Cold Iron (Masters & Mages)

by Miles Cameron

  Aranthur had the sense he was being toyed with, but he was focusing on his sword. She saluted without flourish, a mere twitch of her fingers, and settled into a high stance. Her legs were long, her torso short, and she seemed to be standing erect. Her shoes had heels, which made her even taller.

  He saluted.

  The moment his sword’s point settled into a garde, she came at him. She cut at his head, and he covered. She cut from high to low, at his advanced leg, and he parried but she was so fast he couldn’t withdraw his leg. When she went for a third attack, he didn’t retreat and their swords crossed almost at the hilts as she thrust, but she was as fast as a tiger, and his attempt to take her blade came to nothing. He had it for a moment, but not enough to keep it. Still, he drove forward, attacking as she whipped the blade away and forcing her to make a hurried parry. He was too slow to force her blade off the parry and she cut at his bicep.

  He made a high parry with his sword pointing almost straight in the air. He didn’t have a thought in his head. He cut straight at her head and she made the same cover with which he’d started the phrase: a high garde.

  She laughed. ‘Very pretty,’ she said. ‘You must fence with Vladith.’

  She thrust. He never met her blade all through an interminable double envelopment that ended with her sword bent almost double against his hip.

  He was sweating hard. She didn’t seem to have perspired at all.

  He tried a hard blow from a high garde, the cut he’d planned to use in the duel at the Inn of Fosse. She covered it with a rolling action of her wrist that he didn’t even know and her blade hit him hard enough in the head that he smelled blood.

  He was woozy, and she hit him with an effortless cut to his left bicep that he missed altogether. He raised his hand. She stepped forward.

  ‘I don’t think I’m anything like an opponent for you,’ he said.

  ‘On the contrary,’ she said, ‘I like you very much, and I’ll tell you why in two more hits. Come!’

  He saluted, gritted his teeth and determined to see how long he could survive. He cut carefully at her wrist and hands, and otherwise parried and retreated. On their third engagement, she deceived his blade, moving her sword under his in a motion so small that it might have fitted inside a lady’s ring, and put a light thrust into the back of his sword hand. People applauded.

  ‘Oh, well struck,’ he said, filled with admiration. A thrust to the hand was one of the most difficult targets.

  Now the woman was flushed, almost red in the face, and her hair was plastered to her forehead.

  Aranthur thought, after she’d scored seven times in a row, that in fact he was marginally faster. He didn’t dare leave his blade in the middle, for fear she’d deceive him, which she did every time. But he didn’t know how to counter her deception, so he took his blade away, and left it out behind him like a tail. No one was watching them. Everyone was watching two women fight with long swords.

  They circled. Aranthur’s sword pointed almost straight out behind him, invisible to his opponent. She changed gardes twice. He circled, keeping out of her range, which he now knew.

  He could tell she was suddenly bored. Her stance became less alive, and she leant, and finally, she threw a cut, high to low, from the very edge of her distance.

  He cut up, from low to high, into hers. He was stronger; his sword moved hers a fraction and his blade cut along her arm.

  She paused, and then saluted, and then rubbed her arm.

  ‘A little too hard, Syr Aranthur.’

  He hastened to apologise.

  She shrugged. ‘No – no damage done.’ She leant forward and kissed him on the lips; he flushed with surprise. ‘That was fun. You owe me a drink, at least.’

  They walked together to the bar, where two thick oak boards were laid across a pair of old casks.

  ‘Dark ale,’ Alis said.

  ‘The same,’ Aranthur said.

  He didn’t see Dahlia; Drako was talking to the tall man who’d pinched him.

  A pair of dark ales cost him one silver cross and two bronze obols, wiping out his fortunes in an instant. He tried not to writhe.

  Alis watched him with obvious amusement.

  ‘Cheers,’ she said, raising her chipped mug of ale.

  He toasted her. ‘To your deadly lunge.’

  ‘My deadly lunge has nothing to do with it. You don’t know how to deal with a feint.’

  Aranthur nodded. ‘I’ve only been fighting for half a year.’

  She nodded. ‘I gathered,’ she answered.

  He’d rather hoped she would add something about his natural talent.

  ‘I enjoyed crossing blades with you because you get hit with good grace and you learn from experience,’ she said, her face by his ear. ‘Try not to lose those talents, and you’ll be a good blade.’

  She wasn’t even looking at him. She was looking around.

  ‘What do you do?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What do you do?’ he asked again. ‘I told you I was a Student.’

  She smiled. It was a wolfish smile. ‘Oh, that.’

  Dahlia appeared as if by magic and put a very warm hand on his shoulder.

  ‘You are bleeding, and Drako says I ruined your shirt,’ she said.

  ‘I think the blood is my fault,’ Alis said. ‘He’s a good sport.’

  Aranthur saw the moment when the older woman’s eyes locked with a richly dressed older man whose court clothes were out of place on the fighting floor. He could tell, immediately, that they were not friends.

  Dahlia bowed. ‘But, Majesty, I—’

  Alis nodded. ‘Of course. Excuse me.’ She nodded to Aranthur and raised her cup. ‘Save me a fight the next time you come.’

  She walked off into the crowd, which was far denser than it had been when he arrived.

  ‘Come,’ Dahlia said with a tug at his shoulder. ‘I’ll clean that cut.’

  She took his hand and pulled him through the crowd; they went up the steps to the balcony. Aranthur brushed past Drako, who gave him a smile. He was in an argument with the richly dressed man.

  ‘I’m for hoping that it’s not war,’ said a short, wide man with a long beard. ‘The Empire doesn’t need—’

  ‘Of course it’s war. You and your precious mistress are simply afraid to face a real war. “The General” who never fights.’

  ‘War?’ Drako said. ‘You’re exaggerating, General Roaris—’

  ‘War is the only thing that’ll save farm prices,’ a woman said.

  ‘Masr’s been arming for forty years …’ said a tall man with a rich, red under-doublet of embroidered silk.

  ‘Atti—’

  ‘Masr is our natural enemy—

  Drako shrugged, all his feral combativeness once again hidden under an air of foppish languor.

  ‘If there’s two words I can’t imagine together,’ he said, ‘they are natural and enemy.’

  ‘Oh, empty-headed Drako will now lecture us on philosophy,’ said the man who seemed to want war with Masr.

  ‘My dear,’ Drako all but lisped. ‘Natural is whatever a fella is used to, and enemy is whatever a fella don’t like, eh?’

  Aranthur was going up the steps when he realised, in a cascade of discovery, that he knew the short, wide man with the long beard; he had been the guard at Lonika, when he was going home for First Sun. And the woman he’d just fenced with was the one who’d passed him through the gate.

  General, someone had called her. Majesty.

  Dahlia’s hand tightened and she pulled him up the last of the steps. The crowd was even denser there, and a man slapped his back, and several men and women congratulated Dahlia. Up here were observers, people in magnificent clothes: silk and Eastern pashmina wool and brocade and velvet in every direction; a woman in shoes that must have taken a hundred hours to make; a man in boots with toes so pointy that he had gold chains from the points of his shoes up to his garters, which were embroidered with minute mottos. Anothe
r man was just removing his cloak in a swirl of fur. Aranthur, slick with sweat, pressed against a woman whose entire gown appeared to be lined in squirrel fur and covered in an Eastern brocade, high-necked and yet split so far down that Aranthur couldn’t help but look back. She blinked.

  ‘No, no, we need to get through,’ Dahlia said, very loudly.

  But they were hemmed in. The press was as close as a festival crowd at home. There were hundreds of people on the upper floors, trying to watch the fighting below, and they represented a level of wealth that Aranthur didn’t even recognise. He had thought Syr Kallinikos wealthy, and he was, but right in front of him was a man wearing a dagger with a gold and ivory hilt worth more than his father’s farm.

  ‘You struck the General,’ a male voice said.

  Aranthur turned his head. He didn’t know the man, who inclined his head in a very civil manner.

  ‘Not many hit the General,’ he said.

  ‘Pah,’ said his partner.

  ‘A general who has never fought a battle,’ the woman said dismissively.

  Dahlia tugged him on. A woman with red hair smiled at him, a brilliant smile; she had a necklace of Zhouian pearls. She was stunning.

  ‘I think I’m hurt,’ she said. ‘Don’t you know me?’

  Aranthur tried to bow, but the press of flesh and clothing held him up. He was caught up in a billow of ’Asseen smoke from an unseen hookah, and his head swirled, and her perfume seemed to surround him, reach for him …

  ‘Iralia!’ he said. ‘I owe you a—’

  ‘Visit me!’ she called.

  She laughed, and the crowd moved.

  ‘… the Emperor …’ someone said, leaning close, as if to whisper in his ear.

  Suddenly Dahlia’s hand was gone and he was face to face with …

  ‘Syr Ansu,’ Aranthur said. It was the Zhouian prince.

  The prince bowed, hand on heart – a very different bow from Aranthur’s – and, as the first time, he bowed with his hand on his sword and his eyes on Aranthur the whole time. But then he broke into a grin that could not possibly be feigned.

  ‘I missed you, damn it!’ he said.

  He was dressed in a scarlet silk doublet and matching hose that were a patchwork of expensive cloth, all perfectly cut and painstakingly stitched together like a crazy quilt of riches. He wore his long Zhouian sword in a sash, and held it close to him, the way a local aristocrat might have held a parasol in summer or a walking stick.

  ‘I had no idea …’ he began.

  Aranthur felt his hand taken. A man tried to kiss Dahlia and she put an elbow into him and pulled. Aranthur had to glance back over his shoulder.

  ‘I’ll find you!’ Ansu shouted.

  Someone pinched Aranthur’s backside and he jumped.

  He stumbled after Dahlia. But in three more steps they were through the fringe of the press. A new fight was starting in the pit below them, and they were no longer the centre of attention.

  Dahlia smiled at him. It was a smile full of a sort of promise.

  ‘Well, well.’ She looked back. ‘I’m used to it. Did you get groped?’

  ‘I did, too.’ Aranthur smiled. ‘I tried not to enjoy it.’

  She gave him a lopsided smile. ‘Was that Aranthur Timos making a joke?’

  He shrugged. ‘They’re like …’

  Dahlia rolled her eyes. ‘They’re like vultures, even the ones who are my friends. As if by touching us, they are part of the fighting.’

  Aranthur leant forward, daring to put his face close to hers.

  ‘It was good fighting,’ he said.

  She smiled. ‘It does rather warm one up, though, doesn’t it?’

  Aranthur flushed. His heart beat as fast as it had fencing with the General, and he smiled and followed her. She walked along a narrow hall and out onto another balcony, this one overlooking another pit, which held no fighters, but only revellers. Nor was the crowd as well dressed – there were actual Students down there, and much less savoury types.

  But Dahlia went up, not down. She went up a short flight of steps, along a hall with doors as close as soldiers on parade, and she pushed one open. There was a washbasin, and water, obviously hot, as steam rose off it. But it was winter in the City, and the water had cooled. She cast, casually, without a talisman, and the water boiled.

  ‘Shirt off,’ she said. ‘Let’s see it.’

  Aranthur pulled his shirt over his head. He owned five, thanks to the dead man and his baggage, and he was somewhat ashamed to see how badly frayed this shirt was, now that he looked at it.

  The General’s thrust to his abdomen had punctured some skin and bled freely, and now that he was cooling, it hurt. Dahlia tossed him a cloth full of hot water and he washed off the blood. She lit a pair of candles in sconces with power, and then she carefully washed his various lacerations. When she was working on his back, he took courage and kissed her as she leant over him.

  It was one of the bravest things he’d ever done, but he was inspired – he was capable of anything.

  She kissed him enthusiastically, her tongue probing his mouth. Even in occasional encounters with the girls of home, Aranthur had never experienced a kiss like it.

  And then she pulled off her own shirt. He reached for her, and she pushed him away.

  ‘Later,’ she said. ‘Now do my back.’

  She leant back against him, and he was as conscientious as lust could make him, working on her smooth brown skin. He got the blood off the long lacerations she had under her left arm.

  ‘Damn Tiy Drako,’ she said. ‘He always hits me the same way.’

  She turned, and put her lips on his, and there was a long interval of pleasure. And then a very exciting moment where they attacked each other’s buttons and ties.

  ‘Babies?’ Aranthur mustered the discipline to ask, at a crucial moment.

  She was above him, naked, backlit by candlelight.

  She laughed. ‘Tirase took care of that, silly. What do they teach you Arnauts?’

  ‘Wake up,’ Dahlia Tarkas said.

  Aranthur looked up at her. She had two steaming mugs of quaveh and she was wearing his torn shirt.

  ‘Wake up, lover. I assume you have to be at the Magistera’s office this morning?’

  He smiled. It was still dark outside; their room had a window. He took the quaveh gratefully, drank some, and then ran an exploratory hand up her bare leg under the shirt. She set her cup down carefully.

  ‘Ah, that answers my next question,’ she said softly.

  Her body transfixed him, and he pulled the shirt off and gazed at her, all hard muscle and softness alternating. She grew bored of his gaze and turned him to more practical affections, and then she was looking out the window at the growing light.

  ‘Come,’ she said. ‘Time to go.’

  ‘My gown!’ he said.

  She winced. ‘You left it downstairs? Damme. You may never see it again. And I should find you a shirt.’ She kissed him. ‘I am your first?’ she asked, with a little hesitancy and a flip of her head.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Well. How nice.’ She leant over and kissed him.

  His gown, it proved, was still in a ball in a corner of the changing room. It was undamaged and no more frowsy than it had been before, although Dahlia wrinkled her nose at it.

  The two of them walked through the lightening streets. Dahlia wore a sword, and Aranthur was simply another Student in an old gown. She bought him a delicious pastry at a quaveh seller’s, and they parted at the gate inside the precinct. He tried not to notice that she spent her money on him, and he could not have afforded even the pastry.

  Aranthur was, in fact, early. He felt light-headed; it seemed like a year since he had been in the office, instead of a mere twelve hours. The dye-stains on his hands surprised him as being part of another experience entirely. But he sat and began practising his letters at the notary’s desk, and when the Magistera arrived, she smiled at him.

  ‘Now this is dedic
ation,’ she said.

  She unlocked her office with a wave of her hand, and he followed her in and gave her the cup of quaveh he’d kept warm with spellcraft.

  He went back to work. Twice she came and stood over him; the second time she laughed aloud. He was copying

  آیا من نیاز به حس شوخ طبعی دارم؟

  And she followed it with her finger.

  ‘The biter, bit,’ she said.

  He didn’t like how the Safiri letters spaced, and once he angrily cut a whole page of precious paper out of his copybook and threw it away.

  The Master of Arts took the page, uncreased it, and put it in a pile of scrap.

  ‘Paper is too valuable to waste,’ she said mildly. ‘May I assume you got very little sleep last night?’

  Aranthur considered lying, but there seemed no point.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he admitted.

  She shrugged. ‘Well, I hope it was delightful. No more displays of temper, please.’

  Aranthur copied until it was time to fetch food, working his way through the complex occulta of an arcane shield. Edvin gave him a silver cross, which saved him from penury, and he purchased food for the three of them. In the afternoon, Syr Eshtirhan came and worked with him on vocabulary, leaving him with a list of two hundred carefully copied out words to learn. As the next two days were a major Twelver religious holiday called the Feast of the Crafts, Aranthur accepted the brutal assignment with relative calm. He knew he was being pushed. He tried not to yawn.

  The Magistera banished him to the outer office for the last hour, as she had private meetings. Edvin cheerfully helped Aranthur copy his word list, which saved him an hour. They were both copying away when Dahlia, dressed in her doublet, appeared at the door. She placed a messenger’s tube on the notary’s desk.

  ‘It’s not immediate,’ she said with a grin.

  Edvin leant back. ‘I smell an excuse,’ he said.

  Outside in the central court, the great bell began to ring, one, two, three, four.

  ‘Thy servitude is at an end,’ Edvin said with a wink. ‘Perhaps Myr Tarkas will protect you on the way home.’

  Dahlia nodded, her smile both delightful and wicked.