The Gentleman Bastard Series (199 page)

“Ow,” he said, hopping up and down while the sting faded. Locke wiped his forehead, lined up again in the duelist’s stance, and touched the tip of his baton to Sabetha’s. They were using the sanctuary of the Temple of Perelandro as a practice room, under Jean’s watchful eye.

“High diamond, low square,” said Jean. “Go!”

This was more an exercise in speed and precision than actual fighting technique. They slammed their batons together in the patterns demanded by Jean, and after the final contact they were free to swipe at one another, scoring touches against arms or legs.

Clack! Clack! Clack!
The sound of their batons echoed across the stone-walled chamber.

Clack! Clack! Clack!

Clack! Clack! Thump!

“Yeow,” said Locke, shaking his left wrist, where a fresh red welt was rising.

“You’re faster than this, Locke.” Sabetha returned to her starting position. “Something distracting you this morning?”

Sabetha wore a loose white tunic and black silk knee-breeches that left nothing about her lithely-muscled legs to the imagination. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair pulled tightly back with linen cord. If she’d heard anything specific about the disturbance he’d kicked off to start the day, at least she wasn’t saying much.

“More than one something?” she said. “Any of them attached to me?”

So much for the lukewarm comfort of uncertainty.

“You know
I’m
attached to you,” said Locke, trying to sound cheerful as they touched batons again.

“Or might like to be, hmmm?”

“Middle square,” yelled Jean, “middle square, middle diamond! Go!”

They wove their pattern of strikes and counterstrikes, rattling their batons off one another until the end of the sequence, when Sabetha flicked Locke’s weapon down and smacked a painful crease into his right biceps. Sabetha’s only commentary on this victory was to idly twirl her baton while Locke rubbed at his arm.

“Hold it,” said Jean. “We’ll try a new exercise. Locke, stand there with your hands at your sides. Sabetha, you just hit him until you get tired. Be sure to concentrate on his head so he won’t feel anything.”

“Very funny.” Locke lined up again. “I’m ready for another.”

He was nothing of the sort. At the end of the next pattern, Sabetha slapped him on the right biceps again. And again, following the pattern after that, with precision that was obviously deliberate.

“You know, most days you can at least manage to hit back,” she said. “Want to give it up as a bad job?”

“Of course not,” said Locke, trying to be subtle about wiping the nascent tears from the corners of his eyes. “Barely getting started.”

“Have it your way.” She lined up again, and Locke couldn’t miss the coldness of her poise. Ah, gods. When Sabetha felt she was being trifled with, she had a way of radiating the same calm, chilly regard that Locke imagined might pass from executioner to condemned victim. He knew all too well what it meant to be the object of that regard.

“High diamond,” said Jean warily, apprehending the change in Sabetha’s mood. “Middle square, low cross. Go.”

They flew through the patterns with furious speed, Sabetha setting the pace and Locke straining to match her. The instant the last stroke of the formal exercise was made, Locke flew into a guard position that would have deflected any blow aimed at his much-abused right biceps. Sabetha, however, was actually aiming for a point just above his heart, and the hotly stinging slap nearly knocked him over.

“Gods above,” said Jean, stepping between them. “You know the rules, Sabetha. No cuts at anything but arms or legs.”

“Are there rules in a tavern brawl or an alley fight?”

“This isn’t a damned alley fight. It’s just an exercise for building vigor!”

“Doesn’t seem to be working for one of us.”

“What’s gotten into you?”

“What’s gotten into
you
, Jean? Are you going to stand in front of him for the rest of his life?”

“Hey, hey,” said Locke, stepping around Jean and attempting to hide a considerable amount of pain behind a disingenuous smile.

“All’s well, Jean.”

“All’s not well,” said Jean. “Someone is taking this far too seriously.”

“Stand aside, Jean,” said Sabetha. “If he wants to stick his hand in a fire, he can learn to pull it out himself.”

“
He
is right here, thank you very much, and
he
is fine,” said Locke. “It’s fine, Jean. Let’s have another pattern.”

“Sabetha needs to calm down.”

“Aren’t I calm?” said Sabetha. “Locke can have quarter anytime he asks for it.”

“I don’t choose to yield just yet,” said Locke, with what he hoped was a charming, devil-may-care sort of grin. Sabetha’s countenance only darkened in response. “However, if you’re concerned about me, you can back off to any degree you prefer.”

“Oh, no.” Sabetha was anything but calm. “No, no, no. I don’t withdraw.
You
yield! Deliberately. Or we keep going until you can’t stand up.”

“That might take a while,” said Locke. “Let’s see if you have the patience—”

“Damn it, when will you learn that refusing to admit you’ve lost isn’t the same as winning?”

“Sort of depends on how long one keeps refusing, doesn’t it?”

Sabetha scowled, an expression that cut Locke more deeply than any baton-lash. Staring fixedly at him, she took her baton in both hands, snapped it over her knee, and bounced the pieces off the floor.

“Forgive me,
gentlemen
,” she said. “I seem to be unable to conform to the intended spirit of this exercise.”

She turned and left. When she’d vanished into the rear hall of the temple, Locke let out a dejected sigh.

“Gods,” he said. “What the hell is going on between us? What happened, just now?”

“She has a cruel streak, that one,” said Jean.

“No more than any of us!” said Locke, more hotly than he might have intended. “Well, we’ve got some … philosophical differences, to be sure.”

“She’s a perfectionist.” Jean picked up the broken halves of Sabetha’s baton. “And you’re a real idiot from time to time.”

“What did I do, besides fail to be a master baton duelist?” Locke massaged some of the tender reminders Sabetha had left him of her superior technique. “I didn’t train with Don Maranzalla.”

“Neither did she.”

“Well, come on, how does that make me an idiot?”

“You’re no Sanza,” said Jean, “but you can certainly be one sharp stab in the ass. Look, you’d have stood here and let her slap you into paste just for the sake of being in the same room with her. I know it. You know it.
She
knows it.”

“Well, uh—”

“It’s not
endearing
, Locke. You don’t court a girl by inviting her to abuse you from sunrise to sunset.”

“Really? That sounds an awful lot like courtship in every story I’ve ever read—”

“I mean literally abused, as in getting pounded into bird shit with a wooden stick. It’s not charming or impressive. It just makes you look silly.”

“Well, she doesn’t like it when I beat her at anything. She’s certainly not going to respect me if I give up! So just what the hell
can
I do?”

“No idea. Maybe I see some things clearer than you because I’m not bloody infatuated, but what to actually do with the pair of you, gods know.”

“You’re a deep well of reassurance.”

“On the bright side,” said Jean, “I’m sure you’re higher in her esteem right now than the Sanzas.”

“Sweet gods, that’s sickly praise.” Locke leaned against a wall and stretched. “Speaking of Sanzas, did you see Chains’ face when we woke him up this morning?”

“I wish I hadn’t. He’s going to break those two over his knee like Sabetha’s stick.”

“Where do you think he stomped off to?”

“No idea. I’ve never seen him leave angry before the sun was even up.”

“What in all the hells is going on with us?” said Locke. “This whole summer has been one long exercise in getting everything wrong.”

“Chains muttered to me a few nights ago,” said Jean, fiddling with the broken baton. “Something about awkward years. Said he might have to do something about us being all pent up together.”

“Hope that doesn’t mean more apprenticeships. I’m really not in the mood to go learn another temple’s rituals and then pretend to kill myself.”

“No idea what it means, but—”

“Hey, you two!” Galdo Sanza appeared out of the rear corridor, the spitting image of Calo, save for the fact that his skull was shaven clean of every last speck of hair. “Tubby and the training dummy! Chains is back, wants us in the kitchen with a quickness. And what’d you do to Sabetha this time?”

“I exist,” said Locke. “Some days that’s enough.”

“You should make some friends at the Guilded Lilies, mate,” said Galdo. “Why fall on your face trying to tame a horse when you can have a dozen that are already saddled?”

“So now you like to fuck horses,” said Jean. “Bravo, baldy.”

“Laugh all you will, we’re in demand over there,” said Galdo. “Favorite guests. Command performances.”

“I’m sure you’re popular,” said Jean with a yawn. “Who doesn’t like getting paid for fast, easy work?”

“I’ll say a prayer for you next time I’m having it with two at once,” said Galdo. “Maybe the gods will hear me and let your stones drop. But, seriously, Chains came in the river entrance, and I think we’re all about to die.”

“Well, hurrah,” said Locke. “When the weather’s like this, who honestly wants to live?”

3

THE FATHER Chains waiting in the glass burrow’s kitchen wasn’t wearing any of his usual guises or props. No canes or staves to lean on, no robes, no look of sly benevolence on that craggy, bearded face. He was dressed to be out and about in the city, heavily sweated with exertion, and all the furrows in his forehead seemed to meet in an ominous valley above his fierce dark eyes. Locke was unsettled; he’d rarely seen Chains glower like that at an enemy or a stranger, let alone at his apprentices.

Locke noticed that everyone else was keeping a certain instinctive distance from Chains. Sabetha sat on a counter, well away from anyone, arms folded. The Sanzas sat near one another more out of old habit than present warmth. Their appearances were divergent; Calo with his long, oiled, well-tended tresses and Galdo, scraped smooth as a prizefighter. The twins shared no jokes, no gestures, no small talk.

“I suppose it’s only fair to begin,” said Chains, “by apologizing for having failed you all.”

“Um,” said Locke, stepping forward, “how have you failed us, exactly?”

“My mentorship. My responsibility to not allow our happy home to turn into a seething pit of mutual aggravation … which it has.” Chains coughed, as though he’d irritated his throat merely by bringing such words out. “I thought I might ease up on the regimen of previous summers. Fewer lessons, fewer errands, fewer tests. I hoped that without constraints, you might blossom. Instead you’ve rooted yourselves deep without flowering.”

“Hold on,” said Calo, “it hasn’t been such an unwelcome break, has it? And we’ve been training. Jean’s seen to it that we’ve kept up with battering one another about.”

“That’s hardly your principal form of exercise these days,” said Chains. “I’ve heard things from the Lilies. You two spend more time in bed than invalids. Certainly more than you spend planning or practicing our work.”

“So we haven’t run a game on anyone for a few weeks,” said Calo. “Is the fuckin’ Eldren-fire falling? Who gives a damn if we take some
ease? What should we be doing, sir, learning more Vadran? More dances? A seventeenth way to hold knives and forks?”

“You snot-nosed grand duke of insolence,” said Chains, growing louder with each word, “you ignorant, wet-eared, copper-chasing shit-barge puppy! Do you have any idea what you’ve been given? What you’ve worked for? What you
are
?”

“What I am is tired of being yelled at—”

“Ten years under my roof,” said Chains, looming over Calo like an ambulatory mountain, suffused with moral indignation, “ten years under my protection, eating at my table, nurtured by my hand and coin. Have I beaten you, buggered you, put you out in the rain?”

“No,” said Calo, cringing. “No, of course not—”

“Then you can stand one gods-damned rebuke without flapping your jaw.”

“Of course,” said Calo, most meekly. “Sorry.”

“You’re educated thieves,” said Chains. “No matter how you might think it profits you to feign otherwise, you are
not ordinary
. You can pass for servants, farmers, merchants, nobles; you have the poise and manners for any station. If I hadn’t let you grow so callow, you might realize what an unprecedented personal freedom you all possess.”

Locke reflexively opened his mouth to deliver some smooth assuagement, but the merest half-second flick of Chains’ glare was more than enough to keep him mute.

“What do you think this is all for?” said Chains. “What do you suppose it’s all been in aid of? So you can laze around and work the occasional petty theft? Drink and whore and dice with the other Right People until you get called out or hung? Have you
seen
what happens to our kind? How many of your bright-eyed little chums will live to see twenty-five? If they scrape thirty they’re gods-damned elders. You think they have money tucked away? Villas in the country? Thieves may prosper night by night, but there’s nothing for them when the lean times come, do you understand?”

“But there’s
garristas
,” said Galdo, “and the Capa, and a lot of older types at the Floating Grave—”

“Indeed,” said Chains. “Capas and
garristas
don’t go hungry, because they can take scraps from the mouths of their brothers and sisters. And how do you suppose you get to grow old in the Capa’s service?
You guard his doors with an alley-piece, like a constable on the beat. You watch your friends hang, and die in the gutters, and get called up for teeth lessons because they said the wrong thing in their cups or held back a few silvers one fucking time. You put your head down and shut up, forever. That’s what earns you some gray hair.