So far, it hadn’t helped much to have Moss try to jerk Orson’s sword from his grasp. It startled him, but he just leapt over it and assaulted Moss with his bare hands. And while she was having the life choked out of her, she couldn’t focus on pelting him with small stones and other pieces of debris.
“I think you have to be more aggressive in your own attack,” Wen said thoughtfully once the combatants broke apart. Moss was panting, but Orson seemed completely unaffected by the recent struggle. “Don’t let him get close enough to do any damage.”
“That’ll be hard to manage in the heat of battle,” Orson observed. “She needs to learn tricks that will help her after she’s already engaged.”
“We’ll get to those, too,” Wen said. “I want to see what advantages she can summon up most easily.”
“I can drop a rock on his head,” Moss said between gasps. “Minute I see him coming toward me.”
“How much mass can you move all at once?” Wen asked. “How much weight?”
Moss shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve been practicing with different sizes of boulders. Some seem pretty heavy. But I have to concentrate to lift them and move them where I want them to go.”
“What if you didn’t have to
lift
it?” Wen said. “What if you just had to push it?”
Orson saw where she was going and gave her his wicked grin. “Well, let’s try that,” he said, dropping into a runner’s crouch. “You try to shove me back.”
Without any more warning than that, he sprang for Moss across five feet of trampled earth. She gave a little shriek and flung her hands up—and Orson actually seemed to
thump
against blank air before he skidded backward and landed on his rear. He was just stunned enough to sit there silently for a moment, and then he started laughing.
“
That’s
the idea,” he said, picking himself up. “That’s exactly what you want to do.”
Moss looked at her hands, a little bemused. “I never tried that before. I didn’t know I could do that.”
“That’s what fighting for your life will teach you,” Orson said. “The limits of your physical strength.”
Wen was pleased. “Yes, Moss, that was very good. We’ll need to keep practicing that so it becomes automatic every time you’re threatened.”
“Ought to see how many people she can shove aside at once,” Orson suggested. “A whole line of fighters? A man on horseback? Now, that would be worth something.”
“First let’s see if I can knock
you
over again,” Moss said. She had pushed her pale hair behind her ears and her strange eyes were bright in her broad, plain face. Wen thought she had never seen Moss look so triumphant—even though this was a relatively minor victory. Or maybe not, in Moss’s life, which remained largely unknown to Wen. Such a small success might be the first one the other woman had ever had.
The three of them worked on Moss’s skills for the rest of the afternoon, Wen taking her turn running at Moss in case the act of repulsion was affected by an opponent with a different center of gravity. Moss could knock Wen over with more ease, but Wen was faster to recover and managed to skid forward on her knees and bring Moss down with her.
“You’re completely dead,” Wen said, miming a slash to Moss’s throat.
“I love to see women fight,” Orson said.
Wen met Moss’s eyes and shared a thought. Wen stood up and brushed herself off as Orson strolled forward to offer Moss a hand up. Instead, he got knocked flat on his back, and Wen pounced on him, pummeling his chest and shoulders. He yelped and bucked her off, but by this time Moss had used her magic to snatch up a rock about the size of her own head, and she dropped this with a satisfying
splat
right in the middle of his stomach. He groaned and rolled to his side, not making any attempt to rise.
“I love to see women fight, too,” Wen said. “They’re so much smarter than men.”
Then she heard a sound that she had come to think did not exist. Moss’s laughter.
IT
turned out that Jasper Paladar had been thinking about the uses of magic, too, which Wen discovered that night as she joined him in the library. They were almost two weeks into the cruxanno game, and she was tired of it; she had every hope it would be finished soon.
On the other hand, the long, slow game had practically invited the two of them to make idle conversation during the hours they played, and Wen had come to really look forward to the discussions. It was hard to predict what topic would catch Lord Jasper’s fancy from day to day. Sometimes he might ask her prosaic questions about the guards and their progress; other times he might want her opinion on a piece of news he had learned from Ghosenhall. Just as often, he would launch into a tale about some marlord dead these hundred years—stories that Wen would have expected to find excruciatingly dull, but which, in fact, could hold her interest long after they had given up on cruxanno for the night.
She liked Jasper Paladar. She didn’t understand why, precisely. He was not like anyone she had ever met and he didn’t have any of the qualities she was used to requiring in her friends. Merely, he was interesting to her. She found him baffling half of the time and intriguing all of the time. She couldn’t imagine what he found in her own personality to appeal to him, but he never seemed bored in her presence, never seemed disappointed by her replies. Perhaps he merely possessed the grace of his elevated social station and knew how to put any other individual at ease, but she thought it was more than that. He liked her, too.
At times, the knowledge filled her with a low-grade level of warm satisfaction.
At other times, it made her want to abandon her few possessions and disappear without notice in the middle of the night.
Her month of contracted service was due to be up in seven days. She had wondered if he would remember, but it had been the very first thing he said when she had joined him in the library the night before.
“I’m not much of a training master, but even I can tell that the guard you’ve assembled isn’t in fighting shape,” he had greeted her. “One more week won’t be nearly enough time to train them. Will you stay another month?”
“I think that would be best,” she’d said.
They had not referred to the contract again. Wen had lain awake in a panic half the night, hearing the breathing of her fellow guards all around her in the dark barracks. Surrounded again by friends; if she lingered long enough, they would begin to feel like family. She could not afford that; she could not surrender herself to the twin embraces of trust and affection.
But it was just for another five weeks. She could stay that long, then cut herself free.
She tried to forget that every night before she entered the library to see Jasper Paladar she first had to tame both her wisp of excitement and her jangle of fear.
Tonight, fresh from trying out Moss’s magic on the battlefield, she stepped into the room to find the other House mystic displaying his abilities for Lord Jasper. Bryce was perched in a chair before the fire, facing away from Jasper, who sat in his customary spot beside the cruxanno table.
“It’s in your left hand,” Bryce said.
“Correct again,” Jasper replied. He sounded delighted.
Wen closed the door and regarded them with a smile. “What are you two up to?”
Bryce pushed his red hair away from his face. “I’m telling Lord Jasper where he’s hiding a gold coin. He said he’ll give it to me if I can guess right more times than not. But it’s not
guessing
,” he added. “So it doesn’t seem fair.”
“In fact, he hasn’t been wrong once,” Jasper said. “It’s really quite remarkable.”
Wen held her hand out. “Let me try,” she said, and Jasper tossed her the coin. “Turn around and look at Lord Jasper,” she told Bryce. When he obediently redirected his gaze, she tossed the heavy piece of gold from palm to palm a few times before closing the fingers of her right hand over it. “Now. Which hand?”
“Right one,” Bryce said without hesitation.
“Correct.” She repeated the process. “Now?”
“Right hand.”
“Now?”
“Left hand.”
She popped the coin in her mouth and looked at Jasper, who obligingly said, “Now where is it?”
“In her mouth,” Bryce exclaimed. “Don’t swallow my gold! If she does, you have to give me another piece.”
Wen spit out the coin as Jasper laughed. “I don’t think Willa is careless enough to swallow money, but if she is, I’m good for it,” Jasper said. “That was a very impressive demonstration, Bryce! Do you think you can do so well tomorrow night?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“What’s happening tomorrow night?” Wen asked.
“Zellin Banlish is paying us a visit. Don’t you remember?”
“About time,” she muttered.
Jasper smiled. “Give Bryce his money and let him get back to the kitchen. I understand there’s a piece of berry pie awaiting him.”
Once the boy was gone, Wen settled at the cruxanno table and studied Lord Jasper. “Why do you want Bryce to show off parlor tricks to the serlord?”
“I think such a demonstration will—” Jasper searched for a phrase. “Act as a metaphor.”
Wen wasn’t entirely sure what a metaphor was, but she said, “I think a better one would be if I held a sword to his throat.”
He laughed. “Strategy, remember? Not strength.”
She shrugged. “When does he arrive?”
“In time for dinner. Karryn has expressed a desire to be excused from his presence—quite understandably. She will spend the evening with Lindy Coverroe, but Demaray will join us for dinner, as will Serephette, of course. Afterward, the serlord and I will engage in our game of cruxanno, which he tells me he is quite looking forward to.”
Wen was thinking rapidly. Four guards to accompany Karryn to the Coverroe house, two to watch over the dinner and then oversee the game, while two more were inside the house within easy call. Four or six more to roam the House grounds while company was present . . . The day shift would have to be light, then, so that the majority of personnel could be on hand for the evening’s responsibilities.
“And you would rather have me here with you than at the Coverroes’ house with Karryn?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I don’t think any of us are in danger from Zellin, but I would like your opinion on how matters unfold here with the serlord. Which means you must be here to observe that unfolding.”
That was high praise from an employer to his captain. She kept her face grave and nodded. “I’ll send Orson and Moss with Karryn. And a couple of others.”
“Moss—she’s the mystic, right?” At her nod, he said, “Perhaps you should keep her here to join the watch with you.”
Wen nodded again, a little baffled. That meant she would need two particularly seasoned warriors to be stationed inside the house—Eggles certainly should be one of them—since Moss’s fighting skills still were scarcely average. “Why?” she asked.
“In case it seems expedient to offer another metaphor.”
She regarded him. “For someone who was not very impressed at the idea of hiring mystics—”