was hopeless to try to talk Caius Greylace into doing anything.
Best just to get on with things.
I did, doing my best to ignore Caius the way I ignored how wrong the exercises felt without a proper sword in my hand. I told myself that the most important thing was working up a sweat, and feeling that sweetly uncomfortable ache in my muscles that meant I was using them, not sitting around on a cushion all day while my ass got a little more numb and my arms and legs turned to cooked Ke-Han noodles.
I was just about finished when Caius started to clap. I’d done a pretty good job at forgetting he was there, so that the noise startled me out of the neat routine. Try as I might, I couldn’t get my peace of mind back enough to remember what came next. It was hard work, sparring without a partner.
“Oh, that was marvelous,” Caius said, twirling a loose bit of hair between his fingers. He looked thrilled to the bone, and too excited to sit still. “I’ve never seen soldiers training before. This explains all the noise you’ve been making. Do you plan on doing it every morning? Perhaps you should; it really does look as though you’re in need of some practice.”
“Looks better with a sword,” I told him, wiping the sweat from my forehead with my sleeve. “Works better, too.”
“Ah, I see,” Caius said, nodding. He rested his chin on one hand, watching me with his off-putting, mismatched eyes.
“Also,” I added hastily, not knowing why I felt compelled to explain myself to him anyway, “it’s better with two people. That way you’ve got someone to fight back against. It keeps you thinking.”
“Fascinating,” Caius said, drawing the silk of his robes more tightly around him. Then he stood up as though he’d heard some wake-up bell I hadn’t. “Shall we dress for breakfast, my dear?”
He turned and swept through the door that joined my room to his like a little lord, his robes trailing down past his feet in a way that was probably planned, if I knew him. And I did, unfortunately.
The next morning, he showed up before I’d even started my warm-ups. He was carrying a sword. It was a strange blade, thin and curved at the very end, like the sword-maker had got distracted and pulled away too soon. He was holding it all wrong, bundled up in his arms like he thought it was a baby or a cat, and not a real metal blade, sharp and nastiest at the tip.
“Where did you get that?” I asked. It was nearly as big as he was.
“Well,” Caius said, looking ever so pleased I’d asked. He was wearing green robes that morning, and his hair wasn’t clipped back over his bad eye, which meant that he must’ve been planning to interrupt and not just jarred cruelly from his beauty sleep. “I asked around, you know, and that charming lord who’s always shouting—Lord Jiro, I believe—said he had a son about my age, and it was every boy’s duty to carry a sword, or something to that effect. I admit my understanding of the conversation waned toward the end of it. Anyway, his servants dropped by my room later that night, and they were ever so kind enough to provide me with this.”
He held out the sword like it was a dead cat; only it was heavy, because he was holding the hilt with both hands, and swaying under the weight of it. I wanted to laugh, but what I wanted to do even more was to take the sword. I did.
I was surprised to find that it was lighter than any blade you’d have found in Volstov, and thin like I’d thought it was. When I pulled it out of the sheath, I saw that there was one blunt side and one sharp. All the more useful for when you wanted to maim your opponent rather than kill him, I supposed. I was surprised, also, that the Ke-Han could ever decide which side to use without summoning a council of a hundred, but then maybe that was why they’d lost the war.
Caius sat down on the crescent seat again, watching me expectantly. I swung the sword through the air experimentally, making a pass here, a block there. It was a good sword.
“It’s still better with two,” I said, calling out to Caius the same way I’d called out the city boys who’d gathered around the barracks