Athalia’s friend, the knight, was an older man with a minor holding the Lord of Siu Carinal had awarded him some thirty years before for saving a bumbling cousin in the war up north.
“When I was a young buck,” as the old knight said. Most of his stories started off that way.
The old knight’s favorite pastime was to recount his heroic feats of long ago and swear he could replicate them tonight if called upon. By the end of the first month, Seleketra had heard all of his exploits and begun to see where minor details were getting tangled as the past grew further away.
But he was as gentle as Athalia had promised. He never hurt Seleketra on purpose, and when he found out he was too heavy for her, he taught her positions that saved her from taking a man’s weight.
“Some of these court lads are a sight bigger than I. Never lifted a sword in their life, the lards. We’d better get you a few tricks in reserve to keep from being smothered.”
The old knight taught Seleketra what pleased a man, what he liked to hear, what would keep him hanging on her every glance. Without realizing it, he also taught her to listen to the same anecdote over and over again, to appear fascinated every time, and to seem captivated by the most tedious conversation.
Seleketra soon learned that the most vital role she had to play wasn’t in the bedchamber, but on the arm. She was to be a status symbol, a mark of wealth and potency, a banner to make other men burn with envy by imagining her lavishing her favors upon her companion. Desperately yearned for by all, but possessed by few.
The old knight bought dresses and jewelry for his young companion, and staged smaller versions of the events she would one day attend. Actors, singers, jesters, fire jugglers, and contortionists, all playing to an audience of two. Dances, feasts, and exhibitions.
Pretty was dazzled by the spectacle. She couldn’t contain her shouts of joy and dismay at seeing her first drama, and in minutes the jester had her crying from laughing so hard. The bendy people who twisted themselves into curlicues held Pretty spellbound, and the fire jugglers were delighted by her gasps and enthusiastic applause.
Kindly, the old knight admonished Seleketra. A close-rat could behave that way on the streets, but for Seleketra, these performances must be mundane, minor diversions at best. Demigoddesses were not awed by anything, let alone human foolery.
Pretty found boredom easiest to convey with the musicians the old knight hired. They didn’t know how to make the body-moving, heart-thumping, wailing music she was used to hearing on the streets of Siu Carinal. These musicians droned like water bugs while the old knight taught her the steps to the dances popular at court, which didn’t seem much like real dancing at all to Pretty. She never knew uphill folk had to follow a pattern to dance.
The weather grew colder, and the performers stopped traveling for the winter. It was time, the old knight told her, that he brought in a priest to teach Pretty her letters.
Pretty had never met a person who knew letters, but Athalia had been adamant that it was a necessity. The Daylily had risen from the Closes to an uphill townhouse without ever reading a lick. She was determined that Seleketra would go even farther, and the only way to do that was to read like the nobles did.
The priest scared Pretty sicker than sick. Back in Siu Carinal, whenever the moon hid behind the ghost city, the priests of the strong gods flowed in waves through the low streets looking for close-rats to sacrifice. Nights when the moon hid were bad medicine, and the priests were the reason why.
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But Athalia wanted Pretty learnt in letters, so she was going to have to do it to be a good daughter.
Shaking and sweating, Pretty begged the old knight to promise he wouldn’t let the priest drag her off. He took her hand and gave her his solemn vow.
She had trouble paying attention to the priest’s teaching until she made believe she was Seleketra. Seleketra wasn’t afraid of anything, not even the bent shape inside the priest robes, or the hot rank breath whistling through its mask, or the hands all covered in scars and old blood.
By springtime, Seleketra could read the one book the knight owned and even make her own beautiful letters with ink and parchment. The priest crawled away, back to whatever high place it worshipped in, and Pretty only ever saw it again in day terrors.
“My dear Seleketra, you have blossomed like a winter flower,” the old knight told her one day at supper. “Your manner, your comportment, your touch… The Daylily will be delighted with your transformation. As for I, however, it is with the heaviest of hearts that I admit it is time you return to Siu Carinal.”
“My good knight,” Seleketra replied, favoring him with a bittersweet smile and a skillful caress from her tattooed fingers. “The pleasure of our time together will always be one of my greatest treasures.”
But whatever Seleketra said, Pretty was so happy her heart could bust. She was going back to Athalia! She would show the Daylily that she’d been learned better than any real daughter could.
***
Lathe didn’t keep up extra sword practice while the weapons masters were absent, but she played with the disappearing and mirroring, and not just to harass Thirty. She used it while the pirate scum and Four practiced blood magic—usually to their annoyance—and during large-scale melees while training to assault or defend a castle, when nobody would miss her. She even crept around the animals in the stables, because they were harder to deceive than humans.
Most of the time, she could disappear completely, her sound, scent, and shadow gone as well as her form. There were certain times, however, that her shadow remained, and she had to resort to distorting where the shade fell.
Master Saint Daven hadn’t noticed the pattern before he left, which just went to show what an emptyheaded old crow he was, always squawking at her to think when he was the one not thinking. All he’d noticed was that Lathe’s abilities went in streaks. Perfect invisibility for weeks at a time, then everything she had learned would fall apart.
But he must not have kept track of when he had to yell at the brat, because he never did mention how it was right around the same time every month.
What else Lathe realized that the master hadn’t was how much stronger her other medicine got during that time. She could heal up in a heartbeat, throw her shadow a mile, outrun the wind.
She had almost whupped Four during the autumn tournament. They had fought the match before the championships, and she just near pulled the upset of the year. Her left blade pared a wisp of dark hair from the back of Four’s neck the second before his medicine snatched her out of the air and slammed her backward into the wall of the keep.
Next tournament she’d be ready for that throwing trick, and then she would really give her roommate what-for.
Lathe spent a good deal of time dreaming of winning the spring tournament, then rubbing her victory in the weapons master’s ugly face.
But the spring tournament loomed close, and the old crow still wasn’t back.
Lathe waylaid Grandmaster one day after lectures to ask about it. “You figure the twins run out on you?”
Grandmaster Heartless had just received the writ announcing when the king would be in residence for the spring grafting. He’d come to the kitchens to make arrangements, and she, as usual, was working scullery.
“What twins?” the old man asked.
“The Saints, you know the Saints! The weapons masters. Me, I figure they up and run off so’s they didn’t have to teach no more.”
“Ah, I see. No, I imagine Masters Saint Daven and Saint Galen will be back when and if they can. Do you have complaints about training under Master Fright?”
“Nah, he’s a good fighter, him, just fussy when it comes to lecture time. Same as all of ’em.”
Grandmaster smiled. “I suspect if students spent a lecture listening instead of talking, and sitting still rather than getting up and moving around, they might find the masters less inclined to fussiness.”
“Don’t seem likely, Grandmaster Sir. If you so much as itch your nose or let a fart slip, you’re in the kitchens scrubbin’ pots ’til the ghost cities burn out.”
“Try it my way once and see what happens.”
Lathe agreed unenthusiastically. Grandmaster had river water in his ears. She’d sat still purt near ’til her bones jumped out of her skin while that blamed manners lecture dragged on and on, and she’d still got in trouble. It had nothing to do with her. Anybody with common sense would’ve poked that mole on the back of Eleven’s neck to make sure it wasn’t a tick.