial uniform at court and had dueled more than one nobleman over a lady’s honor. So Astrid said, “It’s quite intricate, actually.”

  “Oh?” Nik raised an eyebrow.

  Astrid took the invitation for what it was. “Fan language acts more like a living language than almost any other kind of nonverbal communication. It has grammar, clauses, loan phrases—” She stopped. Nik looked baffled. She tried changing tactics. “Ladies used to put bronze edges on their fans, you know? As a defense against anyone who got too intimate.”

  “Ha!” Nik took a sip of wine. “I know a few ladies who could have used that.” She gave Astrid a sidelong look. “But I suppose we’re more civilized now.” She glanced at Astrid’s belongings, scattered across the table. “You don’t have a fan.”

  “Do I need one?” Astrid said.

  Nik smiled. “That entirely depends on your definition of too intimate.”

  She should be studying. She should be finishing her paper, or sketching her dress design for court approval, or practicing a particularly complicated courante. Instead she cupped her face with one hand, writing a new paper in her mind: Courtly Flirtation Outside of the Court. She was, after all, being handed a delightful research opportunity.

  * * *

  Nik defeated six men on the tournament’s first day, though not every one was as quick a fight as Agmund Birk. After each one, her eyes met Astrid’s and she smiled as if to say, easy. The fan language whipped around the room, almost too fast for Astrid’s hand to copy it down. The court was divided—the five families had each put forth a contestant, to no avail. It irritated them that their power, influence, and nobility would win them nothing. On the other hand, they greatly enjoyed seeing their rivals’ sons brought low. The spectacle entertained them. And when Nik faced off against an outsider—some foreign count who came to try his luck—everyone took pride in the way she disarmed him and nicked him on his solid chin.

  Olve was more pleased than any of them. He’d just seen his treasury grow by six thousand daler, and Astrid wondered whether he wanted his daughter to lose at all.

  When the tournament adjourned for the day, Astrid handed her notes to the sour-faced steward and began to circulate. This was the second part of her job: observe the court, and make a further report at the end of the night. Her university scholarship required that she spend twenty hours at court per week and maintain appropriate scholarly and courtly conduct.

  She’d never found it difficult to do her job before. But as she moved among the crowd, her head filled with bitterness and her heart with ache. She recorded each argument and wager and tried to push down her feelings of hopelessness. A half-wild idea had formed in her mind when Nik first announced the competition: to pick up a sword and try her own hand. But Astrid had never been one for combat, and it would be obvious if Nik threw the match. And Astrid had no money to pay the thousand-daler loser’s fee—at least, not unless she sold something. She ran her fingers over the scar on her left hand. She’d gone down that road once, and she’d vowed never again.

  The musicians struck up a Parnassian courante, and her feet drew her towards the floor. Dancing had always been easy for her, and she never lacked for partners. Now she agreed to the first Aska cousin who asked.

  The courante was a little like a competition itself—he tried to “capture” her by taking her hand or elbow or waist to draw her into the dance, and she tried to evade him. Her fan felt like an extension of her arm and she snapped it open just as he reached for her fingers. She twirled one direction when he swept in toward her waist from the other, used her fan as a shield and closed it in time to push his wrist up so she could turn under. The dance was fast, but Astrid didn’t falter. She knew the steps like she knew her own name.

  They ended the dance pink-faced and smiling. The Aska cousin conceded with grace, and Astrid was back in the real world. Back with the fine wines and confections and endless speculation of the party.

  She retreated to the back of the hall and opened the door to the library. She just needed a moment. She could collect herself, steel her heart to the endless gossip, and prepare to do her job. But as soon as she pulled the door closed, fingers wrapped around her wrist.

  She recognized the suntanned hand, and she let Nik turn her gently around. “I knew you’d come in here,” Nik said. She’d lit just enough candles to see by, enough to set her hair dancing with gold. A tongue of light flicked over one cheekbone, and her blue eyes seemed like dark ocean pools.

  “Maybe I came to get a quote,” Astrid said. Nik was still dressed in her tournament clothes, and the smell of her set Astrid’s head spinning. “To hear what the great princess has to say of her victories.”

  “They were nothing. As long as you were sitting in the front row.” Nik cupped her cheek. Her voice was low and rich and tinged with sadness.

  Their lips met gently at first, but Astrid could taste Nik’s desperation, and she had a fair share of her own. She let Nik press her against the door.

  “You had the punch.” Nik sm
iled against her mouth.

  “Two cups.” Strawberry was her favorite, though Nik hated it.

  “Good.” Nik planted a string of kisses from the edge of her jaw down her neck. “I ordered it for you.”

  Astrid choked on her laugh. The wife she wanted made sure Astrid got strawberry punch at her parties. “What did you drink, then?”

  “Water. I can’t be hungover tomorrow.” She drew back, considering Astrid’s mouth. “It’s bad for the concentration.”

  Astrid put a hand on her chest as she tried to lean in again. Nik had always been determined, single-minded, stubborn. It had been endearing when she tried to teach Astrid to fence; funny when Astrid tried to teach her to dance. Now the inch of air between them was thick with named longing and unnamed despair. Nik couldn’t stubborn her way out of this predicament, not forever. “Don’t you think we should talk?” Astrid whispered.

  Nik swallowed. She looked so soft, from the down on her cheek to her wounded expression. “Come up to me. When you’re finished working. Then we’ll talk.”

  They wouldn’t talk, Astrid knew that, but she said, “Okay,” against Nik’s mouth as she leaned in for one last hard kiss. She’d never been able to refuse Nik anything.

  * * *

  Nik’s rooms grew cold as the fire died down, and they snuggled together under her quilt. Outside, the classic Jotun winds howled, sweeping away the warmth of the day and turning dew to ice on the grass. Astrid fought off drowsiness, skimming her fingers over the crest of Nik’s bare hip and down her thigh. She wanted to bury her head in Nik’s shoulder and sleep, wake up famished in the middle of the night and let Nik order them a grand feast while she finished her notes or sewed. But tomorrow brought more competition, and if Nik lost then this was their last chance together. Astrid took a deep breath and forced her words out from around the lump in her throat. “We can’t do this once you’re married.”

  “Why not?” Nik’s fingers ran gently along the seam of Astrid’s left hand, where her last three fingers had been severed by a white-hot mage knife. Nik’s voice turned bitter. “I’m sure my husband will have his share of indiscretions. Though I suppose I wouldn’t blame him.”

  Astrid felt a slice through her heart. The lump in her throat grew. It was so hard to talk. “I can’t do this after you’re married.” Because the thought of dancing around some man, of being the dirty secret and never the proudly displayed wife—she’d rather cut it all short now, finish her education and get a court placement somewhere else. Nurse her broken heart and start over.

  Nik stilled, and the silence was heavy and stifling and horrible. Only her fingers still moved, back and forth across the line of Astrid’s scar. “I meant what I said,” she whispered at last.

  They’d fought before the contest was announced. Nik had offered to renounce everything and run away. To stop being royalty and just be Nik. She thought Astrid was worth giving it all up.

  Except she didn’t know what it was like to be penniless. She’d never had hunger pangs so fierce she thought she’d vomit. She’d never gotten a meal only because her mother had given up her own. She’d never gone to the mages and asked to be tested, to see how thick her giant blood was, to see if she could sell off pieces of herself. But Astrid had. She’d watched her mother go back again and again—giving up her foot, then her shin, then her thigh. Her bones had been turned into beads and her blood lent potency to elixirs. Her muscles went to animal feed, and every time Astrid saw the ten-foot oxen or the king’s giant warhounds, she wondered. She wondered if she’d recognize her mother in the animals that ate her.

  Astrid’s mother had put her little girl’s future above everything. She’d sold off almost half her body before the procedure went wrong and she died of gangrene, and she spent that money on as nice an education as she could buy—nice enough that Astrid won a scholarship to the university and a sure place at court. All Astrid had had to do was dry her tears and sell the last three fingers on her left hand to buy passage and a room. And if she ran away with Nik, it would be for nothing. Her mother’s sacrifices and her own accomplishments. Perhaps she could get a job assisting some town scribe, but without a letter of reference she’d be working for pennies, lucky to get more money than she used in a month.

  “Everyone wants mercenaries,” Nik said, as if she’d read Astrid’s mind.

  “And mercenaries don’t get breaks and hot baths, or fights to first blood.”

  “I’d provide for you—” Nik said.

  Astrid’s bitter laugh was far too loud in the silent room. “My father was a mercenary. Look how well he provided for us. Died mercenarying somewhere far away, and we never even got his last month’s wages.”

  “Well, what do you want?” Nik pushed herself halfway up. Her red fringe fell over her eyes and Astrid resisted the urge to brush it back. She didn’t want to see the anger and hurt there. “I don’t want to give up on you. Is that so bad? Is that so foolish?”

  Yes, Astrid wanted to cry. Because she’d known from that night in the Elfin Crown, she’d known from the moment Nik’s lips first touched hers: all this was doomed to fail. She’d never expected her warrior princess to love her. And now the invisible knife twisted in her heart whenever she thought of Nik, smelling of sweat and leather, with a crown on her head and a consort that wasn’t Astrid.

  Her face was wet, and her throat was choked off. She didn’t dare breathe, because if she breathed she’d sniffle, and then Nik would know she was crying. “I didn’t bring you here to fight,” Nik said into the long silence. “I wanted...” She flopped back on the bed. “I don’t know what I wanted.”

  She wanted everything to be different.

  Me too, Astrid thought.

  * * *

  Astrid slipped out of bed as summer light threaded gold and pink across the sky. She gave a sleeping Nik one regretful kiss, then hurried back to her university rooms before anyone could catch her sneaking out in yesterday’s dress. She couldn’t do much about the puffiness under her eyes except hope that the cold morning air would reduce it a bit. All the same, she got an affronted look from the king’s steward as he greeted her and sent her to her station at the front of the temporary stage. She resisted the urge to check the front of her dress for stains as she set out her materials.

  A pin fell out of her hair and into the inkwell. She’d forgotten to rebraid it. No wonder the steward had sneered. Professionals looked like their servants had spent hours on their appearance, not like they’d barely had time to wash and dress.

  The second round of the tournament was announced, and the whispers began almost immediately. Six members of the five families were eager to try their hand for the kingship today. As the first candidate was announced Nik caught Astrid’s eye and twisted her mouth in derision. Don’t be cocky, Astrid pleaded silently. But she’d never known Nik to be anything else. Nik ran a hand through her hair and selected her opponent’s weapon of choice, knives.

  He’d obviously hoped to catch her off guard. As soon as the match began he flung a knife with sharp precision. Nik dodged it easily and slid within his range, almost lazily slashing her own knife across his arm. He left the stage sulking.

  The next, who had the paleness but not the stature of a giant, wanted to duel with quarterstaves. They sprang back and forth like dancers, staves clacking against each other in an agitated beat. Nik had more training with pointy things, as Astrid liked to call them, but her feet moved swift and sure. He gave her a good jab in the ribs that elicited gasps from the crowd and nearly stopped the match—but Nik grimaced and swept her staff around, knocking him off his feet and letting him crack his head painfully on the floor. She jabbed his nose with the end of her staff and he got up, blood trickling.

  After Nik’s third victory the tournament was paused for punch and refreshments. Astrid slipped into the library and rebraided her crown, sticking in her hair pins like vengeful little swords of their own. She ran last night’s conversation through her head, over and over, trying to tu
rn it to a different outcome.

  Nik couldn’t possibly want to abandon the throne. She didn’t know what it meant. She was just making a grand gesture—and now she felt rebuffed that Astrid wouldn’t return it. Maybe she feared that Astrid only loved her because she was a princess. In which case, the best way to prove Nik wrong would be with a grand gesture of her own. But what?

  Astrid winced as she stuck a pin too vigorously and too close to her scalp. Maybe she could duel Nik with hairpins. Or inkwells. If she got in a lucky shot, she could hit Nik’s beautiful nose and bloody it the way Nik had bloodied the suitor with the quarterstaff. Or maybe she could sneak red ink into the inkwell, and make it look like blood—

  She sighed. Her fantasies were running away with her, and fantasies wouldn’t provide solutions. Perhaps what she should really do was appeal to Nik’s father, use the rhetoric her professors had praised to convince him to stop the tournament. He’d never let her marry Nik, but at least Nik could marry for love. But he’d never been inclined to entertain Nik’s impassioned pleas to choose a woman before. It’s a phase. You need children. Don’t be absurd. Words she’d hurled against the walls of her room while Astrid tried to comfort her.

  He could be tricked, perhaps. Kings didn’t like to lose face, and if she could win the public to her side... but how? Short of drawing a sword and leaping into the ring herself, anything she did would be seen as an undermining tactic.

  She thought about it as she recorded the matches and the audience, noting down who was most disappointed—and who most relieved—when a candidate traipsed off the stage, sweating and swearing under his breath. She stopped looking at Nik, even though she could feel Nik’s gaze, like a brand, every time she won a fight. I’m doing this for you. Postponing marriage because every extra night was one they could spend together. A grand gesture Astrid wanted to repay but didn’t know how.