“But you don’t think I am strong.”
It wasn’t a question, but Gansukh felt like he should answer anyway. He shook his head, not trusting that he could form the word.
“Teach me,” Lian said. “Teach me to be like your Mongolian women. In return, I can teach you how to survive here at court.” She moved closer to him. “A warrior does not learn from reading; a warrior learns from action, from using his hands and his heart. Can you show me that?”
Gansukh stared at her slender neck. Her pulse was visible under her pale skin. She was frail, and he wondered if she’d ever had a violent thought in her life. There was little chance this delicate Chinese flower could become the equal of a Mongolian woman, but it would certainly be amusing to watch her try. She and Master Chucai were right, though: he did not understand the ways of court, and if he had any hope of succeeding at his mission, he needed Lian’s help. It was better to submit to the offer of this strange and alluring Chinese woman than run back to Chagatai like a whipped dog.
Gansukh nodded. “I will teach you how to fight.”
She nodded curtly and pushed away from him. He grabbed for her, but his hands found nothing in the warm water. She swam to the edge of the pool, and in a smooth motion that suggested she was more fish than woman, she levered herself to the platform. He caught a quick glimpse of her breasts, outlined quite distinctly against her wet robe, and then she swiveled around, curling her legs around her like a flower closing for the night. Her back to him, she picked up the heavy robe that lay on the platform and slipped it over her wet clothing.
She retrieved her discarded scroll. “We will begin our lessons tomorrow,” she said with a final appraising glance over her shoulder.
It was only after she left that Gansukh realized she had taken the robe the servants had meant for him.
CHAPTER 5:
THE KINYEN
Despite Raphael’s ministrations, two more days passed before Illarion’s fever broke and the Ruthenian recovered strength enough to sit up and speak coherently.
Cnán did not begrudge him the time, since she herself spent most of it sleeping and eating. Afternoons she sat in the middle of the clearing, well beyond the graveyard wall, out in the summer sun, mending her travel clothes and watching the Shield-Brethren train. More arrived every day from all over Christendom. As her body regained strength, her mood also improved—and she began to take a more sanguine view of their prowess as fighters.
They fought in pairs over and over, pausing in the middle of the fracas to pick apart each move into smaller elements that they then practiced again and again. She could not fit their halting exercises into any sensible program. How would they ever put the fragments of action together again—learn to face the chaos of a true battle, where nobody pauses, nobody has a second chance? It all seemed like a silly game.
But when they actually sparred, swinging and moving for long minutes at a stretch, strength against strength, they proved capable of feats that astonished Cnán. And studying their determination and their skill, she saw more clearly the weakness in her own training. She had been taught to travel under all manner of cloaks, never to reveal her true self, to bear messages while hiding in plain sight of enemies and friends alike. And always to cross back and forth over the wide, endless, ravaged land, never staying long in one place—like a bird doomed never to nest, never to understand the wisdom of sitting still.
Watching these men, these warriors, assemble into a team, under the constant tutelage of Taran and the watchful eye of Feronantus, made her feel a new kind of loneliness and, with it, a sort of bereavement.
After noon of the second day, Feronantus put out word that, tomorrow, the junior Brethren would stand sentry around their encampment while Kinyen—the Order’s communal mess—was held at the great table of the chapter house. Cnán knew that Kinyen was an ancient tradition, one they took most seriously. The camp grew busy with preparations: A wild sow was spitted and splayed over a bed of banked coals to slow cook. The beams were stripped from the monastery and hewn and pegged into makeshift benches so that there would be room for all of the warrior monks—a full two dozen now, even when ten or so initiates were left outside to stand guard—to sit around the edges of the hall.
The Shield-Brethren stayed up late that night drinking and singing and telling long stories of their exploits and adventures in various parts of the West. Cnán mostly stayed outside, in her tent—ignored, she hoped; unwanted, she suspected.
It was during a particularly long tale told by Raphael, about sewing up Crusaders and Moors alike, that she heard a solitary man emerge from the chapter house. An unevenness in his gait told Cnán that he was reeling slightly. The wind came from behind him and she smelled several horns of mead on his shuddering, belching exhale.