The Invasion of the Tearling

“What do I care?”


“See here.” The Mace detached himself from the wall, his bulky frame towering over hers, and Aisa tensed, preparing. But he merely pointed to her foot. “A kick in the guts is good. But you didn’t plan it well, and so I wasn’t disabled. In a real fight, you’d be dead now. What you want to do is point your toe, catch me with the tip rather than the arch or ankle, knock the wind out of me. It’s very few men who can keep fighting without breath. Point your toe hard enough, and you could even damage one of my organs. As it is, all I’ll have is a good-size bruise.”

Aisa considered this for a moment, sneaking a glance at her own feet. She never planned anything; it just happened, actions exploding out of her. “Still, I hurt you.”

“And what of that? Any man in this wing can keep fighting through much worse. I watched the Queen finish her crowning with a knife stuck in her back. Pain only disables the weak.”

Pain only disables the weak. The words struck a chord inside Aisa, making her think of all those years under Da’s roof. Wen and Matthew each had broken bones, and Wen’s shoulder had never healed properly, giving him a strange, slightly hunched appearance when he tried to stand up straight. Maman had taken so many beatings that some of her bruises never went away. And Aisa and Morryn …

Pain only disables the weak.

“Come along, hellcat.” The Mace resumed his course down the corridor, rubbing his stomach. “I want to show you something.”

Aisa followed him cautiously, a few feet behind. She had never been so far down the hall; it was mostly the guards and their families down here. Near the end, the Mace opened one of the doors and swung it wide.

“Have a look.”

Warily, keeping an eye on him, Aisa peeked around the doorway and blinked in surprise. She had never seen so much metal in one place before. The entire room gleamed in the torchlight.

“The arms room,” she breathed, her eyes wide.

“Welcome to my domain.” A tall, lanky man with a hooked nose emerged from behind a table on the other side of the room. Aisa recognized him: Venner, the arms master. Even on the rare occasions when he emerged into the audience chamber, he always had a weapon in his hands, sword or knife or bow, fine-tuning them as though they were musical instruments. “Come inside, child.”

Aisa only hesitated for a moment. Children were never allowed in the arms room. Wen would be so jealous. Even Matthew would be jealous, though he would try to hide it with scorn. Swords and knives covered the tables; armory sets hung on the walls; there were even some long, twisted metal weapons, taller than a man, which rested against the wall, pointing toward the sky. Several maces, a rack of bows, their wood a deep, polished bronze, and bundles of tied sticks that Aisa eventually recognized as arrows, hundreds and hundreds of them, piled in the corner. So much weaponry! And then Aisa realized what this stockpile was for: siege. Maman had explained siege, but only to Aisa and Wen. Maman thought the Mort army would reach New London by autumn.

The Mace had followed her into the room, and now he paused beside a table that held row after row of knives. “You can’t keep starting brawls with the other children. It’s a distraction we don’t need.”

“It only distracts Marguerite.”

“Today it distracted everyone. Your little squabbles are both noisy and dangerous.”

Aisa flushed. She added up the number of fights she’d been in since they’d come to the Keep, and her cheeks burned brighter. Did they all think she was a brat? The Mace’s gaze was hard, almost contemptuous; he was waiting for her to make an excuse. She would surprise him, just as she had caught him off guard with a kick to the stomach.

“Sometimes the anger runs me, and I can’t control it. I hit and kick before I know what I’m doing.”

The Mace settled back on his heels, his mouth crimping in a small smile. “That’s a strong admission. Many men refuse to face the fact of their anger.”

“Maybe it helps that I’m not a man.”

“In this room it won’t matter,” Venner interrupted, striding forward. “It’s a lesson I learned from the Queen. Here you’re a fighter, and I will treat you like one.”

Aisa looked up, instantly suspicious, and found Venner holding out a knife on one palm, offering her the hilt.

“What do you say, hellcat?” the Mace asked. “Want to learn?”

Aisa looked at the room around her, the weapons piled everywhere, the walls hung with metal. She used to spend days of her childhood fearing that Da’s shadow would appear on the ground beside her, and when she looked up to find him standing there, her stomach would fall to pieces. Staring at Venner and the Mace, Aisa saw that their faces were hard, yes, and grim … but she saw none of Da’s meanness there, none of his taking.

She reached out and grasped the knife.





CHAPTER 3


DUCARTE