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  Kork grunted again. “You shop too much.”

  Rina grinned. “You think I do everything too much.”

  “Except practice.”

  She laughed and, without hesitating, unbuttoned her own heavy fur cloak at the throat and tossed it aside. She now wore only a wool blouse and a long wool “false skirt” that was really an overly blousy pair of pants. They resembled a skirt but allowed her to move and fight and ride a horse like a man. The cold hit her, exhilarating. Soon it would be numbing, but not yet. She drew the thin rapier from the scabbard at her waist.

  Rina was lithe, athletic. Stomach flat and limbs toned from the exercise routine designed for her by Kork. She thought herself a bit too thin and boyish through the hips and occasionally thought it would be nice to have more curves, but she didn’t dwell on this notion. It would be a lie to pretend she wasn’t attractive. The sons of nobles had fallen over themselves to speak to her at court functions, especially the last couple of years. It had been tedious but also … interesting. The braids mingled into her long, glossy black hair were fastened with large sapphires and blue silk ribbons that perfectly complimented her eyes. Her startlingly white skin almost glowed.

  She watched Kork draw his sword, readied herself.

  In fact, Kork wore two swords. The huge hand-and-a-half sword on his back was a weapon he’d fallen in love with after coming to the northlands. It was nearly as long as Rina was tall and could be wielded one- or two-handed.

  But the sword Kork drew was the thin, curved Fyrian scimitar, a more appropriate match for Rina’s plain rapier with its simple knuckle guard and quillon. It was not a jewel-encrusted sword for fancy dress balls. It was a fighting weapon.

  “So you think I need practice, do you?” Rina smirked. “The chances of you scoring even one hit are – Hey!”

  Kork lunged. No salute, bow or warning.

  Rina parried just in time, knocking the tip of the scimitar away and stepping inside Kork’s reach for a counterthrust, but the big man spun, sweeping wide with the scimitar, deflecting the rapier. They backed away from one another, took stock for a split second.

  Kork moved in fast, the scimitar a blur. Rina blocked every thrust and swipe. The metallic clang of their blades rang up and down the battlements. The guards along the wall turned to watch, soldiers and officers alike crowding around, some gawking wide-eyed, most grinning at the display. This was a show many of them had seen before.

  Kork pressed and Rina fell back; their blades clashed. Rina had always been fast, and Kork had trained her to use that ability. Heavy battle axes and two-handed swords could deliver devastating blows but they weren’t fast. Speed had always been Rina’s gift.

  The onlookers had formed a wide circle, and Rina allowed the huge Fyrian to chase her around as she deflected every thrust, all of her swordplay completely defensive. She’d sparred with Kork for years, knew his penchant for overwhelming skillful fencing with brute force, so she let him come on, drawing him in.

  She was waiting for him to lunge, a big one he’d think would suddenly end the match. Two seconds later, he tried it, overreaching, trying to get the scimitar past her defenses. She dropped to the stone floor of the battlement, brought her foot around in a leg sweep. This was something they’d practiced only in the last few months, integrating weaponless hand fighting with fencing skills.

  He jumped, easily avoiding the sweep, but his sword went wide as he spread his arms to balance himself. Rina was already leaping to her feet, thrusting the rapier. The tip tinged off Kork’s breastplate.

  Rina’s point.

  The gathering soldiers laughed and applauded.

  She bowed, panting. “Thank you, thank you! For your further entertainment, the mighty Rina Veraiin will slay another giant after the lunch hour! Bring your friends to see the show.”

  Another small smattering of applause as the group of soldiers dissipated back to their posts.

  “Still think I don’t practice enough?”

  Kork shrugged.

  “Oh, now don’t tell me you’re pouting,” Rina said.

  “What is it you think you’ve accomplished?” Kork asked.

  “Victory, obviously,” Rina said.

  Kork sighed, the sound of a bull ox snorting. “I have been … training you all wrong.”

  What? “Did I not just score that point? I think somebody is being a bad sport.”

  Kork scowled at her, and Rina knew she was close to stepping over a line.

  She cleared her throat. “What do you mean?”

  “I have been teaching you skills,” Kork said, “instead of combat.”

  Rina blinked, confused. “What’s the difference?”

  Kork lifted his chin in the direction of the encamped army on the other side of the Long Bridge. “That.”

  Rina shook her head. “Wait, I don’t understand why that should matter. I still beat you. I think you’re sour because you lost.”

  She regretted saying it immediately. Kork had taught her everything. Her words were the words of a bratty, spoiled duke’s daughter. And yet she couldn’t make herself take them back. Some stubbornness had seized her and refused to let go. It was a stubbornness that had infuriated her father on more than one occasion.

  Kork wasn’t fazed. He’d seen her this way many times. Up until about age eleven, the stubbornness was usually accompanied by the stomping of a little foot and a pouty lip.

  “And if you’d touched the tip of your little sword against my breastplate on the battlefield? What would that mean?”

  “It would mean—” She stopped. What would it mean?

  Kork drew the enormous hand-and-a-half sword from the sheath on his back, held it out to her with one hand. With the other, he rapped a knuckle on his breastplate. A deep metallic ring. “You want to get through this armor, then you need a weapon with heft. Take it.”

  She took the hilt in both hands.

  When Kork let go, the sword dropped, dragging her arms along with it. The tip hit the stone floor.

  “You are soooo funny,” she said. “You know I can’t lift this ridiculous thing.”

  Kork sheathed his scimitar. “I’ll even the odds for you.” He drew a small knife from a hidden pocket sewn inside his cloak. It was what they called a gentleman’s knife. The small four-inch blade folded into and out of a carved wooden handle. This one had a simple carving of a swan on a calm lake. It was a knife old men used to whittle while they sat around and gossiped about affairs of state and hunting and women.

  Kork opened the blade, held it loosely in his right hand. “Come at me.”

  “Obviously, I can’t—”

  “This isn’t a sporting duel,” Kork snapped. “You do not get your choice of weapons. You do not get to rest and regroup between points. You get to live or die.”

  Rina didn’t waste time with more talk. Kork expected her to drag out her protests as she would normally, trying to wriggle out of some unpleasant task or practice session. She had one chance to tag him and that was surprise.

  She started her hips moving first then put her shoulders into it. It was the only way she could get the sword up for a proper swing. Her back was almost to him by the time the sword came around, but at least she had it up to speed for a strike.

  One of Kork’s gigantic hands was suddenly on her wrist, pulling her through the swing, using her own momentum against her. She started to go down and threw out her arms to catch herself, losing the sword. She cursed herself. Amateur!

  Kork suddenly had one arm around her, pinning her arms at her side. With the other hand, Kork held the flat of the gentleman’s blade against the soft, exposed flesh of her throat. Rina knew Kork would never hurt her—with the possible exception of some tutorial bruises with the wooden practices swords. But in that moment when she first felt the cold steel against her jugular, she also felt fear, the brief but palpable knowledge that she could be alive one moment and dead the next.

  He held her that way, helpless.

  Rina clea
red her throat. “So. Do you yield?”

  “Jibes will not save you on the field of battle.”

  “They’re pretty good jibes.”

  He released her.

  She stood away from him, one hand going instinctively to her throat. She half thought her fingertips would come away sticky with her own blood. They didn’t. “Fortunate that I have no immediate plans to find myself on the field of battle, isn’t it?”

  “Plans are what people make when Fate is sneaking up behind them,” Kork said. “Tomorrow we shall alter your training.”

  Rina sighed. “My dear lovely giant, you don’t really think any army is getting over the Long Bridge, do you? This place is impregnable.”

  Another of Kork’s grunts. Rina thought she detected grudging agreement.

  The Long Bridge was named for the simple fact that it was a mile long, the only way over a deep and icy chasm to the fortress city of Klaar. The stone bridge was just wide enough for two wagons to pass each other and, as her father put it, could be defended by a cripple and an infant with slingshots.

  The bridge ended at a large gate in the outer wall, behind which was the town of Klaar. In the center of town was the Duke’s castle and keep. Theoretically, if the outer wall were breached, the citizenry could fall back to the keep.

  No invading army had ever breached the outer wall. None had ever made it off the Long Bridge.

  “How do you think they built it?” She asked, still looking at the bridge.

  “Magic,” Kork said.

  She frowned at him. “An engineer from the University in Luxum designed it and supervised the construction. This is a matter of record.”

  Kork shrugged.

  Rina said, “When I asked how they built it, I meant what sort of mathematical equations, the tools used, manpower. Those sorts of things.”

  “Magic.”

  “I keep forgetting you’re a savage from distant lands,” Rina said.

  The hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

  Kork nodded at the army camped on the far side of the Long Bridge. “You’ve seen enough? We can go inside now, get warm?”

  “I want to go down into the town,” Rina said. She was restless, wanted to feel the tense energy of the commoners.

  “I’d prefer you didn’t, daughter.”

  She turned, saw the Duke with a gaggle of advisors behind him. “Father?”

  Arlus Veraiin smiled at her. His presence was always reassuring. Still handsome at his age, with a perfectly trimmed white beard, hair thinning on top, but bright blue eyes just like hers.

  “I need you dressed to receive guests,” the Duke said. “Hurry along now, please.”

  “Guests? How could they have come through the Perranese army?” Rina asked.

  The Duke said, “The guests are the Perranese army.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  See, this is why you don’t sneak into the castle kitchens to steal a pastry, Alem thought as he walked the halls of the castle’s residential wing, a wicker laundry basket under each arm.

  Alem was a stable boy. No, head stable boy. He’d started as a shit-shoveler and had been raised to stable boy when he’d shown he could handle the horses. Now, five years later, he was head stable boy and would likely be stable master when old Nard retired or passed. The point was, Alem was definitely not a maid.

  But that didn’t matter to fat Bruny, who ran the household. She took one look at him skulking around the kitchen, pointed a finger at him and hollered, “You! Come with me now, boy.” A fever had run through the castle maids, and half of them were down with sour stomachs and green complexions. There was a feeling of panic among the castle servants as beds went unmade and chamber pots were not emptied. Bruny had pressed into service any set of idle hands she could find, and since it was generally understood that indoor servants outranked outdoor servants, Alem had obeyed.

  They’d even made him bathe! His pale skin was pink from a cold-water scrubbing, his feathery blond hair puffed and downy. “You can’t go among them nobles smelling of horse dung,” Bruny had insisted.

  Alem headed into the castle to gather dirty laundry and promptly got lost. This place is enormous. He slept on a straw pallet among the other stable boys and had come to think of his grandmother’s three-room cottage as roomy and extravagant. But this … Well, that’s why they call it a castle, thicko.

  He finally found the right hallway. He’d been told that now was a good time to collect the dirty laundry from the bed chambers of the Duke and his family. They were out and about, up on the walls or down in the town, preparing for the Perranese. He opened the heavy wooden door to the first room, iron hinges creaking. He entered.

  And froze.

  A woman sat on a cushioned chair in front of a dressing table. She held a boot in her hand. The other boot was still on her other foot. The Duke’s daughter. You’re not supposed to be here!

  “Uh …” Alem began to back out of the room. “I didn’t know … I mean … I thought everyone was … I’ll just …” Faster, you idiot, Get out, get out!

  “Who are you?”

  He froze again. “I’m—” He almost said Alem. Thicko, she doesn’t care about your name. “Uh, the dirty laundry.”

  She looked him up and down, a quirky smile flickering across her face. “New maid?”

  “Yes.” No! Stable boy. HEAD stable boy!

  She shrugged. “Bruny’s become broad minded.” She waved vaguely at the rest of the room. “Come on, then.”

  Alem left one of the baskets in the hall, entered her room with the other. He moved quickly around the huge canopy bed, desk, divan, picking up articles of clothing strewn over furniture or dropped on the floor. He never would have thought the nobility could be so messy. Alem supposed if he owned this much clothing he might get careless with it too.

  He hurriedly scooped up breeches and skirts and thick woolen socks and blouses and … something extremely thin and delicate.

  Underwear.

  Alem shoved it into the basket quickly. Don’t look at it!

  He glanced about. Nothing left. Good. He headed for the door. Fast.

  “Wait.”

  The word hit him in the back like an arrow. He turned slowly, looked at her.

  She crooked her finger at him in a come here gesture.

  Alem went to where she sat at the dressing table. She lifted one foot, the one without the boot, pointing her toes at the ceiling. “Don’t forget this.” She took the tip of her sock between a thumb and forefinger and pulled it off. Her toes were small and pink. She dangled the sock a moment as if it were a fish she’d caught, and then let it drop into the basket.

  She sat back, lifted the other boot and looked at Alem expectantly. “This one now.”

  Alem looked from the boot to her face and back again. This one what?

  “I could barely get the other one off,” she said. “They’re new boots, not broken in. I think my feet have swollen.”

  And just what exactly did she expect Alem to do about that?

  “I need you to help me get it off,” she said.

  Alem set the basket aside. He grabbed the heel, moved the other hand to take her by the calf, hesitated, his eyes flickering up to hers.

  She nodded. “Go ahead.

  He grabbed her leg, tugged on the boot. Tight. He was afraid to pull harder.

  “Turn around,” she told him. “You’re not getting any leverage.”

  Alem turned, straddled her leg and grabbed the boot again. He pulled.

  “That’s better. I think it’s coming.” She put her other foot against Alem’s backside, and his eyes shot wide, cheeks warming. He was glad he was facing away from her. She pushed. He pulled.

  The boot popped off. Alem tumbled over the dirty laundry basket, went down in a heap.

  The Duke’s daughter trilled laughter, delicate fingers going up to her mouth.

  Alem hastily got to his feet, scooping clothes back into the basket. His face flushed red, ears burn
ing.

  “How old are you?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Your age?”

  “Eighteen,” Alem said. Nineteen in a month.

  “Well, young man, when you’re older and wiser—like me—you’ll know never to walk away when a job is only half done.” She lifted her foot, pointed her toes at him.

  The confusion must have been plain on his face.

  “You’re here for the dirty laundry, aren’t you?” She lifted an eyebrow and thrust her foot at him again. “Well?”

  Her sock? That was it. She was insisting Alem remove her dirty sock.

  He reached for the top of the sock, trying not to touch any of her bare leg. He felt moist behind the ears. Why can’t she just take off her own damn sock? Because she’s spoiled nobility, that’s why. He peeled it slowly over her heel, up past the toes and off, not quite understanding why his heart beat a bit faster.

  She lifted her foot within two inches of his face and wriggled her perfect pink toes.

  Alem felt his head go light.

  He glanced at her face. A smirk.

  She’s mocking me!

  He shoved the sock into the basket, turned and stalked out the door, slamming it behind him, light and carefree laughter chasing him down the hallway.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  General Chen Maa’Kaa hunched over a table in the large command tent, glaring at the maps spread out before him. They had been drawn by the Emperor’s spies, some painstakingly over a decade in preparation for the invasion, a few more recently to show updated activity, especially in and around Klaar.

  Icy wind blew in from under the tent flap. He’d instantly hated this place upon arrival.

  The largest and most thorough map detailed the entire continent of Helva from Klaar all the way to the Western Ocean nearly three thousand miles away. The map went north as far as the great Glacial Wastes and south to the Scattered Isles. How the Holy Perranese Emperor figured to take and hold such a vast territory wasn’t General Chen’s problem.

  He slid the smaller map of Klaar over the Helva map and frowned at it. Chen understood the War Council’s strategy even if he didn’t agree with all of it. To the south of Klaar, there were literally dozens of better places to land an invasion force, places with more temperate climes, calmer seas, better port facilities and miles of open beach.