Sword Sisters (17 page)

She swallowed hard but pushed through the fear and nodded. I showed her how instead of using force against force, she could meet an assault and glide her sword around to turn a parry into an attack.

And so we cut, sliced, and glided until the sun began to set and the light became too iffy. Amelia didn’t get another lucky shot through my guard, but she did improve her speed. And gliding turned out to be her forte.

“Very good,” I said after one particularly well-executed move. “You did that exactly right.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s super,” a familiar sarcastic voice said.

Gaither had returned, this time wearing a sword. He only had one companion with him, a fat boy with unruly hair. I recognized the look in his eye: He had something to prove now. I knew it because I saw it in my own expression whenever I looked in a mirror. This was the first time I realized how off-putting it must be to everyone else. I made a mental note to work on that at a more convenient time.

“Now what, Gaither?” Amelia said, tired.

“I want to see how good you are,” he said.

“You saw me hack an arrow in half,” I said.

“Not you.” He pointed at Amelia. “Her. The girl who’s pissed off our god.”

I knew Amelia had learned a lot, but she was exhausted and in no shape for a real fight. I said, “Go home, Gaither. Find a puppy to kick or a child with candy you can steal.”

He drew his sword. My inner defenses all went on alert. He said, “I’m not leaving until I see if she’s any good.”

“He’s not leaving,” his toadie said. “You heard him.”

“You’ll leave in pieces if you don’t go now,” I said and stepped between Amelia and Gaither. Amelia’s lucky shot had spooked me a little, and I held my sword ready.

“No, that’s okay,” Amelia said. “It’ll be good practice.”

“I don’t think he sees it as practice,” I said.

“I’ll take it easy on her,” Gaither said smugly. “After all, she’s just a girl.”

Well, that settled it all right. Amelia wasn’t about to back down, and I didn’t blame her. I said, “This will be by Royal Dueling rules. You familiar with those?”

“Yes,” he said. He didn’t twirl his sword or show off with it; I’d have been happier if he had. He just stood with it loose in his hand pointed vaguely in our direction neither on attack or defense.

“And I’m the referee,” I added. “What I say, goes. Is that clear?”

He mock-bowed. “Of course, your highness.”

“Your highness,” the toadie repeated, and giggled.

The sun was at the horizon, and the light did not make it easy to distinguish distance. I hated to put a tired beginner in this position, but the set of Amelia’s jaw told me she wasn’t about to quit.

When I looked back at Gaither, there was sudden uncertainty in his eyes. I don’t think he expected to have to back up his words; I knew that feeling pretty well myself and had gotten my own ass handed to me many times because I was too proud to admit I was outclassed.

“All right,” I said, “these are the rules. Three passes, best two out of three wins. When I say halt, you damn well better halt. And blade flats only, Gaither. We don’t have any practice armor, so I expect you to be careful.”

“What about her?” he said, and pointed his blade.

I knocked it down with my own. “I’m not worried about her. Now: first position.”

Gaither stepped into a pretty good stance; Amelia did as well, but she copied him instead of remembering what I showed her. I couldn’t fix it now. “Go!”

Gaither lunged, and Amelia blocked, but he let his sword slide off her blade and hit her in the shoulder. And that would be gliding. She cried, “Ow!”

“Halt!” I called. “First point, Gaither.”

They returned to first position, and this time Amelia attacked, a solid forward thrust that Gaither tried to block but couldn’t. He jumped back, avoiding the point of her sword.

“Halt!” I said again. “Point, Amelia. One-one.”

“Hey, she tried to stab me!” he whined. “I thought it was supposed to be flats only!”

“Do you want to win on a disqualification?” I said. “Is that what you want your pal to spread around town?”

Gaither glanced back at his toadie then nodded. “All right, let her have it. I’m about to win anyway.”

They resumed position, and this time, neither got the advantage right away. Instead, they swapped blows, each alternately attacking and defending. Amelia’s face was tight with concentration, and Gaither bit his lower lip as he tried to get the upper hand.

Then he slipped up, and Amelia saw it. She executed a spin, something we hadn’t practiced or even talked about, and smacked him on the ass with her blade.

He cried, “Ow!” and dropped his sword.

“Halt!” I said, barely able to keep from laughing. “Point Amelia. You lose, tough guy.”

Taunting him was a mistake though. He was already humiliated, and it made him angry. Angry people were dangerous as I well knew from hours of lectures on my own temper. I should’ve recognized the look in his eye as he snatched his sword from the ground.

“Calm down,” I said. “This isn’t a real fight, remember?”

“The hell it’s not,” he said as he put away his sword then muttered, “you stunted little monster.”

“Calling people names,” I said, “doesn’t change the fact that a girl beat you.”

Oh, was that an error. He screeched like some wounded cori bird and lunged at me not with his sword but with a knife I hadn’t seen him draw. He knocked me to the ground and crawled on top of me, the knife raised high overhead, his face creased into an expression of hatred and fury.

“Stop it, Gaither!” Amelia shouted. And it was the last thing I heard over the roaring blood in my ears as I shifted into full Reaper mode before I could catch myself.

Reaper mode takes you out of time. It’s not that you black out, it’s more like when you wake from a dreamless sleep and are surprised by how much time has passed. To me, it was no more than an instant, and in truth, it probably wasn’t much longer than that in real time. But when I came out of it, I stood over the boy, who howled with pain and clutched at his legs, both of which seemed to have extra knee joints they hadn’t had moments before.

Oh, shit. I broke both his legs.

Then I looked around. Amelia wasn’t laughing now. She stared at me as if I was the monster here.

Heod and Sela, followed by their smaller children, stood where they’d stopped just outside the door. Their eyes were wide.

I stepped slowly away from Gaither, who continued to screech like a wounded bird. I bent to pick up my sword. When I lifted it, there was a collective gasp, and everyone jumped back a step. Even Amelia stood with her hands over her mouth, eyes wide.

Someone shouted, “What’s going on here? Is this—”

I turned. Sixle, accompanied by Damato, came around the house and, like everyone else, froze in their tracks. The elder stared at the boy on the ground. Then his eyes rose to me.

“You,” he snarled. “That’s my son lying there! What did you do to him?”

I couldn’t think of anything to say. This is exactly the sort of thing Andre always warned me about and what Damato had feared. Now, it had happened.

“It wasn’t her fault,” Amelia said, suddenly beside me. “Gaither tried to stab her.”

“Why should anyone believe you?” Sixle snapped at Amelia.

“Because I’m telling the truth,” Amelia shot back.

“Help!” Sixle bellowed over his son’s caterwauling. “Help! Bring weapons!”

Damato grabbed his arm. “Stop shouting. There’s no need to—”

“Help!” Sixle continued.

Amelia pulled me aside and said urgently, “You have to get out of her, Aella. Now. Go back to your castle and your people.”

Those words, coming from a girl I considered a friend, cut me worse than any weapon could. “But I can’t leave—”

“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. I know I can’t stay either. Meet me after full dark at Lurida Lumo’s cave. Nobody will look for you, or me, there.”

“But—”

“Aella, listen. I know you can kill all of them, but I don’t want to see that, and I truly believe you don’t want to do that. So just…go away for a while, okay? I’ll see you tonight.”

I stared at her, an absolutely unexpected range of feelings going through me. For the first time in my life, I was truly ashamed of my loss of control. Was this what Adonis had always wanted me to feel? I also felt rage at this boy and all his friends, but it was not the same hot fury that sent me into Reaper mode; instead, it was anger that they thought so little of women in general and that Amelia and the other village girls had to grow up with that belief. As they stared at me, I realized they no longer saw me as a girl, no longer even as human; I was as much a monster as Lurida Lumo.

I caught Damato, still trying to silence Sixle, glaring at me. Horva and Hatho hid behind their parents, and Heod and Sela appeared as terrified as their babies.

I turned and ran.

The dress wasn’t the best thing for running, and, carrying the sword, I couldn’t really hike it up out of my way. But I still managed to cover a lot of ground more quickly than any human could. Yay, me. Bravely fleeing.

I chose no particular direction beyond back toward the castle, but it took me along the trail to Lurida Lumo’s cave. When I realized no one immediately pursued me, I stopped to catch my breath and realized I stood near the first of the strange little pillars. The flowers left around it, presumably on the pilgrimage that took Amelia to the cave, had begun to wilt and fade.

I looked it over. It had been carved long ago, but the surface had been maintained so that the pictures and words remained visible and in sharp relief. It showed an image of a valley nestled among a range of low mountains with a group of people arriving from somewhere else, their arms upraised and their simplistic faces all smiles. I couldn’t read the text chiseled around this, but I assumed it told where the villagers came from and what brought them here long ago. They probably fled the Demons like so many human populations; it was one reason the eventual uniting of the humans under a single king was such a big deal.

I could breathe easily again and paused to listen for pursuit. I doubted the villagers would come charging after me, and if they sent Damato, he might be so good I didn’t hear him until he was ready to pounce. Reapers move a lot faster than humans even in flouncy dresses, but I didn’t know how fast Damato could move.

I trotted easily to the next pillar. It also showed the village, but something was clearly wrong. People lay on the ground, and around them, others were shown in poses of despair and grief. A plague of some sort must have ravaged them. In one corner stood a cave opening with lines indicating light shining from it. Before it was a lone figure kneeling, perhaps a priest or maybe the first person to discover Lurida Lumo.

How did a god introduce himself to his worshippers, I wondered? And what had he been doing all those eons before the villagers arrived? I was no theologian, but the myth of Lurida Lumo didn’t seem to hold up to too much scrutiny.

I learned about religion from another elderly Reaper, Molon. He was absolutely dead certain in his beliefs, and if you didn’t agree with him, you were absolutely dead wrong. He explained the Reaper cosmology, that we were intended to be the shadowy reflection of what was best in humanity while the Demons represented what was worst. Humans, made in the image of God, embodied both, just as God encompassed everything, even contradictions.

After spending my childhood with the Demons, I had no doubt they were truly the worst. But I struggled with believing Reapers were really just a shadow of humanity. I was filled with the certainty of my own existence and challenged Molon on this. He broke my jaw in punishment for my temerity. I would have hated him for it, but later that night, as I prowled the castle practicing my stealth, I found him in the chapel and overheard him praying for me. It wasn’t a prayer for my immediate painful death, as I expected, but instead one that asked God to give my soul peace. It hadn’t worked, but damn it, I admired the old guy for trying.

Now, looking over this record of the villagers’ belief in Lurida Lumo, I wondered if they felt the same certainty before I came along.

The third pillar, the last one, showed the villagers prosperous and happy. Again in a corner, the cave now had the crossbeams in place, a sacrifice chained to it. Standing in the glowing cave mouth was no spider but a human form. That made sense: Molon always said humans created gods in their own image then put the blame on these deities for the humans’ own mistakes.

Humans
, I thought bitterly. The race we were supposed to gladly allow dominion over the world. The ones who irrationally feared us even though we all had human mothers. Maybe the Demons had the right idea about them.

Then I felt a rush of horror at my own thoughts. Of course the Demons weren’t right. Not about anything. And yet for a moment, that thought had been so satisfying, so pleasant, that I realized it had made me smile. By the screaming banshees of Limba, was I truly more Demon than Reaper?

I was also ashamed. And that shame was deep and fundamental, because it was shame for something I couldn’t help. I was a Reaper, I was half-Demon, and that Demonic half had been nurtured by Ganesh and his followers the way the other Reapers had cultivated their human halves. Until I could learn to control it, it would always come out at the worst possible time, destroying false gods and cocky teenage boys who didn’t really deserve it.