Beyond Binary

by Brit Mandelo

  “What do we need to know?” Lucky said. “You breathe, you can stand up without falling over. You’re on the road to Lemon City, aren’t you? Do you want a job or not?”

  “You mean for money?” She shook her head as if she couldn’t credit my being so dumb. But I’d expected to have to find honest work, meaning something dirty and bone-tiring, before I could start looking for someone to train with. The idea of getting tired, dirty, and paid to train was so exciting I could hardly believe it was real.

  Ro said, “We’ll offer you a trial on the road. Travel with us to Lemon City, and we’ll see if we want to take it any farther.”

  “Not without a fight,” Braxis said. We all looked at her; Ro and Lucky seemed as surprised that she’d spoken as they did at what she’d said.

  “I don’t take anyone on without knowing if they can hold their own,” she said reasonably. “Not even on trial. That’s the whole point of a quad, isn’t it? Four walls, stable house. We need strong walls.”

  “They train you, Brax,” Ro responded. “All we have to do is get past the gate.”

  “No,” I said slowly. “She’s right. And so are you: I do want to go to Lemon City, but it’s got to be properly done.” They looked at me with a variety of expressions: Braxis impassive, Ro with his head tilted and a wrinkle in his forehead, Lucky grinning with her arms akimbo.

  “I can’t explain it. But I need this to be something I can be proud of. It needs to be earned.”

  “Gods, another romantic,” Ro muttered.

  We climbed over the wall into the field, and laid aside our swords. Lemon City was just behind that cloud, and I was a hot wind. It was such an amazing feeling that I almost forgot I’d never really fought anyone except Tom, that I didn’t yet know if I could. Then Braxis’ strong arms reached for me.

  When we were done, and Brax had finished coughing up grass, she said, “Fine. On the way there, you can teach us how to do that.”

  ∞

  We began to learn each other. Braxis woke up surly. Lucky sang walking songs out of tune, and she knew a hundred of them. Ro was good at resolving differences between others, and peevish when he didn’t get his own way. I wasn’t sure what they were discovering about me. I’d never lived with anyone except my mother: it was one more thing I didn’t know how to do. I watched everything and tried not to offend anyone.

  We got into the routine of making camp early in the afternoon, to keep the last hours of light for practicing swords and stormfighting. It didn’t take them long to work out that I barely knew one end of my sword from the other. I was ashamed, and halfway expected them to kick me back up the road. They surprised me. “I’ve never seen anyone fight like you do,” Ro said matter-of-factly. “If we can trade learning between us, it makes us all stronger.” Then he set about showing me the basics.

  Two weeks later it was Lucky who came toward me with her sword. I looked at Ro. He smiled. “I’ve given you enough so that you can at least keep up with what she’s got to show you. She’s the best of us.”

  I expected the thrust-and-parry exercises that I’d worked on with Ro, but Lucky came to stand to one side of me, just out of blade range. She extended her sword. “Follow me,” was all she said, and then she was off in a step, turn, strike, block that moved straight into a new combination. She was fast. I stayed with her as best I could, and actually matched her about one move in seven.

  “Not horrible,” she said. “Let’s try it again.” We worked it over and over until finally she reached out and pried the sword out of my grip. “Those will hurt tomorrow,” she said of the blisters on my palms. “You should have told me.” But I was determined to hold my own with these people, so I only shrugged. My hands felt raw for days after; but I was stubborn. And it helped that I could teach as well as learn. It did not matter so much that I was the youngling, the inexperienced one, when their bodies worked to imitate mine, when their muscles fluttered and strained to please me.

  And I had a new secret: I was beginning to understand the price for all those months that I’d wrestled my body’s feelings back into my fighting. I could scrub Lucky’s back after a cold creek bath, see Brax’s nipples crinkle when she shrugged off her shirt at night, lie with my head pillowed on Ro’s thigh—and never feel a thing except a growing sense of wonder at what complex and contradictory people I had found on my road. But when we met in practice, everything changed. The slide of Brax’s leather-covered breast against my arm during a takedown put a point of heat at the tip of every nerve from my shoulder to my groin. Ro’s weight on me when he tested the possibilities of a technique was voluptuous in a way I’d never imagined in my awkward days with Ad. Lucky’s rain-wet body twisting underneath me excited me so much it was almost beyond bearing: but I learned to bear it, to stuff the pleasure back inside myself so that it wound through me endlessly like a cloud boiling with the weight of unreleased rain. In my days with Tom I had learned to fight through cold and pain and misery: now I learned to persist through pleasure so keen that sometimes it left me seared and breathless and not sure how to make my arms and legs keep working. I told no one; but I woke in the morning anticipating those hours, and slept at night with their taste in my throat. I was always ready to practice.

  “I sweat like a bull,” Brax said ruefully one day when we were all rubbing ourselves down afterwards. “But you always smell so good.” I smiled and pulled my tunic on quickly to hide the shudders that still trembled through me.

  It was a few days later that Ro approached me after supper, squatting down beside me near the fire. We smiled at each other and spent a quiet time stripping the bark off sticks and feeding it to the flames. Eventually, he said, “Share my blanket tonight?”

  I’d seen from the first night how it was between them, bedding two at a time but in a relationship of three. I had already guessed at their idea of what a quad should be. I wondered how sophisticated people handled this sort of thing.

  “No, but thank you,” I said finally. “It’s not you, Ro, you’re a fine person, and I’m pleased to be part of your quad. It’s just—”

  “No need to explain,” he said, which only made me feel more awkward. But the next day he treated me not much differently. By the afternoon I had recovered my equilibrium, and I’d noticed their quiet conversations, so I was only a little surprised to find Lucky at my elbow after practice.

  “Let’s take a walk,” she said cheerfully. “Fetch water, or something.”

  “Fine,” I said, and went to gather everyone’s waterskins. “No need to rush,” Braxis said. Ro nodded agreeably.

  “Fine,” I said again, and off we went.

  We found a stream and loaded up with water, and then sat on the bank. I lay back with my head on my arms while Lucky fiddled with flower stems. Then she leaned over me and kissed me. Her mouth was dry and sweet. But nothing moved in me. I sat up and set her back from me as gently as I could. She didn’t look angry, only amused. “Would Braxis have been a better choice for water duty today?”

  “No, it’s not that.”

  “Don’t you know what you like, then?”

  “You know what?” I said, “Let’s go back to the others so I only have to have this conversation once.”

  We all sat around, and they chewed on hand-sized chunks of bread while I talked.

  “Anyone would be proud to have you as lovers, all of you.” It was nice to see the way they glowed for each other then, with nothing more than smiles or a quick touch before turning their attention back to me. “It’s not about you.”

  I stopped, long enough that Braxis raised an eyebrow. It was hard to say the next thing. “If you need that from your fourth, then I’ll help you find someone else when we get to Lemon City, and no hard feelings.”

  We were all quiet for a while. Finally Braxis wiped the crumbs off her hands. “Oh, well,” she said. “Of course we don’t want another fourth, Mars, we’d rather have you even if we can’t have you, if you take my meaning.” Lucky hooted, and I went red in t
he face, which just made Lucky worse.

  “No, truly,” Braxis went on when Ro had finally put a hammerlock on Lucky. “We like you. We’re starting to fight well together. We learn from each other. We trust ourselves. We can be a good quad. The other,” she shrugged, and Lucky made a rude gesture, “well, it’s nice, but it isn’t everything, is it?”

  It stayed with me, that remark, while I did my share of the night chores, and later as I lay on my back in the dark, listening to Ro’s snores and the small, eager sounds that Braxis and Lucky made together under a restless sky of black scudding clouds. It was strange to think about sex with them so intent on it just a knife-throw away. It’s nice but it’s not everything, Brax had said: but for those moments it sounded like it was everything for the two of them.

  I hoped they stayed willing to take me as I was. I didn’t know if I could explain that what they did wrapped in their blankets was like being offered the lees of fine wine. I could tell they thought I was still grieving for Ad, or Tom: let them believe that, if it would obscure the truth of what I had become and what stirred me now. Keep your mouth shut, Mars, I told myself, and twisted onto my side away from them. They’ll never understand and you’d never be able to explain. They’ll think you’re insane or perverted or worse, and they’ll send you packing back to your no-name village before you can say ‘oh go ahead and fuck me if that’s what it takes to let me stay with you.’

  I never was much good at cheering myself up: but in spite of it all I finally fell asleep, and I woke to a hug from Braxis and pine tea from Ro, to a sleepy pat on the shoulder from Lucky, and for the first time in oh-so-long I felt the hope of belonging.

  ∞

  It took weeks to get to Lemon City, mostly because we were in no hurry. There was always so much to do each day, so much exploring and talking and the hands-on work of turning ourselves into a fighting partnership. And other kinds of work, as well. In spite of what they’d said, the three of them made a concerted effort to seduce me, and I did not know how to reassure them that they had already succeeded, that they had turned me into a banked coal with a constant fire in my belly. “Damn your cold heart, Mars,” Lucky spat at me one day, “I hope someday someone you really want turns you down flat, and then see how you like it!”

  “Luck, it’s not like that!” I called after her as she stalked off down a side trail into the woods.

  “Leave her,” Ro advised. “She’ll accept it. We all will.” He and Brax exchanged a wry look, and I felt terrible. I must be cold, I thought, cold and selfish. It was such a small thing to ask, to make people I loved happy. But it wasn’t just my body they wanted, it was me, and they would never reach me that way, and then we would all still be unsatisfied. And I was not willing to explain. So it was my fault, my flaw. My failure.

  I was packing my bedroll when Lucky came back. “Oh, stop,” she said impatiently. “You know what I’m like, Mars, don’t take it so personally. Just stay away from me tonight and I’ll be fine in the morning.” And she was; and the next afternoon, when she took hold of me so unknowingly, I gave her myself. I gave to all of them, a dozen times each day.

  “The hardest part about all this,” Brax said one evening as we all stretched out near our fire, “is overcoming all the sword training.”

  “Whaddya mean?” Ro mumbled around a mouthful of cheese.

  “Well, the sword makes your arm longer and gives it a killing edge, so that you still strike or punch, sort of, but it’s with the blade. But the stormfighting, well, like Mars is always saying, the whole point is to become the center of the fight and bring your enemy in to you. So with the sword we keep people out far enough to slice them up, and with the storm art we bring them in close enough to kiss. It does my head in sometimes trying to figure out where I’m supposed to be when.”

  “You think it’s hard for you?” I replied. “You’re not the one with half a dozen cuts on every arm and leg trying to learn it the other way around. I always let Lucky get too close.”

  “So maybe there’s a way to do both.” Lucky reached out to swipe a piece of cheese from Ro’s lap.

  “What do you mean?” Ro asked again.

  “Pig. Give me some of that. I mean that maybe there’s a way to combine the moves. All the sword dances I do are based on wheels, being able to turn and move in any direction with your body and the sword like spokes on a wheel. It’s not that different from being at the center of a wind, or whatever.”

  “Gods around us,” I said. She’d put a picture in my mind so clear that for a moment I wasn’t sure which was more real, the Lucky who smiled quizzically at me from across the fire, or the one who suddenly rolled over her own sword and came up slashing at her opponent’s knee. “She’s right. You could do both. Think about it! Just think about it!” They were all bright-eyed now, caught in the spiral of my excitement that drew them in as surely as one of the armlocks we’d worked on that afternoon. “Imagine being able to fight long or short, with an edge or a tip or just your bare hand. They’d never know what to expect, they couldn’t predict what you’d do next!”

  “Okay, maybe,” Lucky said. “It might work with that whole series that’s based off the step in and behind, but what about the face-to-face? A sword’s always a handicap when you’re in that close.”

  “That’s because everyone always goes weapon to weapon.” Lucky looked blank. “If you have a sword, what’s the other person going to do? Get a bigger sword if they can. Try to beat your sword. But we don’t need that. Our weapon is the way we fight. Go in and take their sword away. Go in and do things with a sword that no one thinks possible. In my head I just saw you roll with your own blade and come up edge-ready. Maybe staying low would give us more options for being in close.”

  “Come here,” Lucky said, and scrambled up, and we worked it out again and again until the fire was almost dead and we trod on Brax in the dark. “Stop this idiocy and go to sleep!” she growled; but the next day we were all ready to reinvent sword fighting, and we ate our dinner that night bloody and bruised and grinning like children.

  ∞

  We came into Lemon City on a cold wind, just ahead of a hard autumn rain that dropped from a fast front of muddy clouds. We crowded under cover of a blacksmith’s shed inside the city gates with a dozen other travelers, three gate guards, and two bad-tempered horses, while manure and straw and someone’s basket washed away down the waterlogged street. Everything was grey and stinking. I couldn’t help laughing, remembering my fantasies about golden streets full of important people in silk with me in the center, being whisked toward greatness.

  When the rain had passed we walked in towards the heart of the city. My boots leaked, and my feet got wet, and Ro stepped in goat shit and swore.

  “So far, I feel right at home,” I told Lucky, who cackled wildly and reminded me for one sharp moment of my mother, bent over in laughter with her hands twisted in her apron and flour dust rising all around her.

  We found an inn that they’d heard of, and got the second-to-last room left. We were lucky; the last room was no better than a sty, and went an hour later for the same rate as ours. The city was packed tighter than a farm sausage, our landlord told us with a satisfied smile. He took some of Ro’s money for a pitcher of cider and settled one hip up against the common room table to tell us where to find the guard house for the coming auditions. The next were in two days’ time. “And lots of competition for this one, of course,” he said cheerfully, with a glance around the crowded room that made him scurry to another table with his tray of cider.

  “What’s that mean, of course?” Lucky wondered when he’d gone away.

  I shrugged. Brax drank the last of her cider. “I hate it when they say of course,” she muttered, and belched.

  The next day was sunny, and we went out exploring. I left my sword for the day with the blacksmith near the city gate, who promised to lengthen the grip. From there we wandered to the market, and they laughed at my wide-eyed amazement. And everywhere we saw fou
rsomes, young or seasoned, trying not to show their stress by keeping their faces impassive, so of course you could spot them a mile off. We followed some of them to the guards training camp, and waited in line to give our names to someone whose only job that day seemed to be telling stiff-faced hopefuls where and when to turn up for the next morning’s trials. Then we found a place to perch where Lucky and Brax could size everyone up until they found something to feel superior about: a weak eye, too much weight on one foot, someone’s hands looped under their belt so they couldn’t reach their weapon easily. Eventually the strain got to be too much, and we went back to the inn for an afternoon meal and practice on a small patch of ground near the stable. Working up a sweat seemed to calm them down; and touching them erased everything else for me.

  That night, I laid an extra coin on the table when the landlord brought our platter of chicken and pitcher of beer, and said, “Tell us what’s so special about these auditions.”

  He looked genuinely surprised. “Anybody could tell you that,” he said, but he put the coin in his sleeve pocket. “The prince has turned out half the palace guard again, and Captain Gerlain’s scrambling for replacements. Those who do well are sure to end up with palace duty, although why any of you’d want it is beyond me.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Our prince is mad, that’s why, and the king’s too far gone up his own backside to notice.”

  Lucky put a hand to her knife. “You mind yourself, man,” she said calmly, and Brax and I tried not to grin at each other. Lucky could be startlingly conservative.

  “Oh, and no offense intended to the king,” he said easily. “But well done, he needs loyal soldiers around him. Particularly now he’s old and sick, and too well medicated, at least that’s what they say. You just get yourself hired on up there and keep an eye on him for us.” He poured Lucky another drink. I admired the skill with which he’d turned the conflict aside.

  None of us could eat, thinking about the next day, and the beer tasted off. We sat at the table, not talking much. Eventually we moved out to the snug, where the landlord had a fire going. It was warmer there than the common room, but no more relaxing. I turned the coming day over and over in my head as if it were a puzzle I couldn’t put down until I’d solved it. Lucky and Ro sat close together: their calves touched, then their thighs, then Ro’s hand found its way onto Lucky’s arm and she sighed, leaned into him, looking suddenly small and soft. When I looked away, Brax was there, next to me.