Steelflower

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “Rest,” he said. “I shall keep watch. Sleep, Kaia’li.”

  It was a pun meaning a small, sharp, precious thing, like a decorated hairpin stilette. I had forgotten what it was to speak in G’mai, with the puns, the cadences and nuances, wordplay and poetry. I almost wasted breath telling him not to use my name for his play.

  Instead, I eased into an uneasy doze.

  Chapter 8

  A Seeker, Found

  Redfist was snoring when I woke, stiff and cold. I pushed myself halfway up, something small and hard in my left hand.

  I held it up, my fingers tangled with a thin chain.

  It was the necklace. Or—not the same one. The flaw was much smaller, and the setting was truemetal, not cheap alloy. The chain was serpent-supple, fine silver. Twas worth the value of the metal and a bit for the craftsmanship as well, if I was any judge of such things.

  Across the fire—it was built up and burning now, welcome warmth in the mist and dew of an early morn—the G’mai sat, his eyes closed. Twin dotanii. He was definitely a s’tarei. He carried no travelgear, and there was no adai. I was fairly certain of it. She would have come to the fire.

  What was he about in this trackless forest without travelgear?

  I held up the necklace, glittering sharp in the morning light. Was it the same one?

  It could not be. And yet, it seemed so like.

  The G’mai had put it in my hand as I slept. As the barbarian slept, too. And now, the G'mai had retreated to his side of the fire.

  I rolled up to my feet, slowly, cursing under my breath. I left the gaud behind. If the G’mai wanted to gift me something, I would inform him his leaving my presence would be gift enough. I kicked Redfist, hard enough to hurt but not enough to bruise, on his meaty left leg, and strode away into the trees to relieve myself behind a chana bush.

  When I returned to the fire, Redfist was rubbing at his leg and grimacing between huge lung-emptying yawns. “What di’ ye do that for, lassie?”

  “You were to keep watch. Barbarian.” I stalked away in the direction of the stream.

  I washed my face, shivering at the icy water, and the back of my neck under my hair. Shook my hands free of water and turned back toward the clearing.

  Once on solid ground with a fair bit of room, I laid the bow aside, planted my feet and drew in a deep breath. I raised both hands, loosely shaping the air. My entire body protested, stiff and sore.

  The forms for unarmed combat are coded into the deepest regions of my brain by almost-daily practice since I reached my third summer. As an orphan I was held in common by House Anjalismir, and was taught the unarmed forms, as are all adai.

  When I was five summers high, my mother died. Two moonturns past her death, I was tested in the old traditional way, and found to have none of what makes a G'mai woman worthy of the People.

  That was when the shunning began.

  The other G’mai would never be unkind—not even the children, most paired into twins by the time of their Tests. They simply would not speak to me once the Yada’Adais had finished my Test. Nobody ever spoke of my embarrassing lack. They were simply, kindly, unavailable. Silent. The Yada’Adais herself would often send for me, and bid me, by pointing one long elegant finger, to wait in a corner of her room while she Tested others. She made me watch how their Power showed, glittering and swirling in the air around them as she sat in her thronelike chair, her hands held just so, a black glassy Testing Stone clasped between them and turning phosphorescent.

  I remembered no such glitter in the air around me during my Test. The lesson was explicit and silently delivered, as are most lessons among the People.

  I developed excruciating headaches from sobbing myself to sleep each night. And when I reached six summers, I refused to go to the customary sh-yada’adai, where they learn how to control the Power. Instead, I presented myself at the drilling ground with a clumsy practice sword filched from the armory. I followed the motions as best I could, my small hands sweating and slipping on the grip. The practice blade had been far too large for me.

  It took a good four moonturns before the warmaster—a tall, spare s’tarei related to my mother—would stop and watch as I followed along before barking a correction. He would occasionally correct my grip, then step back and say, “A'vai.”

  Again. And again, and again, until I performed correctly.

  I stopped using the rooms provided for me, my mother’s chambers. She had died of a rare fever; her death had killed her s’tarei, for among us one does not live without the other. Two deaths, both my fault. If I had Power, I might have given her something to live for. Perhaps shame had killed her. After all, she had birthed a flaw in the pattern of the G'mai. Had she been able to tell even before the Yada’Adais Tested me?

  I finished the basic hand-to-hand forms; my sword hilt was in my hand. The blade cleared with a soft shing. The first simple form I had ever learned unreeled before me.

  It was a pleasure to feel my muscles loosening, the blood flowing quickly through my fingers, my breath in deep round swells like the sea under a ship's belly. The basic forms flowed away, and I started one of the more advanced forms—the third, one of my favorites. I loved the piri-splitter, the starstrike, the minstrel’s plea. I leapt into the stag’s strike, the hind’s leap, the swinging-strike.

  My booted feet shuffled and leapt as I switched from the two-handed strikes to the one-handed, working for speed and precision, every contact marked with a sharp huff of breath. Cannot breathe, cannot fight, I heard the warmaster yell, felt the sting of a slap delivered by a thin cane. Corrected my angle, spun on one foot, patter-stepped to the side, avoiding the strikes of my invisible opponents.

  The knife was in my hand, reversed along my forearm to act as a shield, and I started to work in earnest. I needed the clarity of thought that would arise from warming and loosening the body. I needed the calm.

  Besides, a sellsword always needs her practice.

  By the finish I was sweating lightly, warmed and loosened, and much calmer. I stretched down to touch my boot-toes, let the complex braids of my hair fall forward. It felt wonderful. My right thigh felt a little better, less sore, though I favored it a bit.

  I bowed, slightly, to the four quarters and raised my arms briefly to honor the Unseen, and returned from my warrior's trance to find Redfist and Darik both watching me. I scooped up the bow, my hands moving habitually. “Is the fire doused?”

  Redfist nodded. “Care for journeybread, K’ai?”

  Alas, not all problems can be solved with a bit of warm-up. “A little, and some of the dried cirfruit.” I accepted with a scowl, filled my flask at the stream and took a long drink, filled it again.

  Redfist approached, cautiously handing me the bread and the dried fruit. “He din seem like a threat. Ye would nae be sleeping if he was, lass.”

  “True.” But that does not excuse sloppiness. Though I was a fool to trust the watch to you. “The next time you sleep during a watch, no enemy will have to kill you.” Or perhaps I will merely leave you in the woods.

  He nodded. “Fair enow, lass.” He scratched at his linen shirt under the huge leather vest. I wondered briefly if the leatherworkers had used a whole cow to craft it. “I would be liking a bath.”

  “There is a freetown up–coast, before we reach Shaituh. I know an innkeeper there, and we have coin enough for a few nights.” And I will be leaping ship, leaving both of you behind. This is too much trouble even for me.

  The G’mai—Darik—said nothing, watching me. I brushed past him, ready to turn and strike if he made any move, and he fell into step behind me, slightly to my right.

  The very place a s’tarei would walk.

  Heat rose in my cheeks. I rounded on him. No, my temper was not smooth this morn. “Exactly what do you think you are doing?”

  “My duty.” Calmly, matter-of-fact.

  I took a closer look at him.

  Dark hair, the same blue-black as mine, cut short like a s’tarei b
ut a trifle shaggy, as if he had trimmed it himself. High, balanced cheekbones, like mine, an even, relaxed mouth. He had the kind of harsh beauty most often seen among the noble Houses of the G’mai, and he had it in spades. Even among us he would be considered exceptional.

  Except for a ragged band of scar tissue across his throat as if someone had tried to take his head with a garrote. Twas an awful scar. I certainly would have remembered it had I ever laid eyes on him before, and anyone singing a tale of him would mention it.

  His eyes were dark, too, wide and liquid. We are a beautiful race, the First Children, the G’mai. After the Darkness was defeated and Beleriaa journeyed to the Halls of the Gods, the Silver Ships came from the stars, bearing gifts. The legends say the G’mai were taken into the ships and changed by the will of the Moon into the loveliest of the world’s children. The Elders in the Silver Ships had charged the G’mai with protection of the Blessed Land, and we did not fail in that defense.

  I found myself examining his face as I had studied no other G’mai. I had learned long ago in my childhood not to look directly. It hurt too much, to see them walking two by two while I was always alone.

  Say something, Kaia. You are staring. “Your eyes are dark, not red. I expected an evil spirit, from Redfist’s description. Why were you following him?” Not so incidentally, what are you about without an adai? You are at least as old as I, and should be well bonded by now.

  “I did not follow him. I followed this.” He held up the new necklace, with the smaller flaw and the finer silver. Its sharp glitter speared my eyes—perhaps a random ray of sunlight. A silver wire, threaded directly into me.

  No. I closed away the sudden feeling of greed, of wanting it. “What befell the first one—the lightmetal gaud?”

  He shrugged. “This is the only one I have, adai’mi.”

  Rage and terrible pain squeezed my heart. “Do not ever name me thus.” The killing quiet was in my voice. “Ever.”

  He nodded, not surprised or frightened. “What would you prefer? Kaia’li?”

  I stopped the betraying little twitch. It was only a use-name. He had no idea how close he was. “Merely Kaia. And you are Darik.” It was not a question, but it left my mouth as one, changing in midair.

  He bowed his head a little, accepting the name. Again, no offer of his full name or House.

  Good. It meant I did not have to give him mine.

  I watched him a few more moments, searching for something sharp enough to say. Nothing edged enough to draw blood arose from my confusion. Finally I turned away, hitching the bow a little higher on my shoulder.

  “Kaia.” He used my name as if he knew me. As if it sat easy in his mouth.

  I half-turned. Redfist watched with much interest, his busy eyebrows reaching up to touch his hair, giving him the appearance of a wrinkled old puppet.

  I thought of cursing, let it go.

  Darik held out the chain and crystal. It glittered in his hand with something far more than the misty sunlight should wring from a piece of jewelry only fit for a streetseller. The world was quiet around us. I smelled wet earth and my own sweat, the exhalations of trees and the bruised grass.

  “It belongs to you. Take it.”

  I considered it for a long moment. “What if I do not wish to?”

  It made no impression. “You are G’mai. You know better.”

  He was correct. Twould be rude to refuse it, especially since I had returned it once already and he had shared my fire last night. Sharing a hearth made him my guest, and twas rude to refuse a guest’s gift to a host. My childhood rose under my skin, the codes of behavior bred into every G’mai.

  Even flawed ones.

  “What is it?” I sounded more like a petulant child than a fully grown sellsword. I firmed my chin, eyeing him.

  “A gift,” he said, patiently. “It belongs to you. Please, Kaia.”

  Politeness and childhood training warred with hard-learned caution. “Do you swear by your adai it means no harm to me? And that you mean no harm to me, or my traveling companion?”

  “Of a certainty.” He wore dark G’mai travel gear, brocade worked into the fabric of his overshirt. Trousers, G’mai boots, finely made even for us. From a House, then. A G’mai nobleman, his word worth the air it was printed on and a great deal more. “I swear by my adai, this gift means you no harm. I mean you no harm. I will even swear that I mean your traveling companion no harm. I saved him from death at the hands of the Hain, but he did not stop to thank me. Rather rude.”

  I measured his little speech, took the necklace from his fingers. Twas cold, and I slipped it over my head again. I dropped it down the front of my shirt and shivered a little as the metal and crystal met my skin. But it warmed quickly, and I considered him again.

  His shoulders relaxed, slightly. That was curious.

  The whole situation was absurd. My luck had turned sour. Or had it?

  “I do not know what this means,” I told both of them. “And I do not like this turn of luck.” I strode away, my boots sliding in damp loam.

  There was silence, but they followed me.

  I was beginning to wish they would not.

  Chapter 9

  Battle-Rage

  I set a slow pace until midmorning, when the urge to stretch my legs took me and I shifted to a ground-eating mercenary lope. I bore northwest, planning to strike parallel to the twin roads leading to Shaituh. I did not like the roads—either the inland or the coast road, too easy to find a pack of bandits—but I would have to use one as we came closer to Arjux Crossing. I was contemplating this choice when my nostrils flared, and I ceased all movement between one stride and the next.

  Woodsmoke.

  Moss-hung trees lifted to the sky; here in the coastal forests the trees robe themselves with green and gray because of the rain coming in from the Lan’ai. The ground was soft, rich black under a carpet of fallen leaves and needles. In the old forests the relative lack of underbrush makes travel easier. There was no slashwood to bar our passage.

  A tingle at my nape flared into life. Woodsmoke in this quarter meant travelers or bandits. Most travelers took the roads in groups and caravans, hoping swiftness and more weapons would throw the road-wolves off. This deeply in the woods, the chance was high it was bandits.

  Lovely. My lips stretched in a wolf’s grin.

  I sniffed. Wind from the coast, more due west than northwest now. Two days or so out of Hain by foot…

  Is it worthwhile to steal a horse?

  I was reminded of my companions. The G’mai could ride, but the barbarian, no. Too big for any of the small wiry horses the bandits would have; shaggy Hain ponies unfit for anything other than packing about baggage.

  “What is it, lass?” The barbarian broke his quiet, shifting his considerable weight. A stick cracked sharply under his feet.

  I lifted my hand, asking for silence. Stood thinking.

  The risk outweighed the benefit. But twas nice to know where the encampment lay. If we were cautious, they need never know we were about. “Bandits. That way.” I pointed. “We must go silently, and quick.”

  “They have horses,” the G’mai said.

  I suppressed my irritation, that his thoughts would follow mine. “Not one Redfist can ride. And I do not wish another battle right now, I wish to reach the next freetown in one piece and without undue delay. I wish for a bath, and the barbarian could do with one too—”

  The wind shifted, and I dropped to the ground without thought. Actually, I was knocked down after I had already shifted my weight to drop. Knee-high ferns rustled as bloodlust combed the air. I heard the whistle of the arrow and found myself pinned to earth by the G’mai, who rolled away as I shoved him. Redfist cursed. The arrow had come from the left, my fightbrain juggled sound, distance, trajectory—and returned a probable location.

  Lucky twas not a crossbow bolt. Even the G’mai’s speed would not have saved me from that. My shocked body suffered a brief flare of nausea, training shoved it aw
ay. I could not afford coney-fright, freezing into immobility by narrowly escaping death.

  Running footsteps, light and almost impossibly quick. I rolled onto my belly and peered up from the grass to see Darik running.

  Toward the arrow’s birthplace.

  I gained my feet and leapt after him. He had saved my life—and was about to commit suicide chasing down an archer. The fool.

  I saw them, six men in the dappled shade. Four had straightswords, one had dropped a bow and now had a blade in his hand, and the last had a pike. Darik ran for them, and they returned the favor with long easy strides. Why the archer had not simply shot him as he ran I could not guess, unless the archer was indifferently trained and stupid as well.

  Darik met them with a clash of steel, and I almost stopped in confusion. He had both swords out, and wasted no time. He killed two of them in the first pass, taking out one man’s throat and carving the archer’s right arm off with a solid speedstrike.

  Mother's tits, he's fast.

  He engaged the other four with a form I had never seen. Twas similar to the ones I had learned, but this was the double-dotanii style, a wonder to behold. He moved like a whirlwind through the bandits, metal clashing or tearing through flesh, and when he finished all six sprawled on the ground. Even the archer, who had gone into shock as he lost his arm. He thrashed and gasped weakly, the song of a death approaching.

  Darik flipped a dagger out and sent it blurring into the man’s eye, easing his passage. The hilt glittered.

  His blades flashed in a complicated pattern, blood shaken away, and were re-sheathed. He bent down, worked his dagger free, and straightened, wiping the blade on the archer’s overshirt.

  I had stopped short when he killed the last one, having no more need to run or unlimber my own bow. The barbarian was behind me, thundering to a standstill. My lungs burned. Not only had Darik reacted with G’mai speed, but he fought with a fury I had rarely seen.

  I was lucky. He could have killed me during our nighttime duel.

  Why had he refrained?

  I took a deep breath as he glanced at me, a brief passage of his dark eyes from my boots to my hair. The words spilled free, a cascade of ire. “You thrice-damned idiot. What possessed you to run them down? They had an archer. You should have let Redfist and me return their arrows with interest instead of running yourself ragged like a bloodcrazed fool!”