What Iron Sounds Like
I have to get to the Young Master.
Butter and sugar, at long last. A foolish little laugh kept escaping her the whole way to Adrian's room—heh, heh, heh—until Nina could not stop. The Young Master's chamber stood apart from the rest of the house, and no one was there.
Is it a sword-practice day?
Adrian trained in a lonely yard. The two of them looked after it as best they could, but the weeds came back at a terrifying speed. She was bounding along in high spirits when a voice reached her: rough curses, and a sound that boded ill. Nina stopped before she knew she had, then kicked off the ground and ran.
The noise from the training yard grew sharper with every step. The sword master was spewing abuse and beating Adrian without giving him a chance to answer. Not with a wooden sword. With an iron one.
Nina learned what sound iron makes when it strikes a person. She flung herself at the man like a hen in a fury.
"Wh-what?"
Even the sword master flinched. Nina seized his leg and bit into his thigh with all the strength she had.
"Aaagh! Fuck—you bitch!"
"Nina!"
Blood and a ragged lump of flesh tore into her mouth. She spat it out and bit him again, hard.
The sword master struck her with the iron sword. After several blows he tore her off, flung her aside, and stood there panting.
"I'll kill you first!"
He came toward Nina with the iron sword raised, and Adrian brought a wooden sword down across the back of his head.
Thwack. A dull crack, and the wooden sword broke. The sword master went down. Adrian scrambled to catch Nina where she had been thrown.
"Nina, are you all right? Nina."
"Adrian?"
"Thank God."
He bit his lip and gathered her in as if she were something precious.
"You... you filthy bastards..."
The sword master lurched back to his feet. Even then, Nina thought, That is one remarkable rock of a head.
And then the ground gave way beneath him, soft and sudden, as if he had stepped into a marsh.
She had known Adrian was contracted to the spirit of Shadow and Darkness. Seeing that power with her own eyes was another matter.
"Huh? Aaagh! What is this? Save me! Somebody, save me!"
Thrashing, he was drawn slowly down. Adrian watched him with eyes gone cold.
The sword master begged.
"Spare me! I was wrong! I only did what the Duchess told me to! Spare me!"
Crushed so tightly in those arms she could hardly breathe, Nina thought, Right. Our Young Master really was the gentle kind, the dangerous kind of gentle.
Not just a sweet second male lead.
The dark swallowed the sword master whole. He had screamed like that, and still no one came.
"I dropped the sweets."
Nina whispered it from within his embrace, and Adrian answered.
"Then we pick them up."
"Are you all right, Young Master?"
"I'm all right."
He held her harder.
Feeling the sound of her breath and the warmth of her body, he whispered again.
"I'm all right, Nina."
But you.
The words hovered at the tip of his tongue, then slipped down his throat.
The two of them went to the well and washed the blood and the wounds away.
Limping, swallowing the pain, they settled and shared the sweets. Grit crunched between their teeth, but it was sweet all the same, and Nina felt a great deal better.
"But will it be all right?"
"What?"
When Adrian only looked puzzled, Nina pointed at the ground.
"Here. The master who... went away down there."
Adrian smiled, elegant as a line drawn with a brush.
"You don't have to worry."
"Really?"
"Mm."
For all his confidence, Nina had wondered whether it would truly be all right. It truly was.
The sword master had vanished, and not a single person asked where he had gone. That unruffled quiet made Nina's flesh creep. The servants muttered, yes, but the man had been such absolute filth that everyone assumed he had wandered off, drunk himself stupid, and collapsed somewhere.
No one comes here anyway. Maybe that's a mercy.
She felt none of the horror of having killed a person, nor of a person being dead. In a world where the Bellac existed, death stood very near.
Bellac and knights could not be parted. Knight orders drove the Bellac back and kept people alive, and the ducal house of Rubuaene was no exception. Yet Rubuaene's order appeared more often in other kinds of stories than in stories about the Bellac.
"I hear they lost again this year."
Nina let it fall. It was winter, and her breath poured out in a long white stream. In that cold the two of them sat side by side in a corner of the garden, watching the stars.
Even with every garment they owned piled on, it was weather to freeze to death in. Nina, at least, was strong in winter, contracted to the spirits of the North Wind and of Frost. Adrian would be colder still. They had come out only after she asked, over and over, whether he was all right.
"That's already the second loss?"
When Adrian asked it back, Nina nodded.
Where Bellac appeared, the fame of a knight order went past all imagining. The people of a domain might not know their lord's crest. They knew the crest of the knights.
Every territory, every house, kept an order of its own, and when trouble arose it was often settled by a duel. Call them the warlike nobles of the empire, and you would not be far wrong. The Exchange Match was a gathering of that same kind.
The chosen knights of Rubuaene met the chosen knights of the nearby County of Rava and fought. The winner received the right to use the Crystal Well, the greatest well on the plain, so the match was no small matter. Already it was the second year of defeat. Farming would grow hard because of it, and the herds as well.
"They say the Black Knights are nothing but a rabble now. That they're buying up everyone money can buy."
Nina knew Adrian was to be named captain of the Black Knights. Whenever talk of them arose, both her ears pricked, and everything she heard was bad. On the strength of those rumors there was even talk that the Black Knights might be dissolved and a new order raised in their place.
"I see..."
Adrian let the answer blur. Nina cried, "Oh!" and whipped around toward him.
"Did you see the shooting star just now?"
"No. I missed it."
"What a shame. If another one falls, I'll have to say the wish three times. Please let them serve cake at this year's New Year's gathering. Cake, cake, cake."
At Nina's shout, Adrian laughed softly.
She turned sulky and looked back at him.
"Cake matters."
"It does. It matters."
He made his face grave.
They watched the stars a little longer, then rose. Nina had decided that if they stayed as they were, they might drift off and freeze to death where they sat.
Whether Nina's wish had taken hold or not, cake appeared at that year's New Year's gathering.
It was an extravagant cake, with a slice even for every servant. Nina snatched hers up and ran to Adrian.
At the sight of her triumphant face, Adrian laughed.
"I should have made a wish of my own, and not missed my chance."
Nina speared the cake—no bigger than half her palm—on her fork and put it in her mouth.
"Mmm!"
Rich butter and sugar. It was delicious enough to make her shiver. Watching Nina with her cheeks flushed and her eyes shining, Adrian broke off a small piece, ate it, and said,
"Eat plenty, Nina."
"You ought to eat more than I do, Young Master!"
She cut a large piece and held it to his mouth. Made to eat it whether he would or no, Adrian smiled a crooked smile.
"It's good, isn't it?"
"It is."
"But it's definitely crumbly. Maybe the cold made it hard to whip a proper foam. Or is it only ours that's like this?"
Nina cut another small bite for herself, then packed every bit of the rest into Adrian's mouth.
"Well?"
When she asked, Adrian looked at her.
The light in his eyes, turned on Nina, was just the same as when he looked at the stars. She was embarrassed, and at the same time she understood. Cake was worth a look like that. Wasn't it?
He reached out and wiped the cream from the corner of her mouth.
"May the Great Spirit's blessing overflow this year."
At Adrian's New Year greeting, Nina smiled and returned it.
"May you pass a year with the Great Spirit's blessing beside you."