22.

Vivian spent the following days running new courses across the ruined city. Every evening she would return to Owen and tell him where she had run to. He would precede to grunt acknowledgement and continue whatever exercise he had been in the middle of before she arrived. Vivian loved dashing through the city, she tried to imagine what it must have been like back when the streets were filled with thousands of people. Occasionally she would deviate from the roads and duck into different houses. Most didn’t contain anything remarkable, only normal household items which had been able to weather hundreds of years. She found little things like dulled, rusted, metal kitchen knives and occasionally broken clay pottery. But once she found a sword. It was coated in half in an inch of rust and would probably break if it was swung at anything harder than a pillow, but it was a sword. Vivian snatched it up with glee and dashed back to Owen where she presented it with almost childlike pride at her discovery. Owen examined it for a minute before handing it back to her.

“It was well made. The smith knew what he was doing when making it. Good work finding it.” Then he handed it back to her and continued throwing javelins at a straw target.

Vivian felt a rush of pride at his praise. She later hid the rusted sword under the left side of her mattress (which required her to lay on the right side while sleeping). She even found a book up in the library about removing rust from metal and attempted to restore the blade to its former glory.

From that day on, she took it into the city to work on it. She just settled into her work on a balcony which had an almost cozy atmosphere, when Rin came down the alley below. He rounded the corner so quickly that he didn’t seem to notice her above him with the rusty short sword and a cleaning cloth.

Curious about where he was hurrying to, Vivian quietly set down the sword and went down the steps to the alley. She followed from a ways back, ducking behind broken pillars and street corners to avoid being seen. Then he suddenly stopped in the middle of a destroyed building. Reaching down in the wreckage, he pulled up a trap door and slipped down beneath.

Vivian hesitated for a long minute. She wanted desperately to follow but she also didn’t want to make Rin upset with her. Rin had been one of the few people who genuinely seemed interested in being her friend, him and Lynn, and she didn’t want to risk ruining the friendship. She considered just asking him about it the next time she saw him...but then he would know she followed him so that wouldn’t work. Or worse, what if he lied to her? She wouldn’t blame him for not trusting her but the thought of him lying to her tore a hole in her chest.

So, with a heavy heart, she decided to wait for him to leave and go down. She would just get a quick peek at what was down there and leave.

Nothing happened for hours. Vivian remained crouched behind a fallen stone pillar waiting for Rin to return, the anxiety of the wait clinging to her emotions. Finally, she walked over to the trap door. To her surprise, she discovered it was made of wood. It was the first piece of a building she had seen in the entire city to be made of anything other than stone. It looked weather worn too, not hundreds of years old like the rest of the city, but still over a decade old. She opened it and climbed down a ladder.

At first she appeared to be swallowed by darkness and Vivian panicked slightly but, after her eyes adjusted, she saw the faint flickering of candlelight under a door at the end of a hallway. Calming herself and moving as stealthily as possible, Vivian made her way towards it. She slowly pushed open the door and couldn’t contain a gasp at the sight of the room inside. Every bit of it was covered in dark green vegetation. What she had assumed to be candlelight was actually beams of sunlight peeking through holes in the ceiling. Bushes and flowers sprouted up in every inch of the floor and vines entangled the walls. At the center of it all was the trunk of a massive tree. It wasn’t tall, as it crammed against the fifteen foot high ceiling, but it was massive all the same. Vivian knew immediately that if it had been allowed to grow outside this cellar it would easily be double or triple the height.

Rin sat up from where he rested at the gnarled roots of the tree. The boy gave Vivian a harsh look before sighing and standing.

“Welcome, Vivian Topaz, to my private garden.”

“I’m so sorry. I saw you go in and didn’t see you come out and I became worried so I decided to come down after you. I didn’t mean to intrude. I’ll leave now. I’m sorry.” Vivian made to leave but Rin raised his hand.

“Stay. I suppose it’s my own fault, I told you to take initiative, didn’t I? Anyway, I actually have been meaning to talk to you. Just don’t step on any of my plants.”

Vivian stepped gingerly over to a rock where she set herself down. “Thank you, Rin. What do you want to talk about?”

Rin didn’t speak for a minute, just stared forward at the tree in front of him. “Owen mentioned you found an old sword. I’m probably cheating by just telling you this instead of making you figure it out on your own, but the next time you see Owen practicing with his swordplay movements you should take that sword and copy everything he does. He wants to teach you but doesn’t know how to tell you. He’s more frustrated with himself than he is with you. Just do as he does if you want to learn.”

“Oh. Thanks, Rin,” Vivian said. “You know him pretty well don’t you? Have you been friends long?”

Rin shrugged. “No, not long. Do I know him well? Maybe better than most but only because I’ve met so many like him before. Sometimes I wonder how people who have never met one another can be so similar. Maybe they’re all just copies. Clones with different faces.”

Vivian remained silent for a while. “You’re not younger than me are you?” she asked.

“Not even close. I’ve been around for a long time. Far too long. What gave it away?”

“You aren’t speaking like an overly educated boy like you usually do. You sound…I don’t know, weathered?”

“I suppose my garden does that to me. I always feel older when I’m here too.”

“How old are you?”

“It’s a secret.”

“Okay, why are you on Silvian Island? You’re not a Mystic but you’re allowed in the library. Why is that?”

“It’s a secret.”

“How do you look so young?”

“It’s a secret.”

“Is your name even Rin?”

Rin hesitated. “Recently it has been my name. But I think the actual question you’re seeking is ‘what is your original name?’ which my response would be ‘it’s a secret.’” Vivian opened her mouth but Rin raised a hand to cut her off. “I’ll tell you about myself another time. I’ll answer all your questions and more, but right now you should get going. I actually have things I need to take care of.”

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Vivian nodded and stood up. As she was leaving, Vivian looked back and realized the real reason Rin had seemed so old. Normally, he appeared so carefree, always laughing, but now, as she examined him, she saw every muscle in his body seemed tense. Though he had lightly teased her, his mouth had not once, in their entire conversation, smiled. This Rin was an altogether different person from the one above ground.

She fled.

She went back to the balcony and reclaimed the rusted sword. Heaving the metal over her shoulder, she made her way back to the amphitheater. Smiling at her luck, Vivian looked down at Owen swinging his practice sword a dummy.

Without a word she walked down and began mimicking him. Everything about his movements, which seemed effortless when he performed them, felt awkward to imitate for Vivian. The slashing, jabbing, and hilt smashing all became a jumbled mess in her hands and several times she managed to hit herself with her own dull blade.

“Move your feet,” he said. “Your positioning is horrendous. Everything comes down to the foundation you set yourself on.”

She began copying his footwork until he stopped.

“You need to hold the sword with one hand. It’s a short sword, not a great sword or a longsword. It’s not even a bastard sword.” He set his own sword down and went to his chest where he pulled out a sword of a similar length to her own. “Hold it like I am. You’ll get used to the blade in time and build muscles to hold it. Your sword isn’t balanced. That makes it unwieldy. But you’ll figure that out. Just do what I do.”

Vivian did as he told her. By the end of the day, she was drenched in sweat. Her skirt smeared with dirt and her own body odor joined Owen’s in reeking up a ten foot radius around her. When the sun set, she thanked Owen, who grunted in response, and ran back to the library.

She ate dinner quickly and avoided sitting near anyone in the mess hall to save herself from the embarrassment of having them be able to smell her. After eating her fill, she found Ida and asked her to draw a bath, which the serving woman readily agreed to do for her. Ida had a wooden tub brought to her chambers and filled with warmed water.

Once in the warm tub Vivian sighed at the comfort it offered her and simply absorbed the warmth around her. Eventually though, her eyes fell upon her dirty skirt she had left scrunched up on the ground. The skirt had been exceptionally pretty but it had been tailored to be tight at the knees and she had torn it while attempting to copy Owen’s footwork. Once again she longed to wear pants again like she had in the country. Hesitantly, she climbed out of the tub, toweled off, and went to her closet. Opening it, she found a pair of pants in the very back.

Very few of her belongings had been recovered from the burned home but Lord Ivory had managed to find a set of her younger brother’s clothes and had brought them back for her. Her younger brother had been in the middle of a growth spurt and had become almost the same height as her. She stuck one leg into the pants and then another. Lacing up the britches, she found they fit near perfectly. She dropped to one knee in a stretch and grinned at the accessibility the clothes offered her.

The door creaked open and Vivian hurled herself into her bed, throwing her covers over herself just in time as Ida strolled in.

“Finished bathing?”

Vivian nodded. Ida left to bring servants over to carry the tub out and Vivian collapsed onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. Her heart still beat rapidly in her chest, if Ida had seen her in her brother’s pants...she’d never live down that embarrassment. She hugged her sheets closer to herself. Soon she drifted off, stolen away by sleep.

The sun peeked through the curtains when she woke up. For a moment, she groggily looked around the room, confused and disoriented. Then she realized exactly her situation. She hadn’t woken up innately with the sunrise but had slept in. Jumping to her feet, Vivian threw back the curtains to find the sun was already a good ways up in the sky. Curses from a past life on the tip of her tongue, Vivian flew out of the room. On her way out she snatched a piece of toast from a platter of breakfast Ida had left on her bed stand for her.

It wasn’t until she was halfway down the cliffside to the city that she looked down at her outfit and the realization dawned on her with horror that she still wore her brother’s clothes. Even standing alone on the stairs, her face still flushed with embarrassment. Vivian almost wept with despair. It had only been through some miracle that she hadn’t been seen while racing out of the library, going back would almost guarantee people spotting her. Briefly, she debated attempting to get back into her chambers via the window as it decreased the amount of people who could chance to see her, but with that decrease also came a significant increase in the amount of embarrassment which would occur if someone did happen upon her as she attempted to break into her room from outside in men’s clothing.

In the end she decided to go down into the city. She would go and hide on her balcony until nightfall. Then she could sneak back to her chambers while everyone slept and no one would be any of the wiser. It meant missing a training day with Owen but that would be fine. Someone told her once that taking a rest day actually helped strengthen muscles.

Hours passed after she reached the balcony. Vivian lay sprawled on the floor, wishing she had her short sword so she could pass time cleaning the blade. But, of course, yesterday she left it behind where Owen trained. By the time noon came around Vivian’s stomach rumbled with discomfort and she decided she couldn’t simply spend the day sitting on the balcony. Deciding to take a minimal risk, she stretched and left the balcony to run.

It felt phenomenal to run in pants again. It was like singing a song with instruments accompanying after attempting the same song alone in acapella for so long. Everything about it felt easier and smoother and simply right. Vivian let her legs guide the way as she dashed past familiar stonework until she once again found herself at the stone gate with engravings she had seen on her first random run.

It appeared no less ominous now than it had then. The interior carvings were still unthreatening but the exterior engravings appeared more monstrous than ever. She sat under it, staring up at the hooded men. The middle figure smiled poison back at her, sending a shiver down her spine, but she refused to look away from him.

“Move,” demanded a deep voice.

Vivian, panicking, hurled herself behind a broken stone wall without a moment’s hesitation. Only after peering up over it did she realize the voice hadn’t been addressing her and, with relief, she also realized the speaker had not seen her either.

Rounding the corner, Quinton Silver came into view. Then, as if popping out from the very engravings which were above them, a hooded figure appeared at his side. She ducked behind the wall, praying they would not come near her hiding space.

“Simply consider the offer,” the hooded individual said. Vivian couldn’t quite tell from the voice if the speaker was male or female but the speaker’s words echoed with a tone that could coax a snail to abandon its shell for one of paper. “It’s only a matter of time. You will still be able to study if you choose. I’ll give you your tutor full time, on a leash if it comes to it. I understand she has not been the most agreeable so far. Or, I could also give you a new one to teach you Mystic Arts. Or, if you prefer, I can give you gold. That’s a commodity we have a plethora of. And, with money comes political power. I could make you both the richest man in Neo Regnum as well as the most powerful.”

Quinton seemed to consider. “What exactly do you want from me?”

Vivian strained her ears in curiosity as the hooded figure spoke. “Only what you already want. Lynn Jet’s corpse being pecked at by carnivorous birds.”

“You want me to kill the cripple?”

“You wound me. I would never ask such a thing of a noble man such as yourself. I simply want you to arrange for him to be deceased in the near future. My own assassin seems to be…ineffectual.”

Quinton snorted and spat. “I recall you boasting that you could kill anyone, but now a one armed, one legged cripple is too much for you?”

“Lynn Jet is…special. Our methods of killing won’t harm him. There was a reason he survived when my peers assaulted Nornex all those years ago.”

“Sure. I’ll kill the cripple. Then I can have anything I want?”

“Money and power. It will all be yours.”

“And women?”

“Oh, most definitely. Those come with money and power.”

“Good. There’s one in particular I want. But more than one is fine too.” Quinton’s voice oozed with greedy lust.

“Anything for you my friend. Simply escort Jet to the afterlife.”

After those words she could hear Quinton Silver’s boots thumping away from her but she couldn’t hear where the hooded man had gone. After several minutes, she chanced a look over the rubble she hid behind but nobody stood where the two had been. Slowly, she moved to where they had met. Two sets of footprints led there but only one went away. The second pair of footprints simply disappeared.