Skullsworn

by Brian Staveley

  “No shit,” he snorted. “I had no idea being poked in the elbow could hurt so bad.”

  “I would have hit your head more, but you were taking care of it. Hardly sporting.”

  “You’re one to talk. I had to hit you in the ribs a few hundred times before you finally dropped your guard.”

  I found myself smiling at something in his tone. “Glad I didn’t make it too easy.”

  “I’ve led year-long campaigns that were easier.”

  I tested the flesh over my ribs gingerly.

  “I think you broke one or two.”

  He nodded, flashed a smile that bordered on the apologetic. “I wanted to be thorough.”

  “That wasn’t very nice,” I managed to murmur between my teeth.

  He studied me with those green eyes, then leaned in slowly to kiss me on the forehead. I winced as my body shifted toward him, as though of its own accord. With one weak hand, I wiped away the blood at his hairline. When he finally straightened, he shook his head regretfully. “If you wanted someone nice, you shouldn’t have been looking for men at the Rage.”

  “I found you at the temple,” I reminded him.

  He grimaced. “They probably won’t perform Antreem’s Mass again for another decade.” Then he tilted his head to one side. “You want to go?”

  I stared at him through the haze of pain. “What? In ten years?”

  He used that shrug again. “Only if you want to.”

  I started to smile, winced, then settled for a nod. “Of course I want to.”

  10

  “Busted knuckles and nose, those shoulders, and green eyes that don’t look away, that just keep on going.” Ela closed her own eyes, reviewing some private image. “I can see why you like him.”

  I found myself, to my great surprise, suddenly jealous. I couldn’t say I loved Ruc, not yet, but I still hoped to. I’d come to Dombâng to try to love him, at least, not so that some other priestess could spend her evenings skulking in the shadows and licking her lips. Even if that priestess was quickly growing into one of Rassambur’s legends.

  Ela raised her ta, seemingly oblivious to the turbulence churning inside me. Only when she’d taken a small sip, savored it, then set the cup down once more did she go on. “A good choice—arranging your first meeting at the baths. If you’re going to see a man, you want to see all of him. Then again—”

  I cut her off. “I didn’t see you.”

  “The Witness does the witnessing. Not the other way around.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Close enough to hear what I needed to hear. To see what I wanted to see.” She luxuriated a moment in her own lazy smile. “Did you know about that scar on his thigh?” She tipped back in her chair, drew a line up the inside of her own thigh with a painted fingernail. “Right here?”

  “Yes,” I snapped. “I did know. It’s from one of those jungle spears.”

  Ela nodded approvingly. “I like a man with scars.” She waved a hand toward the serving staff. “These are pretty enough, but too smooth, like little figurines. They feel like porcelain whenever I run my hands over them.” She frowned. “Warm porcelain.”

  I stared. “I thought you were spending all your time following me.”

  “All my time?” Ela’s laugh was bright and rich, a chime ringing in the hot morning wind. “How exhausting. You’ve been running all over the city since we got here, painting little symbols, killing people, visiting the baths.…” She made no effort to lower her voice, even at the mention of my murders and sedition. “If I spent all my time following you, when would I enjoy Dombâng’s more leisurely charms?” She nodded toward the bar, where two of the servingmen were conferring. “Kam and Keo aren’t going to pleasure themselves.” She pursed her lips, then reformulated. “Well, I’m sure they do, but I like to think I bring a little something extra to the experience.”

  “What about watching me?”

  Ela reached across the table to pat my hand. “Don’t be jealous, Pyrre. I’m not neglecting you. It’s true that Kossal takes half of the shifts, but when it’s my turn to keep my eye on you, I promise—my gaze is yours alone.”

  “When you’re not watching Ruc.”

  “All a part of my piety,” she replied, then winked.

  “Piety?” I managed, almost choking on the word. “Where’s the piety in studying Ruc’s scars, his shoulders? You’re a priestess of Ananshael.”

  “Which means that I need to know, when you finally give him to the god, whether you love him.”

  I stared at her.

  “And that knowledge requires you to skulk around the baths studying his naked thighs?”

  “Skulking.” Ela made a face, as though she’d bitten into an unripe firefruit. “Such an ugly word. Mostly, I was floating on my back.”

  “The position is irrelevant.”

  Ela pursed her lips. “I’ve found that the position—the right position—can make all the difference.” She put down her clay mug, then cocked her head, studying me. “Yours, for instance, leaves something to be desired.”

  As so often with Ela, I felt like I was falling. The ease with which she moved from Ruc’s thighs to her own piety then back again to sex left me dizzy, disoriented, as though the ground had tilted beneath me. Even her tone escaped me. One moment, it would seem as though she was laughing at me from behind those brown eyes; the next, her smile—perfect white teeth flashing between her upturned lips—seemed like an offering, a secret invitation to some private confidence, one offered to me alone in all the world. I could never quite decide whether to fight or to smile back.

  I felt like a little girl when I finally managed my reply, one who knew nothing of the world or its people. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Obviously,” she replied, rising smoothly from her seat. She stretched her neck to one side then the other, quirked an eyebrow at me, then gestured. “Get up.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the private deck behind my room.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Why?”

  Ela smiled. “Education.”

  * * *

  I tried to look normal as I stood on the wide deck, casual. Faced with the bright amusement of Ela’s gaze, however, everything about my body felt suddenly strange. I couldn’t seem to find a normal stance, couldn’t remember how my arms were supposed to hang at my sides. I tried crossing them over my chest, felt ridiculous—like a blustery soldier from the stage—then let them drop. Ela raised her brows.

  “Ananshael’s sweetest kiss, Pyrre, you’re even more awkward around me than you were around him. Are you trying to look like one of those long-legged birds from the delta?”

  “They’re called sticklegs,” I ground out.

  “You have beautiful legs, but the way you’re posed there…” Ela took a step back. “You don’t need to use the privy, do you?”

  Shame splashed my cheeks. “I didn’t know mockery was a part of the Trial.”

  “Normally, it’s not, but these are desperate times. You’ve got a perfectly gorgeous green-eyed, broken-nosed brawler out there just waiting to lap you up, but if you can’t even stand the right way, you’re never going to fall in love.”

  I ground my teeth. “What does how I stand have to do with falling in love?”

  Ela blinked. “Surely you don’t mean that.”

  “Assume I am stupider than you realized.”

  “Much stupider?”

  “You might as well start at the beginning.”

  The priestess let out a low whistle, wetted her lips with the tip of the tongue, then waved me toward her. I took a step forward. “Closer,” she said. “Stand just outside your striking range.”

  This, at last, was language I understood. My years in Rassambur had been short on discussions of love, but I knew my striking range—with each of half a hundred weapons—down to a finger’s breadth. Ela watched me, then shrugged. “You may as well get out a knife, while you’re at it—anything to ma
ke you feel a little more at ease.” I hesitated, then slid a knife from the sheath at my thigh. The weight of the weapon in my hand made the whole world seem more stable.

  Ela made a little flourish with one hand, as though she were introducing me to a crowd. “So, posture matters, obviously.”

  “When you’re trying to kill someone.”

  “Love is like killing, but without all the blood.” She frowned, as though reconsidering. “Usually. The point is, you know more than you think you know.”

  “What I know,” I growled, “is how to put this knife in your eye, or your chest, or your throat, or any of a dozen other places—”

  “Actually,” Ela said, raising an elegant finger in objection, “you know how to put that knife in the eye, or the chest, or the throat, or any of a dozen places belonging to someone a good deal slower than me, but never mind that. The point is, love is like this. It matters how you hold your body.”

  She was smiling, but it seemed to be her normal smile, warm with the joy of a woman at one with herself and at home in the world. I studied that smile for a hint of mockery. “If this is some joke about sex…”

  She waved away the objection lazily. “Any fool can fuck—perhaps not well, but that’s beside the point. We’re discussing love, here, Pyrre.” Sunlight sparkled in her eyes, tiny stars bright enough to survive the daylight. “Please try to elevate your mind above such carnal pursuits.”

  I realized I was glaring at the priestess. “This is what I look like when I’m elevated.”

  Something about the fighting pose had righted me, returned my equilibrium. Things felt familiar again. Somewhere out of sight, the gong began to sound in Intarra’s temple, massive, sun-bright bronze trembling out the noon hour beneath the priest’s hammer. I spared a glance for that sun—furious, hot, lodged for just a moment at the day’s apex. Sweat slicked my back, matted my hair to my scalp, but poised as I was in one of Ananshael’s oldest forms, none of that mattered. Instead of an idiot who didn’t know what to do with her body, I was a vessel for the god, the never-ending possibility of death made flesh.

  Ela stretched her arms languorously above her head, graceful as an unfolding flower. Her eyes were closed, face uplifted to the sun. “Now,” she murmured. “Kill me.”

  I stared. “Excuse me?”

  A tiny frown creased her expression, but she didn’t open her eyes. “Do you say that every time you kill a woman?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s why we’re doing this.” She took a deep breath, chest filling against the silk of her ki-pan, as though she were savoring the warm air in her lungs. “It’s time to kill me, Pyrre. And please, try your hardest.”

  I hesitated only half a heartbeat. Someone is always fighting in Rassambur, sparring with broad blades on the sun-baked clay, going knuckle-to-knuckle in the blocked-out squares inside the training barns, hammering through spear forms on top of one of the neighboring mesas. You learn early on how to pull punches, how to twist a blade at the last moment to avoid a killing stroke. It’s not that killing is forbidden—we would make strange servants of Ananshael if it were—so much that each killing should be deliberate, an act of true devotion, not just a mistake made in training. I debated, in my half heartbeat of hesitation, whether to go at Ela with a curtal Manjari thrust, an attack that would draw blood without killing. Back in Rassambur, it would have been a reasonable assumption, but we had left Rassambur behind months earlier. She’d told me to kill her. If I succeeded, Kossal would still be alive to Witness the end of my Trial.

  The smooth skin of her throat was exposed. I went after it.

  Ela didn’t parry. She didn’t even really dodge. As my knife came at her, she took a step back, quick and smooth as a dancer caught up in the music, dropped her arms to her side, and bent away from me. My motion ended with hers. I was at the full extent of my lunge, the tip of my knife bright against her neck, touching, but not quite close enough to cut. Ela winked at me.

  “You see?”

  The question seemed to suggest an end to the fight—if it could even be called a fight—but the priestess hadn’t told me to stop trying to kill her, so I didn’t. My next attack was awkward, a clumsy stumble forward out of the full lunge, but my knife was already against her neck. I had to close with her only a finger’s breadth to nick the smooth artery beneath her skin. Ela anticipated the attack, moved with the knife, keeping the blade against her skin without allowing it to cut.

  It was the most ostentatious display of competence I’d ever seen. Priestesses and priests of Ananshael are encouraged to be discreet. It is easier to give people to the god if those people believe you to be a wheelwright or a gardener or a haberdasher—anything but a member of the dreaded Skullsworn. As a result, the training at Rassambur emphasizes speed and efficiency. If you can kill a woman in one heartbeat, it’s sloppy to use two. There’s almost no place for the kind of dangerous, showy game Ela was playing with my knife and her neck, but then, Ela had never quite fit with the rest of the priests in the first place. There weren’t a lot of silk ki-pans in Rassambur.

  She smiled at me over the length of gleaming steel. “You’re thinking about love all wrong.”

  I almost hurled myself forward into yet another lunge, but my lunges hadn’t done much good. I wasn’t sure just how I was giving myself away, but Ela obviously knew the signal. I took a step back, letting my arm drop into a low guard, ready to feint left with the knife, then level the true attack with a stiffened fist. Instead of taking the offered space, however, Ela matched her advance to my retreat, moving forward with the knife, so close the blade sliced down the front of her ki-pan as I shifted to the low guard. She was close enough that I could smell the jasmine on her, close enough that I could have leaned forward to kiss her. She smiled, and for a moment I was too shocked to move.

  “You think love is something that happens in here,” she tapped me once between the eyes, “or here,” in the center of my chest. Then she frowned, her brow wrinkling. “Don’t stop killing, Pyrre, just because I’m talking.”

  I slammed the blade into her stomach, ripping upward through her diaphragm into the lung. I would have, anyway, if she hadn’t pivoted with the attack, letting it slide by her. My knife parted the silk along her waist, then sailed off into empty space. Hauled forward by the violence of the attack, I tripped over Ela’s outstretched foot, falling clumsily to the wooden deck.

  “See?” she said again.

  That word was starting to wear on my nerves.

  “Killing is not something you do privately, in the space of your own head. It happens here.” She opened her arms, as though to embrace the whole world. “In the relationship between bodies.”

  I pushed myself slowly to my feet, turned to face the priestess once more. I’d managed to hack away a neat section of her ki-pan, but the smooth skin beneath seemed untouched. I flipped the knife, catching it in the old Antheran grip, then drew its companion from its sheath. I might have been holding a pair of potatoes for all Ela seemed to notice.

  “It’s the same with love,” she went on. “You’re going at the whole thing as though it’s a problem with you, inside of you, sealed off from the rest of the world. It’s not. Love isn’t a part of you or your lover. It’s not something you can have, like a pile of gold or a pet pig. Love is this,” she said, gesturing to the emptiness between us. “The space between.”

  I took half a step forward, testing that space, searching for the right distance, close enough to kill without being killed.

  “There’s space everywhere,” I growled, “between everyone.”

  “Don’t be obtuse, Pyrre. It’s the nature of the space that matters.”

  Then, abruptly, she turned her back on me. This time, I didn’t hesitate. I went high with one blade, low with the other, raking the air in opposite directions even as I closed. Ela, without turning, caught both of my wrists in the moment before the steel drove home. It was impossible; even a priestess of Ananshael couldn’t
block an attack without seeing it. Then I saw her brown eyes reflected in the glass of the window, her amused smile.

  “This configuration, for instance”—there was no strain in her voice, despite the fact that I was putting my full weight behind those blades—“is wrong. There is a shape to a kill without which it is not a kill, just as there is a shape to love, without which it is just flirting, or fawning, or fucking.” She shrugged, twisted, shifted my blades, and was free.

  My breath chafed in my throat, hot and ragged. Barely a pace away, Ela glanced down at the fabric of her ki-pan, ran a finger along the rent, then shook her head regretfully. “You know, Pyrre,” she said, looking back up at me, “there are other ways to get a woman out of a dress.” She picked up her cup of ta from the railing where she’d left it, then took a long sip.

  “That’s all it is to you, isn’t it?” I demanded. Back in Rassambur, I would never have spoken to a priestess that way, but then, back in Rassambur no one had ever taunted me. I’d been defeated certainly, hundreds of times over in training and sparring matches, beaten or bloodied with just about every conceivable weapon. Priestesses and priests had mercilessly revealed the flaws in my technique, and yet it had all felt like a part of our greater devotion. There was no shame in straining to better serve our god.

  What Ela was doing now, however, didn’t feel like devotion; it felt like a game she was playing. She wasn’t trying to make me a better killer or a better priest. We were fighting—sort of—but she wasn’t teaching me anything new about my knife work. Instead, she just kept smiling and taunting me about my own failure. I found, standing there panting, that I really did want to put a knife inside her. Not a sentiment worthy of a servant of Ananshael, but I didn’t feel like Ananshael’s servant. I felt like a stupid little girl, a girl so broken she couldn’t even fall in love, not with anyone, not even once. I ached to drive a knife into Ela’s eye, but failing that, I lashed out with my words, pouring as much scorn as I could into my voice.

  “That’s your great lesson? That love is just a matter of bodies? Of the way they line up next to each other? Stick a knife in a neck or a chest or a gut, and it’s killing; get a tongue in your cunt or a cock in your ear, and it’s love, is that it?”