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Forty oars cut the still, deep blue water, moving together in perfect time. The barge, sleek and fast for all its gilded ornamentation, raced toward the morning sun. Gloria stood amidships, a silk scarf wrapped tight around her shoulders, and watched as they passed a rocky island with a little golden shrine on top, sheltered by a single twisted old pine tree. In the soft blue distance all around them, she could see other islands, large and small, each one with its own shrine or temple.
The night before, Rishi had asked to stop at one of the larger islands, where he burned some incense and prayed for their success at the great temple of the goddess Svami. As he explained, the temple marked the spot where the goddess had stood while creating the whole world. In return, a quick visit and an offering wasn’t a lot to ask.
Quin was in awe of it all, which made Gloria smile, even though, as she openly admitted to him, she had never sailed on the lake, either. She had been to Sanjay Durga several times, starting when she was barely 5 years old. But every time before, she had taken the road along the lakeshore with her father, their trips for business, not pleasure, as he never tired of reminding her.
Lord Baldwin Ostensen, however, thought renting carriages was “hot, dusty, and boring.” And since he had insisted on paying for their travel and accommodations, everyone on the team was more than willing to oblige him. On their way from Keneburg, they had stayed at all the most expensive inns. And where there weren’t inns that met Baldwin’s very high standards, they stayed at the country houses or hunting lodges of the local nobility, who were always friends or distant relations of his parents.
When they reached the small city of Avakasa, on the western shore of the Sanjay Sarovara, Baldwin had insisted on renting this gilded pleasure barge. “This trip is my bachelor party,” he declared drunkenly at supper. “You are all my teammates now, and I’m going to spare no expense!”
Nor was he the only one who had decided to make the journey in style. Late in the morning, as they began to see the eastern shore and the distant haze and sunlit glow that marked the city of Sanjay Durga, another barge appeared behind them, gaining fast. When it was a quarter mile back, they heard horns and bells ringing, and Baldwin asked their captain to slow down and wait, thinking it might be a vital message from home.
Then the other barge drew alongside, and they all saw the royal banner of Myrcia fluttering from the mast. “Hey! Hey, Baldwin!” someone shouted. “Baldwin! Over here!” A lanky, brown-haired young man climbed up on the stern of the other ship, waving his arms for their attention. Then, when they were all looking, he turned and dropped his trousers. While they stood there, trying to think how to respond, the other barge hurried on with the sound of adolescent laughter, leaving their boat in its wake.
“There goes the future King of Myrcia, ladies and gentlemen,” said Baldwin.
“Not bad,” said Ilsa, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. “I’d give it at least a three on the Weekes Scoring System, wouldn’t you?”
Gloria clucked her tongue and shook her head.
An hour later, they landed north of the city at Parda Ghat, a vast collection of bathing pavilions, public parks, and private estates that stretched for miles along the lakeshore and miles back into the hills beyond. Baldwin had arranged for them to be met by four elephants, draped in brocaded silk and with their tusks painted in gold leaf. They rode the elephants in padded, pillow-laden baskets, up the road from the docks and through gardens full of lilies and flowering magnolia trees.
Many of the wealthiest and most socially well-connected competitors were staying east of the city in the royal guest pavilions of the Vayeth Valley. But since the tournament grounds were in Parda Ghat, on a meadow not far from the port, Baldwin had gotten them rooms much closer in a highly exclusive caravanserai.
“They won’t even take your reservation if you’re not of noble birth,” he informed them. “It’s a nice place, though. I’ve been here before.”
To call it “nice” was a typical bit of Baldwin-esque understatement. They didn’t simply have rooms, or even a suite of rooms. They had their own wing of the building, consisting of half a dozen little huts, all connected by covered walkways and gravel paths that wound around fountains and fishponds.
Baldwin and Ilsa wanted to order a feast immediately, but Gloria put her foot down and said they should go see the melee field. “We will get to choose our ground first, before any of the other teams,” she told them. “We need to decide which spot will give you five the best advantage.”
The field was barely a mile away, so she declined Baldwin’s offer to summon the elephants again. As they walked, she went over their team strategy yet again. They had discussed and refined it all the way from Keneburg, but Gloria didn’t think it hurt to review it one more time.
Rishi and Ilsa were their offense—they were light and fast, and they could dart out to score “kills” before running back to the safety of the group. Baldwin and Logan were the defense. They would watch the flanks and rear, and when the other three needed a rest, Baldwin and Logan would move forward to give them a little time to recover.
Quin was the center. He wasn’t quite as agile and fast as Rishi; he wasn’t as strong as Logan. But he was, in Gloria’s opinion, the best all-around fighter on the team. “We’re going to take losses,” she told them. “But the goal is to make sure Quin survives as long as possible. We have no idea which people on the other teams will survive until the end, so we need to make sure our last man standing is someone with a good balance of offense and defense.”
Ilsa grinned at Quin. “And you’ll take it from there, right?”
“Um...sure,” he said, looking a bit green in the face.
The melee would take place in a public park that had been carefully landscaped to give the appearance of being “natural.” There were little boulders and thickets of flowering trees, all arranged to best artistic effect. The field itself, marked out with ropes and flags, measured three Sahasran bigha, which was slightly smaller than one Myrcian acre. A stream called the Neela ran diagonally across the field, from the northwest corner to the southeast, with a wooden footbridge at the center. On either side of the stream, the land rose gently. The northeast corner had a little rocky outcrop—the highest spot on the field. The southwest corner had a little copse of birch trees.
They all debated the relative merits of the bridge, the rocks, and the trees, before deciding the trees were the best position. “It will be virtually impossible for anyone to get around behind us there,” said Logan.
“Very well,” said Gloria. “The trees will be ours. I’ll go inform the heralds of our decision. You all can go back to the caravanserai and eat. But no partying. One glass of wine apiece. I mean it.” She pointed at Baldwin, who blushed, and at Ilsa, who turned and looked behind her, as if Gloria were talking to someone else.
They left, and Gloria headed for the heralds’ tent, over the hill in the center of a formal rose garden. When she reached the rocks at the northeast corner of the melee field, however, she found a group of fashionable young women, all in bright silk dresses, gathered around, whispering and giggling together. She drew closer, and saw that at their center was Sir Nico Xylander. He had a pencil and a notebook in his hands, and he seemed to be sketching something while trying to ignore the crowd.
“What are you drawing, Sir Nico?” one of them giggled. “Can you draw me?” Gloria recognized Alicia Barras, daughter of the Duke of Pinshire. Like several of her friends, she was carrying a little pennant with the Xylander coat of arms.
“Sorry, no,” he muttered, not even lifting his eyes from the page.
“He’s planning his strategy,” said Mathea Vollen, daughter of the Annenstruker Duke of Sortland. “Sir Nico, would you care to stroll around the field? You can tell us all about your strategy. I bet it’s fascinating.”
“Perhaps another time,” he growled.
Gloria had known Nico’s wife for years, and considered her a good friend. So she took pity on him and decided to lift the siege. “There you are!” she said, pushing through the crowd of girls and grabbing Nico’s arm. “My father was looking for you. Important tournament business. Ladies, how good to see you all. If you’ll excuse me and Sir Nicolaus.”
Experienced tactician that he was, Nico saw her ploy immediately and let her lead him away, heedless to the disappointed sighs and moans of the girls. “Thank you for that,” he said, tucking his sketchbook into a deep pocket of his long gray tunic.
“Give Lady Xylander my best regards,” she said.
“I will. I already sent her a letter today, as it happens. She’s going to be interested to hear you’ve started your own team.”
“She’ll be disappointed you’re not on it,” said Gloria, doing her best attempt at a winsome smile.
“She would prefer that I’m on the winning team, I think.”
“And you don’t think we can win?”
“No.”
She looked at him, and he wasn’t smiling. She dropped his arm. “What’s wrong with my team?”
“As far as I can tell, you chose your team members based on whether they have pleasant personalities and are willing to take orders from you. You’ve got Lord Baldwin, who’s the usual aristocratic drunk. You’ve got Rishi, a second-rate journeyman. And Logan, a second-rate journeyman who’s over the hill. Plus Ilsa, whom everyone loves for her two biggest assets.”
“Don’t be crude.”
“I’m referring to her archery and her smile, of course. Then you’ve got Quin Porcher, who—”
“Don’t you dare say a word against Quin.”
“I was going to say that he’s got a lot of raw talent. Unfortunately, it would take you a year to train him properly, and by then the grand tournament will be over.”
“Fine then. Say what you like about my team, but we’re still seeded first, damn it.”
“No, you’re not.” He chuckled to himself, then looked back at her and stopped. “Wait...you don’t know? Miss Weekes, I think you’d better go look at the board outside the heralds’ tent.”
“What? What in the fucking depths of the Void are you talking about?”
He held up his hands and started backing away. “Just remember, I had nothing to do with it.”
She jogged down a gravel path to the rose garden and rounded the big purple and white-striped pavilion at the center. Hanging on either side of the gold-embroidered front flap were two large slates that showed the standings of the nine teams entered in the melee.
In first was the team of Kostas Roncallus. In second was the team of Sir Amund Linwood, which included Nico. And then finally, in third, was her team.
“We’re third?” she blurted out. “Fucking third? How?”
She raced into the tent, past a troupe of dancing girls in gold silk, servants with trays of fruit and decanters of rare wines, and found her father right in the inner sanctum, looking over a map of the melee field with Pascal Clementus, Prince Ethelred, and King Shubdaiva Udar of Sahasra Deva. Dozens of courtiers and nobles from various countries looked on. Fransis Sigor was there, too, acting as wine steward. He noticed Gloria and sidled over.
“Is something wrong?” he whispered.
“You’d better believe it. Tell my father I need to talk to him. Outside. Now.”
She went out and waited for her father, pacing back and forth on the gravel path. After a few minutes, he appeared and joined her, still carrying a glass of wine in his hand. “Gloria, dear. What can I do for you?”
“You can tell me how my team is suddenly ranked third. By your own rules, we should be first. My team members have more points than the members of any other team. That’s how it works.”
He closed his eyes. “You must have misunderstood. There are factors which—”
“Don’t sell me a pile of shit and tell me it’s a pony. I didn’t ‘misunderstand.’ I’ve been doing this my whole life, Father. I know what the rules were. You changed them.”
“It’s a matter of fairness,” he said in a low, soothing tone, like she was a child having a tantrum. “Some people were concerned that focusing too much on the scores in Keneburg didn’t properly account for the past performance of well-known and highly-regarded knights, who—”
“When you say, ‘some people,’ you mean Kostas and Amund, don’t you? We can’t have them ranked below my team, can we? That might look bad, wouldn’t it?”
He scowled. “You have to think how it looks. I don’t know why you persist in this idiotic notion of sponsoring a team, but what do you think people will say if I’m in charge of setting the rules, and you are ranked first? I’m protecting you from any charge of nepotism. I’m doing you a favor.”
“Oh, please. The next time you do me a favor, it’ll be the first time ever.” She stormed past him and ran back to the caravanserai, occasionally picking flowers from the garden beds along the way and tearing them to bits.
She found her team sharing a luncheon of curried peacock and a pitcher of mango wine. Still shaking with indignation, she told them what had happened. They were all properly outraged, but none of them blamed her, which she appreciated. None of them seemed to regret having signed on to her team, which meant even more.
“Very well,” she finally said, once she’d had a couple glasses of the sickly-sweet wine and calmed down a bit. “Kostas and Amund will choose the copse of trees and the rocks, obviously. That means the two best defensive positions are gone. We need a new strategy—one that relies on mobile offense, not on fixed defense. I want all of you to think about it. We’ve got this afternoon and all day tomorrow to practice.”
“I’ll go order more wine,” said Baldwin.
“Yes, please,” said Ilsa, raising a nearly-empty cup. “It shouldn’t be that hard to change our plans. Rishi and I are still the quick ones, Logan and Baldwin will still be watching the flanks, and Quin is still the center. It’s all very simple.”
It wasn’t simple, actually. They spent four hours that afternoon in an empty field near the caravanserai, experimenting with different infantry squad formations and practicing how to move from one to another smoothly. Logan, who had served as a centurion in the Immani army, was an expert at this, and Gloria deferred to his judgment.
At last she called a halt for rest, though of course Baldwin immediately ordered drinks for everyone in the caravanserai common room. Gloria was about to join them, when she noticed that Quin had disappeared. She sent the others on ahead and searched the pavilions and gardens of their private wing, eventually finding him in a little shaded lawn, surrounded by blossoming cherry trees. He was still practicing the moves they had learned, scowling and swearing every time he messed up.
“We still have tomorrow to work on it,” she assured him.
He turned wearily, his dark blond hair hanging sweaty and limp in his eyes. He hadn’t shaved for a couple days, she noticed.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” he said. “I don’t think you should make me the ‘center’ of this formation or depend on me to win at the end. I’ve never fought like this.”
“It’s not so different from what you’ve done before. And in any case, this will help you a lot with your swordsmanship. Learn this, and you’ll be unstoppable.”
He pushed his damp hair back. “What do you mean?”
She snapped a thin branch, still bearing pink flowers, from one of the trees. Then she planted herself in a fighting stance a couple yards in front of him, raising the branch like a sword. “Forget what we learned today. If you and I were dueling, and I had my sword up here, what would you do?”
He stepped forward and brought his sword around in a broad, slashing motion.
“Stop!” she cried. “Hold it right there. Yes, like that. Look at what you’re doing.”
He had to shift his feet to stop from toppling over. “I’m overbalancing.”
“You’re overbalancing, and you’re swinging far too wide. Rishi could dart in and score three touches on you right now in the time it took you to bring that big sword of yours around.” She demonstrated with exaggerated motions, and he smiled ruefully.
“Now think about what Logan was showing you earlier. Keep the sword close. Drop your hips. Small, controlled motions. Jab, don’t swing wildly. If you swing, keep the swing short. Don’t let the opponent see what you’re going to do ahead of time. When you step out like you did before and you bring that arm all the way back, you might as well have sent a formal letter to your opponent six weeks ago telling him what you were going to do. It’s that obvious.” She stepped back a few paces. “Right. Now try it again.”
As he came forward, she swatted his nose with one of the pink cherry blossoms. He stopped and let his sword fall useless to his side. His shirt had come open in the front, and as he heaved a tired sigh, she tried not to look at how the hard muscles of his sweaty chest flexed.
“Watch me do it, alright?” She moved through the steps Logan had taught the group, keeping her body low, jabbing quickly. Using her back and hips as much as possible, rather than her arms.
She spun around when she finished, and she caught him raising his eyes quickly before looking away. He blushed, and she felt suddenly rather warm, herself.
Quin tried the sequence of movements again. And then again, but he could tell he wasn’t getting it quite right. Finally, he stuck his sword into the turf and threw up his hands. “What am I doing wrong?”
“You’re tensing up. You need to keep loose—your arms, your back, your...um, hips. Remember, this isn’t a sword duel, you’re not fighting to three touches. You could be out there on the melee field for an hour or two.”
“You want me to crouch down and keep my arms tucked in, but you don’t want me to tense up. How does that work?”
“Hold your sword out.”
He pulled it out of the ground and held it in front of himself.
“Feel what your muscles are doing,” she said. “Your whole arm is tense, and your back, too.”
“I don’t want to drop my sword.”
“It weighs, what? Two and a half pounds? You’re not going to drop it if you let your shoulder relax, I can promise you that.”
She stepped closer and put a hand on his forearm, then another on his shoulder, feeling the curves of his big, powerful muscles. Her breath caught. “Let this relax,” she said. “Right here where I’m touching.”
In a rather strained voice, he said, “I...I’m not sure I can do that right now.”
Just then, they heard footsteps on the path coming around the pavilion. Gloria tore her hands away like Quin’s arm was a red-hot blade in an armorer’s forge. A moment later, Ilsa appeared, carrying a huge glass of something pink and frothy that had a hibiscus blossom resting on top for decoration.
“Are you coming or not?” she demanded. “Baldwin says we each have to sing a song, and I’m not doing it if the two of you don’t have to do it, too.”
“We’ll be there in a minute,” said Gloria.
“Yes, um....” Quin cleared his throat. “I’m going to, um...get myself cleaned up a bit first.”
“Me, too,” said Gloria. “I need to change my clothes.” As she started back toward her own room, she added in her mind, “But first, I need a cold, cold bath.”