“Well …” I had no good answer. “It is what we do.”
“When there is reason, and there was no reason for Sayda Halfhand to die, or for me. Now I have bought us time, Girton, we must use it well or it may be our names that are scratched on a wall.”
“She fought—” I glanced back over my shoulder “—differently to you.”
“Yes, she fought as Aseela’s Mount, strong and steady. We fight as Xus’s Bird, quick and light.”
“Where did she learn that?”
“From her master, as you learn from yours.”
“I thought everyone—”
“Fought like us? No, and even those who fight as the bird will fight differently to us. Each sorrowing has their own way.”
“I thought the Open Circle had rules and told us what to do. I thought we were all …” I stopped; I did not know what I thought we were.
“Companions?” I nodded. “We are, Girton, but it is a silent companionship and there are few of us left.”
I thought on that for a while as we walked back.
“She was good,” I said.
“Yes. She very nearly beat me.” I stopped, shocked at her words.
“But you are the greatest assassin of our age,” I said.
“As you keep saying,” she said and she smiled, but it was the smile of an adult indulging a child. “Come, Girton,” she said.‘It is cold and I am tired.” She led me back to our room, where she slept the sleep of the exhausted while I thought on how much I did, and did not, know.
Interlude
This is a dream of what was.
She squats behind him, her warmth against his back, and if she can feel him shivering in fear she says nothing about it. She picks up the loose end of the rope tied to the tree and puts it in his hand. Together, they start the rope moving through the air where it traces out a giant oval. “Good,” she says, “don’t stop.” She walks around and looks at the rope spinning through the air and then steps into it. He is so surprised he drops the rope.
“Sorry, Master,” he says.
“Do not worry.” She comes back and shows him how to spin the rope again. “Do not stop this time,” she says. “No matter what I do.”
“Yes, Master.”
“Girton, my name is Merela. You may call me that.”
“Yes, Master,” he says. He always will.
This time when she steps into the rope he does not drop it. He expects it to hit her but she jumps over it without even looking. She is watching him and smiling and jumping. Then she starts to hop from one foot to another. It makes him laugh because she pulls funny faces when she does it, but she never lets the rope touch her. She pretends to fall, catching herself at the last moment and making him giggle. She lands on her hands and then flips from her hands to her feet and her movements get more and more complex, and always the rope goes round and round and round until she is tumbling and leaping and cartwheeling in and out of the steadily spinning rope. Then, with one last twirling spring that flips her out of the rope’s reach, she finishes. She stands with her legs slightly apart and her hands held loosely at her side. She is barely even breathing hard.
“This is how we stand when we are finished, Girton.” He nods. “Now it is your turn.” She sees panic starting on his face. “Don’t worry. All you have to do is jump over the rope, nothing more. The rest will come with time.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“I have a bad foot.”
“Girton.” She walks over to him, lowering herself to his level. “Among the blessed of the Tired Lands there is a belief that a woman is good for nothing but sitting in a parlour sewing and giving birth to children. Do you believe that of me?”
“No, Master.” He really, honestly, completely believes that she can do anything.
“Good. And I do not believe you will let a bad foot hold you back. Now, jump the rope. Breathe out when you jump, breathe in when you land. It will help, and if you cannot do it then you cannot. But you must try.”
“Yes, Master.”
He tries, he fails. And he fails and he fails again. His club foot hurts but she never gets angry. Never stops smiling. Never stops coaxing him on and saying that, maybe next time he’ll do it. Even though he is sure it is beyond him.
Then he jumps the rope.
And again.
And again and again and the rope gets faster and he is laughing with the joy of it as the rope whips through the air. Eventually, it stops, and she stares at him like he’s forgotten something and he remembers her words—This is how we stand when we are finished. He does his best to copy how she had stood and is rewarded with a smile.
“Not bad for a boy with a bad foot, eh?” she says.
And she always will.
He skips the rope, hops the rope, leaps the rope. Years pass as he works through the acrobatics until there are two trees and two ropes and they spin so fast they make a sound like the wind roaring in his ears when Xus runs and he can flip and spin between them without ever being touched. Always when he is finished she will say, “Not bad for a boy with a bad foot,” and smile at him.
And the ripples in the water go on and on and on and the skies whisper out an infinity.
This is a dream of what was.
Chapter 10
My mood was not good the next morning. I had wanted to ask my master’s advice about Drusl but instead we had argued, though I did not know why. I questioned what we did—how we could be putting ourselves in jeopardy and throwing away our futures as assassins for people like Queen Adran and her odious son. My master had listened patiently while I ranted. She seldom removed her Death’s Jester make-up once it was on, and her brown eyes stared out of a face alien and distorted by sleep-smeared make-up. She had waited until my anger had run out of words and then risen. She was smaller than I was now. I wondered when that had happened.
“Girton,” she said, “you may leave whenever you wish.”
I had no answer. Instead I acted like a child—I walked out, slamming the door behind me. Storming out may have been dramatic but it accomplished little as I left my armour and blades in our room. I could not bring myself to go back and get them even though I had an hour to waste before I was due at the squireyard. After I had skulked about in the corridors of the castle for a while I decided to do something constructive. I would try and track down the guard who had been outside the kennels when I was locked in. Few people know the ins and outs of a castle like its jester, and if I wanted to find someone then Gusteffa, the king’s dwarf, was probably my best chance.