The Edge of the Blade

by Jeffe Kennedy

  And Kral asked why I didn’t have a husband or children. Fool. One pain less was . . . well, one pain less, I supposed.

  I turned away from the fire to find Sunniva glancing down quickly and Runa studying me with open curiosity, only averting her gaze when Sunniva nudged her. Both looked much alike, beyond their similarities in coloring. The high, intelligent foreheads and broad cheekbones that marked them likely kin to Harlan and Kral—and Hestar. Special servants to the Imperial Princesses, too. I’d put money down that these were some of those royal by-blows, bred for a life of servitude.

  “Problem?” I asked, addressing them more as I would one of my scouts, mostly out of habit, but that seemed to startle at least Runa out of her habitual meekness.

  “Are you truly a man wearing a klút, then, Ambassador?” she asked.

  Sunniva elbowed her harder. “She means no offense, Ambassador. We are simply uncertain how to . . . care for you. Shall we address you as a man or a woman?”

  Curse this place that it had messed with my head enough that I didn’t have a ready answer to the question. Once the bath was ready and they saw me naked, the obvious gender aspects would be cleared up, but that addressed only part of the conundrum. According to this culture, I kind of was a man in thought and behavior, wearing a woman’s body.

  Ha! Wait until I told Kral that particular theory. If he didn’t leave me here to rot, which would be an admittedly simple solution for him.

  “What makes you ask at this moment?” I tried, mostly as a stalling tactic.

  Runa dipped her forehead at the carafe of mjed. “Only men drink this liquor, so therefore you must be a man.” Her forehead crinkled as she studied me more boldly. “But you look like one of us, even with your dark skin. Except your hair is short, as if it was shorn for service. Perhaps you were a servant and elevated?”

  Sunniva made a sound halfway between a snort of derision and a whimper of despair. “These things are not our business, Runa! Mother always said your curiosity would be the death of you.”

  Aha. My pathway in. “Let me show you something, Runa.” I poured more of the mjed into the empty cup and held it out to her. “Take a sip.”

  Her mouth dropped open in horror—and avid curiosity.

  “Don’t!” Sunniva hissed at her. “Women cannot drink of it. It is of Sól and therefore of men. Too much svida will cook a woman’s nature.”

  “But the ambassador told me to,” Runa hedged, then sidled to me. “Surely a tiny sip won’t be enough to cook me.”

  Sunniva slid a look at me that immediately darted away. I nearly laughed. Clearly she wanted to comment on the quantity of my feminine nature. “But it’s poison to a woman,” she whispered, wringing her hands.

  “It won’t kill me, will it, Ambassador?” Runa asked, taking the cup gingerly in her hands, holding it like she might an injured bird.

  “It won’t.” I said it to reassure Sunniva as much as Runa.

  “Runa . . .” Sunniva wrung her hands.

  “Maybe a bit of cooking will be good for me,” Runa said to her sister, a bit sharply. Her gaze lingered on me, and the daggers in my armbands. She brought the cup slowly to her lips. Sunniva watched in fascinated terror, the way people look witnessing executions, making a squeak of anxiety as Runa swallowed. They looked at each other, waiting with obvious apprehension in the one, delighted anticipation in the other—which turned to consternation as color flooded her pale face. Runa coughed, then coughed again, harder. Running to her, Sunniva put her arms around her sister’s waist and buried her face against her neck. “Don’t die, Runa! You can’t leave me here alone.”

  Absurdly, Runa giggled. “It burns! Oh, it burns, but in such a delicious way. Try it, Sunniva.”

  Sunniva’s blue eyes went wide and she took Runa’s face in her hands. “You’re not cooking.”

  “Of course she isn’t,” I said, adding more mjed to the cup Runa still held. Getting them a bit tipsy could only help with our little bonding ceremony. “Sure you don’t want to try, Sunniva?”

  She did want to, left out of the fun now, but shook her head. “The water is hot for your bath now, Ambassador. Let’s assist you with that.”

  “I can take my own bath.”

  “Oh, no, we must help you,” Sunniva insisted, with a determined set to her chin that reminded me vividly of Kral. Stupidly sending a pang through me of missing his company. Days of near-constant companionship would do that, I supposed. He might be annoying, but he never bored me. Not something I could say for my other lovers. Probably I’d get tired of Kral, too, over time, given enough opportunity. That pang demanded the opportunity to try. Alas for the impossible.

  “Sunniva.” I studied her, then Runa, who still held the mjed cup, eyes wide with trepidation. “Are you under orders to see what I look like naked?”

  Both women cast their eyes down, golden lashes fluttering, in subservient apology. They didn’t speak, but that was answer enough.

  “Fine.” I shrugged and began stripping off my knives. They’d see me for myself and carry back the tale. Let the repercussions be what they were. They followed me into the bathing chamber, helping me unwrap the klút. It was kind of nice to have their expert assistance. Kral might have known the basics, but these women possessed serious expertise. I set a few more daggers on the edge of the bathing cistern as I took them off, then posed naked for them, even turning in a circle. “Well?”

  They looked me over, exchanged glances. A great deal of unspoken communication between them.

  “Do you want me to bend over so you can look between my legs?” I meant it jokingly, but Sunniva cocked her head.

  “Ambassador, if you would . . .”

  “Allow us to bathe you,” Runa inserted with a nod at her sister. “That will suffice.”

  Bemused, I stepped into the water, which felt deliciously warming indeed. They set to scrubbing me with scented soap of the same varietals of the lotion Kral liked. I’d never been washed by another person before—at least, not literally as opposed to as an excuse for foreplay—and the women did a thorough job of it. I tried to take it philosophically, that following their efforts, they could be in no doubt of what I did and did not possess, anatomically.

  It wasn’t unpleasant, but definitely not remotely sexy. Hopefully it was the situation that dampened my ardor, and my tepid feelings had nothing to do with Kral ruining me for anyone else. Was he meeting with Hestar even now? Frustrating that I couldn’t get ears into that conversation. Hmm. Unless Sunniva and Runa found out from their rekjabrel cousins in Hestar’s service.

  Runa scrubbed my hair, massaging my scalp as she did—an exquisite experience—while Sunniva scrubbed my feet and trimmed my toenails, not quite as soothing. This being tended to, however, could get addicting. “Ambassador?” Runa asked tentatively.

  “Just ask,” I told her with my eyes closed. “I’m nearly impossible to offend.” Ha! Just as Hestar said of women, but for entirely different reasons. “I know you have no intention of insulting me,” I added, in case that tidbit made it back to someone else.

  “I can arrange for a wig for you, if you like. Some women do, once elevated from service or punishment, while their hair grows out.”

  I squinched open one eye and she hastily brushed the suds away before they could sting. “My hair is exactly the way I like it. I keep it cut short on purpose for three reasons—because I like how I look this way and it’s easy to take care of, because it’s wildly curly and if it gets too long, I look like a hystrix on a bad day—”

  Both women burst into a fit of giggles at that image. Not so funny if you actually saw it, though. Actually . . . maybe it was. I waffled a bit on the third reason, as the information would likely be carried out of the room, but my gut said go, so I did.

  “Third, I’m a fighter and long hair makes a too-convenient handle for an opponent.”

  They fell silent at that, Runa rinsing, then combing my hair with a comb made of spicily scented wood, Sunniva polishing my toen
ails with some kind of rough pad. She’d remarked on the ugly state of my feet and set to work on prettying them with grim determination.

  “How . . . how can you fight?” Runa finally asked. “Surely not against men.”

  Sunniva said nothing, but she filed quietly, hanging on every word.

  “Against men, yes, or other female fighters.” I decided not to mention fish-birds or shape-shifters, as that might overload their already stretching sensibilities. “Having good weapons and knowing how to use them makes all the difference. Everyone has a weakness. The trick is to get past where they’re strong and strike where they’re weak.”

  Good words to remember. Sometimes I was smarter than I knew. “And . . . these are good weapons?” Sunniva asked, with a nod at my nearby daggers, which both women had been careful not to touch. “They are so much smaller than swords. It seems odd to think they could do anything much.”

  “Excellent weapons. A broadsword suits a fighter like Kr—like His Imperial Highness Prince Kral—but, while I can lift one, it’s not the best choice for me. See? I’m shorter, lighter of body; my strength, like for most women, is in my hips and legs. It changes how I fight. I’m fast, so a light, sharp weapon suits my style.”

  “Women are strong in their lower bodies,” Sunniva affirmed with a brisk nod, surprising me. “The men, they don’t know that. But they don’t see what it takes for a woman to carry and birth a child. They moan over their aches or their winter coughs, but they don’t lie there for days, laboring, wracked with pain, bleeding their lives away while their children are born.”

  Not something I knew much about, but I believed her. Not many of my good friends had given birth to babies—most of the female fighters shared the herbs that let us avoid getting pregnant in the first place, as it could mean the loss of a job at best and dying in a fight at worst—and I tended to wander away from those conversations where women started trading labor horror stories instead of battle tales. Still, I’d been at Windroven when Queen Amelia nearly died giving birth to her twins. The Hawks had even secretly consulted over a strategy to handle Ursula if her sister died and she lost her mind with grief. The High Queen could handle most anything, but the chink in her armor undoubtedly was her sisters. Fortunately, it hadn’t come to that.

  “I can teach you,” I told them. “A few little knife tricks. I have some extra daggers you could have.”

  They actually jerked their hands off me, as if I’d burned them. “We could not,” Sunniva said with great firmness, glaring at her sister. “Never.”

  Runa nodded unhappily. “Never.”

  16

  They wouldn’t talk more after that, except to comment on the state of my nails—both hands and feet—my skin, my unpierced ears. At least they gave up on the hair.

  “Your hands are so rough!” Sunniva cried in a tone of real despair. It seemed now that they’d determined me to be a genuine female, the state of my beauty posed a real problem.

  “Calluses,” I told them, rubbing my fingers together, thinking of how they represented a real fetish for the Dasnarian men. Ursula had confided it to me, that day Kral arrived at Ordnung, taking me aside after they’d signed the treaty and were ready to celebrate, explaining that Harlan liked hers—one of those few times I saw her flustered—and that Kral seemed to be equally intrigued. She’d asked me to pass the word to any of the female Hawks who might be interested in playing, but I’d kept that nugget to myself. And made sure Kral felt mine. I’d wanted him from the moment I laid eyes on him. All that Dasnarian muscle, with the mind of a shark. The opportunity to present myself for gobbling had been too good to miss.

  It had worked like a dagger to the heart. He’d fastened all of that exuberant sexual vitality on me, and the evening progressed exactly as I’d hoped. As can happen with the morning after, it only got rocky after that.

  “Calluses from using weapons,” I clarified. “Don’t try to polish them off. I need them, to keep my hands strong for using knives and swords, even a bow.” And also for tantalizing my lover. Where in Danu was Kral? Entirely possible he’d vanish into the bowels of his family and never reemerge. That withdrawing and personality change as we drew nearer to this spider’s nest could have been him deliberately putting distance between us. Probably politically savvy on his part. Understandable, if so. Shouldn’t bother me.

  I’d get myself out of this mess without his help, if I needed to. It wasn’t as if we enjoyed a deeper bond than sex. Maybe a rough kind of friendship. Being in the Imperial Palace, however, brought home that any friendship we might enjoy fell second place to the fact that we served rulers who would be enemies without a fresh treaty. One Hestar might not even ratify. He hadn’t sounded at all happy with Kral.

  Sunniva and Runa finally declared my hands and feet as pretty as they could make them without hours’ more work—and that was better than they’d looked my entire life—and wrapped me up in a klút I hadn’t seen before, this one in patterned silk of dappled greens, like a forest. The colors suited me, they said, and I liked them just fine. They debated the problem of the extra length briefly, then solved it by Runa cutting off quite a bit and Sunniva hemming the cut end with silk thread and stitches that whipped so fast her fingers blurred. I refrained from pointing out that Runa’s sewing shears were basically a pair of sharp, one-sided blades. But I made mental note of her dexterity. I could teach her to use those as a weapon quite readily.

  Whether due to their expertise or the lack of surplus material, the new klút flattered me far more than any of Kral’s. The deeper colors did suit my darker complexion, and the greens somehow made my brown eyes interesting. And the expertly draped silk emphasized my figure in all the right places. If only Kral could see, alas. Though he couldn’t act on it, I’d still enjoy watching him simmer in his frustration. Small joys.

  The women had discovered I possessed no jewelry—not even for my feet, to their great dismay—and were deep in discussion of what to do when it belatedly occurred to me they were fixing me up for more than an evening alone in my room. Would I be going to the dinner Kral mentioned? After Hestar’s banishing me from his sight, that seemed highly unlikely.

  “Ah, Sunniva, Runa—what am I getting decked out for?”

  They gave me astonished looks. “The Imperial Princesses’ visit, naturally!” Sunniva replied.

  Ah, of course. How interesting. Runa cocked her head, listening. “Here they come now.”

  They both withdrew at the polite tap on the door, vanishing with the practiced ease of good servants. “Come in,” I called, remembering to use an invitational phrasing, rather than the male command variety.

  Another servant girl in gray robes opened the door, sidestepping behind it as Inga and her sister swept in. Eyes no longer lowered, they examined me with bold curiosity. I’d put money down that they’d come to my rooms directly from court.

  “Ambassador.” Inga inclined her head, her brown-eyed sister hovering slightly behind her. “We have not been introduced. I hope it fits within your cultural values for us to introduce ourselves. Among women here, we tend to be less formal.”

  Though she didn’t phrase her words as a question, the tone of her voice made them into one. I figured Sunniva and Runa had managed to pass the news of my verified femaleness during one of their errands for supplies, but Inga seemed to be allowing me the benefit of the doubt behavior-wise. Interesting. I could see why Dafne found paying attention to language and words enlightening. But how would she handle this—was less formal good or bad?

  Eh, back to being myself.

  “Less formal is fine with me, Your Imperial Highnesses,” I replied, “though what I consider to be informal could well be perceived as impertinence.”

  Inga’s lips twitched into a wry smile. “Ah, but women cannot be insulted, can they?”

  Sarcasm was the last thing I’d expected from the Imperial Princess. “So I’ve recently been informed,” I replied, sharing the head-shaking moment. I could like this woman.

&
nbsp; “Leave us,” she called out, and all the serving ladies slipped out of the room like water disappearing down the drain.

  Once the door shut, both Inga and her sister visibly relaxed, giving me genuine smiles. “I am Inga, and this is my sister Helva. We generally dispense with titles when in private.”

  Again the implied question in her tone. “Please call me Jepp, then.”

  Helva’s smile broadened and she stepped forward to take my hands, squeezing them almost painfully tight. “Jepp, I greet you as one woman to another. Tell me, if you will—have you news of our baby brother, Harlan?”

  I must have looked shocked, because Inga laid a hand on my shoulder. “Please don’t think ill of our impatience. It has been many years since we’ve heard news of him and longer since we’ve spoken with him. Rumors had traveled to us that he had taken his mercenaries to a place called the Twelve Kingdoms, along with other, more dire possibilities. Forgive our driving straight to the core of our concern, but—”

  “But have mercy on our hearts and don’t keep us in suspense,” Helva cut in. “It’s so rare for us to access information from a reliable source. Do you know of him and if Jenna is with him?”

  Talking to the Imperial Princesses had a rhythm similar as with Sunniva and Runa, so much so that it was tempting to tease them about it. But I wouldn’t indulge that amusement; they both seemed so urgently distressed. Besides, they might not take it well.

  “Harlan is fine. He’s . . . a friend.” That was fair enough. I doubted Harlan would argue the point, though we were more loose acquaintances than anything. “Who is Jenna, though? I don’t know anyone of that name.”

  The relieved smiles that had brightened at my news crashed at that last, and they exchanged long, worried looks, the familial similarity to Sunniva and Runa even more pronounced.

  “Would you care to sit? I’m happy to tell you what I do know.” I gestured to the chairs by the fire, trying to channel what little ladylike social behavior I’d observed from Queen Amelia. Ursula would usually just point to a chair. Belatedly I recalled the forbidden mjed on the table, but it was too late to hide it.