Petrodor: A Trial of Blood and Steel, Book 2 (12 page)

All the world wanted Jaryd dead. That suited him fine. Just so long as he could take Arastyn and a few of his rotten, scheming friends with him.

Sasha woke the next morning to the sound of the ocean swell against the pier. Sunlight peered through the shutters of her small room.

From the floors below came the sounds of footsteps and muffled voices. More voices on the docks, fishermen greeting the morning. On the roof above, a gull's feet scrabbled. Then a piercing cry. Another gull answered, circling nearby. The creaking of ropes, as boats strained at their moorings. The air smelled of salt, and the skin of her hands was still dry and taut from the previous day's fishing.

Strange sounds, and strange smells. So far from Lenayin. And yet peaceful, in the strange way that dangerous, overcrowded Petrodor could sometimes spring on a person, right when she least expected it. If she relaxed on her back in the warm morning air, and listened to the rise and fall of the ocean, she could just about drift off to sleep once more…

The door creaked open before her eyelids could close entirely. Sasha jerked awake, a hand moving fast to the knife beneath her pillow. But it was only Fara, wrapped in a towel from her morning wash and holding two mugs of tea.

“Thanks,” said Sasha, as the other girl placed the mug on the floor beside the bed. Fara returned to her own bed and began dressing.

Neither being a princess, nor the uma of Kessligh Cronenverdt, had been enough to gain Sasha a room of her own. She didn't mind. She and Fara shared the best upstairs room at the Velos, a crumbling little brick-walled space with floorboards that creaked, and rickety wooden shutters that let in
the rain in a storm. At least they had a view of the docks—Liam and Rodery were stuck in the back room with only a dingy courtyard to look upon.

The tea was spiced something fierce. Sasha winced as she sipped it, opening the window shutters enough for a view. Already there were small fishing boats heading out past the large ships at mooring. Men clambered over boats along the piers, tending to ropes, nets and sails. The sun glared several hands above the ocean horizon…someone had been nice to her, Sasha realised, and let her sleep in past the dawn. Quite likely some of the men would be back from their first fishing trip soon, having set out before sunrise. Others would be off to North Pier to work at the warehouses, shifting the rich families’ cargo. Another day in Petrodor.

Serrin put something in their tea that woke a person up real fast. She sat on the floor and did her stretches. Then came the exercises, fast sit-ups and push-ups in her underclothes. Then she lifted her chin repeatedly above the crosswise ceiling beam, with relative ease.

“You should do more exercises,” she encouraged Fara, who sat on her bed and arranged little parcels of medicines in small leather pouches, along with other implements Sasha did not recognise, and placed them carefully in a wooden carry box. “Then the boys won't beat you up at training so bad.”

“I do enough,” said Fara. Fara was a quiet girl with long, light brown hair and eyes that never quite met a person's gaze. Her uman was a healer, skilled primarily in the serrin lore of medicines. Her uman was also a woman; and that, in Sasha's estimation, was where the problems began.

“You could do better,” Sasha suggested, stretching her arms.

“Not everyone has to learn to fight with swords,” Fara said with irritation, her eyes not leaving her precious medicines. “Fighting was the
last
of the serrin's skills the Nasi-Keth learned to do.”

Sasha shrugged, extended her arms, and leapt for the beam once more. “The last and most important,” she added, lifting herself up and down, breathing hard.

“Important to you, maybe. Not everyone's a muscle-bound warrior like you.” There was an edge of sarcasm to her voice.

Sasha snorted. She completed several more lifts, then dropped to the floor and pulled off her sweaty undershirt. “Do you know your problem?” she told Fara, tossing the shirt on her bed. “You enter the Nasi-Keth, the home of all open-mindedness and learning, yet you cling to old prejudices like a child to a mother's skirts. All these serrin women, and now me as an example, and no Petrodor woman wants to admit that women can fight.”

“Oh, you're a wonderful example,” Fara said with gritted teeth, uncomfortable now that Sasha wore no top.

Sasha knew that her physique made the locals edgy. Her new tattoo, even more so. Tongren had made it curl expertly about her upper bicep, three interwoven strands, like the tri-braid on the side of her head, dark like forest vines against the pale skin.

“I'd much rather heal people, thanks.”

“Most male healers can do both,” Sasha reasoned.

“I'm an exception,” said Fara, testily.

“Look, why don't you at least come on a run with me? It'll do you good, I find
all
my skills improve when I'm fit.”

“Sashandra, why don't you leave me alone?” Fara retorted, looking up for the first time. Sasha could see the alarm in Fara's eyes, to observe her muscular arms, her hard stomach, her compact breasts. “I'm not a highlands warrior princess! Now why don't you go off and…and eat raw lizards, or rub sand in your hair, or whatever it is that you do in the mornings to stay so warriorlike!”

Sasha took her towel off the end of the bed. “You think I'm uncivilised, don't you?”

“Heavens forbid I should think such a thing,” Fara said beneath her breath, eyes down once again.

“I've met sheep with more character,” Sasha muttered in Lenay, putting the towel around her neck and taking her sword and scabbard.

“What was that?” Fara asked suspiciously.

“Just a little something in barbarian-speak,” Sasha told her in Torovan once more. “Never you mind your civilised, cultured little Torovan head about it.”

She nearly ran into Liam in the narrow hall. “Hey!” the young Nasi-Keth protested, spinning about to avert his gaze. “Sasha! For the gods’ sakes, put a shirt on!”

“What!” Sasha snapped at him. “You don't like it either?”

“Like it?” Liam tried to look at her, but propriety kept dragging his eyes away. He seemed caught, like a puppet with two masters each pulling in separate directions. “Sasha, you're naked!”

Sasha laughed. “If you think this is naked, kid, you're in for a nasty surprise on your wedding night.” And gave him a playful kick on the backside before strolling to the washroom and shutting the door.

Sasha's morning run took her through narrow lanes until the bottom of the slope where alleys snaked up precarious stairways between crumbling walls. She ran with several local Nasi-Keth as it was always safer to move in groups, even across the lower slopes.

The run ended in Fishnet Alley by a nondescript lane between buildings. Squeezing through, the lane opened into a broad courtyard. Within it, men wielded practice stanches in single combat and the air echoed with the sharp crack of wood on wood, and the grunting exertion of combatants.

Sasha walked to the courtyard's north side and crouched to splash cold water from a bucket on her face. She grabbed some breakfast from a table under the awning, apologising to the lady for being late. There were doorways leading from the training courtyard into neighbouring houses, and people came and went.

A little girl with tangled hair and a brown-cloth dress watched her shyly as she ate, seated on an old footstool. Sasha smiled at her. In Lenayin, there were no children allowed in the training hall. And no women, either…herself, the exception. Here amongst the dockfolk, everything was communal. People had no choice but to cooperate, she supposed as she chewed, watching the men fight. They all lived cheek by jowl and space had to be shared.

Finishing breakfast, she strode to the opposite side of the courtyard, strapped on a padded banda, took up a stanch and stepped onto the pavings.

“Rodery,” she said, interrupting the boy's taka-dan. “Your quarter-step is mistimed, I've been watching. Here, I'll show you.”

Rodery was a big lad of nineteen summers with broad shoulders and dark freckles across his square face. He turned and frowned at her, displeased at the interruption. “Uman Torshai says my footwork's good.”

“It is good,” Sasha agreed impatiently, taking stance opposite. “I can make it better.”

She took him through his moves. To Rodery's credit, he watched and listened, regardless of the occasional dark stare coming from other parts of the courtyard. The svaalverd—the serrin martial art—was all about balance, technique and timing. She demonstrated Rodery's slow adjustment to a roundhouse strike, and gave him some bruises to prove the point. Then she drilled him until his feet adjusted properly, and comprehension dawned in the big lad's eyes, as he deflected her attacks with new poise and speed.

Sasha grinned at him, twirling her stanch. “You see? Much better.”

“I'd never thought of doing it like that,” Rodery conceded, repeating the steps. “The timing's complex.”

Sasha shook her head impatiently. “No, there's no complexity in svaalverd. Look for the simplicity, every time. It's just basic balance, see?” She demonstrated the six basic stances that every five-year-old learned. “And the balance dictates the stroke, see? It's all the same thing. Kessligh tells me that
improving at svaalverd is a constant quest to make everything as simple as possible. There's always one thing that drives everything else. Look for it.”

“But…” Rodery shook his head, with a spreading half-smile. “But there's so many things…”

“
Ele'sherihl
,” Sasha told him.

Rodery winced. “Wait, I know that, that's…um…”

“Study your Saalsi!” Sasha said in exasperation. “Petrodor is full of serrin and they could all talk a stone to boredom! Ask them a question, they'll go on till sundown!
Ele'sherihl
means ‘the product of many things’…terrible translation, of course, but if you learn the tongue you'll realise how it works. Some things are made that are made up of many things. Like a boat—the hull, the mast, the sails, all are made separately. But, once completed, it's just one boat.
Ele'sherihl
. When you fight, make each stroke just one stroke, not a combination of feet and hands and torso. One thing. Simplicity. That's the key to svaalverd.”

There came a
thud
from nearby and a cry of pain. Sasha looked and found a teenage girl clutching her arm. Liam, her opponent, looked exasperated.

Sasha strode over. “Liam! Go easy! The object is to help her improve, not break her bones!”

“I'm okay,” the girl protested, shaking her arm. It was Yulia, a slight girl a little shorter than Sasha. She wore her auburn hair in a ponytail and her banda looked a little too big for her. She'd only started attending the training regularly after Sasha had arrived in Petrodor. “It's not bad.”

“It was a simple move!” Liam protested. “It's not my fault if she's no damn good!” Yulia, to Sasha's disappointment, only stared at the ground. Damn it, was she the only human girl in Petrodor prepared to fight back?

“Would you beat up a child?” she asked coldly.

“Look…” Liam turned to face her, slinging his stanch over his shoulders with a swagger. Cocky, like so many young Torovan men. “She's not a child. She has fifteen summers. And for that age, she's pathetic. Or are you going to tell me otherwise?”

“She needs work,” Sasha retorted. “So do you. Girls in this city don't have access to male umans, and they're usually the ones who can fight. And, what a surprise, I find girls aren't made to feel welcome in the courtyards, either. No wonder they fall behind the boys when fools like you try to break their arms whenever they try to learn!”

“Bah!” said Liam, with a dismissive wave. “You make excuses like all the others.”

“You truly think women can't fight the svaalverd?” Sasha asked dangerously.

“Sure! Serrin can! And you can, you're a wild, crazy highlander, they fed you raw sheep's bladders in the crib and you grew up strangling wild wolves with your bare hands!” There was laughter from watching men. Many had stopped their sparring to observe the confrontation. “But it's not our culture! And
you
, you should know better than to come into Petrodor from your mountain kingdom and try to turn all our women into wild amazons like yourself—”