Dancing the Warrior Read online

  The crowd parted before the man like butter under a hot knife. Seniade was trying to break free of her captors, scrabbling for a vicious joint-lock neither Talon nor Kerestel had taught her, when the edges of that group spotted the Grandmaster. Half of them had the sense to back away, but one—a sixteen-year-old named Leksen—wrenched Seniade’s arm around, forcing her to her knees. He buried his free hand in her hair, exposing the roots to the light. “Grandmaster, look what we found.”

  Kerestel winced. Idiot. Leksen wasn’t long for this school, and he was the only one who couldn’t see it; the bastard was a bully and a sadist more than a fighter, and none too bright, either. As he had just proven, displaying Seniade like some kind of captured bug the Grandmaster might not have known was there.

  Leksen probably didn’t hear the danger in the Grandmaster’s mild voice, but Kerestel did. “What have you found, trainee?”

  “A witch,” Leksen said. Yeah, he’s an idiot, all right. “See?”

  The Grandmaster’s cold, light eyes slid over the crowd, finally settling on one of the first-years. “Paura. How do witches cast their spells?”

  The weedy little girl quaked at the sound of her name, but answered. “They sing.”

  Kerestel knew where this was going even before Paura spoke. The Grandmaster returned his attention to Leksen and his captive, and said, “Seniade. Sing for us.”

  With Leksen’s fist tangled in her hair, dragging her head to the side, she was hardly in the best position for the task—but within two notes, Kerestel knew it didn’t matter. Seniade had no sense of pitch. He didn’t recognize the song she was trying to sing, but whether that was because she’d grown up in Eriot or because she was butchering something familiar beyond recognition, he couldn’t tell. Either way, it was painful to hear.

  “She could be faking it—” Leksen began, cutting Seniade off. This time, though, he had the sense to shut up when the Grandmaster’s gaze fell upon him.

  “Leksen. Tell me. Do you think I’m incapable of recognizing a witch when I see one?”

  The boy shook his head, blessedly silent for once.

  “How many dealings have you had with them, yourself?”

  “Uh . . . none, sir.”

  “And yet you think you’re capable of recognizing one?”

  “But sir, the hair—”

  “Means nothing. If the witches decided to put some kind of spy among us, they’d have the brains not to pick a child with such a simple identifying characteristic. Not to mention that they’re hardly renowned for their close ties with Temple Dancers.” The Grandmaster paused, letting the logic sink in. “Perhaps you left your brain at the top of the bell tower, Leksen. I suggest you search for it up there. Ten times.”

  Kerestel shuddered. Climbing the exterior of the bell tower was a common enough punishment at Silverfire, but ten repetitions would be no laughing matter. Fortunately for Leksen, he scraped together enough wits to realize that saying anything more would only increase the number. He let go of Seniade, arm and hair both, putting his own hands up as if to indicate he had meant no harm.

  The Grandmaster surveyed the silent crowd. “If the rest of you have nowhere else to be, you can join Leksen at the bell tower.”

  One would have thought it was evaluation time, and the trainees’ right to stay at Silverfire depended on how quickly they could vanish. Kerestel ran with the rest, not wanting to try and convince the Grandmaster he’d been planning to help. Somehow.

  To his surprise, Sen passed him a moment later, jogging steadily for the woods, where they were to have their first lesson of the day. She’s coming with us?

  Of course she was. She’d come to the refectory that morning, after all, when he thought she would have bolted from Silverfire. Nothing was going to drive her from this place—nothing short of the Grandmaster’s decree, anyway, and he’d just made it clear that wasn’t going to happen. Not today.

  But the issue wasn’t anywhere near settled. Kerestel thought about Sen’s strength, her speed, the way she picked up movement as easily as breathing. None of that was witch-like—but it wasn’t normal, either. And he might not be the only one who had noticed it.

  Her two-colored head bobbed ahead of him, red peeking out from beneath the black. Kerestel had known for a while that Sen must be crazy. But what if that wasn’t the whole story?

  Biting his lip, he followed her into the woods.

  * * *

  Even under Silverfire’s discipline, it was possible to idle about. Sen found Leksen behind the visitor’s stables, stretched out atop a bale of hay.

  He sat up quickly when he saw her. Days had passed since their encounter outside the refectory, but not nearly enough for him to forget it. Sen raised her hands, open-palmed. “Hear me out.”

  “What in the Void do you want?”

  “Your help.”

  Leksen gaped at her. As well he might; if she’d had any other choice, she wouldn’t have come to him. But Kerestel wouldn’t practice with her anymore—or the others wouldn’t let him; it made no difference. The Grandmaster might have stopped the trainees from killing her, but instead they’d taken to treating her like a leper. Which was fine by Sen—they could be damned to the Void, for all of her—except that she needed that extra practice. Drilling on her own wasn’t enough. She’d been working herself to the bone since losing Kerestel’s help, but Talon’s insults only got more scathing with each passing day.

  “The Grandmaster’s watching you, you know,” she said. It might or might not be true; she didn’t much care. “After what you did that morning. You have to prove to him that you’re okay with me being here.”

  Leksen snorted. “No, I don’t. I don’t know who licked his boots to get you in here, but you aren’t enough of a pet for him to throw me out over that. If he was going to, he would have done it then.”

  Sen’s anger at hearing him speak of Criel that way was a small thing, under the dread of hearing her gambit come up short. She’d hoped it would work; it was better than the alternative.

  But the alternative was better than failing. Failing out, or failing the Warrior. She couldn’t find perfection on her own.

  Before she could lose her nerve, Sen said, “Okay, then. Look at it this way. You hate me, right? But I am enough of a pet that if you try to beat me up, that will get you in trouble. I can offer you something almost as good, though, without the risk.”

  His eyebrows slanted into a line of mixed confusion and curiosity. “Oh?”

  “I need a training partner. So I can learn the things I need to know. If you’ll help me. . . .” She had to pause, draw in a deep breath to steady herself. “Then as long as you don’t injure me so badly I can’t train, I won’t complain to anyone.”

  Leksen’s jaw sagged open. He stared as if expecting her to take it back; then he looked around as if expecting to find the Grandmaster waiting to kill him. When neither happened, he said in a reverential whisper, “You’re insane.”

  Only desperate. Leksen was hardly the best at Silverfire. He was the only one, though, that she thought she could convince to do this. Nobody else would come near her: Sen’s Void-damned hair had seen to that.

  “Yes or no?” she asked, voice hard. “If it’s no, then I’ll stop wasting my time with you.”

  He snorted again, with something more like his usual arrogance. “Oh, it’s a yes. You want to play wooden dummy for me, I’ve got no complaints.”

  That was about how it would go, and Sen knew it. Leksen had no interest in teaching her anything. But she’d learned from Kerestel, even in that first sparring match; she would learn from Leksen, too. Hunters did make blood-offerings to the Warrior, after all. Hopefully the Goddess would accept this one.

  Sen remembered thinking that her left knee was bothering her, that she would have to get some linen bandages to brace it with.

  Then she was on the ground, in a different part of the forest, and her horse was standing practically on top of her, munching at a yellowing tuft of grass.


  Her whole side felt bruised, which told her half of what she needed to know. She’d fallen off. And judging by the change of surroundings, the other half was that she’d been asleep in the saddle for a while.

  Sen straightened her leg, wincing as her knee complained. The tumble hadn’t done it any good. Beneath the sudden racing of her heart, she was bone-weary; no surprise that she’d drifted off. I suppose I ought to be proud that I stayed on the horse at all.

  She needed to get back on; today was her first endurance ride since coming to Silverfire, endless circuits out of the compound, and Anchor and his assistants were roaming about to see how the trainees were doing. But she wasn’t able to make herself move until she actually heard approaching hoofbeats; then she leapt to her feet and reached for the reins.

  Her horse sidled uncooperatively. “Void-damned beast,” Sen growled; a quick snatch gained her the reins—glad to know my reflexes are good for something; they haven’t been much use against Leksen—but she wasn’t able to get into the saddle before the rider came round the boulder that hid her from view.

  It was Kerestel, not a master, and she thanked the Warrior for that. He pulled his mount up short at the sight of her. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” Sen hauled herself into the saddle, pretending her left knee didn’t mind. The horse wanted more grass, but she dragged his head up and kicked him onward.

  Of course Kerestel followed; they were all riding the same circuit. “Did Tobb throw you?”

  “No.” Wouldn’t you all like that—more stories to tell, of how the witch-brat can’t manage her horse. They seized on any error, any weakness, and already had more than enough weapons to use against her.

  “You sure? Because I could ride with you for a while—Tobb can be a troublemaker, but he generally behaves if there’s another horse around—”

  Sen twisted in her saddle to glare at him. “What, you want to help me now?”

  Kerestel flinched. They hadn’t exchanged more than a handful of words since their semi-secret partnership ended. Sen didn’t really care, not anymore; what she needed now was sparring practice, not tips on patterns, and she learned more from a more experienced opponent. Which Leksen was; it was the one good thing she could say for him.

  Lamely, Kerestel said, “I just. . . .”

  He trailed off, clearly unsure how to finish the sentence. Sen turned her back on him. They were coming up on the place where she’d been ambushed after coming to Silverfire; he’d warned her of that, but had done nothing to stop it. Maybe he wasn’t as bad as the rest of them—but that just made him neutral. And therefore irrelevant. She had to save what energy she had, not waste it on him.

  Steeling herself, Sen put her heels to the horse’s flanks, moving him from a walk into the steady trot that was the fastest pace they were permitted during this ride. If Kerestel wanted to keep up, he could, but she quickly left him behind.

  * * *

  The shame eating away at Kerestel’s gut like a disease found a partial cure that night.

  Sen, he was willing to bet, didn’t know about the raids. They were part of Silverfire tradition, and one she had missed learning, along with so much else. Every trainee eventually grew hungry and desperate enough to steal food from the store-rooms, and every trainee eventually figured out that was part of their training, too: a test of their skill at stealth and subtlety. People worked out different ways to do it—even bribing the kitchen staff—but for those in the middle years, it came down to a contest of sorts, one team against another, raiding in the night.

  It was fun practice, even if it meant everyone would be exhausted the next day. They’d decided to work in trios tonight, him and Loye and Tareth against Marwen and Rolier and Doiyet. Once they graduated, Silverfires mostly worked alone, but it was more exciting this way—especially since sometimes people betrayed their own side. The winners got first pick of whatever they snatched, and the losers owed them favors afterward.

  The favors wouldn’t extend as far as demanding the others help Sen out. But food could be shared, and he would have wagered his hope of a Hunter’s name that she needed it.

  Up ahead, Loye had already fiddled open the catch on the window with the point of her knife. Rolier thought he was so subtle; Kerestel knew perfectly well the other team was letting his side get here first and do the work of collecting the food. It wasn’t victory until the raiders got the food back to the dormitory, and Rolier had an ambush planned. But Kerestel had a plan for that.

  He patted the kitchen dog on the head as they went by. If this were real, he and his partners would have had to do something to prevent it barking, but—according to legend—the head of the kitchens complained ages ago about having his dog drugged every night, and the poison master complained about raids on his stores. Now the chief qualification for the so-called guard dog was an ability to distinguish thieves from Hunter trainees, thumping his tail in friendly welcome as the latter went by.

  Back out into the night, prizes in hand. Up ahead, Kerestel heard muffled noise and grinned. Right on time. His team passed the scuffle without pausing, turning only once they’d crossed the threshold of the dormitory. A moment later, a tall shadow detached itself from the side of a building and sauntered up to join them, one hand out. “Pay up.”

  Kerestel scowled at Tareth. He’d picked Leksen as their secret ally? All right, so the other trainee was sixteen and well into his growth; he was more than capable of taking out the members of the ambushing team. But working with Leksen soured Kerestel’s pride in their victory.

  Grudgingly, he handed over a box of blackberries. Leksen took them without comment and headed off into the night, stuffing a handful into his mouth. Kerestel and his partners retired upstairs to his room, waiting for the others to join them.

  “Dirty trick,” Rolier said sullenly when his team arrived. “It was supposed to be trios.”

  “And the tripwire last time wasn’t a dirty trick?” Kerestel wanted to know. His heart wasn’t in the argument, though, not with Rolier’s lip already swelling from the scuffle with Leksen.

  Tareth shuffled his feet when Kerestel took him aside to say something about it a moment later. “Sorry. He was eager to help, though.”

  Not to help; to beat up on the younger trainees. Leksen wasn’t good enough to get that satisfaction from his own year-mates, so he was always on the lookout for chances to dominate those below him. Kerestel shook his head, stepping on the urge to yell at Tareth. “Next time, I’ll do the recruiting.”

  Doiyet went off to get some sleep. The rest ate in silence for a while, shoveling down the more perishable bits of food, saving the rest for later. Kerestel slipped a bun and a lump of cheese under his pillow when nobody else was looking. He’d sneak them over to the girls’ side of the dormitory once the others were gone.

  Marwen, perched on the windowsill, sat up suddenly. “What’s that?”

  She spoke more loudly than she should have. The masters knew this kind of thing went on, but they ignored it so long as the trainees stayed quiet. When there were girls on the boys’ side of the dormitory, though, or vice versa, their bar for “quiet” was a lot lower. Kerestel hushed her and peered through the thick glass, watching a shadow slip through the compound, coming from the woods.

  “Nothing,” he said, trying to edge Marwen away.

  “Too small to be Leksen,” she said, not moving. “Wait—is that the witch-brat?”

  Loye glanced up from sorting through the food. “What’s she doing out there?”

  Rolier made a sneering sound. “Casting spells, probably.”

  “Shut it, Rolier,” Kerestel snapped, forgetting to keep his voice low. “She’s coming back from practice.”

  “With who? A tree?”

  That was all she had to practice with, since Kerestel let the others scare him off. Or scared himself off—that had been part of it, too. He couldn’t shake the feeling there was something strange about her, and he wasn’t the only one. Rumor said
she’d approached half the senior trainees, trying to find a sparring partner, and they’d all refused her. Unless—

  Leksen hadn’t come upstairs after being paid.

  Dread made the cheese Kerestel had eaten congeal unpleasantly in his gut. She wouldn’t, would she? I mean, she’d have to be crazy—

  He already knew that was true. But this went far beyond that.

  Marwen and Tareth were laughing with Rolier, embroidering on his suggestion. Loye, at least, was keeping out of it. But that only went so far, and all at once, Kerestel’s uneasiness resolved into fury—on Sen’s behalf.

  “Look,” he said abruptly, cutting through the laughter. “What she’s doing would kill any of us. You realize that? She gets up early, stays up late, and practices every minute she’s got. The Grandmaster saw something in her—call it whatever you like. That’s why he let her in. But the truth is that she’s working herself halfway to death to make sure she deserves it. So go ahead and mock her, but don’t ever forget that she’s fighting harder to stay here than any of us.”

  It produced an awkward silence. What had he expected—for Rolier to hang his head and say, I’m sorry, I was wrong? It wasn’t that easy. None of them knew what to do with her, not anymore. They mocked her, and she ignored them, living inside her own head and body rather than the world around her. They hurt her, and she accepted the pain. They shunned her, and she just went on learning—even from Leksen, it seemed. What in the Goddess’s many names was driving her?

  Talon was.

  Kerestel sucked a quick breath through his teeth, forgetting the other trainees entirely. It didn’t explain Sen herself, and what she was doing here . . . but it might explain the madness. Talon’s demands on Sen were impossibly high, more than anyone could hope to meet—and unfortunately, he was one of the few people at Silverfire who could tell the Grandmaster that a trainee ought to go. If he said Sen wasn’t meeting his standards….

  Surely the Grandmaster would come see for himself. He wouldn’t just take Talon’s word for it.