Savine frowned. ‘Then who pulls the strings?’
Her father’s eyes met hers, bright and hard. ‘I have been asking questions all my life. I learned that some are better left unanswered.’ He let his hand drop and clapped it on top of hers. The one that held her steels. ‘Time to work on your defence.’
‘Three strikes?’ asked Gorst.
Savine tossed her short steel up with her right hand and snatched it out of the air with her left. ‘Whatever you say.’
He shuffled at her, jabbed and cut with no real venom. It was easy for her to block the jabs, to turn the cut away with a showy flick of the wrist.
‘So, if the lady governor fights the Northmen to a stalemate, what does it mean for holdings in Angland?’
‘Ah!’ Her father grinned. ‘I was wondering when we’d get to money.’
‘We never left it.’ She parried, and again, sidestepped a sluggish lunge. For a man renowned for his ferocity, Gorst was scarcely hitting at all. ‘Prices are tumbling up there. Do I sell out or get deeper in?’
‘The Union will never let go of Angland. If I were a man of business, I’d be snapping up the bargains. After all, danger and opportunity—’
‘Often walk hand in hand,’ she finished for him, and out of the corner of her eye she caught his grin. There were few things that gave her the same satisfaction as making the Arch Lector smile. Aside from her mother, no one else could manage it. ‘I’ll see about borrowing a little to expand my holdings in the mines up there.’ She could hardly keep the smile off her face. ‘There are excellent rates on offer from Valint and Balk—’
‘Don’t!’ barked her father, with a wince that made her feel just a little guilty. ‘Don’t even joke about it, Savine. Valint and Balk are vermin. Parasites. Leeches. Once they get stuck to you, there’s no getting free of them. They won’t be satisfied until they own the sun and can charge the world interest for letting it rise every morning. Promise me you’ll never take a bit from the bastards!’
‘I promise. I’ll stay well away.’ Though it was not always easy. Like a greedy old willow tree, the twisted roots of that particular banking house burrowed into everything. ‘We’re not talking about much. I already took a controlling share in the armoury in Ostenhorm at a price you would scarcely believe.’
‘Swords are always a good investment,’ admitted the Arch Lector as he watched her swat Gorst’s away with her own.
‘I’m told these fire-tubes are the future. These cannons.’
‘We had mixed results with them in Styria.’
‘But they’re getting smaller all the time, more portable and more powerful.’ She stepped nimbly around a limp jab. ‘They’ve developed an exploding cannon-stone now.’
‘Explosions are always a good investment, too.’
‘Especially if I can arrange a contract or two with the King’s Own.’
‘Oh? Do you know anyone with influence?’
‘As it happens, I have arranged a little soirée with Asil dan Roth and a few other military wives. Her husband was recently appointed Master of the King’s Armouries, I believe.’
‘What good fortune,’ murmured her father, drily.
Gorst’s next lunge was positively belittling. ‘I’m not made of glass, either,’ said Savine, flicking irritably at the point of his steel. ‘Come at me like you mean it.’
She had been fencing all her life, after all. As a girl, she had dreamed of winning the Contest disguised as a man, whipping off her cap to reveal her golden tresses to an ecstatic crowd. Then wigs had come into fashion and she had shaved her tresses off, which, honestly, had been a rather unprepossessing brown in any case. Then she had learned men never cheer for a woman who beats them at their own games, so she had left the fencing circle to the cocks and decided to count her victories at the bank.
She parried two efforts which were scarcely stronger than before and, this time, stepped neatly around the lazy cut that followed and gave Gorst a shove with the basketwork of her short steel. ‘Do you hit like a woman as well as talk like one?’
Gorst’s eye gave the faintest twitch. ‘Ouch!’ called her father. ‘A touch to the lady.’
‘I want to know how it feels to be attacked by a dangerous man who means it.’ Savine set herself again, confident in her stance, confident in her grip, confident in her abilities. ‘Otherwise what’s the point?
Gorst glanced at her father. The Arch Lector pressed his lips thoughtfully together, then gave the faintest shrug. ‘She is here to learn.’ There was a hardness on his face she was not used to seeing. ‘Teach her.’
There was something ever so slightly different in the way Gorst took his mark, the way he twisted his feet into the faintly creaking boards, the way he worked his great shoulders and gripped his notched steels. His flat face hardly showed emotion, but it was as if a door had opened a chink, and beyond it Savine glimpsed something monstrous.
It is easy to smile at the bull you know is chained. When you realise of a sudden the chain is off, and its horns towards you, and its hoof scraping at the dust, the bull looks an entirely different animal.
She half-opened her mouth to say, ‘Wait.’
‘Begin.’
She had been ready for his strength. It was his speed that shocked her. He was on her before she could draw a breath. Her eyes went wide as his long steel whipped down and she had just the presence of mind to sidestep, bringing up her short steel to parry.
She had not been ready for his strength after all. The force of it numbed her arm from fingertips to shoulder, rattled the teeth in her head. She stumbled back, gasping, but his short steel was already coming at her, crashing into her long, ripping it from her numb fingers and sending it skittering across the floor. She flapped blindly with her short, all training and technique forgotten, saw a flash of metal—
His long steel thudded into her padded jacket and drove her breath out in a burning wheeze, nearly lifted her off her feet and sent her tottering sideways. A moment later, his shoulder rammed into her body. Her head snapped forward, her face crunched against something. The blunt top of his skull, maybe.
Was she in the air?
The wall smashed her in the back, the bare room reeled and, to her great surprise, she found herself on hands and knees, blinking at the floor.
Spots of blood pit-pattered onto the polished wood in front of her face.
‘Oh,’ she gasped.
Her ribs throbbed with each snatched breath, sick scalding the back of her throat. Her hand was all tangled up in the basketwork of her short steel, and she flopped it drunkenly around until the sword clattered onto the floor. The backs of her fingers were all grazed. She put them to her throbbing mouth and they came away bloody. Her hand was shaking. She was shaking all over.
It hurt. Her face, her side, her pride. But it was not the pain that really shook her. It was the powerlessness. The total misjudgement of her own abilities. The curtain had been twitched aside, and she saw just how fragile she was. How fragile anyone was, compared to a sword swung in anger. The world was a different place than it had been a few moments before, and not a better one.
Gorst squatted before her, notched steels in one hand. ‘I should warn you that I was still holding back.’
She managed to nod. ‘I see.’
There was no trace of guilt on her father’s face. Constant pain, as he always liked to say, had cured him of that. ‘Fencing is one thing,’ he said. ‘Actual violence quite another. Few of us are made for it. It is healthy to be disabused of our self-deceptions every now and then, even if it hurts.’
He smiled while she wiped the blood from her nose. Savine had given up trying to understand him. Most of the time, she was the one thing he loved in a world he despised. Then, on occasion, he treated her like a rival to be crushed.