Authors: Scott Lynch
His outflung right hand failed to do anything useful, but it did snatch the opaque
cover from his cot-side alchemical globe, bathing the cell in soft golden light for
him to gasp and writhe by. A carelessly stacked pile of books toppled loudly to the
floor, then took several similar piles with it in a fratricidal cascade.
“Gods below,” muttered Jean, rolling away from the light. Jean was definitely in his
proper place, and their cell was once again the cluttered mess of daily life rather
than the dark private stage of Locke’s dream.
“Arrrrrrrrrrrgh,” said Locke. It didn’t help much, so he tried again. “Arrrrrrrrrrr—”
“You know,” said Jean, yawning irritably, “you should burn some offerings in thanks
for the fact that you don’t actually talk in your sleep.”
“… rrrrrrgh. What the hell do you mean?”
“Sabetha’s got really sharp ears.”
“Nnngh.”
“I mean, it’s pretty gods-damned obvious you’re not dreaming about calligraphy over
there.”
There was a loud knock on the wall just outside their cell, and then the curtain was
swept aside to reveal Calo Sanza, long hair hanging in his eyes, working his way into
a pair of breeches.
“Good morning, sunshines! What’s with all the noise?”
“Someone took a tumble,” muttered Jean.
“What’s so hard about sleeping on a cot like a normal person, ya fuckin’ spastic dog?”
“Kiss my ass, Sanza,” Locke gasped.
“Heyyyyyyyyy, EVERYBODY!” Calo pounded on the wall as he shouted. “I know we’ve got
half an hour yet to sleep, but Locke thinks we should all be up right now! Find your
happy faces, Gentlefucker Bastards, it’s a bright new day and we get to start it EARLY!”
“Calo, what the hell is wrong with you?” hollered Sabetha, somewhere down the hall.
Locke put his forehead against the floor and moaned. It was the height of the endless
steaming summer of the seventy-eighth Year of Preva, Lady of the Red Madness, and
everything was absolutely screwed up to hell.
SABETHA DARTED
in, parried Locke’s attempt at a guard, and smacked the outside of his left knee
with her chestnut wood baton.
“Ow,” he said, hopping up and down while the sting faded. Locke wiped his forehead,
lined up again in the duelist’s stance, and touched the tip of his baton to Sabetha’s.
They were using the sanctuary of the Temple of Perelandro as a practice room, under
Jean’s watchful eye.
“High diamond, low square,” said Jean. “Go!”
This was more an exercise in speed and precision than actual fighting technique. They
slammed their batons together in the patterns demanded by Jean, and after the final
contact they were free to swipe at one another, scoring touches against arms or legs.
Clack! Clack! Clack!
The sound of their batons echoed across the stone-walled chamber.
Clack! Clack! Clack!
Clack! Clack! Thump!
“Yeow,” said Locke, shaking his left wrist, where a fresh red welt was rising.
“You’re faster than this, Locke.” Sabetha returned to her starting position. “Something
distracting you this morning?”
Sabetha wore a loose white tunic and black silk knee-breeches that left nothing about
her lithely-muscled legs to the imagination. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair pulled
tightly back with linen cord. If she’d heard anything specific about the disturbance
he’d kicked off to start the day, at least she wasn’t saying much.
“More than one something?” she said. “Any of them attached to me?”
So much for the lukewarm comfort of uncertainty.
“You know
I’m
attached to you,” said Locke, trying to sound cheerful as they touched batons again.
“Or might like to be, hmmm?”
“Middle square,” yelled Jean, “middle square, middle diamond! Go!”
They wove their pattern of strikes and counterstrikes, rattling their batons off one
another until the end of the sequence, when Sabetha flicked Locke’s weapon down and
smacked a painful crease into his right biceps. Sabetha’s only commentary on this
victory was to idly twirl her baton while Locke rubbed at his arm.
“Hold it,” said Jean. “We’ll try a new exercise. Locke, stand there with your hands
at your sides. Sabetha, you just hit him until you get tired. Be sure to concentrate
on his head so he won’t feel anything.”
“Very funny.” Locke lined up again. “I’m ready for another.”
He was nothing of the sort. At the end of the next pattern, Sabetha slapped him on
the right biceps again. And again, following the pattern after that, with precision
that was obviously deliberate.
“You know, most days you can at least manage to hit back,” she said. “Want to give
it up as a bad job?”
“Of course not,” said Locke, trying to be subtle about wiping the nascent tears from
the corners of his eyes. “Barely getting started.”
“Have it your way.” She lined up again, and Locke couldn’t miss the coldness of her
poise. Ah, gods. When Sabetha felt she was being trifled with, she had a way of radiating
the same calm, chilly regard that Locke imagined might pass from executioner to condemned
victim. He knew all too well what it meant to be the object of that regard.
“High diamond,” said Jean warily, apprehending the change in Sabetha’s mood. “Middle
square, low cross. Go.”
They flew through the patterns with furious speed, Sabetha setting the pace and Locke
straining to match her. The instant the last stroke of the formal exercise was made,
Locke flew into a guard position that would have deflected any blow aimed at his much-abused
right biceps. Sabetha, however, was actually aiming for a point just above his heart,
and the hotly stinging slap nearly knocked him over.
“Gods above,” said Jean, stepping between them. “You know the rules, Sabetha. No cuts
at anything but arms or legs.”
“Are there rules in a tavern brawl or an alley fight?”
“This isn’t a damned alley fight. It’s just an exercise for building vigor!”
“Doesn’t seem to be working for one of us.”
“What’s gotten into you?”
“What’s gotten into
you
, Jean? Are you going to stand in front of him for the rest of his life?”
“Hey, hey,” said Locke, stepping around Jean and attempting to hide a considerable
amount of pain behind a disingenuous smile.
“All’s well, Jean.”
“All’s not well,” said Jean. “Someone is taking this far too seriously.”
“Stand aside, Jean,” said Sabetha. “If he wants to stick his hand in a fire, he can
learn to pull it out himself.”
“
He
is right here, thank you very much, and
he
is fine,” said Locke. “It’s fine, Jean. Let’s have another pattern.”
“Sabetha needs to calm down.”
“Aren’t I calm?” said Sabetha. “Locke can have quarter anytime he asks for it.”
“I don’t choose to yield just yet,” said Locke, with what he hoped was a charming,
devil-may-care sort of grin. Sabetha’s countenance only darkened in response. “However,
if you’re concerned about me, you can back off to any degree you prefer.”
“Oh, no.” Sabetha was anything but calm. “No, no, no. I don’t withdraw.
You
yield! Deliberately. Or we keep going until you can’t stand up.”
“That might take a while,” said Locke. “Let’s see if you have the patience—”
“Damn it, when will you learn that refusing to admit you’ve lost isn’t the same as
winning?”
“Sort of depends on how long one keeps refusing, doesn’t it?”
Sabetha scowled, an expression that cut Locke more deeply than any baton-lash. Staring
fixedly at him, she took her baton in both hands, snapped it over her knee, and bounced
the pieces off the floor.
“Forgive me,
gentlemen
,” she said. “I seem to be unable to conform to the intended spirit of this exercise.”
She turned and left. When she’d vanished into the rear hall of the temple, Locke let
out a dejected sigh.
“Gods,” he said. “What the hell is going on between us? What happened, just now?”
“She has a cruel streak, that one,” said Jean.
“No more than any of us!” said Locke, more hotly than he might have intended. “Well,
we’ve got some … philosophical differences, to be sure.”
“She’s a perfectionist.” Jean picked up the broken halves of Sabetha’s baton. “And
you’re a real idiot from time to time.”
“What did I do, besides fail to be a master baton duelist?” Locke massaged some of
the tender reminders Sabetha had left him of her superior technique. “I didn’t train
with Don Maranzalla.”
“Neither did she.”
“Well, come on, how does that make me an idiot?”
“You’re no Sanza,” said Jean, “but you can certainly be one sharp stab in the ass.
Look, you’d have stood here and let her slap you into paste just for the sake of being
in the same room with her. I know it. You know it.
She
knows it.”
“Well, uh—”
“It’s not
endearing
, Locke. You don’t court a girl by inviting her to abuse you from sunrise to sunset.”
“Really? That sounds an awful lot like courtship in every story I’ve ever read—”
“I mean literally abused, as in getting pounded into bird shit with a wooden stick.
It’s not charming or impressive. It just makes you look silly.”
“Well, she doesn’t like it when I beat her at anything. She’s certainly not going
to respect me if I give up! So just what the hell
can
I do?”
“No idea. Maybe I see some things clearer than you because I’m not bloody infatuated,
but what to actually do with the pair of you, gods know.”
“You’re a deep well of reassurance.”
“On the bright side,” said Jean, “I’m sure you’re higher in her esteem right now than
the Sanzas.”
“Sweet gods, that’s sickly praise.” Locke leaned against a wall and stretched. “Speaking
of Sanzas, did you see Chains’ face when we woke him up this morning?”
“I wish I hadn’t. He’s going to break those two over his knee like Sabetha’s stick.”
“Where do you think he stomped off to?”
“No idea. I’ve never seen him leave angry before the sun was even up.”
“What in all the hells is going on with us?” said Locke. “This whole summer has been
one long exercise in getting everything wrong.”
“Chains muttered to me a few nights ago,” said Jean, fiddling with the broken baton.
“Something about awkward years. Said he might have to do something about us being
all pent up together.”
“Hope that doesn’t mean more apprenticeships. I’m really not in the mood to go learn
another temple’s rituals and then pretend to kill myself.”
“No idea what it means, but—”
“Hey, you two!” Galdo Sanza appeared out of the rear corridor, the spitting image
of Calo, save for the fact that his skull was shaven clean of every last speck of
hair. “Tubby and the training dummy! Chains is back, wants us in the kitchen with
a quickness. And what’d you do to Sabetha this time?”
“I exist,” said Locke. “Some days that’s enough.”
“You should make some friends at the Guilded Lilies, mate,” said Galdo. “Why fall
on your face trying to tame a horse when you can have a dozen that are already saddled?”
“So now you like to fuck horses,” said Jean. “Bravo, baldy.”
“Laugh all you will, we’re in demand over there,” said Galdo. “Favorite guests. Command
performances.”
“I’m sure you’re popular,” said Jean with a yawn. “Who doesn’t like getting paid for
fast, easy work?”
“I’ll say a prayer for you next time I’m having it with two at once,” said Galdo.
“Maybe the gods will hear me and let your stones drop. But, seriously, Chains came
in the river entrance, and I think we’re all about to die.”
“Well, hurrah,” said Locke. “When the weather’s like this, who honestly wants to live?”
THE FATHER
Chains waiting in the glass burrow’s kitchen wasn’t wearing any of his usual guises
or props. No canes or staves to lean on, no robes, no look of sly benevolence on that
craggy, bearded face. He was dressed to be out and about in the city, heavily sweated
with exertion, and all the furrows in his forehead seemed to meet in an ominous valley
above his fierce dark eyes. Locke was unsettled; he’d rarely seen Chains glower like
that at an enemy or a stranger, let alone at his apprentices.
Locke noticed that everyone else was keeping a certain instinctive distance from Chains.
Sabetha sat on a counter, well away from anyone, arms folded. The Sanzas sat near
one another more out of old habit than present warmth. Their appearances were divergent;
Calo with his long, oiled, well-tended tresses and Galdo, scraped smooth as a prizefighter.
The twins shared no jokes, no gestures, no small talk.
“I suppose it’s only fair to begin,” said Chains, “by apologizing for having failed
you all.”
“Um,” said Locke, stepping forward, “how have you failed us, exactly?”
“My mentorship. My responsibility to not allow our happy home to turn into a seething
pit of mutual aggravation … which it has.” Chains coughed, as though he’d irritated
his throat merely by bringing such words out. “I thought I might ease up on the regimen
of previous summers. Fewer lessons, fewer errands, fewer tests. I hoped that without
constraints, you might blossom. Instead you’ve rooted yourselves deep without flowering.”
“Hold on,” said Calo, “it hasn’t been such an unwelcome break, has it? And we’ve been
training. Jean’s seen to it that we’ve kept up with battering one another about.”
“That’s hardly your principal form of exercise these days,” said Chains. “I’ve heard
things from the Lilies. You two spend more time in bed than invalids. Certainly more
than you spend planning or practicing our work.”
“So we haven’t run a game on anyone for a few weeks,” said Calo. “Is the fuckin’ Eldren-fire
falling? Who gives a damn if we take some
ease? What should we be doing, sir, learning more Vadran? More dances? A seventeenth
way to hold knives and forks?”
“You snot-nosed grand duke of insolence,” said Chains, growing louder with each word,
“you ignorant, wet-eared, copper-chasing shit-barge puppy! Do you have any idea what
you’ve been given? What you’ve worked for? What you
are
?”