Cold Iron (Masters & Mages)

by Miles Cameron

  ‘Because that would make a mess,’ the refugee said.

  ‘Exactly.’

  The thin man smiled. ‘Well, you made me laugh.’

  Aranthur ran down the stairs and across the street to where Kallinikos lived, and begged the loan of Chiraz, his excellent butler.

  ‘I need a companion for my … friend,’ he said.

  Chiraz bowed. ‘I am often called on for such roles.’

  Kallinikos laughed aloud. ‘He’s hoping she’s beautiful.’

  ‘He is a Safian and a thuryx addict and I’m afraid he’ll injure himself.’ Aranthur bowed to Chiraz.

  Chiraz gave a very small smile. ‘Ah. I had rather hoped for Myr Tarkas.’

  But the butler’s face took on a more human aspect. He packed a small leather case and left.

  ‘His brother was a thuryx addict,’ Kallinikos said. ‘You came to the right house.’

  Aranthur nodded. ‘I thought you’d said that,’ he admitted with a sigh of relief.

  The two men walked to the Academy together.

  ‘You look better,’ Aranthur said, finally.

  It was true; his friend looked cheerful and almost relaxed.

  ‘I’ve made a decision.’ Kallinikos smiled. ‘You may have to loan me money and a butler eventually, but I’m … Let’s say I’m changing direction.’

  ‘Loan you money?’ Aranthur asked.

  ‘We’ll see. Congratulations on your First in Advanced, by the way. I did rather well myself.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘If all else were as usual, my father would be ridiculously proud.’

  ‘I got a first in Advanced Enhancement?’ Aranthur asked.

  ‘Don’t get all proud. I got one too,’ Kallinikos laughed.

  Aranthur had a long day. He worked on translation and on his new occulta, his spell, which he was almost ready to deploy. As soon as the Master of Arts released him, he went and worked on leather. Then, as the light was fading, he took his mare for a ride north of the City on the high ground. After currying her, he went and drilled under Syr Sapu until his wrist and arm were almost stiff from fatigue – arming sword and montante.

  He was about to leave when he saw Kallinikos.

  ‘Nothing to worry about,’ the young noble said. ‘Chiraz has your man in hand.’

  He bowed, making light of it, but he looked pale, and agitated. He opened his mouth; Aranthur was sure he was trying to say something important.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Aranthur asked.

  Kallinikos clasped his hand. ‘After class.’

  Sapu invited him to a bout and he accepted. The Voltain excused himself to see to another student first, and Aranthur sat down with a dozen young men and a couple of older women. The women had just been fighting, and each had wounded the other lightly, and they were laughing together. The Master was talking to them, clearly well pleased.

  ‘It’s daft, letting women fight,’ a man behind Aranthur said. ‘They’re no good at it, and they waste the Master’s time.’

  ‘They only come to pick up men,’ said another.

  ‘The same might be said of you, Djinar,’ another young man quipped.

  Everyone laughed, except Djinar, whose face grew red.

  ‘When the duke goes back to his own, he’ll change things,’ Djinar said, a little too loudly. The young man was wearing the full, resplendent red and gold and black of the Lions. ‘What are you looking at, syr?’ he asked Aranthur.

  Aranthur smiled. ‘I’m not sure.’

  He was proud of the answer; it was steady, and someone laughed, anyway.

  Sapu came back. ‘Are you ready, Timos?’

  Aranthur rose and bowed.

  The other young man nodded to Sapu.

  ‘Sapu, you are from Volta. Won’t the duke’s restoration go a long way to—’

  ‘I’m no friend of your duke, Syr Djinar,’ Sapu said curtly. ‘Excuse me.’

  He led Aranthur out onto the floor and they saluted. Aranthur used the new, elaborate salute that was a symbol of the school, and then settled into a garde – his new favourite – with his left leg forward and his light sword held point down, covering the leg.

  They were using bated sharps, and Sapu thrust immediately. Aranthur covered, a rising parry, and tried for Sapu’s hand, but the Voltain was far too fast, too canny, and his sword was already back. Aranthur played for it, following it. Sapu deceived him and planted his blunt tip hard on Aranthur’s sword arm bicep.

  ‘Ouch,’ Aranthur said, saluting.

  Several young men jeered.

  ‘Go fight with women,’ Djinar called.

  ‘Ignore them,’ Sapu said. ‘But that was foolish.’

  Aranthur vowed to be more cautious, and the second time the blades did not cross, as both fighters kept their blades off the centre line and circled. To Aranthur’s mortification, Sapu circled, deceived him on distance and slashed his wrist with a fast cut that Aranthur failed to parry – a simple attack.

  The young men jeered again.

  The sharp blade had cut Aranthur’s glove but not his wrist, so exact was the Voltain’s control.

  ‘You are thinking too much,’ Sapu said.

  Aranthur tried not to think, although the cost of the ruined glove would irk him all week. He threw feints, and circled, and when Sapu pressed he backed. He kept his parries small and simple.

  He risked a heavy cut, rising from a low garde that forced Sapu to make a fully developed parry. The blades bit into each other. Sapu had not backed with his parry, and both men went for holds. The blades crossed and locked. Each men had the other’s sword arm, and Aranthur allowed himself to be pulled forward a step, rotated his hips and threw Sapu to the floor. The Voltain rolled, coming to his feet fluidly, his sword still in his hand. He thrust, and Aranthur parried from the middle to the outside and countered with a light cut to Sapu’s upper arm …

  And hit.

  He immediately stepped back into garde. There was a faint red line on Sapu’s bicep.

  The little crowd of young men was silent.

  Sapu smiled. ‘Hah, I deserved that. So proud of rolling out of your throw!’ He wiped a practised thumb along the cut, licked the blood, and flicked his blade in a salute. ‘Where was that nice counter-cut all the other times?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Aranthur was flushed with excitement.

  He was eager to go, to get home, but Sapu kept him after class, drilling him on a particular way of delivering a neat counter-parry – a circular motion that required perfect timing.

  ‘This sets you up for that counter-cut,’ Sapu said. ‘Learn the two together and you will have a powerful strike.’

  ‘I understand,’ Aranthur said.

  ‘The timing is different for every opponent. Never try this on a novice. Their movements are so clumsy and so are their perceptions … All your finesse will be wasted.’

  ‘I am a novice,’ Aranthur joked, rubbing his forearm where Sapu had hit it so easily.

  ‘Mmm,’ Master Sparthos came by. He’d been working with Syr Kallinikos, and Aranthur hadn’t seen him stop to watch. ‘Is he ready to test?’

  Sapu nodded. ‘Barely. But yes.’

  Sparthos nodded. ‘Right now?’

  ‘Yes, Master,’ Sapu said formally.

  Sparthos nodded. ‘Good.’ He smiled a very thin smile at Aranthur. ‘Three weeks, Draxday, you will be tested on your knowledge of the arming sword.’

  ‘He’s really better with montante,’ Sapu said.

  Sparthos smiled. ‘I know. Arming sword. Three weeks.’

  Aranthur was tempted to shout that he had other things to do, thousands of them, but something told him that would be a mistake.

  ‘Yes, Master,’ he said.

  The day still wasn’t over. Kallinikos waited for him in the changing room.

  ‘I need a favour,’ the young man said. His body language suggested it was more you owe me.

  Aranthur shrugged. ‘At your service.’

  Kallinikos played with his laces for a moment.
‘I have been challenged,’ he said.

  Aranthur paused. ‘What?’

  ‘To a duel. A legal duel.’ Kallinikos looked desperate, but resolved, now that Aranthur looked closely. ‘Maybe not so legal,’ he went on.

  Duelling was a very carefully regulated matter in the City.

  ‘Someone challenged you?’ Aranthur asked.

  Kallinikos had recovered his composure.

  ‘Sure.’ He shrugged. ‘It is a private matter. I need a second. Would you be my second?’

  Aranthur considered it for a moment. ‘Fighting?’

  ‘Probably,’ Kallinikos said.

  Aranthur didn’t bother to think. ‘Of course.’

  His rich, aristocratic acquaintance suddenly grinned and embraced him.

  ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘I needed to hear that.’

  ‘When?’ Aranthur asked.

  ‘Tomorrow, Square of the Water Clock, sunrise.’ Kallinikos was shaking. ‘Damme, I’m sorry. I feel … like a coward.’

  Aranthur shook his head. ‘Don’t. When I fought my duel …’

  He paused, because his friend was looking at him as if he’d just said when I had two heads.

  ‘You fought a duel? Not the brawl we were in at the Temple?’

  ‘What?’ Syr Sapu said, pushing through the bead curtain. ‘You are fighting?’

  Kallinikos looked away. ‘I wasn’t going to let the Master know.’

  Sapu nodded. ‘Nor will he know from me, but he always knows. And as a professional, I’m forbidden to duel any but my own kind. But I can still show you something. You want to wound your man or kill him?’

  ‘Kill him,’ Kallinikos said.

  Sapu raised an eyebrow. ‘You know the implications? I speak not of morality but strictly legally.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kallinkos said. ‘I’m afraid I have little choice.’

  Sapu frowned. ‘Very well.’ He winked at Aranthur. ‘For you, I have no worries. You will likely have a foot of reach and muscles. Strike hard repeatedly until your opponent is terrified.’

  ‘And throw him,’ Aranthur said.

  ‘Exactly! Damme, you do pay attention, Timos. Go home. I’ll take care of Syr Kallinikos.’ He winked, and took the other man by the arm. ‘Come. One hour, and I’ll make you a killer.’

  Aranthur arrived home having not thought at all about his guest for an hour, at least until he got most of the way up the steps. Then he heard a creak from the floor, imagined for a moment it might be Dahlia, and then remembered. He pushed the door open as a rush of musical notes came to greet him.

  Tiy Drako stood at the darkened window. He had his tamboura in his hands, and his head was bent over the instrument. He was playing a form of music that the Arnauts called ‘Betika’.

  Sasan sat in the reading chair. He was clean and shaven. He was terribly thin – too thin, like a wraith or a corpse. Clothes made it worse; he’d been better off naked. But he had an instrument across his lap – an oud. And he was playing softly, the heavier notes of the oud balancing the rapid flow of the tamboura.

  Aranthur was exhausted and he had to fight in the morning.

  ‘Do you two know each other?’ he asked, pettishly.

  Drako frowned. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But I brought him an oud.’

  ‘No,’ Sasan said. ‘It is very odd to be so clean, don’t you think? How long will it take me to build up a good layer of filth?’ He smiled. ‘No one will give a clean addict an obol.’ He ran his fingers through his beard. ‘On the other hand, my beard is longer. Is there some lesson there?’

  ‘I’ve been here long enough to learn that he speaks Safiri,’ Drako said. ‘Aranthur, you really are some sort of miracle worker. Or Dama Tyche follows you around like a strumpet following a customer who hasn’t paid.’

  ‘You two sat here for an hour and didn’t talk?’ Aranthur asked.

  The butler, Chiraz, emerged from behind what had been Daud’s curtain.

  ‘They have been perfectly polite, and Syr Sasan needed music. I took the liberty of sending Syr Drako for an instrument.’ He bowed.

  ‘Thanks so much!’ Aranthur said.

  Chiraz bowed, the perfect servant. ‘I am always at your service, Syr Timos.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘I assume that my master is home?’

  ‘Just home, Chiraz. He’s in a bit of a mood.’

  The butler walked off down the steps with his usual dignity.

  ‘You played for an hour?’ Aranthur asked Drako.

  ‘Yes.’

  Aranthur blew air out of his cheeks in exasperation.

  ‘Really, I need to go to bed.’

  ‘I’m here for Dahlia,’ Drako said. ‘This isn’t about the other business. Well … a little bit that. This is personal.’

  Aranthur rolled his eyes. ‘I thought … Never mind.’ He paused.

  ‘Just pretend I’m not here,’ Sasan said. ‘I’d like a beet, please.’

  ‘She … misses you, and she won’t admit it,’ Drako said.

  Aranthur shook his head. ‘She can say so herself.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Sasan. ‘No one ever can.’

  The other two men looked at him.

  He shrugged. ‘Fuck, whatever. But people don’t say they are sorry and they don’t admit they are wrong. Except in romances and songs. And in love? Pfft.’

  Drako nodded. ‘This is true,’ he admitted.

  Aranthur wondered why they were ganging up on him.

  ‘My message is delivered. She doesn’t even know I’m here – but I’m tired of her pining and hanging around.’ Drako shrugged. ‘Also, I need some of your time in the next few days.’

  ‘I have no time,’ Aranthur said. But as he said it, he considered that the sword he owned and the rent on his room had been paid by this man. ‘Very well, I will make time.’

  ‘Good.’ Drako looked at Sasan. ‘You really speak Safiri?’

  ‘Like a native,’ the man said bitterly.

  ‘When were you last there?’ Drako asked.

  ‘When the Disciples sacked my village and killed my wife and my father,’ Sasan said. ‘When was that exactly?’ He blinked. ‘I’ve been working hard to kill that knowledge off, so fuck yourself.’

  ‘I need to go to bed,’ Aranthur said into the silence.

  ‘No,’ Drako said.

  ‘I’m fighting a duel in the morning.’

  Sasan turned and looked at him. It was a completely different look from any other he’d seen from the man, except when he drew himself up and spoke to the beet seller.

  ‘I forbid it,’ Drako said.

  Aranthur sighed. ‘I’ve promised. And who are you to forbid me, anyway?’

  ‘And I thought I was crazy,’ Sasan said.

  Drako folded his arms. ‘You know what, Timos? There’s a lot going on out there in the City. And the world. Your new friend here is the very flotsam of a tidal wave sweeping the archipelago, and you want to go fight a duel. Over what? A girl?’

  Aranthur shrugged. ‘No idea.’

  Drako rolled his eyes. ‘Sunlight, and my father thinks I’m an idiot. You are going to fight, and possibly die, and you don’t even know why?’

  Aranthur smiled. ‘I agree that put that way, it does sound stupid. But I’m doing it for a friend. He asked me. I owe him.’

  Sasan smiled. ‘I like this. It sounds like home.’

  It was the second real smile the man had made, and it made him look younger.

  Drako narrowed his eyes. ‘Fine. If you live, come and see me.’

  He was very angry, and he slammed the door on his way out.

  Aranthur found that he didn’t care. He lay down, and tried to go to sleep, but it was a long time coming. He was working through Safiri verbs in the historical past tense when sleep finally overtook his fears and threw him down.

  In the morning, Sasan was again with Chiraz, both of them playing ouds, and Aranthur was standing in the Square of the Water Clock in his best doublet and hose over his best shirt. He doubted everything, including his clo
thes. Clothes he’d won in a duel. He had spent a quarter of an hour trying to decide which sword to wear. Now he felt like a fake; he was pretending to be a gentleman, an aristocrat, a duellist. In fact, he was an Arnaut Student and he assumed everyone could tell. He was tempted to run home and put on baggy trousers and a vest like his uncle used to wear.

  He was beginning to feel even more like a fool because he was waiting alone, with a sword, by a canal in a beautiful neighbourhood. He expected to be arrested. A man kept watching him from a doorway, and Aranthur spat in the canal and cursed quietly in Safiri, which had become his language of cursing.

  A young woman in a beautiful short silk gown came by with her shoes on her shoulder. She crossed the street to avoid him.

  Aranthur shook his head and considered walking home, or at least retreating two canals to a neighbourhood more in keeping with his doublet. He turned away from the water, and there was Kallinikos hurrying along the canal with a small sword on his shoulder, like a farmer with an axe.

  ‘I’m late,’ he said.

  Aranthur shook his head. ‘No, we’re both early.’ His hands were shaking. He bit his lip.

  Kallinikos said, ‘I have a letter for my family. I just want to know … Fuck it. Thanks, Timos. You came through for me when my so-called friends walked. You really are a gentleman, unlike some. I have learned a lot from you.’ He frowned. ‘Even Chiraz likes you.’

  Aranthur looked across the canal, where a man in dark clothing was addressing three big men.

  ‘Why exactly are we doing this?’

  ‘Remember Salla? Her husband. That’s him …’ Kallinikos pointed. ‘The worst of it is that my father tried to patch it up. This is so fucking complicated, and I want out. But I want Salla. He hates her anyway.’

  ‘He’s an aristo?’ Aranthur asked.

  ‘Yes. Country house, but an old one, like mine. He’s a nasty piece of work, too.’ Kallinikos shrugged. ‘And I did sleep with his wife. I like her. Fuck him. If I kill him, maybe she’ll marry me.’

  Aranthur blushed. ‘Aploun. Sunrise,’ he said.

  Anything else he might have said was banished by the arrival of the much older man and his three large companions.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ Kallinikos said.

  ‘Kill them,’ the old man said. He pointed. ‘Both of them.’ His words were very clear across the canal. Aranthur saw him motion with a short stick.