by K. J. Parker
“No,” Furio said. “He’d have told me. Besides, there aren’t any. That was the point.”
“Then it’s got to be—you know.” She sounded as though she was proving some mathematical calculation. “You want to watch yourself,” she added.
“Tissa…”
“I’m just saying.” She leaned away so as not to be in contact with him. “Think about it,” she said. “He sneaks down off the mountain, breaking rules, getting past the guards, swims rivers just to come here and see you. And he gives you presents.”
“He lends me books,” Furio corrected her.
“Same thing,” Tissa replied. “Well? Has he ever talked to you about…?”
“What?”
“Stuff boys talk about,” Tissa said irritably. “You know.”
For crying out loud, he thought. “It’s not that,” he said firmly, and he knew he was right. “Look.”
“What?”
He hesitated. After all, it was just a guess on his part. “Don’t tell this to anyone, right?”
She shrugged. That would have to do.
“I think something happened,” Furio said. “About six years ago. Don’t ask me what, because I don’t know. But he stopped breaking out for a long time, and when he came back he was different.”
Tissa raised her eyebrows. “What sort of thing?”
“Not a clue,” Furio said blankly. “But whatever it was, he isn’t saying and I can’t ask.”
“Something that’s made him allergic to being kissed by girls?”
“I just told you, I don’t know.” He stood up, suddenly anxious to be somewhere else. “Do me a favour,” he said.
Tissa let out a long, deliberate sigh. “What?”
“Tell Bonoa to keep her face shut.”
Tissa laughed. It sounded more like a cough. “I wouldn’t worry about that,” she said. “Hardly the sort of thing she’ll go boasting about.”
“Just talk to her,” Furio said. “Please?”
“If you like,” Tissa replied. Furio realised how much he liked Tissa. In fact, he was suddenly aware that he’d made a decision about her, without realising he’d done it. “I get all the rotten jobs,” she added, and he laughed.
“Well?” he said.
“What?”
“What did you think of him?”
A moment of stunned silence. Then she said, “Apart from being strange, you mean?”
“Yes.”
She shrugged. “I hardly said two words to him.”
“So?”
“So he’s nice-looking,” Tissa vouchsafed. “Which really doesn’t count for much, if he’s—”
“That’s all?” Furio said. “Just nice-looking, nothing else?”
Apparently he’d made a mistake, because Tissa got up, told him to go to hell, and walked away. “Talk to Bonoa,” he called after her. She waved a hand at him without looking round, so that was all right.
He went back inside and tidied up a bit. Then Uncle caught him—proof that he hadn’t been paying attention—and put him on unpacking and degreasing a consignment of scythe blades. The job took the rest of the afternoon and he cut his finger quite badly. Tissa dropped by just before the store closed. She’d spoken to Bonoa, and as far as she was concerned, the whole miserable business had never happened. Furio kissed Tissa and she prodded him hard in the solar plexus, then kissed him back while he was still gasping for air and went home.
Luso was in a foul mood. That was bad news for everyone in the house, but worse for Gignomai because Luso tended to work out his temper in impromptu fencing lessons.
“We had one this morning,” Gignomai protested.
“Yes, and you were bloody useless. So we’ll go through it again.” Luso frowned. “You’re all wet.”
“I fell in the stream.”
Luso smiled at him, and he shivered. Considered objectively, Luso was extraordinarily good-looking, everybody said so, and Gignomai could see it himself. But that was Luso for you. He was a man with practically every gift, talent, quality and virtue worth having, and it wasn’t as though he was actively or deliberately malicious, let alone bad or evil, he was just—unfortunate, their mother had called him once, when she didn’t realise Gignomai was listening. Somehow, the fact that Luso could play the harp like an angel devalued harp-playing, and his good looks made you wonder if beauty was such a good thing after all.
“You’re always falling in water,” Luso said, hustling him across the yard into the long barn, where they used the threshing floor as their fencing ring. “Anybody’d think you’ve got two left feet. But you haven’t.”
As he spoke, he lashed out with his left fist. It was a slow punch, barely concealed. Its purpose (as Gignomai realised, too late to do anything about it) was to get him to step back smartly out of the way, thereby proving Luso’s point.
“See?” Luso said. “Good reactions, pretty reasonable balance, good coordination. And yet you’re for ever toppling off logs into streams. Maybe we ought to work on that.”
(And that, Gignomai reflected, was the difference between them. Luso had seen him breaking out, and now he couldn’t resist letting him know he knew. Gignomai would’ve kept the knowledge safe and quiet, for when he needed to use it.)
“If you like,” Gignomai replied. He could see his sword leaning against the wall. Luso had brought it here earlier, so this lesson wasn’t quite as spur of the moment as he’d been led to believe. “I don’t mind.”
The hard, polished clay of the threshing floor had been carefully marked out with a series of concentric rings, clearly shown up with blue raddle mixed with powdered chalk. Gignomai went and stood on the outer ring, but Luso shook his head. “Middle,” he said. “We’ll do voids.”
Oh, Gignomai thought, but managed not to let anything show.
Leaning next to the sword was a hazel stick, the same length, about half an inch thick. Gignomai always used the sword, unbated, its point sharp as a needle. Luso used the stick.
“All right,” Luso said, taking his place on the mark. “In your own time try and kill me.”
That was what he always said. Once, about five years ago, after Luso had cut his bottom lip open with a swish of the stick before smacking him stupid with a blow over the right eye, Gignomai asked him, do you really mean that, about killing you? Yes, of course, Luso had said. You want to, don’t you? He hadn’t answered. He was still thinking about it.
Or maybe not. “If I wanted to kill you,” he replied, “I wouldn’t try and do it here.”
Luso laughed. His face was beautiful—no other way to describe it—when he laughed. “If you do it here, you’ll get away with it,” he said.
“Well, I don’t want to.”
“That’s a weight off my mind,” Luso said, and aimed a fast jab at his teeth. Gignomai retreated, one step back and left. He was supposed to counter-attack in time. Luso rolled his eyes at him.
“All right,” he said. “You attack me this time.”
Hiding to nothing. Gignomai did his very best, and found himself walking into a slam just above the right ear that made his head swim. Luso only ever used the tip of his stick, at most the first two inches: the stramazone or point-flick, the only cut available with the smallsword.
“You’re not trying,” Luso said. “You’ve got to read me like a book.”
“Sorry,” Gignomai heard himself say, and he tried again, going in on the diagonal, lunging for Luso’s kneecap. That got him a sharp prod in the face, a finger’s breadth under his left eye.
“Tell me what I did,” Luso ordered.
“You withdrew the front foot a full stride while raising your sword-arm and changing from first to fourth.”
“Quite right. You know the move, yes?”
Gignomai nodded. “We did it—”
“You knew the move, but you thought I’d forgotten it?” Luso let the tip of the stick rest on the floor. “That’s the trouble with you,” he said. “You learn the moves, you get them really well, but
you don’t use them. You practise them as if they’re dance steps, but you don’t see how they fit together.” He sighed. “You won’t fight, is your problem.”
Gignomai put on a remorseful face and nodded sadly, then he drove his front foot forward, not how he’d been taught but wildly, and swung a far too wide extravagant slash at Luso’s face with the sword-tip. It caught him an inch below the hairline, and for a fraction of a second nothing happened. Then blood started blossoming out of the cut, and Luso hammered the stick into the inside of his wrist, sending the sword spinning across the barn.
Gignomai froze, wondering what on earth he’d just done and, as if he were an uninvolved observer, what Luso was going to do to him next.
Luso grinned. “That was dreadful,” he said. “What was bad about it?”
It took him a moment to understand the question. “Front foot?”
Luso nodded, which made blood trickle down his forehead. “Too far forward. And?”
“Too much arm.”
“That’s right. You wasted time and energy, and you opened yourself up more than you should’ve done. Apart from that,” he added, wiping his forehead and looking at his hand, “it wasn’t bad.”
He hesitated. “Luso, I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what I was—”
The stick swung down hard on the point of his left shoulder filling his whole body with pain. “Don’t apologise,” Luso roared at him. “First time in six years you’ve even tried to do this, don’t you dare say you’re sorry. You think I like wasting my time on you, when you can’t even be bothered to try?”
Gignomai couldn’t move the fingers of his left hand. “Fine,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “I’m sorry I was sorry.”
Luso came a long step closer. It wasn’t a teaching-fencing step but a real lunge, such as Luso might make in a real fight. He was there before Gignomai realised he’d moved. “Listen,” he said, and he grabbed Gignomai’s right elbow, “fencing isn’t fighting. You can fence better than the masters at the royal court, and one day an angry old man with a hayfork’s going to stick you in the guts and kill you. Skill’s a handy thing to have, but fighting’s about meaning it.”
Gignomai looked down at the hand clamped on his elbow. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said. “I was sure you’d parry.”
Luso let go. “For a moment there,” he said, “I was proud of you.” Then he walked away.
At dinner, Father noticed. “What happened to you?” he asked.
“Gig’s fencing lesson,” Luso replied.
Father put down the slice of bread he’d been working on. “He got past you, did he?”
“He most certainly did.”
“Must be getting good, then.”
“He’s very good,” Luso said. “He’s really come on this year. Still needs to work on his single time, but we’re getting there.”
Father turned his head, and his eye fell on Gignomai like a firm grip, like Luso’s hand on his arm. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “It’s taken you long enough.”
He was required to say something but he couldn’t think what. “Luso’s been very patient,” he said. That made Father laugh, and pick up his bread again.
After dinner, he went down into the cellar, which Luso had turned into his armoury. He was usually down there after dinner, polishing and sharpening.
“Did you mean all that?” he said.
Luso had taken the lock off one of the snapping-hens. He’d laid the screws out on the table in a sort of flattened horseshoe shape, so he’d know which one went in which hole. He didn’t look up. “All what?”
“Am I good at fencing?”
Luso nodded. “Very good,” he said.
“Is that just because…?”
“At fencing,” Luso repeated, “you’d beat anyone in this colony, except me.”
Gignomai was stunned. He’d always assumed he was useless. “But you knock me around as though I was still a little kid,” he said. “You use a stick and I use sharps.”
“So?”
And Gignomai understood. Good, very good, but not good enough. It was, perhaps, the first time in his life he’d appreciated the difference. “Will it leave a scar?”
Luso laughed. “Girls like scars,” he said. “In moderation. I’ve always felt I could do with one, so you’ve saved me a job. Or I could grow my fringe, I guess.”
That seemed to be that, but Gignomai, though offered a dismissal, decided for once not to accept it. “Is there something wrong with the gun?”
Luso nodded. “Overriding at half cock,” he said. Presumably that was supposed to mean something. “There’s a little burr here, look.” He pointed at something with the tip of his turnscrew. “It’s making the sear bridge the detent. Couple of strokes with a fine stone’ll put that right.”
Gignomai took a step closer and looked over his shoulder. It didn’t take him long to figure out how the mechanism worked. “Interested?” Luso asked.
“Not really.”
Shrug. “Aurelio says you’re always hanging round the forge, watching.”
“It’s warm.”
Luso had teased out one of the components, and was drawing a small whetstone across it. “You don’t approve of me, do you?”
It was such an absurd thing for Luso to say; as if the sun needed his approval before it could rise.
But he said, “I think we ought to try and get along with the other people here.”
Luso grinned. “That’s what Furio Opello thinks, is it?”
“He says they put up with us because if the savages attack, we’ll defend them.”
“Is that right?” Luso was squeezing together the legs of a powerful spring, forcing it back into place. “What a strange idea. Old-country thinking.”
Gignomai didn’t know what to make of that. Talking to Luso like this didn’t feel right. Luso had the knack of making him feel fourteen years old. “I’d best be going,” he said.
“Why?” Luso had pushed the spring back where it needed to be, and was looking at the ball of his thumb. A sharp edge had cut into it deeply. “Nobody needs you for anything.”
“Do you?”
“Not really.” Luso started putting back the screws. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? You know they only had you as a spare. In case anything happened to Stheno or me. Since we’re still both alive, they’re at a loss to figure out what you’re for.” A screw slipped through his fingers and spun onto the floor; Gignomai pounced on it and handed it over. “Exactly what is it you do all day, anyway? When you’re not sneaking down to the town.”
“I do what I’m told, mostly,” Gignomai said.
“Yes, I know that. But you’ve got a marvellous gift for not being there when people are looking for you with work to be done. I don’t think it’s because you’re idle. There’s something you do. What?”
Gignomai shrugged. “I like to read.”
“You like to read.” Luso ran in the last screw, and pulled back the long arm, the part that held the splinter of flint. Gignomai heard it click twice—a confident metal noise, like the tick of Furio’s father’s clock. Then Luso pressed a lever on the other side of the lock plate, and the arm tried to lunge forward, only his bleeding thumb was in the way and obstructed it. “Apart from that.”
“I do jobs around the farm.”
“I asked Stheno what you do,” Luso said. “He said he was minded to ask me the same question. Which made me think, maybe I should ask you directly. It’s not the way we do things in this family, but I’m not morally opposed to innovation.” He put the lock down on the table. “Well?”
“I do jobs around the farm. I read. Sometimes I go for walks.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
Luso laughed again. Luso was always laughing, but rarely, as far as Gignomai could recall, at anything funny. “We’re going to have to take you in hand,” he said. “Can’t have a son of the met’Oc just drifting around aimlessly all day.”
/> “I thought the met’Oc were gentlemen of leisure.”
Luso scowled at him. “Don’t be stupid,” he said. “You know as well as I do, people like us are spared the necessity of miserable everyday labour so we can spend our time on things that really matter. Gentle occupations and noble pursuits.”
He said it as if he meant it, so there was no point in arguing. That was where most people were wrong about Luso. He sincerely believed in something. Unfortunately, only he knew what it was.
“Stheno works on the farm. He works really hard.”
Luso turned his head away. “Stheno…” He was having trouble finding words, a remarkable thing. “Stheno’s had to make sacrifices, because of being the eldest. Someone’s got to run the farm, because while we’re stuck here in this godforsaken place we’ve got to eat and put clothes on our backs. Stheno sees to all that. It means he’s got to miss out on a lot of better things. You should be grateful.”
Gignomai could see all sorts of dangers if they followed this line of discussion. He’d been there before, arguing with Furio.
(“Your family are crazy,” Furio had said. “They act as though they’re noblemen at court, but really you’re just a bunch of farmers like everybody else.”
“No we’re not,” Gignomai had replied automatically. Searching blind for his argument, he found the words his father relied on. “We’re in exile. While we’re here—”
“You’re stuck here for good and you know it. Your brother Stheno knows it. He’s the hardest working farmer in the colony.”
“That’s a good thing, surely.”
“Yes, but the rest of you carry on like… Well, like you’re at the hunting lodge for the summer, and wouldn’t it be fun to play at shepherds and shepherdesses.”
“No we don’t.”
“Oh, right. So it’s fine for you to herd pigs, but will they let you learn a trade? Like hell they will. That’d mean accepting. They won’t stand for it. And they treat Stheno as if he’s simple or something. They’re sorry for him, and they look down their noses at him.”)
“I’ll talk to Father about it,” Luso said, and the decision was made. “There’s got to be something you can do. We’ve just got to figure out what it could possibly be.”
