“Ah, ha,” she said, and stopped out of my reach. “Perhaps a bear cub after all. I don’t mean to detain you against your will, traveler. We have Shortline cheese to share, and we’d welcome news of the world beyond this road.”
She was relaxed, smiling, but she watched my body rather than my face, and her knees were slightly bent, ready to move her in whatever direction she needed to go. She looked strong and capable, but I could see a weakness in her stance, a slight cant to her hips. I could probably take her, I thought.
I put my hands down. “The place I’ve come from is so small, you’d miss it if you looked down to scratch. But I can trade flatcakes for a wedge of cheese and your news.”
“Fair enough,” she said.
She was Lucky, and the man was Ro. The other, silent woman was Braxis. We ate cheese and my mother’s cake in the afternoon sun, and they told me about the north, and I gave them what I knew about the west. I was nervous, but gradually their laughter, their worldliness, won me over. They never asked a question that was too personal, and they gave exactly as much information about themselves as I did, so I never felt at a disadvantage.
“What is it you want from me?” I asked finally. I don’t know exactly what made me say it. Maybe it was the combination of the warm gold sun and the warm gold cheese, the bread and the cider from Braxis’s wineskin. Maybe it was hearing about the great cities to the north, Shirkasar and Low Grayling, and the massive port of Hunemoth, the way they made me see the marketplaces and the moonlight on the marbled plazas of the noble houses. Maybe it was the looks the three of them traded when I answered their questions.
Braxis raised an eyebrow in my direction. It was Ro who answered.
“Okay, so you know when something’s going on under your nose. That’s good. Can you fight?”
I tensed. “I’ve told you how I grew up. I can fight.”
“We’re going to Lemon City, to the auditions. We need a fourth.”
“What auditions?”
“Hoo hoo,” Lucky said with a grin.
“Three times a year they hold an audition for the city guard,” Ro said. “They only accept quads, they think it’s the most stable configuration for training and fighting.”
“So,” I said. I thought of Tom under the alders, of Lemon City as I’d imagined it with Ad.
“So you probably noticed there are only three of us.”
“You came all this way from Grayling without a fourth?”
“No, of course not,” Ro said patiently. “He left us two days ago. He found true love in some stupid little town with probably only one bloodline, but he didn’t care. He’s a romantic, much good may it do him in the ass end of nowhere.”
“And you’d take me just like that, not knowing me at all.”
“What do we need to know?” Lucky said. “You breathe, you can stand up without falling over. You’re on the road to Lemon City, aren’t you? Do you want a job or not?”
“You mean for money?” She shook her head as if she couldn’t credit my being so dumb. But I’d expected to have to find honest work, meaning something dirty and bone-tiring, before I could start looking for someone to train with. The idea of getting tired, dirty, and paid to train was so exciting I could hardly believe it was real.
Ro said, “We’ll offer you a trial on the road. Travel with us to Lemon City and we’ll see if we want to take it any farther.”
“Not without a fight,” Braxis said. We all looked at her; Ro and Lucky seemed as surprised that she’d spoken as they did at what she’d said.
“I don’t take anyone on without knowing if they can hold their own,” she said reasonably. “Not even on trial. That’s the whole point of a quad, isn’t it? Four walls, stable house. We need strong walls.”
“They train you, Brax,” Ro responded. “All we have to do is get past the gate.”
“No,” I said slowly. “She’s right. And so are you: I do want to go to Lemon City, but it’s got to be properly done.” They looked at me with a variety of expressions: Braxis impassive, Ro with his head tilted and a wrinkle in his forehead, Lucky grinning with her arms akimbo.
“I can’t explain it. But I need this to be something I can be proud of. It needs to be earned.”
“Gods, another romantic,” Ro muttered.
We climbed over the wall into the field, and laid aside our swords. Lemon City was just behind that cloud, and I was a hot wind. It was such an amazing feeling that I almost forgot that I’d never really fought anyone except Tom, that I didn’t yet know if I could. Then Braxis’s strong arms reached for me.
When we were done, and Brax had finished coughing up grass, she said, “Fine. On the way there, you can teach us how to do that.”
We began to learn each other: Braxis woke up surly; Lucky sang walking songs out of tune, and she knew a hundred of them; Ro was good at resolving differences between others and peevish when he didn’t get his own way. I wasn’t sure what they were discovering about me. I’d never lived with anyone except my mother: It was one more thing I didn’t know how to do. I watched everything and tried not to offend anyone.
We got into the routine of making camp early in the afternoon, to keep the last hours of light for practicing swords and stormfighting. It didn’t take them long to work out that I barely knew one end of my sword from the other. I was ashamed, and halfway expected them to kick me back up the road. They surprised me. “I’ve never seen anyone fight like you do,” Ro said matter-of-factly. “If we can trade learning between us, it makes us all stronger.” Then he set about showing me the basics.
Two weeks later it was Lucky who came toward me with her sword. I looked at Ro. He smiled. “I’ve given you enough so that you can at least keep up with what she’s got to show you. She’s the best of us.”
I expected the thrust-and-parry exercises that I’d worked on with Ro, but Lucky came to stand to one side of me, just out of blade range. She extended her sword. “Follow me,” was all she said, and then she was off in a step, turn, strike, block that moved straight into a new combination. She was fast. I stayed with her as best I could, and actually matched her about one move in seven.
“Not horrible,” she said. “Let’s try it again.” We worked it over and over until finally she reached out and pried the sword out of my grip. “Those will hurt tomorrow,” she said of the blisters on my palms. “You should have told me.” But I was determined to hold my own with these people, so I only shrugged. My hands felt raw for days after; but I was stubborn. And it helped that I could teach as well as learn. It did not matter so much that I was the youngling, the inexperienced one, when their bodies worked to imitate mine, when their muscles fluttered and strained to please me.
And I had a new secret: I was beginning to understand the price for all those months that I’d wrestled my body’s feelings back into my fighting. I could scrub Lucky’s back after a cold creek bath, see Brax’s nipples crinkle when she shrugged off her shirt at night, lie with my head pillowed on Ro’s thigh — and never feel a thing except a growing sense of wonder at what complex and contradictory people I had found on my road. But when we met in practice, everything changed. The slide of Brax’s leather-covered breast against my arm during a takedown put a point of heat at the tip of every nerve from my shoulder to my groin. Ro’s weight on me when he tested the possibilities of a technique was voluptuous in a way I’d never imagined in my awkward days with Ad. Lucky’s rain-wet body twisting underneath me excited me so much it was almost beyond bearing: But I learned to bear it, to stuff the pleasure back inside myself so that it wound through me endlessly like a cloud boiling with the weight of unreleased rain. In my days with Tom I had learned to fight through cold and pain and misery: Now I learned to persist through pleasure so keen that sometimes it left me seared and breathless and not sure how to make my arms and legs keep working. I told no one; but I woke in the morning anticipating those hours, and slept at night with their taste in my throat. I was always ready to practice.