Windsinger

by A. F. E. Smith

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I really want to learn the twin blades. Really. And since Captain Caraway is going to lock us in a room together every week until I have the necessary skills, you might as well get it over with as quickly as possible.’

  The corners of Sorrow’s mouth twitched. ‘Fair point.’

  ‘Who knows?’ Ree added. ‘You might end up liking me.’

  ‘Stranger things have happened.’ Sorrow studied her face for a moment, then shrugged and stuck out a hand. ‘All right. We’ll give it a try.’

  That was how Ree ended up being trained by a mercenary – a fact, she quickly decided, of which her parents didn’t need to be informed. Sorrow didn’t talk much, beyond the instructions she gave, but it was good to be around another female warrior. She understood certain things without needing to have them explained. Like when she asked Ree one day, out of nowhere, why she’d been so anxious to join the Helm when everyone knew it wasn’t a woman’s job, and Ree looked up from unfastening her gloves and said simply, ‘Because everyone knew it wasn’t a woman’s job.’ Zander would have pressed her on it. Penn, too. But Sorrow only nodded and went back to her own task. Ree guessed she knew, quite well, what it was like to want something because other people said she couldn’t have it.

  In addition, she proved to be a far better teacher than she’d made out. Not as good as Zander, of course; no-one was as good a teacher as Zander. But she certainly wasn’t horrible. Her way of teaching was to make Ree try to do something, and then tell her what she’d got wrong, and make her do it again, over and over until the lesson was drummed into her head – and then do it again the next week, just to make sure.

  ‘It’s how I taught Elisse to shoot,’ she said. ‘Repeat something enough times that the memory of it settles in your bones, and you’ll never forget it.’

  ‘Who’s Elisse?’ Ree asked curiously, and Sorrow raised an eyebrow.

  ‘None of your business, that’s who.’

  It wasn’t until training finished and Ree was accepted into the Helm that she was able to put the pieces together: as well as being Sorrow’s lover, Elisse was the mother of Ayla’s half-brother Corus. All the Helm knew about Corus, because he had a special contingent of Helmsmen to live with him and guard him away from Darkhaven, but his existence was largely hidden from the rest of the world. And to all intents and purposes, Naeve Sorrow – infamous mercenary and former scourge of the Helm – was his parent.

  Ree wondered how Ayla felt about that.

  Sorrow came and went from Arkannen on a frequent basis, visiting Elisse and Corus, but the lessons she gave Ree were enough. By the time Ree joined the Helm, she was proficient with the twin blades; enough so that Caraway gave her special dispensation to carry a pair instead of the usual Helmsman’s issue. And she’d also grown to like Sorrow. It was hard not to like someone who had helped her to discover such a fundamental part of herself.

  Walking through the fifth ring, now, Ree smiled to remember how nervous she’d once been around Sorrow. They still practised together now that Ree was in the Helm, moving easily from a teacher–pupil relationship to one of … what? Friends? Comrades? Equals, at least. Sorrow only sparred with people she considered worthy of her notice, which mostly meant Caraway and Art Bryan and a handful of other experienced sellswords and Helmsmen – and Ree. If that wasn’t a token of respect, she didn’t know what was.

  By now she could see the Gate of Steel ahead of her, illuminated by tall gas lamps that made the blades that lined the archway gleam fierce and orange. And there, just inside it – Ree glanced away, thinking she was hallucinating, but when she looked back they were still there, standing stiff and awkward in the company of one of the watchmen from the gate.

  Her parents.

  As she walked towards them, her father raised his head. He put a hand on her mother’s arm, and she, too, looked up. Both of them smiled uneasily, but Ree didn’t return the smile. This was too unexpected an occurrence for her to be sanguine about it.

  ‘Hello, Cheri,’ her father said when she was close enough. Ree exchanged nods with the watchman, who returned to his post. Only then did she turn to her parents, seeing – with the strange half-surprise that came with looking at something familiar for the first time in a while – the pieces of them that had gone towards making her. Her father’s green eyes. Her mother’s brown hair: longer than her own, of course, but still the same. Their yellow-brown skin, of a shade that Zander referred to poetically as amber. She was taller than her mother, she realised. That must have been true for a long time; she’d stopped growing years ago. But it was the first time she’d felt it.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

  Her father attempted a hearty chuckle, though it was a shadow of its usual self. ‘Can’t a father visit his daughter?’

  ‘He can,’ Ree said. ‘But usually he doesn’t.’

  ‘We went to your address, but you weren’t there.’ Her mother’s tone suggested mild rudeness on Ree’s part. ‘So we came up here to find you, but the guards wouldn’t let us in.’ Apparently an even greater degree of rudeness. Ree sighed.

  ‘You can’t enter the fifth ring without legitimate business. You know that.’

  ‘Visiting our daughter isn’t legitimate business?’

  Not really, no. Ree shook her head, too tired to pursue the point. ‘Does this visit have a purpose? Only I can’t believe you’d hang around waiting for me to come off duty if it wasn’t urgent.’ Belated anxiety gripping her, she peered more closely at them. ‘Is someone ill? Dead?’

  ‘Nothing like that,’ her father said. Then, with a glance in her mother’s direction, ‘We just need to talk to you.’

  Guess I won’t be visiting Zander after all. Ree suppressed another sigh. ‘It’s late. I’ve just come off duty. Can we talk tomorrow?’

  ‘Now would be better.’

  ‘Fine.’ Ree caught the petulant note in her own voice, and winced. Next she’d be stamping her foot and telling them she hated them. Did everyone revert to childhood when confronted with their own parents?

  ‘I’ll take you back to my apartment,’ she said, achieving politeness with an effort. ‘It would be nice for you to see where I live.’

  The Ametrine Quarter was only a short walk from the Gate of Steel, which was a relief with her parents’ silence at her heels. Ree led them to the three-storey terraced house that held her apartment, a two-roomed place with shared cooking and bathing facilities that was all she could afford on a junior Helmsman’s salary. Middle floor – the worst floor, she always complained to Zander, people above and below. Yet as her parents traipsed up the stairs after her, she found herself wanting to point out everything good about it. Her apartment was much like family, in that respect; she could moan about it as much as she liked, but she’d make short work of anyone else’s criticism.

  Once inside, she divested herself of her weapons and hung up her coat, before – in a sudden panic – glancing around to see what she could offer her parents to sit on. She had one armchair, an old saggy thing with stuffing leaking out of the cushions. And at the tiny table, a rickety wooden chair with a folded news-sheet under one leg. She wasn’t convinced that would stand up under her father’s weight, so she gestured her mother towards it and said brightly, ‘I can fetch you my pillow, if you like.’

  ‘No, dear, that’s fine.’ Ree’s mother sat down on the very edge of the chair. A determined smile was pinned to her face, but the swift glance she cast around the room spoke volumes.

  Come on, Ree wanted to say. It’s better than the barracks. Oh, but you wouldn’t know about that, would you? Because you never visited me.

  Not that she minded, really. On the whole she’d been grateful for her parents’ lack of interference. Her father had called in on her a couple of times over the years, when he had business in the city. And she’d dutifully made the journey home every Harvest Festival, to sit in a corner of the drawing room and pretend not to notice the other merchants�
�� daughters whispering about her hair, her clothes, her otherness. After the last visit, when her mother had tried to bundle her upstairs to change as soon as she set foot in the house – please, Cheri, it’s a beautiful dress, and so much more appropriate than that garish monstrosity of a coat – she’d given herself permission to forego even that small torture. Her parents weren’t proud of her. They didn’t care that she was the first female Helmsman in history, sworn to protect the very heart of their country, fulfilling a role that most of the young men back home would kill for. No, her mother considered her an embarrassment. Even her father, who’d once indulged her interest in weaponry, was beginning to think better of it. And so Ree had decided that since they were so anxious for her to be someone else, she’d leave them to the company of that imaginary daughter and extract herself from their lives completely.

  Yet here they were in her apartment.

  Ree installed her father in the armchair, then – after considering and swiftly discarding the idea of perching on the arm in a mockery of happy family relations – settled cross-legged on the floor. She looked from her mother’s fixed smile to her father’s awkward grin, and her heart lifted a little. Maybe they’d realised how unfair they’d been. Maybe they were here to apologise.

  ‘So what brings you to Arkannen?’ she asked.

  Her mother glanced at her father. Her father ran a finger around the inside of his collar, and leaned forward to look her in the eye.

  ‘We’ve found a husband for you, Cheri,’ he said.

  Ree laughed.

  Her parents didn’t.

  Ree stopped laughing. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘He’s a very nice boy.’ Her mother didn’t meet Ree’s gaze, but directed a tremulous smile somewhere in the direction of her left cheekbone. ‘Such a good family. His parents …’

  Ree said nothing.

  ‘You’ll like him,’ her father said cheerfully. ‘He has a wonderful collection of antique swords. Maybe he’ll let you try them out sometimes.’ He chuckled at his own joke.

  Ree said nothing.

  ‘And he doesn’t mind at all that you’ve been working in the city these last few years.’ Her mother’s smile had slipped at Ree’s silence, but she plastered it back in place and pressed on doggedly. ‘He said it was refreshing to find a girl who wanted to make her own way in the world. Said it would come in useful when he takes over his father’s business, to have a sensible partner by his side and not some empty-headed female …’

  Ree said nothing.

  Then, vibrating with fury, she stood up and said in a voice so low and hoarse that it grated in her own ears, ‘Get out.’

  ‘Cheri.’ An expression of distress replaced the smile on her mother’s face. ‘That’s not very –’

  ‘I said get out. Now. Now!’

  She grabbed each of her parents by an arm and bundled them towards the door. They didn’t resist. Only when they were at the threshold did her mother turn to her again and say, in a weak and pleading voice, ‘Cheri …’

  Ree slammed the door in her face.

  How could they? How could they sit there and say those things to her as if she wouldn’t mind, as if she’d just been frittering away her days here while she waited for them to find her a suitable husband? She’d always known that wealthy old families regarded their children as assets to be invested for maximum return, rather than people free to make their own decisions, but she hadn’t thought her parents were like that. They weren’t rich enough to be like that. They might not understand why she’d come to Arkannen, but at least they’d let her do it. They hadn’t contracted her off to the highest bidder, her talents and virtues enumerated like a ship’s manifest in search of the best possible price. So what had changed?

  The Helm was her life. She’d thought they understood that by now. She’d spent a year training. Two more, so far, as a Helmsman. Did they think she’d dedicated all that time and energy to a hobby? To a whim? Did they not know her at all?

  She wanted to punch something. Or break something. But she didn’t have any furniture to spare, and if there was one thing her years in the fifth ring had taught her, it was the importance of restraint. Violence, Captain Caraway had said more than once, is only of value when it’s controlled. So rather than smash up her limited number of possessions, she grabbed her coat from the peg by the door and stormed back out of her apartment in the direction of the training grounds. It might be close to seventh bell by now, but one of her friends would be awake. There was always someone awake.

  She found Penn in the boxing ring, practising on one of the punching-bags, which was perfect. Zander would have tried to cheer her up, and failing that, he’d have suggested she work out her aggression in a different way. Sometimes that was exactly what she needed. But not tonight. Tonight she didn’t want angry sex, she just wanted anger.

  And if there was one person on whom she found it easy to take out her raw, unconstrained anger, it was Penn.

  She strode forward, grabbing a pair of padded mittens to protect her knuckles. Penn turned at her approach, fists half raised, but he lowered them when he recognised her.

  ‘Ree, are you –’

  She threw a punch, which he barely blocked; the impact sent him back a step. His eyes widened, then narrowed.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘My parents,’ Ree said through gritted teeth, ‘want me to get married.’

  Another punch accompanied the word. This time it landed, because Penn was too busy laughing to defend himself. The laugh became a wheeze as all the breath was knocked out of him.

  ‘Married?’ he gasped, eyes watering, stumbling out of her reach with more haste than technique. ‘Have they actually met you?’

  ‘Apparently not.’ Ree danced forward and punched him again, but he blocked it and returned a blow of his own. It made her dizzy. Penn was strong. Three years of daily practice had left him far more muscular than he’d been when he started. Which, admittedly, was also true of her – but since Penn was a head taller than her, and considerably broader in the shoulders, he’d had a lot further to fill out. Once she’d been able to knock him down just by punching, but not any more. If she wasn’t careful, he’d pick her up and fling her over his shoulder; he had a nasty habit of doing that, these days. Yet the knowledge only made her anger surge hotter.

  ‘Penn?’ she panted. Violence is only of value when it’s controlled. But Captain Caraway had never met her parents. ‘Can we go off-book?’

  Off-book was what everyone called the no-holds-barred style of fighting that was strongly discouraged amongst professional warriors. Ree and Penn might not be trainees any more, but they were still expected to keep to the Code, just like everyone else in the fifth ring. Not only that, but the Helm were held to it more strictly than most, and with good reason: an incapacitated Helmsman was a temporarily useless Helmsman, and their captain expected them to have more sense than to waste their time on thoroughly avoidable injuries.

  All of that went some way towards explaining the wary look in Penn’s eyes as he circled her.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he said finally. ‘After last time? Because you know I won’t hold back.’

  Ree knew he wouldn’t. That’s what she liked about fighting him. Last time they’d gone off-book, he’d fractured two of her ribs. Captain Caraway had been furious, thinking someone had jumped her, but she’d told him it had happened breaking up a street brawl down in the first ring. She’d had to listen to a lecture about not getting involved in incidents that were more properly the Watch’s business, but at least she hadn’t landed Penn in any trouble. She had no desire to do that. It was just that sometimes … sometimes, to really lose herself in anger, she had to release every control she had.

  ‘I’m sure,’ she said.

  ‘Even with the Kardise ambassador here?’

  That gave her a moment’s pause, because he was right: they all needed to be on top form during the ambassador’s visit. She certainly couldn’t sho
w up for guard duty in Darkhaven with a black eye or a broken nose.

  ‘Nothing that will show,’ she conceded. ‘But otherwise, no rules.’

  As the last word left her mouth, she spun on the ball of her foot and drove her elbow hard into his stomach. He absorbed the blow, twisting aside; she saw the flicker in his eyes as he changed the direction of his own left-handed punch at the last moment – avoiding her face – and so was able to dodge just far enough to let his fist skim past her ribs. Before he could retreat, she caught his forearm in the crook of her elbow and drove the heel of her other hand up towards his chin. He blocked it with his free arm, pushing it back and closing the distance between them until they were chest to chest. Not good. If she wasn’t careful, he’d overpower her through height and weight alone.

  If they had been truly off-book, she would have headbutted him in the mouth, but that would almost certainly show in the morning. So instead, she turned her head and sank her teeth into his arm.

  ‘Fuck’s sake, Ree!’ He broke free of her grasp, twisting round behind her, grabbing her arm and pulling it up behind her back until a cry escaped her lips despite her determination. Her knees buckled under the steady pressure. He was trying to force her down, and if he got her on the ground she’d have no chance. She bucked and writhed, trying to wrench herself away, but his grip was inexorable. Anger and frustration boiled up inside her –

  We’ve found a husband for you, Cheri. Maybe he’ll let you try out his sword collection sometimes. He doesn’t mind at all that you’ve been working in the city.

  With an inarticulate sound of rage, she kicked backwards with all her strength and felt her boot connect with Penn’s shin. As his grip on her loosened, she pulled away and spun round to face him, shoving his shoulders and hooking her foot behind his ankles. She went with him as he fell, pummelling indiscriminately at any part of him she could reach until they landed on the floor and she straddled his chest, one arm moving across his throat for a chokehold –