Second thing of Britannia—there was her mother’s falcon blade. She’d left the falcon dagger in their quarters. Never was it for common wear.
Waiting his turn at guard, watchful as a leopard before heavy curtains of blue silk, Umar thumped the hilt of his sword against the stone of the door arch to the Blue Flower room. Kyrin dipped her head to Ali’s bodyguard, her mouth wry. The solid thunk of the hilt announced Kyrin and Alaina’s presence to the feasters within—and to their master, Ali Ben Aidon—murderer and merchant.
In turban and robe, with his midnight-blue sash of office about his waist, Umar held out his hand, his dark eyes demanding Alaina’s staff. Alaina set the weapon in his golden-skinned palm, free of her blue veil and serving robe for this brief moment.
Kyrin wrinkled her nose, her fingers brushing the plain dagger in her sash for comfort. Her master’s unacknowledged son could never quite wash off the smell of meat, rice, and saluki: scents of the kennels, of the savage beasts of his Hand.
Umar ran often with his salukis, teaching his hunters of men patience and endurance in the desert. Umar glanced at her, and remained expressionless. He had not glared at her since she tended mistress Shema in her last illness. So she feared his Hand less. Kyrin clenched her fingers. Had he forgiven her for her eye of evil intent which tipped the glowing brazier on Ali’s ship, for the burn scar across his sword hand?
No matter. Umar never spoke of it, and she had grown strong, ready for escape. The eye of evil that men thought she bore was in the beholder’s eyes alone.
She’d stolen every moment she could from serving Ali’s table the past three winters to learn the demanding ways of Subak. Tae Chisun, her husband in name, second father in fact, had taught her well his ancestral fighting art of the hands and feet. And under the tutelage of her master’s second bodyguard, Jachin, she knew one end of a sword from the other.
Umar had never sought to interfere, knowing Ali Ben Aidon wished her and Alaina’s skill to impress the caliph in Baghdad—and those the caliph favored. Such as the caliph’s wazir.
So it was dagger work this night. Kyrin frowned. She and Alaina would show the fighting art of the East to Ali’s guests at table—with the art of Subak they would entertain Sirius Abdasir, he who had once been guardsman to the caliph, now first wazir. Ali’s most honored guest professed a liking for close-in combat.
Kyrin felt for her blade again. The cool haft of the dagger in her sash did not have the balance of her bronze falcon. But Tae was right. The falcon blade drew men’s interest to its piercing amber gaze and beautiful strength. And her master must never discover the Damascus steel under the bronzed surface.
Umar grinned at her, a thin stretching of his mouth over white teeth. “Do not disillusion our wazir.”
Kyrin danced lightly from foot to foot, her blood picking up, breath quickening in the familiar rhythm, and inclined her head.
The moment had come for their training to bear fruit. The trick was not to betray Tae or her master. His guests would see cunning artistry, flamboyant performance—neither failure nor mastery of the warrior’s art. For none of them in the Blue Flower room could know how deep her skill in Subak had gone. Tae insisted the death touch was not for talk about the hearth, thought he promised to show her and Alaina the touch of death soon.
Men’s ignorance of her knowledge gave her advantage, for the dazzlement of jaded guests—and for other things. Kyrin smiled. Umar need not fear. They had practiced hard for this night.
Umar turned and pulled the curtains aside with a flourish, crying, “The slaves of the house of Ali Ben Aidon!”
Warm, incense-laden air rolled around Kyrin. She drew a breath. From the windows, air that hinted at winter frost touched her cheek. Tae did not linger near the marble hunter beneath them, his hair dark, with a pale streak above his ear, comfortingly familiar.
Instead, Arab guests in flowing thawbs and spotless kaffieyehs milled beyond a wood dais before her, clustered about tall pillars that marched up the sides of the room. The pillars flanked the feasting table, till the last pair reared behind Ali’s great empty chair at the far end, casting their shadows against the walls. Lamps flamed bright, fixed high on the pillars’ sides.
Tae was not anywhere, not among the shadows nor among the guests. Surely Ali had bid his hakeem, his most esteemed healer, and exiled warrior, to be present and witness the triumph of the house of Ben Aidon.
Nine of the wazir’s men in brilliant red thawbs, edged in black, stood beside the pillars. They guarded their resting master, nearly as still as the marble hunter, who reclined near the dais. So many men must be a habit from his guardsman’s days . . .
A yell of challenge on a hot breath blasted Kyrin’s ear. She leaped upward, and spun with an answering cry of fierce attack before her feet touched again. Guests glanced up, some sharply, some lazily, or with cunning. Date-brown to fig-black, their eyes watched her from under kaffiyeh and turban. Lamp light skittered over the men and merchants of the caliph’s court and the local souk, seating themselves on the rugs about the low dais and the feasting table, their animated, liquid Arabic flowing in anticipation.
Alaina grinned at Kyrin—she’d caught her out well and truly. Kyrin snorted. Of her master Ali’s ilk, the men were. He suffered no good company for long.
The men wondered, no doubt, if what Ali Ben Aidon boasted of his foreign women who wielded blades in the fighting art of the East was true. Could they kill a man? Would Ali’s female slaves please the wazir enough to go to the caliph’s court? She smiled grimly. They would learn. But she did not intend to go to court, or let Tae or Alaina near that pit of eels.
“It is time, sister!” In the harsher tongue of Britannia, Alaina’s voice was welcome. She leaped back, her hands guarding her face, her left foot leading, her green eyes alight.
Kyrin felt a catch in her throat. She lifted her chin and her smile bared her teeth as her spirit rose in answer. She and Alaina did not have greater strength than a man—but they could strike nerves the size of a needle’s head, deal crippling pain, and take the senses of the strongest—then kill at need.
Her mouth flattened. Though all her master’s guests would see was a dance of interweaving bodies mixed with the gleam of blade and the thud of weapons on flesh, executed in a moment, during the fall of a grain of sand—she and Alaina would teach them awe. Teach merchants, who in their grasping minds imagined coins tinkling into coffers. Kyrin’s lip curled.
She yelled again in fierce defiance, wordless judgment. Jackals, hyenas, they preyed on the foolish, the weak, the needy—and the unknowing. As did her master, Ali Ben Aidon. They should know better.
Alaina cried low, “Seajok!” And kicked for Kyrin’s head.
Kyrin slipped forward and to the side, deflecting the blow, and hit Alaina’s shoulder with an open palm. She thumped Kyrin’s chest armor with another kick. Kyrin absorbed the blow with a grunt.
They circled across the stone floor toward the dais, an occasional yell focusing a strike. Kyrin sought an opening while Alaina pressed her back, down the aisle between the guests, toward the dais. Kyrin’s heel touched polished wood. She sprang up and back and used her momentum to drive her other foot around in a hard kick. The top of her foot thunked into Alaina’s side. Her sister reeled back.
Kyrin grinned. Too soon. Alaina turned and caught the staff Umar threw to her from the doorway. Kyrin attacked from the high ground of the dais edge, her dagger darting down. The blade ‘tinged’ on the staff’s iron band as Alaina brought her weapon around, and the dagger vibrated in Kyrin’s hand. She flowed around Alaina’s counter, blade arm darting for her side.
Ali would punish her with a day of fieldwork if she did not please. Not that she minded fieldwork. She hated working under Umar’s fault-finding eye.
Alaina thrust for Kyrin’s stomach then whirled her staff toward Kyrin’s legs. Kyrin sucked in her middle and jumped over
the blurring wood, slashing at Alaina’s near hand with her dagger. Her sister evaded, jerked her staff back, and flipped the opposite end at Kyrin’s head. Kyrin leaned away—the tip whirred past her nose—and Alaina was open.
Kyrin leapt for her throat, flashing hand and blade ready. Her palm lost most of its power against Alaina’s rising arm, but her knee driving up beneath found Alaina’s stomach.
Her sister crumpled, her mouth open for air, and almost fell. She dropped her staff, which rolled across the dais in staccato thunder. Zoltan darted from among Ali’s watching slaves to pull the entangling weapon free. The edges of Kyrin’s mouth lifted. No chance of Alaina gaining it. Blade reversed, spine out, she drove her dagger toward her sister’s neck.
With a high yell, Alaina surged in under her arm, shouldering upward. Her fingers dug behind Kyrin’s knee, seeking her balance. Kyrin let her have the leg, dropped to her back, tucked a foot in Alaina’s stomach, and pulled. Her sister flew over her head.
Alaina rolled and spun to her feet, but Kyrin had used her pull to follow her up. She smiled triumph.
Alaina drew her dagger, a small frown of focus on her heart-shaped face.
Steel glittered and shrieked as they swung apart and together, blades flashing low and quick. Resilient leather body armor strained against leather armor, inner strips of cane bending with the force of their striving bodies. Their feet pounded a small circle as they leaned against each other, searching for advantage or disadvantage of balance. Kyrin grunted, broke free. Sweat trickled down her face. She brushed it aside. Alaina breathed hard.
The guests murmured. The smell of sweat masked sandalwood. No moment to rest.
In again, feint and fumble with a purpose—to catch and lock Alaina’s wrist, take her blade, slam her to the wood. Then a courteous bow and a dagger returned to her, the dance to begin again.
Attack and counter-attack. Purposeful mistakes, where first she and then Alaina came away with a blade after a giving a blow that would maim or kill if it were delivered with the edge, at speed.
Ali’s cross-legged guests leaned forward on their rugs, as breathless as the marble hunter. Kyrin’s grip on her dagger hurt her fingers, and her stomach twisted. They did not know that in Tae’s Land of the Morning Calm a child could do so well. This display was for their enjoyment—and to mislead and disguise skill. A true fight lasted a moment—and then one life would be left. But men such as they took no thought for that; only for the dance, the uncertainty, the lingering moment before the mock kill.
Back to back, Kyrin and Alaina stopped to bow to their master’s guests. Then abruptly they spun into a second display, a series of stylized fighting forms: jumping kicks as high as a man’s head and dagger attacks against the air, their sweeping movements weaving a mesmerizing pattern across the dais.
Was her master pleased? Right of the dais and the hunter, Ali Ben Aidon sat on a low throne of cushions, out of the window’s chill draft, his pale, wide lips pursed in approval. He lifted the end of a water-pipe to his mouth and drew a rumbling burble through his nargeela.
To Ali’s left, the wazir reclined on an elbow, one languid arm across his knee, the clean nails meticulously pared on that broad hand that commanded so many. Sirius Abdasir’s face bore the seal of his Greek mother and Arab father, rounded features blent with a high brow in a rather long face. His brown eyes were as light as his golden skin, his generous mouth gifting one and all with warm approval. That warmth could turn arrogant and cold in a moment. Kyrin swallowed, rolled her enemy of air to the floor, and spun back toward Alaina.
Only a brave man dared Sirius Abdasir’s displeasure. And took his head in his hands when he did—and the sword drank his blood—or it did not. There was too much thought in Sirius Abdasir’s slight frown as he watched them, stroking his chin. What did the wazir seek?
His finger and thumb drew down his beardless chin again—a gesture she remembered from a day of ash and blood. Kyrin pressed her lips together. That day was not this—and it would never be.
In a swift lunge, almost without looking, she closed with Alaina and tapped the base of her sister’s throat with darting fingers. They spun apart and together. Another deft turn, and Alaina’s blade lay against Kyrin’s skin.
She shivered at the cold touch on the scar in the hollow of her throat, and clashed her dagger against Alaina’s in high salute then lowered her blade. Alaina reversed her dagger hand and brushed Kyrin’s neck in promise, with a mocking smile for the sake of their watchers, a smile that belied her white fingers on the hilt.
The danger was known.
Kyrin sheathed her dagger and breathed deep, resisting the urge to gulp air. She bowed to Ali’s guests around the dais and the long feast table. The guests turned to each other, their tongues wagging with astonishment, while Kyrin held a second bow for a long moment before Ali and the wazir in his scarlet thawb. Alaina was a silent, comforting shadow beside her.
“Oh, well done, O my host! Most excellent!” Sirius Abdasir, first wazir to the caliph, inclined his head to Ali. His head erect, his glance passed over Kyrin with a sudden tightness of the mouth, his nose flaring with indrawn breath, intent as saluki casting for a scent. If he had hackles they would be raised.
What did he wish now? Kyrin repressed her inner scorn. Doubtless such a warrior as Sirius Abdasir was disappointed that there was no taking of a life. As when he gave his slave, Seliam, to her blade. But that did not end as either of them thought.
A fig for what he thought. Ali was pleased well enough. The frankincense-laden air stung Kyrin’s nose. Seven moments in—hold her breath for seven—and seven counts out. This night she was wet with sweat—not red blood. The wazir was not her master. She might always fail Sirius Abdasir in that, the taking of a life.
After her fight with Seliam, the wazir, then the caliph’s guardsman, had been curious about her falcon dagger. He had asked to see it, and loosened it in its sheath enough to note the bronze blade—and then tossed the falcon dagger back to her. Kyrin’s breath fled gently thorugh her nose and she forced her shoulders down.
Sirius’s wry mouth flattened with the faintest smile. Kyrin could not stop her shiver. It was said he wove webs at court, and there had been whispers about the sudden end of the old wazir. If Sirius Abdasir wove a web about her and Alaina . . . Tae was not here.
37
Lance and Quill Peek 2
The Hand
“Tae!” Alaina bolted upright in her blanket, grasping for her staff, and rolled to her feet. She held the weapon across her chest, blinking. Her nose stung with frost. Cold first light bared dark hills beyond a far line of dunes. Sharp barks echoed, high and far. The dry and pungent smell of seared herbage and sand was unbroken.
The men around her were silent, still. Tae held the noses of the two nearest horses, and Faisal restrained his stallion and her mare. Faisal lifted his head in the old gesture. The Twilket prince’s nostrils flared as a wolf’s, his eyes dark in his lean face. He held his lance ready, his other hand on a stick he rested across his beast’s withers. An unusual camel stick, heavy and thick.
Tae nudged dry camel dung into the ashy remains of the night fire at his feet. A clear tongue of flame rose. Glancing at Alaina over the smokeless blaze he said, “Cicero hunts.” Wrinkles of a silent laugh deepened his almond-shaped eyes. No man who saw the white hair about his ear from an old wound, stark against his straight-cropped black, and met his steady brown gaze would make the mistake that lack of height made him prey.
Alaina licked her lips and steadied her breathing. She kept her gaze from Faisal Ben Salin. A prince of the Twilkets must not see her fear. It was only Cicero.
The saluki barked again, fainter. Beside Tae, young Youbib of the Aneza grinned, a flash of teeth against dark skin under his turban, and Alaina’s tight grip on her staff relaxed.
Kentar nodded, his wrinkled face creasing within the frame of his white kaffi
yeh, and muttered to Youbib, “It is not the wazir’s Hand. Umar and his pack do not come for us.”
Alaina clamped her jaw on the laugh she could not stop if she once let it go, and bent to roll up her bed. Her eyes were as gritty as if they had slept bare moments. Her heart yet thundered.
Umar’s Hand would not be merciful. She shivered. Brought down by saluki teeth and claws, then beaten with sticks, sewn in a raw hide—wounded, left in the sun to the delight of ants, wasps, and dung beetles—unable to move while they crawled and bit and gnawed . . . the wazir’s swift blade through the neck might be a gift. She would give Cicero a bit of her meat at the night fire for not being Umar’s Hand—his pack of salukis and the wazir’s men—who hunted them.
She shifted her rolled blanket under her arm and lifted her eyes to the sky. Where was Truthseeker? The falcon could be anywhere, and they must leave.
§
Faisal lifted his head and gave a piercing whistle. Kentar jerked his blade a fraction from his sheath in reflex—then slid it home with a pointed glare. Faisal shrugged, grinned, and lifted his arm toward the brightening chill blue sky. With an answering scream, Truthseeker thumped onto his wrist, driving his arm toward earth. He kept her up with an effort, biting back a grimace. He could not teach her to land as if alighting at her eyrie. His arm was no rabbit.
Truthseeker cocked her head and uttered a softer cry. Faisal stroked the falcon’s head and down her back. She arched her neck, straightening with a ruffle of feathers and a proud wag of her tail. “Ahh my wise one, tell me, does Cicero chase a rabbit or a reem?”
She shifted her taloned feet toward his shoulder and bobbed her head, her piercing amber gaze on Alaina. Alaina stared back, wide-eyed as the reem, the gazelle. She clutched her blanket, her knuckles white. Faisal’s brow wrinkled and he tilted his head toward the falcon.
“It is only Kyrin’s Truthseeker. Swift and deadly, she is a queen among the noble ones. Since the peace, she has come into her glory, a true shaheen. Here”—he held out the peregrine—“you hunt her this day.”
Falcon Heart: Chronicle I an epic young adult fantasy series set in medieval times Page 38