by Guy Antibes
“I’ll be glad for that, sir. I don’t know if I’ll ever be used to the frigid temperatures of Santasia.”
“Cold winters, hot blood,” Dalistro said, winking at Trak. “Don’t you think it’s time to mingle with others of your own age? You were sweet on that Warishian girl, Valanna Sleekbottle?” He laughed. “Your Pestlan last names, so prosaic.”
Trak had never given last names much thought, but as he thought of the people in Greenbrook and in his circle of acquaintances in Pestledown, most of them had colorful surnames. Trak had become so focused on learning swordsmanship and magic that he had forgotten about others. In Greenbrook, he had naturally gravitated to his father’s friends.
“That would be nice, but I wouldn’t know how to act in front of others.”
Dalistro grinned and laid his hand on Trak’s broadening shoulder. “You’re growing up, lad, and still in need of education. I’ve neglected to provide you with behavioral instruction, so in the mornings, we will take a few slices from your magic instruction and substitute them for a manners course.”
A few slices? He had already gone from three morning hours to an hour and a half. Trak enjoyed the swordsmanship, but the other studying was beginning to get tedious. However, he knew if he wanted to get into the University of Pestle, still a goal no matter how unrealistic, his manners and deportment would have to improve along with his knowledge.
~
The second day of practicing in the conservatory brought something new.
Dalistro walked onto the freshly rolled dirt floor with a group of young men. They all looked a bit older than Trak, but he wouldn’t let that bother him. They would only give him more of a challenge.
“I thought it might be more interesting for you to practice with a group of swordsmen of your same age and capability.”
Perhaps Dalistro wasn’t a very good judge of age, so Trak wondered about their capabilities.
“They brought along their own weapons master and a significantly wider choice of arms to learn. I’ll leave you to make your own introductions,” Dalistro said, and then left Trak with the strangers.
A short older man strutted into the conservatory. He had a few scars running down his face. Trak wondered if those came on the battlefield. The man walked up to Trak.
“So you think you are something special, eh?” He spoke in broken Pestlan and put his face as close to Trak’s as he could. “You will find out that Gio won’t take it easy on you.” Trak understood that the man had referred to himself.
“I didn’t ask you to,” Trak said in his broken Santasian. “I’m here to become a better swordsman and I’m willing to work. Ask Master Dalistro.”
“You mean Senior Dalistro of the Santasian Council?”
Trak didn’t know what he meant. “Dalistro, the man who brought me here from Pestle.”
“The son, he has been working with you?” The man’s demeanor softened a little.
“He has, but he’s much better than I am. I’ve only recently been able to get through his defenses for a touch or two per sparring session.”
Gio’s eyebrows shot up and then his eyes narrowed. “I will treat you just the same as my other students. Bepiro!”
The tallest of the young men stepped up. He was both taller and broader than Trak. “Grab your practice sword and show this Pestlan how we swing swords in Santasia.”
A test. Trak wondered if Dalistro set this up and might never know the answer, but he would do his best against an unknown fighter—likely Gio’s best.
Bepiro waved his sword and began to warm up using rather crude forms, but Trak could see the power behind the swings. Dalistro had power, but he also fought with finesse, and perhaps practicing with these young men would give him more insight in how to defend himself against bigger, stronger opponents. He didn’t see much point in going on the offensive. A single push by the bigger, heavier boy would put Trak right on his rear.
Trak used his simpler forms to get ready. He didn’t see the point in showing Bepiro his speed, so he also slowed them up. He thought that he picked up a few disparaging comments in Santasian on the simplicity of his style from the group of eight other boys.
“That is enough.” Gio pointed at each of them and then at the center of the conservatory.
Bepiro sneered at Trak, but still bowed to him and brought his sword up to his forehead and swept it aside in the same manner that Dalistro had taught him when they began a sparring round. Trak had already adopted the Santasian salute.
They began to circle each other. Bepiro would feint in and back with his footwork, but kept his sword on guard. The man moved much less precisely than his tutor. Unfortunately, Trak didn’t know exactly how to capitalize on the different style.
He sighed, facing the fact that he would learn something new this morning. He thrust with his sword and let Bepiro swat it away. The force of his blow nearly tore the sword out of his grasp. A strategy of force on force wouldn’t work.
Bepiro reached back with his sword hand and slammed it towards Trak, who used his sword to deflect the blow as he slid to his left. That was an opening to exploit, he thought, and had to stop thinking while Bepiro advanced with a combination of short slashes and thrusts. It was all Trak could do to parry off the onslaught.
He remembered a form he could use and pirouetted to his right as Bepiro’s sword futilely followed his move. Trak faced Bepiro’s back and slapped his sword on the bigger man’s backside before he could turn around. He shuffled backwards to the center of the conservatory and put his sword up in a different defense than he had yet shown.
Bepiro stalked towards Trak and just as he reached him, raised his sword as he had at the beginning. Trak thrust as quickly as he could and scored a solid thrust that made Bepiro grunt, but it didn’t stop the bigger man’s blade from coming down on Trak’s head. He didn’t even remember falling back onto the dirt.
Trak woke as freezing water splashed onto him. He shook off the water and sat up in the resulting mud with his sword still clutched in his hand. He brought it up to the guffaws of the other boys.
He put his hand to his head, now pulsing with pain and stood.
“You did better than I expected,” Gio said. “But, of course, Bepiro won.”
Trak wouldn’t have any of that. “Bepiro would have been dead with my sword through his gut. If you excuse me, I don’t think I’m fit enough to work with you anymore today, but I will be back tomorrow.” He knew his performance was a close thing, but he’d be more successful fighting Bepiro with more movement the next time they sparred.
He turned and staggered out. Dalistro stood at a window and grinned at him, clapping silently at his performance.
Trak walked through the ornate splendor of Dalistro’s mansion. His boots clicked on the polished stone floors and up the wide sweeping stairway to his personal rooms. He stepped through the double doors and took off his muddy boots and clothes. A servant would soon arrive to whisk them away for cleaning.
The closet that he used had twenty different outfits, half of them devoted to his fencing lessons. Trak ignored them as he walked through to the bathroom. Piped in hot water flowed through golden fixtures into the marble tub. Pestledown knew no such luxury, so Dalistro had told him when he first arrived.
He settled down into a steaming bath and soaked. Trak’s head still pounded from Bepiro’s blow. At least the bleeding hadn’t taken long to stop. He closed his eyes and slept.
The water had gone cold when he woke up. He dried himself off with thick towels made with a weave that he had never seen before coming to Santasia. Esmera and his father, Able, would die to have these for their best customers. Trak wondered if Dalistro would let him send some to Pestle.
He laid down on his bed, only wearing a robe made out of the absorbent cloth and went back to sleep. He woke in darkness. He had missed his magic lesson!
A servant had slipped in to light the enclosed lamps that illuminated the higher-class Espozian homes and businesses.
“In half an hour, sir,” the woman said. “You will be joining the Master in the dining room. Do you need anything?” Her lip curled in a smile. Trak thought that she intended to suggest a dalliance. He wasn’t ready for this. He’d had intimations before from this woman.
He blushed. “No, no, you can leave, now that there is enough light to see by. Thank you.” Dalistro had told him that it was bad form to thank servants, but Trak knew otherwise.
She gave him the briefest of a curtsey and left him alone in his room. Even after a few months living like a noble, Trak didn’t feel comfortable. His stomach did grumble and he rose from the bed and dressed for dinner. He didn’t like the velvet and the stretchy pants, but Dalistro had rules for him to follow. Soon he’d be learning more of what accounted for proper behavior in Espozia. Trak didn’t know what conventions he violated on a daily basis, not having any idea what Santasian manners were really like.
Dinner was a bit different tonight. Dalistro had invited Gio and an unfamiliar woman. Typically, Trak dined alone in a smaller dining room closer to the kitchen, but his evening meals were punctuated with occasional appearances by his tutor dining in this room.
“You know Gio, the sword master,” Dalistro said. Trak nodded to him. “And this is your manners tutor, the esteemed Madame Barrazi.”
Trak nodded to her. She dressed very elegantly and was very pretty with her dark curled hair and dark eyes. He figured that she was younger than Dalistro and younger than Honor. Fashions in Espozia were somewhat more revealing than in Pestledown and that made him blush.
She laughed. “You’ll have to do better than that in Espozia’s polite society, Master Bluntwithe.”
“You were ungallant, Trak,” Dalistro said. “When a lady is present and you are introduced, you stand and bow and say something complimentary.”
Trak didn’t like being criticized in front of these two strangers, but he could do nothing but smile and nod again. Why did Dalistro invite two new tutors, but ignored Honor Fidelia? True, the woman made any festive occasion less festive, but if he had to be polite to Madame Barrazi, why didn’t he have to be polite to Honor?
“I am sorry, Madame Barrazi. I have humble origins and don’t have a knack for knowing how to act.”
She smiled in much the same way that the maid had. “I will teach you how to behave properly. You wait.”
Gio and Dalistro laughed, but Trak didn’t know what the woman had said to make them react so.
“The boy performed well during his session today,” Gio said. “He was right, Bepiro’s downward slash would have had no force with a sword in him.” He nodded to Trak.
“Keep him at it. As you can see, he has promise to be an elegant swordsman, but you must teach him how to fight others and with different weapons.”
Gio nodded and sported a crafty smile that Trak didn’t like. “Don’t worry. We practice all morning, though. That is a longer session than you have established?”
Dalistro waved his hand. “Take all morning, if you wish. We will move his lessons to the afternoons.”
“What about my sessions with Honor?”
Dalistro’s eyes flashed and he shook his head. Trak could tell that he didn’t want him to talk about his magic lessons.
“Your honor lessons will be displaced by your manner’s lessons. That leaves you with less time for honor, but more time with the exquisite Madame Barrazi.” He nodded at the manners tutor.
Trak certainly caught the Dalistro’s turning of the conversation away from Honor Fidelia. That meant he needed to be discreet about his magic. Who knows what Dalistro would have done if Trak hadn’t caught on?
After dinner, Trak showed up on Honor’s doorstep.
She opened up the door. “What are you doing coming here in the middle of the night?”
It wasn’t even half past eight o’clock. “I was injured during my fencing lessons, a clout on the head.”
Honor held up a lantern to his head. “I can see,” Honor said. Her anger dissipated. “So?”
“So, Dalistro has expanded my swordsmanship tutoring to all morning long and added a third tutor in the afternoon, pushing your time out.”
“Out to when?” Honor said.
Trak shrugged. “I guess whenever I can get away.”
Honor looked out into the darkness. “Here I am in my robe. Come in, come in.”
She led him to the kitchen and fixed some tea. She set a mug in front of Trak and took a sip of her own.
“Now when do you think you can see me?”
Trak didn’t know what to say. Dalistro had usurped his time. “Maybe Dalistro doesn’t want me to learn magic, but what if things have changed?”
Honor scratched her head. He’d never seen the woman with her hair down. She looked younger—not a lot, but younger.
“Perhaps that’s exactly what happened. To him, I’m sure everything is about politics. As long as he puts me up in this house, then we’ll just have to set up a range of hours. I’ll be here during those times.”
“I still have half of your book to copy.”
“Then that is even more of a priority. You can practice your poses on your own and we’ll have to make the best of it.”
“Is night okay?”
She shook her head. “The appearance of a sixteen year old boy in a single lady’s house at night is not a pleasant one for many people. You’ll have to find time during daylight.”
“I’ll have to go without lunch, then.”
“Go without lunch. I can provide you with something to fill your stomach well enough while you are sketching the poses.”
“Then that’s what I’ll do. Give me a few days to get used to the new routine.”
“A few days, and then I’ll be waiting for you.”
~~~
Chapter Thirteen
MADAME BARRAZI WORE PROVOCATIVE CLOTHING even to their first session. Trak had a hard time keeping his eyes from drifting to the woman’s ample bosom.
“You are a blank slate, aren’t you Master Bluntwithe? Can I call you Trak, like Misson does?”
He nodded, concentrating on looking at her forehead.
“You may call me, Sereni. Okay?” She leaned forward. “First of all, when you enter a room, you bow to the men and kiss the hands of the ladies. Kiss my hand.”
She offered him her hand and Trak shook it. He could tell he blushed and didn’t really want to do something so intimate with a stranger.
She waved her hand. “Perhaps if we knew each other better, it might make it easier. Go ahead, call me Sereni.”
Trak nodded his head, “Sereni.”
“Now, give me your hand.”
Trak held out his hand.
“Make it limp. A woman doesn’t proffer a stiff hand. Relaxed. Expect a relaxed hand.”
Trak tried to make his hand limp.
She looked at him sideways and curled a lip. “Better, but not good.” She shook her head, making her curls shiver. “Now you caress the hand just a little. Just enough to feel the bones of her hand with your thumb and then you brush your lips on her fingers.” She bent down and kissed his hand, brushing her lips, but the tip of her tongue slid along his skin as well.
He yanked his hand back. “You made my hand wet!”
“I did? That’s not a thing that a man should do. It’s a bit too intimate.” She sighed but then quickly held out her hand.
“Now that I’ve demonstrated, it’s your turn.”
Trak held her hand and squeezed it between his fingers and thumb and barely touched her hand with his lips. “There.”
She sighed again. “It’s a start.”
Although the woman intimidated him, he felt a certain attraction that made him uncomfortable. It was quite different from the way he had thought about Val. This was deeper and darker; yet he knew it w
asn’t even close to love.
~
Gio put Trak together with Bepiro for the first week of training. They exclusively used practice swords. His opponent never stopped using his advantage of weight and strength in their work together, but neither sparred aggressively with one another after Gio made it perfectly clear that injuring each other would be a sin worthy of death.
His next sparring match was with a thin wiry opponent that everyone called Pipa. Trak had observed the styles of each of the nine boys in the class. All were competent swordsmen. Trak knew he was competent, but, despite his use of the forms, he lacked the smoothness of the others. In a sense, he bludgeoned his way with movement and discipline not much different from how Bepiro used his strength.
The boys all gathered along the edges of the conservatory. The sun peeked in and out of the clouds that he saw from the glass windows, but it began to snow just before they started and the top of the conservatory had begun to turn darker. Lanterns were lit and the light reflected from the snow-covered glass in the ceiling. The atmosphere held an other-worldliness that set Trak’s teeth on edge for some reason.
Pipa said something to Gio that Trak thought was permission to go all out. Gio nodded in assent. His Santasian was improving, but he wouldn’t let these people know.
Gio brought them to the center of the conservatory and pointed at them to start. Pipa and Trak swept their swords from their foreheads at the same time. Pipa immediately went on the offensive, just as Trak thought he would. Pipa’s advantage was overcoming his opponent with energy.
Trak thought his match with Pipa let him use his forms easier than the difficulties with Bepiro’s strength. Pipa came at him with his sword twirling, but Trak just timed a slash to Pipa’s wrist on one of his revolutions. That brought the match to a halt as Trak withdrew a few steps while Pipa snatched up his sword.
He could nearly feel the anger that steamed off of Pipa’s face. He began a series of thrust advances that had Trak backing up as he flicked Pipa’s sword away each time. A form came to mind that was a flick and then a sliding thrust as Trak interpreted it and used it on Pipa. His sword tracked up Pipa’s arm that pointed slightly away from Trak’s body and then he poked Pipa in the side.
