by Bruce Blake
The young girl and older man rejoined the fight. His shield rebuffed a thrust from the princess; she sprang out of the way of a roundhouse swing that sent Droinfeld stumbling. His miscue gave Danya the opening she needed to finish him, but she caught another glimpse of Teryk and Trenan behind him and stayed her finishing blow.
Trenan was on one knee, blocking Teryk’s overhead swings with his blade. It was obvious to the princess he could have extricated himself from the predicament with little effort—each time the prince raised his sword, he left himself exposed to being hamstrung, or run through the belly, but Trenan passed up the opportunity like a novice sparring for the first time.
“Ha!” the prince exclaimed, his sword coming down again and knocking the master swordsman onto his back. Danya watched him step forward and put the tip of his blade to Trenan’s throat; the trainer let his sword fall to the dusty ground, surrendering.
An instant later, Danya felt a pressure against her stomach and glanced down to find the corked tip of Droinfeld’s weapon pressed against her belly. She let her own sword and shield droop to her sides and looked up at the old knight smiling at her, his sagging mustache all but hiding the curl of his lips.
“You...should...,” he gasped, struggling to make his pants form words. “Pay...attention...to...”
“Yes, yes,” Danya said, brushing his sword aside with the hilt of her own. “Pay attention to my opponent. That’s all for today, Droinfeld.”
The old knight held her gaze, enjoying the moment of his triumph, and well he should—it had been many turns of the moon since last Danya let him best her. She couldn’t dispute him, though; she needed to worry about the opponent in front of her, not what went on around her, but she wondered why Trenan let Teryk defeat him every time.
Droinfeld bowed low at the waist and, for an instant, Danya worried he might not be able to right himself. He did, then drew a long, slow sigh and took his leave from the practice ring. When he stepped aside, she saw Teryk offering a hand to help Trenan up out of the dirt.
“Beat him again. Did you see, sis?”
Trenan refused the prince’s assistance and planted the corked tip of his sword against the ground to push himself up. Other than a smear of dust across his cheek, he didn’t appear any the worse for wear after his sparring session with the prince.
“I saw,” she replied, doing her most to sound happy for him, but she found it difficult. She wished Trenan would allow her and Teryk to spar just once, because she wouldn’t hesitate to teach her brother the lessons he needed to learn. The thought brought a smile to her face and she used it to fool her brother into thinking his victory delighted her.
Teryk slapped Trenan on the shoulder, sending a puff of dust into the air.
“Are you all right? I didn’t hurt you, did I, Trenan?”
To his credit, the master swordsman kept from revealing the truth of the matter, as he always did.
“I’m fine, your grace. You caught me with a blow I didn’t see coming.” He pulled the cork off the tip of his sword with his teeth, spat it to the ground, and slid the weapon into its sheath. “You grow more skillful every day.”
Danya fought to keep from rolling her eyes as the prince beamed. His cheeks weren’t as pink as Droinfeld’s had been, and not as much sweat seeped from under his helm, but he did touch his shoulder and his muscles after stowing his sword. She saw the fight had drained him, and not because of his age, as was the case with the old knight, but due to his technique and conditioning. If he’d only learn to defend and attack correctly, his shoulder wouldn’t hurt so, and he’d be less likely to lose his breath.
She couldn’t tell him these things, though, because she was but his sister, and younger than him.
Teryk’s smile faded, his expression becoming grave.
“Trenan, I have something to discuss with you,” he said, his eyes flickering to Danya, and she saw he meant to tell their trainer about the scroll. He’d kept it to himself for three sunrises, and made her do the same, but it had gotten too much of a secret for him to hold any longer.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said and felt Trenan’s gaze upon her.
“Well, I do.” The prince looked back to the trainer. “I am to bathe the dust and sweat of my victory from my skin, then take dinner and rest. Tomorrow is a full day of classes, but my night is free. Meet me in my chambers after dinner, Trenan. You, too, sister.”
“Tomorrow after dinner, of course.” The master swordsman clicked his heels and bowed his head.
Teryk directed his gaze to his sister again and she pressed her lips together, gave him a hard look so he’d know she thought showing Trenan an unwise idea. They’d have to explain where they got it, which meant they’d have to tell him they’d been swimming in the river under the castle. Trenan normally kept their secrets, but as much as they considered him their friend, his service belonged to their father. If he told the king, there would be hell to pay.
The prince walked three paces before stopping and peering back over his shoulder.
“Are you coming to bathe, Danya?”
The princess shook her head. “No. I’m going to stay and practice with Trenan some more.”
“Ha! Good luck. You didn’t even beat old Droinfeld.”
The prince walked away, his back to them as the princess stuck out her tongue. Trenan chuckled and shook his head.
“The prince is right: Droinfeld beat you. Are you sure you want to spar with me, your grace?”
“You know he beat me because I let myself be distracted.” She sneered at him and raised her sword, waggled it in the air between them. “Besides, at least Droinfeld is a knight. You were bested by a boy who can’t tell a broadsword from a rapier.”
“Now, now, princess,” Trenan said drawing his weapon. “The prince beat me in a fair fight.”
“Not true. You let him win. You always let him win.”
“Your brother is an excellent swordsman.”
“And Droinfeld is next in line to be king,” she said as Trenan crossed the yard to where his cork lay on the ground. “You don’t need that.”
The master swordsman raised an eyebrow, his sword tip hovering above the chunk of cork, but he didn’t plunge it in. He faced the princess and bowed at the waist, a wicked grin crossing his lips.
“As you command, your imperial cockiness.”
Danya narrowed her eyes and smirked back at him, then fell into the on-guard stance she’d learned the first time she held a sword. She’d taken to the discipline of swordplay right away, much to the queen’s chagrin. For seasons, she’d practiced in secret, bribing any knight willing to take her coin to fence with her using branches or wooden swords. Finally, she convinced the king to allow her some formal training but even then, he assigned the lowest level swordsmen to train her, over-the-hill Droinfeld being the best of them. She could count on her fingers the number of times she’d crossed blades with Trenan and still have some to spare.
The master swordsman nodded, acknowledging her form, and took up his own pose, the grin disappearing from his lips. He shuffle-stepped to his right and Danya matched his movement.
“Why, Trenan?” she said, her eyes glued to his. “Why do you let him win?”
“I am but a trainer, commanded by the king, princess. A man such as I does what I’m told.”
So father tells you to let him win.
They circled, Trenan’s icy blue eyes on her, his chestnut hair hanging dry to his shoulders—he hadn’t even broken a sweat as he worked out with the prince. Danya put her left foot across behind her right, stepping away.
“Do not cross your feet, princess. Crossed feet cause stumbles.”
She pursed her lips and swore to herself. She knew not to take the chance of tangling her feet. If they did and she fell, Teryk might be the only opponent in the entire kingdom who wouldn’t find a way to finish her.
Trenan feinted left and Danya bit, then he lunged in, quick as a viper and deadlier than two. The
princess wrenched her hips around and the tip of his sword grazed the surface of her shield with a squeal of metal. He backed away a step, smiling.
“How does it serve the kingdom for my brother to think himself a skilled swordsman when a child could beat him?” Danya thought that, if she distracted Trenan, she may stand a chance.
“It gives him confidence, your grace,” the trainer answered, circling again.
“But what if he has to fight?”
“The king employs an army of swordsmen to ensure your brother will never have need to fight. One day, he’ll rule the kingdom, and that’s all he’ll have to—”
Danya leaped forward before he finished speaking, her blade whipping in. He deflected her attack aside as though he knew her mind, then parried another attack and side-stepped when she swung her sword at him.
“You’re revealing your moves before you make them, princess. Conceal.”
His attack came out of nowhere, his blade striking with more force than any two of poor old Droinfeld’s. The impact shook her arm and rattled her armor. Her fingers slipped on the sword’s grip, but she held on. She blocked another blow with her shield, ducked under a third and counter-attacked, but Trenan tilted his body and the swipe whistled wide.
Danya had barely recovered when he struck again, his blows not as firm, but faster. His blade seemed to attack from all directions at once, like she fought not one man, but many. Light flickered in his sword as it danced and struck; she parried and dodged, ducked and retreated under the attack, stumbling away. Trenan pressed her until she forgot her lessons and, in desperation to avoid his assault, cross-stepped her feet.
They tangled and Danya fell to the ground in a puff of dust.
Her shield pinned beneath her, the princess grunted and tried to roll away and defend herself, but too late. Trenan stood over her, the flat of his sword pressed underneath her chin, the point a hair’s-width from her throat.
Danya froze, afraid to swallow. Her airway tightened and closed, tears threatening at being so easily defeated, but she refused to let them flow.
“You are a far superior swordsman than your brother will ever be,” Trenan said. He moved the sword away from her throat. “But you have much to learn yet.”
The princess made herself breathe again, swallowed the lump clogging her throat.
“Teach me.”
“And let old Droinfeld at your brother? He’d likely kill him by accident.” Trenan slid his sword back into its scabbard and held out his hand to aid the princess to her feet. “Who but I has enough skill to make the prince think he is a master swordsman?”
Danya took the master’s hand and he yanked her up with little effort. The strength in the man’s sword arm astonished her, but not so much as the balance he achieved even while being short the other.
“I still don’t understand why father wants him to think he is.” She stowed her sword and unstrapped the shield. A fresh gouge across the buckler where she’d blocked one of Trenan’s blows looked deep enough it might have removed her arm.
“It’s not my business to know the mind of the king,” Trenan said, retiring from the training circle. “But worry not. Never will the day come when your brother need discover the truth. Not so long as I’m alive.”
Danya watched the master swordsman disappear through the door, hoping for the kingdom’s sake he was right.
VI Discovery
In the prince’s chamber on the castle’s third floor, the stone walls diffused the constant burble of the river flowing beneath and made the shush of running water hardly noticeable. But on this night, the water rumbled loud in his ears, as though Teryk sat on the shore beside great rapids. Only it wasn’t the river’s sounds he heard.
The din emanated from the scroll.
The parchment lay open on the table, the prince’s sheathed dagger lying at the top edge to prevent it from curling in on itself, his hand resting on the bottom. The scroll only made the noise when he touched it.
Teryk leaned in, squinting hard at the parchment’s browned and grainy surface. He imagined swirls and shapes scrolling across it, but each cursive letter he fancied he perceived revealed itself a trick of the flickering candle at his elbow and nothing more. He’d taken repast in his chamber, studying the scroll before Trenan came as he’d asked. When the queen protested his absence at the dinner table, he claimed Master Rewn had assigned him the task of memorizing the epic poem Ghillihan—the history of his family’s ascension to the throne—and needed the extra time to do so.
A lie, but a victimless one.
As the sun set and the light faded from day to twilight to dark, Teryk pondered the scroll, watching for a change, but it remained no more than an old, blank sheet of parchment. With his hand rested on the coarse surface, he listened to its sound, willing the paper to speak the way it had in the chamber by the river, but it remained wordless. The babble of rushing water filled the prince’s ears and he had to remove his touch to rest his head and ears from its monotony.
Why conceal a blank scroll in a secret chamber?
After turning the question over and over in his mind, Teryk kept returning to one answer: it wasn’t blank. If so, why couldn’t his eyes see the words written upon it?
He’d leaned over the paper again to ponder the same thing for the hundredth time, his hand on its edge and ears filling with the scroll’s sound, when a knock at the door startled him.
“Enter.” The word wasn’t fully out of his mouth when Danya did.
“Trenan isn’t here yet?” she asked, closing the door and stealing across the room with silent steps, her feet bare again.
“Not yet.”
Teryk removed his hand from the scroll and the parchment rolled around his dagger weighting down the top; the river sound disappeared from his ears. The prince raised his gaze to his sister. Her long hair was pulled back from her face and a circlet of flowers ringed her head. She wore the same dress as when they’d gone swimming in the river four days earlier, its hem marked by a smudge of dirt the launderers couldn’t get out. Surprising their mother hadn’t noticed and made her change.
“Have you found anything?” She leaned over the table, peering down at the scroll.
Teryk shook his head. “Nothing. It’s blank.” He leaned back and crossed his arms, a sliver of frustration tingling in his belly. “Touch it and tell me what happens.”
“Touch it?”
“Yeah. Touch it.”
Danya shrugged and reached for the scroll, Teryk’s gut churning as she did. He chewed his bottom lip. The scroll hadn’t spoken to the princess in the chamber as it had to him. Would it now?
The tip of her pointer finger brushed its surface and the prince held his breath. Danya stroked her fingertip along the scroll’s length.
“Not very good quality paper,” she said. “Too rough.”
He prompted her to continue the examination when she looked at him. She put one hand palm down by her brother’s dagger and used the other to spread the parchment out on top of the table. With both her hands on the page to hold it, her eyes flickered back and forth across its surface.
“There’s nothing on it.”
“Anything else?”
He sensed her gaze on him again, knew she’d have one eyebrow raised, wondering if he’d gone daft, but she didn’t say a word. Instead, she leaned forward until the tip of her nose came within a finger’s-width of touching the scroll. She sniffed, her nostrils flaring.
“Smells of old paper,” Danya said, straightening again.
“Do you hear anything?” Teryk chewed his bottom lip again, made himself stop.
“Hear anything? No. Just you breathing on me.”
She took her hands off the parchment and it rolled up again. Teryk watched it, struggling to keep from reaching out and stopping it. Danya reached under the table and pulled out the stool stowed beneath, sat beside her brother.
“Do you think it’s a good idea to tell Trenan?”
“Why wouldn’t it
be?”
“Because he might tell father. Then we’d have to explain where we got it. And how we got there.”
Teryk frowned; he hadn’t thought of that. With the scroll’s river sound clogging his ears and its mystery muddling his head, he hadn’t paused to consider Trenan might choose to do anything other than help them solve the riddle the parchment presented.
“It’ll be all right. He won’t tell.” The river sounds, dim and distant, reached Teryk’s ears again—the rush of the real river flowing beneath the palace.
A knock at the door startled them both. The siblings both stared at its plain wood surface, neither of them moving. A second later, Danya laughed and a smile crept across the prince’s face, her merriment making his tension dissipate. He inhaled deeply between his parted lips and blew the air out noisily.
“Enter, Trenan.”
The door swung open and the master swordsman entered, the plate he wore during their practice sessions replaced by a leather chest piece died green to match the king’s colors and a black shirt over top, the sleeve of his missing arm pinned up at the shoulder. His ever-present sword hung at his waist.
“Your graces,” he said, dipping his head as he shut the door. “What is of such import I should be summoned to the prince’s chambers?”
“We found something,” Danya said before Teryk had a chance to speak. She bounced excitedly on her stool and her brother wondered at the youthful enthusiasm she still managed. Teryk waved Trenan over to them.
“Have a look,” he said, standing and offering his stool.
The one-armed knight strode across the room and took the offered seat, peered at the table top.
“Your dagger? If I recall, a gift from your weapons master.”
“Not that,” Teryk said, pointing. “The scroll.”
Trenan raised an eyebrow. “This scrap of old paper?” He gestured toward the parchment, waving his fingers toward it without touching it. “What of it?”
“Just have a look,” the prince insisted.