Blade of Glass: Chapter 4

Geneve sucked her knuckle. The skin was split, and the bright tang of blood lay on her tongue. She wasn’t sure if it was from her hand, or the knock her lip had against her teeth.

She wasn’t sure of very much right now. Her ears rang from the blunt blow of a practice blade. Geneve had fallen onto her butt, legs splayed in front of her, but she hadn’t gone all the way down, which she was certain annoyed Wincuf. The larger boy loomed above her, his wooden sword leveled at her face. “Yield.”

Geneve thought about that. What yielding to Wincuf would feel like, and what it might feel like if she didn’t. She felt rather than saw eyes on her. Perhaps Israel’s, brows furrowed in a frown. The noises of the practice room faded to silence, the clack-clack of wood on wood vanishing like heat from a doused fire. Her peers waited for what she would do.

Yielding wouldn’t bring her dishonor. She’d been bested by a larger opponent. More skilled, too. She’d been in the keep for a year, eating like a horse and training to be strong like the Knights who walked the halls. 

If I yield to Wincuf today, it won’t stop there. The clarity of the thought felt like benediction, a release from choice. She couldn’t yield, because it wouldn’t be the last time. Geneve spat blood on the mat, then shook her head, angry red hair lashing. “No.”

Wincuf’s face twisted in a snarl, and he swung the sword back to hit her again. Her own ‘blade’ lay beside her, and she reached for it despite the low value in the move. Geneve was six years old, and Wincuf was near twice that. She could hold her sword up in defense but may as well stand against the tide. He’d sweep her sword aside again.

She yanked her sword up in a hand that felt too weak for the job, fingers still smarting from where he’d banged them with the flat of his sword. He’d smiled when he’d done that, but not in a nice way. Wincuf looked like he wanted her hand to hurt, and then her pride, and he was just the boy for the job.

There was no footwork she could bring to bear on the problem, because her butt didn’t have feet, and her own were useless in front of her. Geneve flailed her blade at the air, snarling her defiance at Wincuf. He looked surprised, taking a step back, no doubt because the doe wasn’t supposed to snarl at the bear. Geneve managed to scramble into a crouch.

Her balance was off, because the room wouldn’t sit still. It circled like it was holding a fancy party all by itself. She swayed, but her crouch didn’t let her fall.

Wincuf’s sword did, though. He hit her hard, knocking her sword aside, the strike ringing against her head again. She fell to the mat, staring at the roof above. Sounds muted, losing their meaning. Geneve felt someone shouting at her and didn’t know if it was Wincuf again demanding surrender, or the Knight leading the lessons. Her head felt fat, but also like it was vibrating, and the sensation wasn’t unpleasant.

It felt like it should hurt, but didn’t, and that made her curious. Curiosity was insufficient to get her upright, so she stared at the roof above a while longer. The beams were old and dark, either stained or simply marked by the passage of years. Like everything in the Keep, they were old but clean. No cobwebs lay above her. She couldn’t see an adventurous rat, or stray lengths of straw. Just beams, and thatching above, to keep the rain off the mats so Novices could train in the winter.

Geneve’s view of the roof was cut off by a face. Pale skin, like the snow that came in winter, but not soft like it. Blue eyes hard as ice stared at her. Lips moved, making sound, but Geneve understood nothing. She raised her hand to the face, her amber-honey skin so in contrast to the pale woman’s. Geneve stroked the woman’s cheek, touched her lip, then let her hand drop.

The woman stopped trying to talk, and a little thaw made it into the hard blue eyes. She scooped up Geneve in her arms as if she weighed nothing at all. Geneve’s head lolled back, and she kept looking skyward as they left the training hall behind. The sky was blue, lighter and cooler than the woman’s eyes, but so very far away.

* * *

Geneve was propped on a stone bench outside a closed door. The pale woman sat with her, back straight, eyes hard again. Geneve was sure she’d been through the door before a half dozen times at least.

The pale woman wore the black sash and single gold bar of an Adept over full armor. Strange Geneve hadn’t noticed the armor as she’d been carried here. Armor was cold and hard, like the woman’s eyes, yet she held no memory of it. She’d felt safe, which didn’t make sense because Wincuf beat her like a toy drum in front of fifty Novices without anyone stepping in.

“My head hurts,” Geneve said. The words were thick and mushy, like potato boiled too long.

The pale-eyed woman didn’t look at her. “You were hit in the head.”

“I remember.”

“Yet you forgot the other parts of your lessons. We pair you against bigger opponents so you know how to lose.” The pale woman shook her head, a braid down her back whipping like a Feybrind’s tail.

“There are a lot of lessons.” Geneve groaned as pain lanced her head. “I don’t feel well.”

“Don’t throw up on me.”

“Ugh.” Geneve swallowed bile. “We were taught a fortnight ago that Knights never run. Never surrender. Never give ground. I want to be a good Knight.”

Nothing changed about the pale woman’s posture. Her armor still gleamed. Gauntlets still lay, perfectly folded in her lap. Yet Geneve felt a softening, like spring thaw. “You are six years old, Novice. No one expects you to be a Knight. Not today, anyway.” She muttered something under her breath that might have been, this place is fucking cracked, except Knights didn’t speak like that.

“I also didn’t want Wincuf to win.”

The pale woman laughed. “That seems more like the truth.”

“The other thing was true, too.” Geneve felt another wave of nausea. “Israel said—”

The braid lashed as the woman turned to her, eyes sparkling, cold fire. “Israel? He put you up to this?”

“No, he—”

“I will knock his teeth out.” The pale woman shot to her feet, her back held straight by fury. “I will—”

The door opened, an older woman stepping out. She wore plain white cotton, with a white sash carrying two silver bars. “Adept Vertiline?” The old woman pushed a boy out before her, who scampered down the corridor.

“Lucent Eleni.” Vertiline gave a short bow. “This Novice—”

“Novice Geneve is known to me, Adept.” The old woman gave a smile not at all like Wincuf’s. It was kind, and soft, and used to being handed out because it made people feel better to see it. “Bring her inside.”

Vertiline helped Geneve to her feet. The walk inside Eleni’s room felt very long, what with the world still spinning, and Geneve’s gut wanting to escape via her teeth. The room was about four meters to a side, with a crackling fire laid in a hearth keeping the southern winters at bay. A large window overlooked the training grounds, and through it Geneve could see her classmates still sparring within the training room. Eleni’s room held two cots, both empty. A massive shelf dominated the wall opposite the fireplace. It held about a million different pots, jars, and bunches of herbs.

Eleni helped Geneve onto a cot, then bent to look in her eyes. “She’s been hit on the head.”

“By Wincuf.”

“The little shit.” Eleni’s warm smile dimmed. “By the Three, I don’t know—”

“I don’t feel well,” Geneve admitted. “I feel really bad.”

Eleni nodded, straightened, then held a hand out, palm up. She touched the fingers of her other to her palm. Geneve knew the word. {Help.} “This won’t hurt.”

“Why do you speak the People’s tongue?” Geneve looked into Eleni’s face. “No one else here does.”

“Because I like it.” A twinkle took root in the old woman’s eyes. “And it helps me focus my mind. Hush, now.” She closed her eyes, lips pressed into a firm line, like she was remembering something, or telling herself a story. Eleni reached for Geneve’s face, cupping her cheeks. 

Geneve felt warm, in a good way, like she was in a hot bath on a cold day, or she’d just eaten sugarloaf. The pain in her head walked away like it had somewhere else to be. The nausea in her stomach subsided. 

When the old woman let her head go, Geneve felt like she had before Wincuf used her head as a percussive instrument. Better, even. The aches and pains of a year’s training were muted, further away than she remembered them being. “How did you do that?”

“I asked someone for help.” Eleni tousled Geneve’s hair. “You should try it sometime.” She arched her back, as if working out a kink from a hard day’s labor, then faced Vertiline. “Unless you want to visit me too, I’d recommend not trying to knock out Chevalier Israel’s teeth.”

Vertiline paled further, which would have seemed impossible to Geneve if she hadn’t just seen it. “You heard—”

“I heard nothing.” The older woman’s sly smile belied her words. “I’m merely making conversation.”

“Thank you, Lucent.” Vertiline gave a half-bow, then held a hand out to Geneve. “I’ll take the Novice back to her lessons.”

“I wish she could rest for a day.” Eleni looked out the window at the training Novices. “I wish a lot of things these days, but the Tresward hungers for new Knights. There are so few of us.”

Vertiline hovered for a moment, indecision in her lean frame, before she took the three paces to Eleni’s side, putting a gauntleted hand on the old woman’s shoulder. “Thank you for making sure the few we have remain whole.” She bobbed her head, grabbed Geneve’s hand, and hurried to the door.

In the corridor outside, Geneve let herself be led. “I don’t want to go back to training.” She meant go back to Wincuf, but she couldn’t say that.

Vertiline slowed, then coasted to a complete stop. “Then we won’t.”

“But Eleni said—”

“Lucent Eleni doesn’t know all the ways of Knight training.” Vertiline offered the tiniest of smiles. It was like sun peeking from behind basalt-colored storm clouds. Marvelous, and bright, but short-lived. “I do.” She picked up her pace again.

“Where are we going?”

“To meet a small, angry man.” Vertiline’s voice held affection. “We’re going to meet Kytto.”

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