“Gods around us,” I said. She’d put a picture in my mind so clear that for a moment I wasn’t sure which was more real, the Lucky who smiled quizzically at me from across the fire, or the one who suddenly rolled over her own sword and came up slashing at her opponent’s knee. “She’s right. You could do both. Think about it! Just think about it!” They were all bright-eyed now, caught in the spiral of my excitement that drew them in as surely as one of the armlocks we’d worked on that afternoon. “Imagine being able to fight long or short, with an edge or a tip or just your bare hand. They’d never know what to expect, they couldn’t predict what you’d do next!”
“Okay, maybe,” Lucky said. “It might work with that whole series that’s based off the step in and behind, but what about the face-to-face? A sword’s always a handicap when you’re in that close.”
“That’s because everyone always goes weapon to weapon.” Lucky looked blank. “If you have a sword, what’s the other person going to do? Get a bigger sword if they can. Try to beat your sword. But we don’t need that. Our weapon is the way we fight. Go in and take their sword away. Go in and do things with a sword that no one thinks possible. In my head I just saw you roll with your own blade and come up edge-ready. Maybe staying low would give us more options for being in close.”
“Come here,” Lucky said, and scrambled up, and we worked it out again and again until the fire was almost dead and we trod on Brax in the dark. “Stop this idiocy and go to sleep!” she growled; but the next day we were all ready to reinvent sword fighting, and we ate our dinner that night bloody and bruised and grinning like children.
We came into Lemon City on a cold wind, just ahead of a hard autumn rain that dropped from a fast front of muddy clouds. We crowded under cover of a blacksmith’s shed inside the city gates, with a dozen other travelers, three gate guards, and two bad-tempered horses, while manure and straw and someone’s basket washed away down the waterlogged street. Everything was gray and stinking. I couldn’t help laughing, remembering my fantasies about the golden streets full of important people in silk with me in the center, being whisked toward greatness.
When the rain had passed we walked in toward the heart of the city. My boots leaked and my feet got wet, and Ro stepped in goat shit and swore.
“So far, I feel right at home,” I told Lucky, who cackled wildly and reminded me for one sharp moment of my mother, bent over in laughter with her hands twisted in her apron and flour dust rising all around her.
We found an inn that they’d heard of, and got the second-to-last room left. We were lucky; the last room was no better than a sty, and went an hour later for the same rate as ours. The city was packed tighter than a farm sausage, our landlord told us with a satisfied smile. He took some of Ro’s money for a pitcher of cider and settled one hip up against the common room table to tell us where to find the guard house for the coming auditions. The next were in two days’ time. “And lots of competition for this one, of course,” he said cheerfully, with a glance around the crowded room that made him scurry to another table with his tray of cider.
“What’s that mean, of course?” Lucky wondered when he’d gone away.
I shrugged. Brax drank the last of her cider. “I hate it when they say of course,” she muttered, and belched.
The next day was sunny, and we went out exploring. I left my sword for the day with the blacksmith near the city gate, who promised to lengthen the grip. From there we wandered to the market, and they laughed at my wide-eyed amazement. And everywhere we saw foursomes, young or seasoned, trying not to show their stress by keeping their faces impassive, so of course you could spot them a mile off. We followed some of them to the guards training camp, and waited in line to give our names to someone whose only job that day seemed to be telling stiff-faced hopefuls where and when to turn up for the next morning’s trials. Then we found a place to perch where Lucky and Brax could size everyone up until they found something to feel superior about: a weak eye, too much weight on one foot, someone’s hands looped under their belt so they couldn’t reach their weapon easily. Eventually the strain got to be too much, and we went back to the inn for an afternoon meal and practice on a small patch of ground near the stable. Working up a sweat seemed to calm them down; and touching them erased everything else for me.
That night, I laid an extra coin on the table when the landlord brought our platter of chicken and pitcher of beer, and said, “Tell us what’s so special about these auditions.”
He looked genuinely surprised. “Anybody could tell you that,” he said, but he put the coin in his sleeve pocket. “The prince has turned out half the palace guard again, and Captain Gerlain’s scrambling for replacements. Those who do well are sure to end up with palace duty, although why any of you’d want it is beyond me.”
“Why’s that?”
“Our prince is mad, that’s why, and the king’s too far gone up his own backside to notice.”
Lucky put a hand to her knife. “You mind yourself, man,” she said calmly, and Brax and I tried not to grin at each other. Lucky could be startlingly conservative.
“Oh, and no offense intended to the king,” he said easily. “But well done, the king needs loyal soldiers around him. Particularly now he’s old and sick, and too well medicated, at least that’s what they say. You just get yourself hired on up there and keep an eye on him for us.” He poured Lucky another drink. I admired the skill with which he’d turned the conflict aside.
None of us could eat, thinking about the next day, and the beer tasted off. We sat at the table, not talking much. Eventually we moved out to the snug, where the landlord had a fire going. It was warmer there than the common room, but no more relaxing. I turned the coming day over and over in my head as if it were a puzzle I couldn’t put down until I’d solved it. Lucky and Ro sat close together: their calves touched, then their thighs, then Ro’s hand found its way onto Lucky’s arm and she sighed, leaned into him, looking suddenly small and soft. When I looked away, Brax was there, next to me.
She cupped her hard hand around my jaw and cheek and left ear. “Don’t turn me away, Mars,” she said quietly. “It’s no night to be alone.”
“You’re right,” I replied. “But let’s try something a little different.” I felt wild and daring, even though I knew she wouldn’t understand. I took her by the hand and led her out to our practice area by the stable. They kept a lantern out there for late arrivals; it gave us just enough light to see motion, but the fine work would have to be done by instinct: by feel.
“You want to practice?” she said.
My heart was thudding under my ribs. This was the closest I had ever come to telling anyone what it was like with me. It was so tempting to say Take me down, Brax, challenge me, control me, equal me, best me, love me. But I only smiled and stepped into the small circle of light. “Put your hands on me,” I whispered, soft enough so that she would not hear, and centered myself.
They were fair auditions, and hard, and we were brilliant. I could tell they had never seen anything like us. The method was to put two quads into the arena with wooden swords. I learned later that they looked for how we fought, but that was only part of it. “The fighting is the easiest thing to teach,” Captain Gerlain told me once. “What I look for is basic coordination, understanding of the body and how it works. And how the quad works together.”
It was an incredible day, a blur of things swirled together: crisp air that smelled of fried bread from the camp kitchen and the sweat of a hundred nervous humans; the sounds of leather on skin and huffing breath interleaved with the faint music of temple singers practicing three streets away; and the touch of a hundred different hands, the textures of their skin, the energies that ran between us as we laid hold of one another.