Cold Iron

by Miles Cameron

  ‘Here, let me have a go,’ Edvin said.

  ‘I can’t afford you.’

  Edvin laughed. ‘Oh, I’m all bark and no bite. I like a pretty lad, I admit. You’re a little big for my taste. Never you mind, my honey. You bring me quaveh. Let me have a look.’

  Edvin’s first attempt at the Safiri calligraphy was better than any of Aranthur’s. Then he spent ten minutes talking Aranthur through just two symbols – showing how the pen must touch the paper, and what the strokes must be like.

  Aranthur couldn’t take it all in, but he got most of it, and he began to copy more fluidly.

  ‘Not bad at all,’ Edvin said. ‘You are a good student.’

  ‘I’m sure he is,’ Dahlia said. She was standing in front of the two of them, hands on her hips. Today she wore a gown like other students. ‘Where do you fence, Syr Timos?’

  Aranthur blushed furiously and felt a fool for doing so.

  ‘I … um.’

  He looked away from her, at Edvin, who laughed aloud at his confusion.

  ‘I used to fence with Master Vladith,’ he managed. ‘Now, I …’

  ‘You left Vladith?’ Myr Dahlia asked. ‘Ah.’

  ‘I will … be fencing … with Master Sparthos.’

  He looked up at her, feeling ink-stained and immature.

  ‘Sparthos!’ she said. ‘My, my.’ She did a thing with her eyes that made Aranthur’s heart jump. ‘I’m to meet the Ambassador from Volta, Edvin, and take him to the Founder’s Square and the Seniors’ Mess, for lunch.’

  ‘Right you are, Myr.’ Edvin wrote out a message on a scrap he cut with his penknife and sealed it with his own ring. ‘There you go.’

  ‘My thanks, Edvin.’

  She sparkled at Aranthur and might have said something, but the door to the Master of Arts’ study opened and an elegant man appeared with the Master of Arts herself by his side. He bowed to Dahlia, who allowed her hand to be kissed with an air of detachment and took the visitor away.

  Magistera Benvenutu peered over Aranthur’s shoulder.

  ‘Good work. Come, let us find Syr Eshtirhan.’ She looked back at him. ‘You should try being less serious,’ she said with a smile.

  Aranthur wondered what she meant.

  The Safiri speaker proved to be a man of Atti, tall, fat, darkly bearded and full of good humour. He settled in the Master of Arts’ capacious office and they worked straight through lunch – all on the verb to be. He corrected some of Aranthur’s calligraphy and then went off to teach a class on Attian history. He was not yet a master, but only a senior student; Aranthur gathered he had been at the Academy for twenty years.

  ‘I am, perhaps, too fond of smoking stock and drinking forbidden wine,’ Eshtirhan said. ‘But damn it all, there’s more to life than verbs.’

  This last sally coincided with Dahlia’s return with the Voltain ambassadors. Eshtirhan eyed her like a connoisseur and she wrinkled her nose at him.

  But then she kissed the other scholar on both cheeks, which told Aranthur that he didn’t understand anything, and made him wonder again about being ‘too serious’.

  She looked at him. ‘Care to fence this afternoon? Perhaps after evening prayer?’ She leant over. ‘Really, even in these decadent days, men are supposed to ask women these things, but a girl could grow old …’

  She winked at Eshtirhan, who cackled.

  ‘I have to work,’ Aranthur said.

  Dahlia raised an elegant eyebrow. ‘Now that’s not a line I’ve heard before,’ she said, without apparent offence.

  You should try being less serious.

  Aranthur took a breath. ‘I can be done by prayers,’ he said, a little too suddenly.

  As an Arnaut, Aranthur seldom attended the formal, incense-filled prayers to Sophia every morning and evening, preferring to visit a temple of the Eagle from time to time, or to visit one of the Lady shrines throughout the city. So he wasn’t even sure why he’d said that …

  She smiled. ‘Good. Work? More work than this?’ She shrugged. ‘I am at Tercel’s. I’ll cover your fee – I assume you are poor.’

  Somehow, that comment hurt.

  ‘I can cover my own fee,’ he said, stung.

  ‘Oh, and doubtless buy a river of pearls. I’m sorry, Syr Timos, but I insist as your senior that I will pay your fee.’

  She bowed like a soldier, and swept out of the room.

  The magistera glanced after her.

  ‘Sometimes I wish Dahlia didn’t try quite so hard to be exceptional,’ she said. ‘And you, my dear Timos, need a sense of humour.’

  A sense of humour? Aranthur, who was usually a calm young man, bridled. You want me to fight evil and learn Safiri and get good grades and you think, perhaps, I need a sense of humour?

  It rankled all the way out of the Academy and across the squares and down the hill and over the spine to Ghazala’s shop. He even framed the thought in Safiri: آیا من نیاز به حس شوخ طبعی دارم؟. Then, while his dye was still wet, he lost himself thinking about what humour meant, as a word.

  Ghazala shook her head. ‘Hello?’ she snapped.

  ‘Do I need a sense of humour?’ Aranthur asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Ghazala said. ‘There is a woman?’

  Aranthur flushed.

  ‘Bah,’ she said. ‘Look here. This is how to dye blue. It is the most difficult.’

  Aranthur was deep in Safiri even as Ghazala taught him to dye. They were working with indigo and garza, a liquid that smelled to Aranthur like a distilled alcohol that was apparently a trade secret. The best leathers were usually dyed in the hide, when it was tanned, but for very small jobs and repairs, in-shop dyeing was essential. It was messy and very smelly, and by the end of his second six-hour day, Aranthur’s left hand was a mottled web of black and red and green.

  He didn’t really think about it until he arrived at the door of Master Tercel’s School of Defence, which proved to be a tavern, brothel, inn, stable, and a fencing salle all under one roof. It was all comfortably shabby, but as soon as Aranthur pulled his scholar’s gown over his head in the dressing room, he discovered that all of the other men were rich. Their sleeveless under-doublets were silk or superfine wool, their beautiful boots of pierced leather, with purses and belts to match. He was the only man with a scholar’s gown; the rest of them had doublets finer than anything he possessed, a dazzle of colours carelessly tossed in corners.

  Aranthur was the only man present who didn’t have an under-doublet. His hose were pointed to his braes, the short breeches that most Byzas wore to work, unlike the baggy trousers and smocks of the Arnauts. He wore the boots he’d found in the dead man’s case. All the other men had slippers, purposely made for swordplay.

  Aranthur had the humiliating feeling of being watched – and worse, commented on. There was a ripple of comment, and a snort of obvious derision.

  Someone said Arnaut loud enough to carry.

  He took a deep breath and considered leaving.

  Instead, the same feeling that had pushed him up the stairs against the kotsyphas now pushed him out of the changing room and onto the tavern floor. Or pit.

  The salle floor was surrounded by galleries, so that men and women could watch the bouts from either the ground level or the upper level, which was an extension of the upper level of the tavern. Out on the floor of the salle, two pairs were fighting. One was a pair of men boxing bare-handed; both had cuts on their faces. One of them was Tiy Drako.

  The other pair were both women; one was Dahlia, and the other a slim woman Aranthur didn’t know. They were using small swords – the light weapon that the gentry carried all the time, even at parties. The motions were incredibly rapid, compared to the more ponderous heavy swords that Master Vladith preferred. Both women had weapons with buttons on the points, and they circled, thrust, parried, discussed the finer points of their exchange, and went back to it.

  Drako blocked a straight jab, seized his opponent’s arm and threw him to the ground. Spectators bur
st into applause. Even the two women stopped fighting. Everyone clapped, and a woman threw a flower.

  Drako tucked it behind his ear, blew a kiss and spotted Aranthur. He did a double take, and then, too smoothly, covered his surprise.

  He came over. ‘My dear fellow,’ he said. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘I invited him,’ Dahlia said, leaving her bout.

  Drako bowed. ‘Your taste remains impeccable, Myr Tarkas.’

  ‘I always think so, of course,’ she said, with a tilt of her head and a raised eyebrow at Aranthur. ‘You came! What dreadful thing has the Master of Arts done to your hand? Was that sorcery?’

  Drako’s look of well-bred insipidity was replaced with something like curiosity – perhaps even concern.

  Aranthur was briefly tempted to lie. It was not that he was ashamed of working – he was far too much a product of the Revolution to be concerned about such a thing. And yet …

  And yet …

  ‘I am learning to dye leather,’ he said.

  ‘Of course you are,’ Drako said. ‘And damned creditable, too.’ His tone was ironic. ‘Isn’t leather already dead?’

  They had spectators, and many of them laughed.

  Aranthur wasn’t good at this sort of thing, and he shrugged.

  ‘There’s a lot to learn,’ he said weakly.

  But Dahlia rescued him.

  ‘He’s the Master of Arts’ student this year,’ she said to the spectators.

  A few people clapped, in a way that indicated that they were not so impressed, but most people’s faces expressed pleasure.

  ‘Damme, I throw Folis on his fool head and you are all eyes for this fella,’ Drako said.

  His opponent, who was apparently Syr Folis, was rubbing his head.

  ‘Damn your eyes, Drako,’ he said. ‘I thought we was boxing, an’ all along you was wrestling!’

  That led to a great deal of laughter, and the focus moved off Aranthur, who nonetheless feared he was flushed.

  Dahlia looked at him coolly. ‘Of course you don’t own an under-doublet,’ she said. ‘Let’s cross swords. What do you fancy?’

  ‘I have really only practised with arming swords,’ he said.

  She smiled. ‘Lovely.’

  She was dressed like a man, in hose and an under-doublet that showed her figure was very unlike a man’s, skintight to reveal billowing acres of snowy white man’s shirt, black-worked at neck and cuff, long legs clad in knit hose that showed every muscle.

  She went to a rack whose wealth of blades beggared even Master Sparthos’ well-furnished rack and withdrew two arming swords. They were three feet long, had simple cross-hilts; the blades had square edges and the points were rebated.

  Aranthur had never actually held such a weapon. Swords were expensive. A sword without edge or point took all the same smithing skills as a sharp sword, and thus, only the richest could afford to own both. At Vladith’s, every man and woman brought their own swords, and mostly they had cut at straw or at bucklers.

  He took the sword, rolled his wrist, and nodded. With a sword in his hand, he no longer saw her as beautiful; he simply looked at her muscles and where her weight was going. It was hard to describe, but the change was instant, and he was filled with purpose.

  They bowed. Another bout had begun next to them – two showy men with heavy swords. Close to Aranthur, a red-haired woman wagered that fingers would be broken and people laughed. No one seemed to pay him any mind, so he and Dahlia circled after their salutes and no one commented.

  He misjudged her distance and she slipped in and cut his sword arm. He didn’t even cover; it was so fast he stood for a moment, unbelieving.

  Drako laughed. ‘Ah, Syr Timos, don’t let her bully you. But she is fast as a cat, that one.’

  Aranthur saluted again. Dahlia was grinning.

  They circled. This time he saw her trying to close the distance, a sort of slow, lazy spiral. He cut back, stepping straight at her, and he threw a heavy blow from a high garde. She covered, and he rolled his wrist, forcing her to extend her garde. She backed and he followed, and suddenly she changed direction, seizing her own blade at the half-sword and going for his face with the point. His left hand took her right, and she punched with her left hand, snapping his head back and making him taste blood. He raised her right hand and threw her over his out-thrust foot with his superior weight and height.

  Then, as any Arnaut would do, he knelt on her arms to make sure she couldn’t strike again.

  She licked her lips and laughed. ‘Well, well,’ she said.

  Close by them, one of the swordsmen had just broken two fingers while swaggering swords, and the red-haired woman was collecting her winnings.

  They both bowed and the third point started more quickly, as she came straight at him with a thrust and he parried. Her thrust was a deception, but he had made a circular parry. The two intentions defeated each other, and their blades ended up crossed, points down. She rotated her blade, down to up, slid her forte along his foible and put her point into his gut with a strong advance.

  ‘Ouch,’ he said.

  She smiled. ‘You don’t know that one.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said.

  On the fourth exchange, he tried a flurry of very fast cuts – left, right, left, right. She parried three and tapped him on the shoulder before he could throw the fourth, a magnificent piece of control.

  By then people were watching.

  On the fifth exchange, he cut at her hard, again, from a high garde, correctly reading that she feared a heavy cut. But at the cross, he pushed her blade to his inside and grabbed it with his left hand, pulled hard, and found himself holding both swords.

  She turned on her heel and mimed running away. People laughed.

  ‘Nicely done,’ Drako said. ‘In oh so many ways.’

  Seeing that Drako was speaking to him, a half a dozen other men and woman came over and introduced themselves. Drako told a very, very amended version of the events at the Inn of Fosse, where he claimed he’d had an assignation with a married woman. There were many knowing glances.

  ‘Let’s cross blades,’ Drako said. ‘She’s already ruined your shirt.’

  Dahlia blew Drako a kiss, and grinned.

  ‘He’s mine, not yours. And anyway, I think the tradition of the floor is that you face the winner, not the loser.’

  Drako made an elaborate court bow that Aranthur couldn’t have hoped to emulate.

  ‘Your pardon, milady,’ he said.

  Aranthur understood he was to withdraw. Despite his good disarm, Dahlia had certainly scored more points. He stepped off the floor, where a tall man of his own age casually slipped a hand inside his shirt.

  ‘Ah, excellent muscles,’ he said with a winning smile. ‘You’re not pretty, but you are handsome.’

  Aranthur writhed away, but not fast enough to avoid a casual pinch.

  He flinched away from the hand. ‘Excuse me?’ he spat.

  The tall man grinned. ‘You are so fetching when you fight.’

  He smiled at another tall man, this one very dark-skinned, with an elaborate velvet coat.

  ‘Make him fight you,’ whispered Velvet Coat. ‘That will chill his ambitions.’

  ‘Now that’s unfair. I do not come out to fight. I come out to play,’ pouted the tall man.

  ‘We all come to play,’ a woman said with a beautiful smile. ‘But you have to fight first.’

  She was older, perhaps forty. She had iron-grey hair in a queue like a military man’s, and she was very fit. She looked familiar, but Aranthur didn’t know many women who wore hose and baggy shirts like men, aside from Dahlia. She was, as Aranthur looked at her, the most attractive older woman he’d ever seen. She was … dangerous.

  Aranthur acted on his own whim.

  ‘Would you care for a bout, ma’am?’ he asked.

  ‘Isn’t she a little old for you, darling?’ the tall man said. ‘Ah, well. Be careful of the General. She’ll eat you alive.�
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  Velvet Coat shook his head, as if in disapproval.

  ‘And what did you have in mind for him?’ asked the older woman. ‘I would be charmed to cross blades with you, sir,’ she said, turning back to Aranthur. ‘Though perhaps you are unaware that …’ She smiled. ‘Never mind. Who brought you here?’

  ‘I brought myself,’ he said, with a little too much severity.

  ‘Yes, yes, I was young once, too,’ the woman said. ‘Arming sword?’

  ‘As you wish, ma’am.’

  There was something about the way she held herself that led him to believe that she was a master, or at least an expert. And he knew her. He just couldn’t place her.

  ‘Arming sword.’

  She fetched a short, straight blade very like the one he still held in his hand and they joined a line of couples. There were five pairs ahead of them.

  ‘You are a Student?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said.

  Out on the floor, Drako and Dahlia had a surprisingly long engagement: blow, cover, counter, cover, riposte, parry, thrust. The two backed out of measure and there was a little applause; most conversations stilled.

  Dahlia threw a low leg-cut on a long advance, to close the distance. Drako covered with a leg withdrawal and a point-low parry. Then Aranthur lost the action. The duellists were turning and Drako’s back blocked what happened next. Then there was applause and Drako was saluting with a wicked grin on his face.

  ‘What do you study?’ she asked, pleasantly enough.

  For the first time, it occurred to Aranthur that he ought to watch what he said, contradicting his natural inclination to brag a little. The two warred within him. He shrugged.

  ‘I hope to be in the Studion,’ he said. ‘I am in my second year.’

  ‘Second year?’ The woman smiled, and her smile was both flirtatious and somehow automatic, as if her attention was elsewhere. ‘Ah, so very young.’

  ‘And you, ma’am?’

  ‘I do not love being called ma’am. Call me Alis.’

  One of the pairs ahead of them left the line, having changed their minds; suddenly, they were next.

  ‘You look familiar to me.’ Alis smiled. ‘Bah. We’ll talk later. Fight well.’