She realized before she was halfway there that the cow wasn’t Bessie. She looked enough like Bessie, still, that the sight of her filled Micah with joy or relief, or both. “What’s her name?” she said to the farmer when she arrived at his stand.
“Esmeralda.”
“Esmeralda’s spots are the same color as Bessie’s, and so are her eyes. Bessie’s spots are in different places, though. Bessie has one on her nose and three on her left side and five on her right side, and your cow has one less spot in each place: none on her nose, two on her left side, and four on her right side.” She talked until the farmer gave her a funny look and walked away from her to the lettuces on his table, which she knew meant he didn’t want to listen anymore. If she hadn’t been so worried about Reuben, she would have arranged the lettuces more neatly for him.
She sat down on a stool and began stroking the side of the cow who wasn’t Bessie. Thunder pealed over her, but with her hands on Esmeralda’s side she was not frightened. She sat, silent, breathing deeply, as the feel of the soft flanks against her hands began to muffle the sharpness of her anxiety with images of the farm and Aunt Judith and the turnip fields. Things that made her smile.
Esmeralda tilted her head back and stuck out her tongue, which was exactly what Bessie did when she was happy.
What Micah needed to do, she realized, was to figure out exactly what to say. It was important. She thought for a moment and breathed deeply.
“Reuben,” she told Esmeralda, “I’m not coming back to the farm.” No. Aunt Judith always said that when you were telling people something they wouldn’t be happy to hear you should warn them first that you had bad news. “Reuben, I have bad news.” Yes, that was better. You should also apologize. “I’m sorry. But I’m not coming back to the farm.” Or was this not a time she should apologize? “Reuben, I have bad news. I’m not coming back to the farm.” No, the apology was better. Maybe.
Esmeralda tore a mouthful of hay from the pile at her feet. Stroke, stroke, stroke.
“Rafe is giving me a job teaching at his school, and you know how much I love math.” Yes, that would be good. “And I’ll get to spend all my time doing math.” She sped up as she spoke, all in one breath. “So I know you depend on me to help with the turnips and the planting and all the other things but I think you can do them without me and if you want, I can keep coming to visit you here and remind you of things like when it’s time to plow and harvest and what to do in the rain and things and I promise you’ll be okay, but Rafe says I have a duty to scholarship so I’ll be happy too and it will be so wonderful!”
Was that right?
Esmeralda turned her head to look at Micah, bits of hay hanging from her lower lip, and let out a soft moo.
Micah clapped her hands and then put her arms as far around Esmeralda’s middle as she could and pressed hard. So solid, so dependable.
As she made her way toward her cousin’s stall, though, she began to feel anxious again. It had been so clear just a little bit earlier! Reuben, I have bad news . . . spend all my time doing math . . . keep coming to visit you here . . . But she remembered the time on the farm that the sheep had wandered off and how loud and frightening Reuben had been when he yelled about it. The words she’d just thought of, sitting with Esmeralda, got harder and harder to remember. Reuben was going to be so angry. Wait, was she going to include an apology or not?
She caught sight of Reuben’s back and started feeling sick to her stomach. She wanted to run back to Rafe’s rooms, but Joshua and somebody she didn’t recognize had been there in bed making noise like the pigs did when they mated so she didn’t think that would be good and anyway she had to tell Reuben, she had to.
“Reuben!” she said, and he scowled to see her. Oh gods. He was in a bad mood.
“Wonderful,” he said. “The one person who stops is somebody I know doesn’t want any cabbage.” He bit his fingernail. “In the rain the roads back will be bad enough as it is, without my having to drive them with a cart full of unsold greens.”
Micah wanted to throw up. What was she supposed to say? She had been so careful, come up with something so good. But the words stayed out of her head. Finally she couldn’t bear it anymore.
“I love math more than the farm so I’m not coming back and I know you might not like it but I have a duty to scholarship,” she blurted.
Was that right? Probably not. Probably he would yell at her much worse than she had expected. Her whole body was rigid. She wanted to disappear.
And then a grin split his face, and he started laughing louder than she’d ever heard him laugh before.
Reuben wasn’t mad! Her body melted and she threw her arms around him and squeezed him even harder than she’d squeezed Esmeralda.
“Micah,” he said when she finally let go, “I don’t understand a damn thing when you talk about numbers, but you’re a great kid, and if that’s what you want to do, then that’s what you should do.” He reached out and chucked her under her chin.
“You don’t need me for the turnips?”
“You’ve taught us enough about growing crops to last us a lifetime. Do me a favor, though?”
The wondrous shapes entered her vision again, rotating, relating, growing, changing. Right. “Anything, Reuben!”
“Keep coming to visit me here? And write Aunt Judith and Uncle Amos a letter every week? It’ll help us miss you less.”
“Every day! I’ll come every day!” And she clapped again and jumped up and down.
As she ran off, thunder slapped the sky again.
It began, finally, to rain.
Kaab was fuming. The gods showered the earth with water in Binkiinha, too, but the City seemed to see more rain in a month than her homeland did in a year, if not two. And the rain here, unlike that in her homeland, was cold.
She looked up and muttered a curse as a raindrop landed in her eye.
She had walked around Riverside twice by now on a meandering, circuitous route, avoiding the mud and the largest puddles, taking in the whores she passed, the pimps, the pickpockets, the ne’er-do-wells, the urchins. But she had managed neither to evade nor to identify whoever was trailing her.
As she passed a secondhand clothier’s, she glanced at the reflection in the window and finally saw him, across the street now, the man who had surely broken into Tess’s apartment, the man Vincent said he had seen dressed in house livery at the Swan Ball.
Tremontaine’s creature.
She grunted in frustration. She was tired, and she was wet, and she had lost her morning. The gods had not created her with the patience for this.
She stopped in her tracks, turned around, and stared directly at her pursuer. His hair was plastered against his forehead, water dripping from his ears, a dangerous half smile on his face. She said nothing as she crossed the street to him, simply eyed him, imperious.
“You are following me,” she said when she reached him. “Furthermore, you have been plaguing a woman whose happiness is a matter of some import to me. I am displeased.”
He laughed, without amusement. “Then we have something in common. You, girl, have been plaguing a woman whose happiness is a matter of some import to me.” His hand moved to the hilt of his sword.
“I do not see how I can have troubled the peace of the Duchess Tremontaine by going about my family’s business.” Was that a flicker of surprise on his face? “Whom do you take me for, that I should not know your mistress? Some girl on her first mission, fresh as unpicked maize, with her eyes closed to what is around her? Or is it your own pox-ridden eyes that cannot see clearly what lies before them?”
The man’s half smile blossomed into something mocking, derisive. “This,” he said, “will be amusing.”
He drew his sword.
Kaab didn’t move a muscle, but her throat closed and her liver grew heavy with fear. The air smelled suddenly sour.
She hurled a prayer up to the gods.
Protect me, Ixchel, from the spear by day and the jagua
r by night.
What had she been thinking, confronting this man? Had she expected him to slink away, chastised, and leave her and Tess in peace?
Swallowing her fear, she drew her own sword. “There are customs to be observed, are there not,” she said, “when two swordsmen duel?”
This time his laugh was almost genuine. “Two swordsmen?”
Kaab said nothing, feeling the balance of the sword in her hand.
“Very well, then.” His voice rang out above the sound of the rain pattering on the ground. “I call challenge.”
From the corner of her eye Kaab saw a passerby stop, then another. They had an audience. Never mind them. Immaterial.
She assumed her stance, different from the one she had learned in her youth across the Road of the Sun, but one into which, after months of work with Applethorpe, she fell naturally. Torso turned to the side, legs bent, arm lifted, elbow crooked just so, the sword loose in her hand, her other arm relaxed behind her. They began to circle each other.
Kaab stepped forward.
* * *
She lunges. He parries, makes a riposte. She parries, the clash of metal on metal.
These are easy moves, testing moves. The first part of a duel isn’t part of the duel. Vincent’s words. It’s strictly for information. How strong is your opponent? What are his weaknesses? Does he favor one side? Does he give anything away?
“Not bad,” says the man opposite her, and she can hear an echo of something that sounds like admiration in his voice.
She, for her part, will not waste her breath in idle talk. Not until she knows it will do her good.
She was furious when Vincent made her spend their first few lessons on walking. Ekchuah guide her, he didn’t even allow her to draw her sword! But thanks to him the circular fighting pattern the Xanamwiinik swordsmen use is second nature now. Face him to the west, one foot, the other, again, face the south. Gods, how sweet it would feel to run directly at him, as she would at home! There is something foolish in this style of fighting. Effete.
But that does not make the blade she faces any less deadly.
He thrusts. She sweeps the tip of his sword away, dances back.
This man is taller than she is, though not by much. A few inches. But where she is lean and wiry, he is muscled. Large. It will slow him down. Light, unfortunately, on his feet. His rapier is longer than hers by, what, a handspan? Two? Which means she has to stay farther away from him to keep out of his range. But it also means that she needn’t get as close to him before his weapon becomes useless. A sword whose point extends past her ear can do her no harm.
His head nods up and down, judging her balance, her strength, her guard. And wasting movement. A sneer. He’s underestimating her. Good. She’ll use that.
As for her, everything she needs to know she sees in his face.
Watch my eyes, damn it, not my sword, Applethorpe kept saying. This man’s eyes are narrow. Veiled. He thinks himself opaque. But Ixkaab Balam is a first daughter of a first daughter of the Kinwiinik. He can conceal nothing from her.
“You will never get what you want,” she says, her voice steady.
Attack, riposte. Feint from him, the whip of a blade slashing the air, feint, thrust high inside. “Oh?” he says. “And what might that be?”
She says nothing. She will tell him when it suits her.
He thrusts again, too fast, too close. She leaps to the side, barely misses being scratched. The duel has begun in earnest. She smiles, crouches lower, hears Vincent’s voice in her head: Too low. She rises two fingers’ breadth. Circle, circle.
She has this man’s measure now. He still underestimates her, but he isn’t letting it make him careless. His guard is high, his parry consistent. No tells, nothing that will allow her to predict any of his next attacks. She will have to wear him down. Which means the longer the fight takes, the better. “You fight well,” he says, “for a barbarian.”
Her left eyebrow rises very slightly. “So do you,” she says. “For a barbarian.”
He smiles, slows his circling steps. She follows suit. Parry, feint, feint, feint, feint, thrust center outside, yes, parry, no, no, no! Xamanek’s light! His riposte low inside, strike, and the sleeve stuck to her arm flowers blood.
She has been bloodied many times before in combat—single, group. But never when she has known that every wound she took brought her closer to joining her mother in the houses beneath the earth. Tears come unbidden, unwelcome, to her eyes.
Courage begins to seep from her body along with blood. She is facing a City swordsman. He is intimately acquainted with a weapon she met for the first time not half a year ago—he is toying with her; he knows what he is about, and she does not. He has spilled the blood of countless men, wasted it without the sanction of the gods.
And now his slashes and thrusts seem to come faster, faster, sharper, and sweat mixes in her eyes along with the rain, and pain, and more of her blood. She slips in mud, goes down on one knee. She can barely breathe. Up again. He batters her, drives her back toward the wall. She is blind with terror; she is doomed; she knows even as she begins to whisper a prayer to the gods that they cannot be importuned, that Chaacmul will accept this sacrifice from their priest, that—
No.
A single word, echoing, stills the roiling she feels within.
The voice, it surprises her to note, is not Applethorpe’s.
It is her own.
Despair is unworthy of you, says the voice. Have you not stood before Ekchuah’s temple to celebrate the return of the morning star? Have you not danced the Water Dance in the Batab’s palace with his most distinguished warriors under the first new moon of the year?
Are you not your mother’s daughter?
She knows what to do.
She reaches for the feeling of obsidian, the cool, silent force with which she has so recently become acquainted. Impassive. Respectful. Controlled.
Strength begins to spread through her, and warmth. Her smile becomes an openmouthed grin, falling rain running over her tongue. She leaps up and back like a jaguar, facing away from the crowd of spectators that has gathered to watch someone die. Step, step, yes, there! No, not far enough, there, back, back, damn it, back, but he’s moved too quickly, too quickly, too close, and he seizes her sword arm, pulls her to him, hard, what on earth is he doing, his elbow coming at her, pain pierces her face, red, blooming, vicious, she staggers back toward the side of the street.
She bends over, panting, her hand on her thigh, wipes under her nose, sees bloodied rain streaming off the back of her hand. How dare he? Vincent almost ended her lessons when she pulled something like this move.
A swordsman never grabs his opponent’s arm, Applethorpe had barked, furious. Do that and you lose the duel, and probably any hope of future contracts. She has spent months learning the rules of combat in this godsforsaken Land, has paid the Xanamwiinik the respect of acting according to their custom. Who does her opponent think she is, a dog to be spit upon, a fool to be made mock of in the sight of the gods?
Her liver begins to move within her, to heat her limbs to tingling, to urge her to strike, now. Now. Leap at him, do it, do it for Citlali, for her kin executed in Tultenco, for every woman killed by a man who has claimed the right.
Yes, whispers her liver as she stokes it, and it is crimson with rage, abandon yourself, deliver yourself to me, I will make of you an eagle, striking without thought, killing by instinct, attacking, destroying, yes, yes—
No. Her own voice again, steady, still, rooted deep in stone. Giving herself over to her liver-spirit was exactly what led to the disaster in Tultenco, to Citlali’s death and the death of her kin, to her banishment here. She has no need to call on her liver-spirit.
It is part of her.
Her opponent has shown that the ordinary rules do not apply in this fight.
This is not, then, a duel.
It is a murder.
The only question is whose.
She reaches
now for actual obsidian, pulls out her dagger. A handspan of chipped stone, the hilt wrapped with rough, strong henequen rope, the blade harder than steel. More deadly.
A flash of fear in his eyes. He sees that something has changed. Does not yet know what.
She drops to a crouch. Ah yes. Her work with Vincent has rendered the Xanamwiinik fighting stance comfortable for her—but this, to this position she was born.
Now is the time to speak. “It does not occur to her, you know,” she says, her voice low and clear through the rain. He cannot keep uncertainty from his eyes. Apprehension. “I speak of your duchess. You dream of her; you lust after her in the dark; you bed your lovers and thrust into them and whisper her name.”
His lips press together, tight. She has struck true.
“But.” Make him wait. “When you are not before her, it does not occur to her that you are alive. You are less to her than her leavings in the commode.”
He has begun to tremble. Now strike home.
“If she knew how you thought of her, she would laugh harder than you have ever laughed at anything since the cursed day your mother gave you to the light.”
He roars, inarticulate, wild. And she sees it, as clearly as if his skin had grown transparent as the skies; she sees him fill with rage; she sees his innards clench with the truth she has hurled. It is time.
She lets her sword fall to the ground and runs directly at him, stays low as she runs, reaches down with her empty right hand, makes it a shovel collecting mud, garbage, muck, dung, flips his sword aside with a contemptuous twist of her dagger as he is still roaring, inside his guard now, hand up, fling, and now his eyes and his face are dripping with gods know what. His sword cannot touch her, and he cannot see. He strikes out with his off fist, she leaps easily out of its way.
And now she is the one who laughs, because this is so easy. He was so arrogant, so sure of himself. Now he is blind with filth. The rain running down his face does nothing to restore his sight to him. Her impulse is to toy with him, to humiliate him. She shifts her balance to step to the south, just out of his range, where she can taunt him further.
Tremontaine Season 1 Saga Omnibus Page 44
