Nona fought six opponents in a row before Sister Tallow called her out of the ring.
On the first day Zole, Clera, and Nona found themselves pitched against a long succession of Caltess trainees. “Trainees” meant attic-children purchased by Partnis and set to chores by Maya until it became clear what their potential might be. Nona suspected that beyond running laps and watching fights the training the “trainees” received amounted to little more than feeding up. The fact that many hunska and gerant didn’t come into their full speed or show significant size until their teens meant that Partnis didn’t want to waste his fight-masters’ time on the children he bought by the dozen each year.
Nona saw the fight-masters taking notes, writing down Partnis’s muttered comments. It wasn’t the novices being forged here: Partnis was getting to see what mettle his purchases had, though why he couldn’t use his own apprentices for that Nona had no idea.
Zole fought the trainees with brutal efficiency, seeming intent on putting each onto the boards with the minimum number of blows. Yisht came to the ring for Zole’s fights and barked at her in the ice-tongue. Commands, encouragements, threats? Nona never knew.
Nona found herself giving her opponents a chance, letting them swing, punishing them for mistakes rather than for effort. Clera seemed to revel in the chance to hit and not be hit, using her opponents as practice dummies, peppering them with dozens of punches as if seeing how many times she could hit them before they fell. After her first half-dozen, finished by a dull-looking giant of a farm-boy, she jumped out spattered with blood and grinning like a lunatic.
They each faced a second batch of six opponents after lunch. These were older, showing more signs of actual training, or at least more muscle and stamina. Some of the hunskas were half-bloods at least. None presented a challenge.
Come evening the crowd swelled with more fighters and others whose right to be there seemed written only in the richness of the cloth across their backs. Partnis put down his goblet and his chicken leg, moving in for closer observation. If he recognized Nona his eyes let none of it show as they studied the length of her. Nona ignored him, waiting in her corner for the third set of opponents.
The second of Nona’s six opponents was the first of the day to hit her. A tall boy with long hair blacker than a raven’s wing and a scar that gave him a permanent half-smile. He let her land a couple of punches, clearly relying on what he’d learned by watching her earlier in the day, knowing she wouldn’t go for the kill. He disguised his speed and grunted when hit, staggering back. When Nona came in to put him on the ground he struck with the speed of a hunska prime, a straight punch for which his body gave no warning, aimed at her throat. Nona dug deep and managed to take the blow on the side of her face, spinning away, spitting blood. She fetched up against the ropes and found the boy watching her, his scar-smile no longer lopsided.
“Ouch.” She wiped at her mouth, her hand coming away scarlet, and offered a red grin in return.
The remainder of that fight was short, vicious, and one-sided. Nona shouted “Next!” before the fight-master got a chance to.
Her final opponent made the boards shake as he stepped over the ropes. A dark-haired gerant with muscle heaped along the thick bones of his arms. He was a handsome boy, a couple of years Nona’s senior, and popular too, to judge from the cheer among the attic-children—though in truth for the past few hours they’d been cheering anyone who could put up more than a moment’s resistance.
“Hello.” The boy grinned down at Nona. “I’ll try not to spoil your face.” Meaty fist smacked into broad palm.
Nona sprinted at him, dropped to her back, and skidded between his legs. She gained her feet long before he had a chance to turn . . . but he never did. The foot she planted between his thighs, arching up on her shoulders as she slid between his ankles, seemed to have been just as effective as Sister Tallow had promised it would be in her classes. The youth stood without motion, shoulders hunched, silent save for a fierce hissing sound, then with no warning he fell first to his knees, then to the boards, coiled up and clutching his groin.
• • •
DAY TWO WAS given over to blade. In the morning Alata and Croy took to the ring, first with blunted knives and later with wooden swords, facing a small number of the very best trainees. The handsome gerant was among Alata’s three opponents. He shot Nona a filthy look as he climbed in, gingerly this time. He lasted no longer with a sword in his hand. Alata parried a blow, ducked beneath a swing, and came up with her sword against his thick neck.
The other bouts were similarly short with no Caltess trainees coming close to victory, though the hunska boy who hit Nona did manage to score a knife-mark against Croy before she “sliced” his throat.
“Now they’ll try us against the apprentices,” Croy said as she climbed down from the morning’s final contest. She looked less than enthusiastic.
“You’ve seen it before?” Nona asked.
“We were here last year with Leeni in the fist battles,” Alata said. “The Caltess don’t train their trainees worth a damn, but they do nothing but train their apprentices. No Path or Academia for them, just fighting. While we’re in Spirit class or grinding poisons they’re fighting. We get our fun in the trainee bouts. The Caltess gets its revenge in the apprentice bouts.”
The afternoon proved to be all that Alata promised. The apprentices came to the ring hardened by years of focused training. Alata, with her hunska speed, won two rounds against two gerant apprentices, the first of them the hulking redhead from Nona’s attic days, Denam. He now loomed almost eight foot in height and his body looked ready to burst with the pressure of all the muscle heaped around his bones. When Alata spun inside his guard and thrust her wooden blade into his gut he snatched it from her in one huge hand and for a moment Nona thought he would just reach out and crush her head. But the fight-master’s shouts reached him and he flung both swords down before leaving the ring cursing.
Croy didn’t win a single bout. She had a natural talent for swordplay but just a touch of hunska, and neither was enough to overcome the mismatch between her single year of sword in Blade classes and the apprentices’ dedicated training over several years.
It was Regol who first defeated Alata. The tall, sardonic boy Nona had known as king of the attic was now a tall, sardonic young man, the mocking smile and watchful eyes unchanged. He proved both lightning-fast and highly skilled, overcoming Alata’s defence in a blinding exchange of parries, thrusts, and feints. Alata lost to all the hunska apprentices and one of the older gerants too.
Both girls returned to the convent that night with the record of their defeats written across them in lines of black bruising. Croy hobbled the last quarter-mile of the Seren Way and Alata looked spent by the time they reached the pillars. As they staggered off together towards the bathhouse Nona wasn’t sure either of the novices would make it to the pool.
“Your turn with the apprentices tomorrow,” Alata offered as a parting shot.
• • •
ON THE THIRD and final day of the forging Sister Tallow once again put Nona up first to meet the Caltess Challenge. The crowd had grown greater still. A sword fight can be difficult to see, it can be over quickly, and with wooden blades there is seldom any gore to entertain the masses. Fights without weapons are more of a spectacle: everyone understands them or can at least fool themselves into thinking they can. And blood will often flow.
“Learn something.” Sister Tallow set Nona moving towards the ring.
“Not, ‘don’t break them’?” Nona glanced back.
Sister Tallow gave one of her rare smiles. “Try.”
Nona vaulted over the ropes into her corner. A moment later Regol climbed unhurriedly into his. The Caltess children began to chant Regol’s name, quietly at first, but rising in volume, and on every side the crowd edged closer. Where the trainees had fought in their Caltess shifts, still
dusty from the attic, the apprentices fought only in thick white loincloths, the women binding a heavy linen wrap around their chests.
Tarkax, the ice-triber, had moved closer to the ring, dwarfed by the gerant ring-fighters behind him. He watched Nona with mild interest as if waiting to be impressed. Yisht stood by his side, both of them muttering to each other with just a twitching of lips. Nona wondered what they would have to talk about. Perhaps just ice warriors sharing their contempt of Corridor battle skills? But Ara had said Sherzal had attended Thuran Tacsis’s ball, and Partnis lay under the Tacsis thumb. If Tarkax was his creature and Yisht was Sherzal’s . . .
Regol raised a hand in salute, turning a full circle before letting his eyes come to rest on Nona. His habitual mocking smile broadened into something more sincere. “Little Nona. You’ve grown.”
“You remembered me. I’m touched.” Nona couldn’t help but smile back. “I won’t go easy on you though.”
Regol nodded, grave for a moment. He stepped to the centre of the ring, muttering through a fixed smile, his voice so low it barely reached her. “You’re remembered. Don’t ever think otherwise. Children have short memories, adults long ones.” His eyes flicked to the left and following his gaze Nona saw, out at the back of the crowd, behind Partnis, behind the rich in their furs and jewels, Raymel Tacsis, his nine-foot frame wrapped in a mole-dark cape that couldn’t hide the broadness of him. A silver circlet held his golden hair back from his brow, and the face beneath had changed. The veins on the right side of his neck stood black against his flesh, like tendrils of night rising from his cape, and something was amiss with his left eye, though at such a distance Nona couldn’t tell what exactly. Perhaps it was just full of blood.
Nona moved to face Regol at the centre. “He came to see me fight?” Something in that two-tone stare had caught at Nona’s guts like a cold hand, waking an old emotion, one she had never had much use for. Fear.
“He came to see you hurt,” Regol said, shaking out his arms and rolling his head.
“You’re going to hurt me?” A snarl twisted at Nona’s lip, fire rising in her belly to drive out the unease.
“No. I’m going to beat you. Make sure you submit clearly and quickly so I’ve a good excuse for stopping. Next—”
“Fight!” The fight-master’s bark cut through the chanting.
“Next up is Denam. Do not let him get hold of you.”
Regol struck as his lips closed on his last word. A swivelling kick aimed directly at Nona’s chest. She slowed the world, stretching each second into an age, but however deep she dug Regol’s foot refused to slow. Nona both blocked and deflected but against a grown man neither made much difference, her blocking arm was simply driven against her chest, transmitting the force of the kick. Nona felt her feet lift from the ground, watched the frozen faces of the crowd as she flew, and bent as the ropes caught her in a rough embrace. The rebound took her to the floor where she pushed herself quickly to her feet, fighting for breath, her body a mass of hurt.
Regol didn’t press his attack. He stood relaxed, wearing his old smile as the cheers rose around him.
“You’re quicker than me . . .” The words came out in a pained wheeze. The fact hurt Nona more than her lungs did.
“I am.” Regol nodded. “But you’ll likely grow faster, and I’m as good as I’ll get.”
Nona adopted the blade stance. Few hunska reached their full potential before fourteen, but even so it shocked her to find someone so obviously swifter than herself. “Fight!”
Nona advanced, snapping jump-kicks at Regol, testing his defence with jabs, but hitting only air. His longer reach kept her at bay and combined with his speed left her at a loss for how to proceed. Regol made the decision for her with a lightning-fast leg sweep. Nona leapt above it by the narrowest of margins, throwing herself not just up but forward towards Regol’s shoulder as the rotation turned him from her.
It was a trap. Regol had lured her in and his elbow rose to meet her. In mid-air Nona was a slave to events already set in motion. She twisted and raised her arms to block. Regol’s elbow knocked her arms aside and hit the side of her head.
Nona found herself on the boards, the roaring of the crowd faint against a ringing in her ears as if Bitel were being hammered in warning. She lifted her head and the world spun around her, the looming shape of her opponent revolving with it.
“. . . surrender.” A harsh whisper as Regol approached.
Nona lifted her hand, fingers splayed. The blood-roar of the crowd missed a beat then fractured into both cheers and jeers. Nona rolled to her back, panting, fighting nausea, watching Regol’s back as he returned to his corner.
• • •
NONA DIDN’T SEE Clera’s or Zole’s fights. She heard the crowd howling, she heard laughter, hooting, gasps, but all that time she lay on a table in what looked to be the apprentice hall, her head ringing, exhaustion running through her though her fight had lasted only moments. Sister Flint gave her sugar in water and told her to rest. Sister Rock leaned over her, a frown on her brutal face, hands surprisingly tender as she pulled Nona’s eyes wide and waved a finger before them.
“You’ll be all right, child. No more fighting today, though.”
• • •
PERHAPS AN HOUR later, though it seemed both far longer and far less, Clera came limping to sit on the table. “We’re both done.”
“You look awful.” Nona sat up. She felt much better. Certainly better than Clera looked, her eye blackening, lip split.
“You should see the other girl.” Clera grinned, teeth red.
“You beat an apprentice?”
“What? No. Are you mad? She pounded me. I meant Zole.”
Nona looked around. She was in the apprentice hall, on the dining table to which she had delivered dozens of meals from the Caltess kitchens during her time there. “Where is she?”
“Sister Flint’s taking her back to the convent.” Clera grinned again. “On a mule!” She touched her lip, wincing. “That girl doesn’t know when to quit! She did manage to hurt one of them though. Talitha, the tall hunska with the braids, remember?”
Nona didn’t but she nodded.
“She had Zole in a lock. No way she could escape. But Zole kicked her in the face anyway.” Clera mimed the impact. “Brilliant.”
“And then?” Nona asked.
“I think she broke Zole’s arm.” Clera shrugged.
Sister Tallow appeared at the doorway, glimpses of the throng behind her, the rumble of them filling the hall. Someone caught her attention before she could turn into the room.
“No. We’re returning to the convent.”
Nona couldn’t hear the other party above the noise outside.
“That’s really not my concern, Reeve.”
“. . .”
“I don’t care what he wants.” Sister Tallow made to turn away but a tall figure closed on her. Partnis Reeve, reaching out for her arm before thinking better of it and withdrawing his hand as she stared at it.
“I don’t know what you’ve heard, sister, but he’s not some street-show villain! He’s the heir to one of Empire’s oldest families, for Ancestor’s sake! A refined young man of considerable education . . .”
“. . .” Now Sister Tallow’s voice fell to a mutter.
And Partnis’s rose in response. “Many young men have . . . appetites. Such lapses are unfortunate but—”
Sister Tallow stepped backwards into the room and shut the door in Partnis’s face.
“Are you fit to travel, Nona? We’re going back.”
Nona slipped from the table. The sound, the smell of the place, both of them filled her head with images—Raymel Tacsis in the ring, seen through an attic slit, bathed in the many-tongued voice of the crowd, Raymel Tacsis on his knees, blood spurting from the lacerations to his neck, Saida on the ground, her arm at broke
n angles, Raymel Tacsis watching from a crimson eye, black fingers running beneath the skin of his neck. She shook her head to clear the visions. “I want to fight.”
“Sister Rock says you took quite a blow to the head. There’s no shame in leaving now.” Sister Tallow crossed the room to stand above Nona. She took Nona’s chin and angled her face, eyes narrowed in inspection.
“I feel better.” It wasn’t a lie. She did feel better. Not good, but better.
“Your opponent is ready,” Sister Tallow said. “There’s much you could learn from him, but they would be rough lessons and perhaps you’ve been taught enough today.”
“I’ll fight.”
Sister Tallow chewed her cheek, frowned, then released Nona’s chin. “The world is a dangerous place. We do you no favours if we hide your weakness from you. You can fight.” She turned and walked towards the doorway.
Nona followed.
• • •
NOT SINCE SHE felled Raymel Tacsis had Nona been up close with someone as massive as Denam. The apprentice seemed to fill half the ring and she had to crane her neck to look up at his face.
“I’m going to snap you in two, little girl.” Denam curled his lip. He had the arms to do it too, without effort. He’d grown, if anything, less handsome over the two years, and he hadn’t been pleasing to look on in the first place. His face, reddened in anger, sported a nasty collection of pustules, and the beginnings of a sparse ginger beard. More spots had broken out along his arms and his back was thick with them.
“You shouldn’t oil your muscles.” Clera from just behind Nona’s corner. “It’s bad for your skin!” Nona had to put a hand to her mouth to hide a grin as Denam’s face contorted in rage.
Raymel Tacsis had moved closer to the ring, towering above the merchants and lords he now stood among. In all the crowd only one man seemed prepared to stand beside Raymel and an empty area had opened around the pair of them despite the press of people. The other man stood skeletally thin in a robe of sky-blue silk, his head small upon the long column of his neck, eyes pale, dark hair scraped across his head in long thinning locks. He seemed more interested in Raymel than in the fight, constantly glancing at the giant to his left.