Chương 28

Three days later, mid-swing through a lunging cut, John noticed a silhouette enter his periphery. The shadow belonged to a pair of polished boots that had stopped just outside the white line. Above the boots, a quilted gambeson of good cloth with an Iron-rank badge on it, sword in a polished scabbard, and above the coat, the blonde man from Elara's doorstep just a few days ago.

"Retainer Rook," the voice said, pitched to carry.

"Edric Rase. We haven't been properly introduced." A dozen retainers and yard-hands were scattered across the outer yard, most of them at drill, and the name went across the stone like a thrown coin. Heads turned. John lunged again.

"I won't keep you long." Edric stepped over the white line, which was a thing a man did when he wanted to be seen doing it.

"Word is you'll stand Kilhane's review before the month is out. A month is not long, and the Annex doesn't grade gently. It occurred to me that a man in your position might want testing — proper testing, against a ranked blade. I think it would be a kindness to Lady Elara to know where her man actually stands before the armsmaster tells her in front of a clerk. So I'm offering to test you. Here. An exchange with blunts. Nothing that need trouble anyone." He opened his hands.

"For her benefit, you understand. Better you learn your gaps from a friend." The murmurs along the eaves and sidelines went quiet. It was a nice piece of work, this newest ploy, and John gave it the attention it deserved while he checked his front knee. Iron-rank, a grade above him, with a family name and a clean sheet and a lady of House Vey to vouch for him. Refuse, and it was a Bronze who'd been offered a friendly bout and hadn't the stomach.

Accept, and the best case was that he spent the next fortnight training around a cracked forearm. Or worse, goaded him into something hot-headed in front of witnesses. Both doors led down. The man had even oiled the hinges, saying friend like that. A grey-bearded retainer by the white line leaned on his spear and crossed his arms, watching Edric, then John, without moving. John breathed out and began the fourth cut. Shoulder, hip, wrist.

The Aura went where it was told and nowhere else, and the blade crossed the line and stopped, and the point hung. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"Perhaps you didn't hear me." Edric had moved round into his line of sight. Two servants hauling a water barrel toward the roofed hall had stopped to watch; by the white line a grey-bearded retainer in a worn leather jerkin leaned on a spear with his arms crossed and no expression at all, a man who'd likely seen this sort of thing before and was waiting to learn which of them would walk away smaller.

"I said I'd be willing to test you. For your lady's sake. One would think a retainer would leap at it." John lunged again. His breath went in on the recovery and out on the extension. Fifteen, fourteen, he counted under each exhale.

"Lady Seraphine was good enough to put my name forward for the post, if it should fall empty." A little louder. More of the yard had drifted in from the hall.

"I'd have thought that gave you reason enough." It gave him reason to be amused, mostly. Seraphine's name in Seraphine's man's mouth, in Seraphine's sort of trap. He'd wondered, since the doorstep, where she'd go after the balcony, and here it was: a quilted gambeson, a borrowed argument, an audience. Twenty-two. Twenty-three.

"Have you nothing to say?"

"Eric, yeah? That was your name?"

"No, it's Ed—""I'm sorry, I really don't care," John said, and lunged.

"As you can see, I'm rather busy right now. Go find someone else to bother." He came up out of the lunge and stood a moment, breathing, sweat running down under his shirt, and let his eyes pass over Edric the way they'd pass over a fence post, before lowering his stance for a swing. The silence that followed had a texture to it. Edric's hands, which had been easy, closed. He looked, briefly, around the yard he'd gathered. John could see from the corner of his eye a rash of red climbing out of his collar, the jaw.

"You—" Edric started, and stopped, because there was no sentence that followed which didn't make it worse.

"Coward, then," he said ultimately, to nobody. It came out too loud for the yard and too late for the argument. Then he turned on his heel and walked out through the annex gates fast enough that his cloak had to catch up with him at the corner. The barrel resumed its sloshing. The yard, in its unhurried way, dissolved back into its own noise — drill-shout, the ring of a practice hall, somebody laughing about a bet John didn't hear the end of.

The grey-bearded retainer uncrossed his arms, leaned on his spear the other way, and appeared to give the matter no further thought. John gave it none either. It had been a decent attempt, as attempts went, and there was a kind of comic dreadfulness to it that he filed away to describe to nobody: a man could spend his whole life at formal sword instruction and still never learn the lessons that truly mattered.