by CW Thomas
Lia’s stomach knotted. She had never considered paying with her body, a revolting concept, and yet, in her desperation, she found herself considering it.
“What do you mean?” she asked, buying time to think.
The man lifted his left hand, making an O shape with his thumb and fingers. “You.” With his other hand he thrust his index finger through the hole. “Me.”
Lia felt her palms growing clammy. For months now she had thought of nothing but returning home and killing The Raven. Blinded by an unquenchable thirst for revenge, she reluctantly agreed to the man’s terms.
He grabbed her dragged her down behind a tall stone building where the narrow back alley reeked of sewage and wet dog. Panic filled her as he thrust her face first against the side of the building. His hands pawed at her, touching her in ways she had never imagined being touched.
“You don’t have much woman on you yet,” he said snidely, pawing her chest.
Her heartbeat quickened as his hands did their fondling.
“Off with your slacks,” he demanded in a low, vibratory tone.
Regret slapped her. Lia started to twist and squirm, her panic rising.
“Hey!” the man said. “You agreed to—”
“I changed my mind,” she said, straining against his hands.
“Too late for that, little honey,” he growled. He slid a greedy hand down the front of her pants.
The months of strength training and stretching paid off when Lia lifted her leg and shoved off the side of the building with a powerful kick. The traveler slammed into the building behind them, giving Lia a chance to break free. In the process, her cloak tore off, exposing her neck and the birthmark she kept hidden on her collarbone. She drew her fist back to strike the man in the face, but stopped when she saw his terrified eyes.
“Witch!” he said, pointing to the mark on her neck. “You’re cursed!”
She thrust her fist at him, but his massive hand swatted her forearm away. He grabbed her throat with both his hands and started to squeeze.
“How dare you lure me into one of your spells!”
Lia saw a long slim blade hanging from his belt. She yanked it out of his trousers and plunged it deep into his belly. The man bellowed until Lia twisted the blade and yanked it left, than up, carving a deep wound. His eyes flared open wide—the shock of death. He slipped to the ground and lay still.
All at once she was overcome with a rush of excitement. For one brief moment her thirst for vengeance felt quenched, the beast inside of her was appeased. Instead of some dark skinned stranger, she imagined it was Komor lying at her feet.
She looked down at the man, almost unable to believe what she had done. Her heart was racing. Her hands were shaking. She looked at the short, narrow sword now covered with blood and felt powerful.
“Someone call out here?” came a shout.
A guard.
Another in the distance called back. “You say something?”
“Someone’s hurt over here.”
Lia grabbed her cloak and took off down the narrow street back onto the main road. She stopped, flung her cloak over her shoulders, and stuffed the bloody sword in the belt at her back. She strolled down the street, calm, like any commoner headed home for the night. She could hear the commotion of guards discovering the dead traveler’s body, but knew they would never find her. Hiding was easy, especially for one as small, clever, and agile as Lia.
She didn’t realize it, but she was smiling.
“Promise me something.”
The voice was so close to her back that Lia let out an audible yelp. She had been so enthralled with her own performance that she didn’t hear Khile walking up behind her. She spun around to face him, almost tripping over her still shaking feet.
“You scared me,” she said, gasping to catch her breath.
“Promise me something,” he said again.
“What? Promise you what?”
Khile stepped up to her, limping on his right leg. “Don’t ever agree to sell yourself like that again.” His tone was surprisingly sharp and threatening.
“You saw?”
“I saw a child giving in to blind ambition. I saw a fool buying dirt with gold.” He paused, looking sad. “I saw a friend about to make a big mistake.”
His words jarred her. They were unexpected and made her feel judged. She responded in the only way she knew how: with hardness. “I’ll pay any price to see Komor’s head on a stick.”
“I don’t believe that,” Khile hit back.
“He killed my family,” she said, choking on the lump in her throat. “He ruined my life. The realm is in chaos because he’s leading the Black King’s army all over Edhen, conquering everyone that opposes him. He deserves to die. So does the king. They all do!”
“You can’t stop them.”
“Well I’m damn well going to try!” she shouted. “And if you’re not going to help me then you can get out of my life!”
He stepped closer. “You just killed a man.”
“I know.”
And that’s when it hit her.
“I know,” she said again, this time less defiantly. “I… I know.”
The tears that followed came quick, like vengeance for Lia’s crime. She had just killed a man. All of a sudden the thought made her sick.
When Khile’s arms encircled her she lost control and wept. He held her until Lia had cried herself out, until she stopped shaking from her adrenaline high.
“That’s how it’s going to feel,” Khile said. “Only worse.”
Lia pulled away, sniffling, embarrassed by the tears that made her look so weak. “I don’t care. I have to find Komor Raven and kill him. I—”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do!”
He sighed, his jaw clenching. “Listen, I said I would teach you to fight and I will, but you need to be patient. It will take time and dedication and—”
“I’m ready.”
“Are you? Did you not get enough of a taste today, or shall we go find the body of the man you killed so you can reconsider.”
Lia shook her head, refusing to let Khile use her guilt against her. “He was a scoundrel. He deserved to die, just like Komor Raven.”
“I wish the world were as black and white as you make it seem.”
“I’m ready,” she said again. “Trust me.”
Khile didn’t look convinced. He regarded her, she thought, like someone with a sickness he didn’t understand.
“I’ll teach you what I can, but how much you learn is up to you.”
She clenched her fists and straightened her back. “I’ll learn it all,” she declared. “I’ll be the best.”
Khile regarded her with a raised eyebrow. “We’ll see.”
He led her to the outskirts of town where he had left his horse next to hers. They mounted and journeyed by moonlight back to the cottage of the old man and the old woman.
Over the months the elderly couple had developed a bit of a fondness for them, Lia believed. At first she helped the old woman tend to the house, and once she convinced the old man to let her outside she began to help with chores around the property. The old woman still didn’t talk much, but Lia could tell that she had come to appreciate the help.
Lia had worked with her hands until they developed thick calluses, just like Khile had said. She had carried buckets of water up and down hills until her legs and arms grew stronger, and practiced running further and further every day to build her stamina. The weeks and months had flown by as Lia wore herself ragged every day learning to grow stronger, quicker, and more flexible.
Lia awoke the next morning and bounced off the floor, eager to start the day. She ran outside where she saw Khile roping together a trio of logs. One of them, about five feet tall and as thick as his torso, still crusted with bark, stood upright, supported at the back by two others.
“What’s that for?” Lia asked.
Khile responded with a question. “How was b
reakfast?”
“I didn’t eat any,” she said, and, now that she thought about it, she didn’t recall even noticing if the old woman had prepared anything, though she was certain she had.
“You’ll wish you did,” Khile said.
He stepped back and looked over his creation. He picked up an old short sword that he had borrowed from the old man and stood in front of the vertical log. With his right hand he took three swipes at it, hitting it in precisely the same spot each time and carving a small notch.
“Right hand,” he said.
He tossed the blade into his other hand, switched up his footing, and repeated the three strikes, carving out a chunk of wood on the other side of the log.
“Left hand.”
He handed the sword to her. “Do that until you cut the log in half.”
Lia took the sword, stifling her disappointment. She thought they were going to start sparring today.
Khile motioned toward the wooden practice doll. Lia lifted the sword in her hand, feeling its weight, and took three clumsy strikes, hitting the post in three completely different locations.
Before her discouragement could set in, Khile said, “Again.”
She took three more swings, moving faster the second time, but still failing with her aim.
“Again.”
Three more strikes, steel against wood—clunk, clunk, clunk—and three more marks appeared in the bark, but nowhere near close to each other.
“Other hand,” Khile said. “Three on the right side. Three on the left.”
If her dominant hand was this bad, Lia dreaded to see how she fared with her left. As expected the sword felt heavier, her swings clumsier. Her strikes hit the wood with less force and were wildly inaccurate.
“Keep going,” he said.
She sighed and tried her right hand again. Clunk, clunk, clunk.
“The sword master who taught me how to use a blade once said, ‘You have to think of the sword as an extension of your arm. It’s a part of you. Use it like a part of you. If you don’t—’”
The sword clanged against the wood and kicked out of Lia’s grasp.
“‘—you’ll drop it.’”
Lia picked up her sword. “Make it a part of me,” she muttered. “A part of my arm.” She attacked the wood again. “Who was your sword master?” she asked.
“A man named Decorus Ferrum, and you’d be hard pressed to find a soldier on Efferous who hasn’t heard his name.”
“He lives here?”
“In Thalmia.”
“Does he still teach?”
“You’re stalling.”
“I am not.”
“Again.”
She let the tip of the sword fall into the dirt. “I thought we were going to start fighting today.”
“Again.”
Pushing away the tempest brewing inside, she took three more clumsy swings—clunk, clunk, clunk.
“Again.”
Clunk, clunk, clunk.
And so it went well into the morning. Three strikes on the right side, followed by three strikes on the left. By noon the log was covered in sword marks and Lia could barely lift her arms. When the web of Lia’s right hand started bleeding from the repetitive motion of the handle in her palm, she expected Khile to let her stop, but he didn’t. He let her wrap it in a bandage, but then said, “Again.”
The blue sky was darkening when the old woman called them in for dinner.
Lia dropped the sword, her arms feeling like strips of fabric. She looked down at her filthy, bleeding hands and frowned. She hated herself for not doing better, hated that the log wasn’t chopped in two. She ate dinner in silence, hating even Khile, and said nothing to him the rest of the night. When she stretched out on the floor to go to sleep, she did so fuming.
She awoke the next morning with far less enthusiasm.
Khile was in the barn. He had taken three blocks of wood that were about half her height and arranged them on the ground. He demonstrated what he wanted her to do by placing his hands on two of the wooden blocks and propping his feet up on the third. Then he balanced there, horizontally across the floor, his legs, torso, and shoulders as straight as a board.
He hopped down and picked up a short sword. “Your turn. Up!”
It took some maneuvering, but Lia got herself up onto the tall blocks and held herself stiff like Khile had done. The position was harder to maintain than it looked, and it required her to hold her stomach muscles tight.
“Decorus used to say that every motion comes from the core,” Khile began, as he walked a circle around Lia. “Every pivot, every twist, every step, every strike, everything you do comes from here.” He tapped her stomach with the sword, which made her abdomen clench and her hips rise. “Strong core. Strong everything.”
Khile got down on the ground under her and lay on his back He pointed the short sword toward her belly.
“Keep your back straight,” he said. “Don’t sag.”
After a few moments Lia felt the poke of the sword on her waist. She lifted her hips, her abdomen shaking.
“This is hard,” she said, feeling the muscle in her arms starting to quiver.
“Be glad I’m not Decorus. He used to weight my hips with buckets of water.”
The sword poked her again, harder this time.
“He could do this all day, then get down and kill a dozen men.”
“He was that good?” she said, straining.
“Let me put it this way, if the bravest young warrior on Efferous found himself in a dual against Decorus Ferrum, he would surrender his sword before the match even began.”
Lia felt her muscles giving out. “I can’t.”
“Don’t let go,” Khile said.
Lia’s muscles trembled from head to toe. Khile moved the sword just as her body gave in, and he caught her as she landed on top of him.
Lia scrambled to her feet. “This is foolish,” she shouted. She started pacing, her hands on her hips, her temper rising. “How is this teaching me anything? I want to fight.”
Khile got to his feet, and shrugged. “Very well. Let’s fight.” He lifted his fists.
“What?”
“Come on, little girl.”
His words fanned the fire inside of her and made her lunge at him.
She didn’t even see his hand coming until it slapped her across the face and pushed her aside. She stopped, shaken, caught her breath and attacked him again. This time she thought she was ready for the blow, but she didn’t see his foot hooking around her ankle, yanking it forward, and sending her sprawling backward onto her rump. She growled, jumped up, and attacked him again. Her third attempt ended with her sprawled on her chest, her mouth full of hay and dirt and… she didn’t want to think about what else.
Four more times she tried to hit him, and every time he threw her down.
“I’m not trying to humiliate you, Lia,” Khile said. “I’m trying to make you understand something.”
She got to her feet, not bothering to brush herself off. “And what is that?”
Lia tossed another punch at him. He swatted it away.
“Take a guess,” he said.
“That you’re better than me?”
“That much is obvious, but no.”
She attacked him again, hating his smugness. “Then what?”
“Guess.”
“Tell me!”
“If I were to take you to Aberdour tomorrow and put you in front of Komor Raven, do you think you could beat him?”
She hesitated, wanting so badly to believe that her passion was enough.
“Do you?” Khile pressed.
It took her a moment, but finally she admitted, “No.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not strong enough,” she admitted.
To her surprise, Khile retorted with, “Wrong.”
“Am I not fast enough?”
He shook his head. “Your physical capabilities have got nothing to do with it. Physically you
’re capable. You proved that a couple days ago with that man in the alleyway.”
“Then what?”
Khile sighed. “You need to learn to let go.”
His ambiguous answer infuriated her almost as much as his smugness.
“Your body can’t keep up with what your head is thinking,” he continued. “And your head can’t detach itself from what your heart wants. You are a beautiful mess of desire and cunning and skill, but you don’t know how to make all that work together.”
Lia shrugged, hoping the insecurity he’d just exposed wasn’t as obvious as it felt.
Khile’s expression softened. “What are you feeling right now?”
Her bottom lip quivered as her voice squeaked out, “All I feel—all I ever feel—is hate. And I can’t—I don’t know how to feel anything else.” She wiped her nose. Her insides were burning.
“Let me teach you.”
After a deep breath, Lia wiped her eyes and calmed. She nodded.
Khile walked up to her and reached for the scarf she kept tied around her neck. Slowly his hands unwrapped the scarf and pulled it off. As nervous as she felt about him exposing the blemish on her collarbone, she felt powerless to stop him. When he took the scarf away, she felt naked and embarrassed.
“That’s not a birthmark, is it?” he asked.
Lia shrugged. “I don’t know what it is.”
“The man from the alleyway, he called you a witch. Why would he say that?”
Again, she just shrugged. “Once a woman was arrested in Aberdour who claimed to be a witch. She had a spot that looked like this on her arm. She saw mine and told me I was marked, but I never knew why.”
“Your parents never told you?”
Lia shook her head. “My mother said I’ve had it since I was born.”
She reached for her scarf in Khile’s hands, but he tossed it away. “You can hate all you want. Just don’t hate yourself. Embrace who you are, flaws and all.”
Lia knew what he was trying to say, but she still didn’t like the feeling of her birthmark being exposed. She felt like she was not in control, vulnerable and unprotected.
“Come,” Khile said, waving an open hand toward the wooden blocks. “Up you go.” He lay back down on the ground with the sword.
Lia climbed back up onto the blocks and suspended herself over the floor, tightening her core, and holding her hips over the point of his sword.