Steelfated, page 28
“It is so good to see you, but I must return to my students.” Morgain’s smile widened.
“You’ve got your own grove of trainees??” she beamed. She knew Rhaelan had always wanted to teach her own grove. She nodded and smiled warmly.
“Five of them. I think three will actually make it, but they may surprise me. They are young yet, the oldest is only five, so it will be awhile before they even have to think about the cunnart caledi, but I think one is too soft to pass, and one is too harsh.” Morgain gave Rhaelan a hug.
“Balance and plenty, Rhaelan. To you and your grove.” Rhaelan smiled.
“Balance and plenty, Morgain. And hey, if things free up, and you want to spend a few days teaching, which would allow me some ah- danger and shenanigans with your friend there… well, you know how to find me.” She winked, then dropped into the ward.
“You are as incorrigible as the others are.” Morgain retorted, before turning to realize Radyn was standing only a few paces behind her, with Cuilada hanging on his arm. He arched one eyebrow and smirked at her.
“Oh, good. You are done talking with the pretty one. Would you like this one back?” He moved his arm, dangling Cuilada a few inches off the ground before depositing her between himself and Morgain. Cuilada shot a pouty glare at him, which he dutifully ignored.
“Eh, she seems rather attached to you.” He didn’t miss a beat.
“Yes, and if I have to have her attached to me, I will, but one of the other druids wants to spar, and I’d just as soon keep some pretense of fairness to the match. Since you did tell me to behave.”
Morgain wasn’t sure if his words were a boast or a barb, but she shook her head and grabbed Cuilada.
“Come on, we’ll watch and enjoy both the spectacle and the view.”
They sparred with quarterstaffs, and Morgain watched pointedly. Cuilada kept babbling, but she ignored most of the inanities the woman spouted. Radyn won, but not handily. He did the same with the three others who wanted to spar with him. It was nearly dark when Morgain herself asked him to spar. She had realized that she had done little at all that day, and was thinking she was going to have trouble sleeping if she didn’t burn off some energy. She grabbed her short spear and buckler and faced off against him.
If he had been holding back with the others, he didn’t with her. For every touch she scored, hits she was certain he allowed, she took five. After an hour and a half, she waved her hand at him dismissively, and he sheathed his blade.
Cuilada approached her wide-eyed.
“You’ve gotten quick. And your stamina is incredible.” Morgain snorted.
“Maybe I’ve gotten faster, but he’s not even breathing hard.”
“True, but I think he does nothing at all but fight.”
“I’d have said the same once, but no longer. The man is as multifaceted as a gemstone. I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
Two hours later, when the sun was sinking low in the western sky, and they had cleaned up from the sparring match, they were treated to a fine, if rustic, dinner from the Grove and the Circle.
They retired a few hours later, after dark. Despite her thoughts racing around Radyn, Morgain fell asleep more quickly than she thought she would have.
A quiet, but insistent knock roused her sometime later, deep in the night. She rose to her feet, but hesitated, a sense of malaise overtaking her. If she ignored it, would it stop? The knock came again. She shoved the feeling down and stood, padding to the door as the knock came a third time. Her suspicions were confirmed as she opened the door.
Dremhin Vallanin.
“What do you want, Dremhin?” she mumbled.
“You.” He said with a smirk, stepping forward into the room, pushing the door shut behind him with one hand and reaching for her waist with the other. His smirking lips found hers, though she did not return the kiss. She put her hand on his chest and pushed him backwards lightly. He didn’t resist, instead taking a step back. His eyes flicked down to her, and the smirk widened on his lips. She found his smirk was still attractive, though it seemed to her as if it had lost much of its bluster, and appeared crass.
“Not an option tonight.” She said flatly. He took a step back, looking slightly hurt.
“But I’ve missed you-”
“And? I said no. My bed is mine alone tonight, and for every night unless I say otherwise. You’ve no claim on me, and I told you before my death that our season had passed. Maybe it will come again, maybe not. Enjoy the memories, Dremhin. I do. Those memories are the only thing you have any claim to here.” His face flickered from shocked awe to anger, then to a sulky discomfort, before returning to its confident smile, though a faint light of arrogance shone in his eyes.
It occurred to Morgain, in that moment, that she had never outright told him no in any advances he had made. She’d deflected him and made him wait. They’d been sneaking off and kissing, and other pubescent explorations for almost two years before she finally let him into her bed, but she’d never directly told him no. He took another step forward and reached for her waist again.
“No. Dremhin, I mean it.” he stopped again, put on his most charming smile and leaned forward for a kiss, anyway. She knotted the fabric of his shirt to the wall opposite her door, and he gave a strangled cry as he was jerked backwards. A sudden wash of dizziness washed over her as she realized she really shouldn’t be using her magic, and she broke the knots before he reached the other wall. The dizziness passed quickly, but Dremhin had stepped forward again. His lip was curled in what looked remarkably like an open sneer. She pulled her short spear from the long quiver hanging on her bedpost and held it loosely in her hand.
“What’s wrong? Did you lose your magic when you got tangled up with the dead man?” he snarled.
“Leave Dremhin. Last warning.”
“I want what I’m owed.” He snarled. She looked at him flatly, though she wanted to gape in amazement. Owed? She’d never promised him anything- though perhaps she had hinted at the desire to spend one more night with him before he died- but she’d spent the whole week in her parent’s keep in the city- and she would not bring a man to her bed there for at least three years after she married him. Despite the detour her mind took at his words, she didn’t miss that his stance told her he was preparing to lunge. An icy wave of fear and dread at what he was planning washed over her, and instincts developed over a year of standard Steelfated training and fighting the Mistbourne, and the additional training with Radyn told her to do.
She nearly moved too soon, and only at the last instant did she hesitate to take account of something that Radyn, and the other masters at arms in Ironlake, had been beating into her head since she picked up her weapon on her first day of duty.
She had been trained to fight Mistbourne. They were faster than most humans, true, but they also couldn’t adjust because of their speed, and they moved out of phase with time. You had to move a heartbeat slower when facing a person, or they’d see your movement and adjust for it.
She was ready, and had been for a whole heartbeat when he lunged at her, muttering the words of a knot to tie her feet to the floor.
She snapped her spear up and out as fast as she could, hitting him in the mouth with the flat of the blade, breaking the cadence of his speech and causing him to not only lose the knotwork but also to cry out in surprise.
She didn’t stop moving, instead following the line of her motion, she stepped left and leaned over as he stumbled by. She used his own momentum and a full twist of her hips to drive her elbow into his solar plexus, then snapped her arm up from there at a right angle to bring the back of her knuckles in contact with his nose, which she felt break beneath the blow. Immediately after she felt his nose break, snapped her arm back down to crash her fist into his groin.
As he buckled over with a bloody, wheezing whine, she stepped to the side again. Grabbing a handful of his hair, she jerked down on his head at the same time she shifted her hip up into his core. She flipped him over her leg, crashing the butt of her spear into a kidney for good measure as he flipped, and sent him crashing back first on the hard packed earth.
He slammed into the ground with a thud, and the curious “whomp” that accompanied all the air being shoved out of his lungs, a pained, wide-eyed expression of shock on his face and blood fanned across his lips and chin. A second later, when his lungs worked again, he gave a piteous whimper and closed his eyes. The emotionless void of instinct broke as she stepped out of the way and lowered her spear until the cold metal of the tip was resting right below one of his rapidly blackening eye. He opened it, glancing down at the point and freezing. The emptiness was replaced by fury.
“How dare you?” she snarled. “Any chance that we had of sharing another night, or even another season, you just threw out the window. All you had to do was walk away for the night, and you might have won me back in time, should I survive being dead. I may even have looked to find you in the morning. I’m sore and exhausted, but a night spent sleeping in direct contact with Archenarium here in the grove, at the intersection point? It would do as much good for me as if you could roll the cycle backwards for a decade to give someone a grasp again at their youth. But this? I never would have expected this from you.” The more she spoke, the angrier she got. “Thirteen hells, Dremhin. We’ve been friends since we were five, and more than that besides. Why? Why NOW you decide to be a… a fecking thief. You’d take from me by force what you can’t have by consent? You’d ruin thirteen years of friendship over a single night’s declined offer? You couldn’t be content owning the joy of a memory? Of knowing what you had had? Of knowing that you were my first, and would always be looked on fondly in my heart, even if I’d never seen you physically again? Of knowing full well you may yet have had me again?” Spittle was flying from the sides of her mouth and her teeth clacked together sharply, painfully. Dremhin opened his mouth, and she prodded hard enough to make him wince. A single bead of blood appeared around the point of her spear. Her next words came out more of a long, drawn out growl than a snarl. “No! Don’t you fecking open your mouth. You won’t have me, not tonight, nor ever again. I swear by the Octet. Not now that you’ve stolen the joy from my memories. Do you understand what it is you’ve done, what it is you’ve taken from me, you bastard? I’m within my rights to kill you.” She lifted her spear slightly when he reached up to wipe his nose, in part to let him do that, and in part because he looked like he might cough. She didn’t want to poke his eye out by accident. If she did it, which she had not decided not to yet, she wanted it to be intentional.
“The Circle would throw you out. I’m an Arch-druid of high standing and you are just a-Ow!” He snapped. She butted the middle of his forehead with the base of her spear to hit him off again.
“No, they wouldn’t, for two reasons. One, what I did, I did in self-defense. Two, they can’t disavow a dead woman. I’m not a part of the circle here, nor am I subject to their authority, beyond the authority that they have over a guest claiming hospitality. Hospitality that you just violated. I’m within my rights to kill you for that alone. But for what you just tried to do- no, killing you would be too quick. Maybe I should castrate you by knotting your manhood to a boulder and shoving it off a bridge. It’s only fitting, really.” She lowered the point back to his cheekbone and pricked sharply until blood welled up around the point. Then she lifted it again, this time holding it a few inches away from his face. Close enough to be a threat, not so close as to keep him from moving. He coughed and spat blood on the floor, then wiped his nose. He sat up, working his jaw side to side, and she was going to let him, until she caught his barely audible mutter of “bitch,” as he did so.
She kicked him in the stomach, hard. He grunted and collapsed back to the floor with a wheeze.
She crouched down next to him, shoved him hard onto his back when he tried to sit up again, and placed the flat of her spear on his stomach, the point angled down towards a softer target. She slowly put all of her weight, though it was not truly considerable, onto the spear shaft, pressing it hard into his torso. Short of her trying to do this as a blow, rather than slow and steady like water from a spring filling a bucket, it wouldn’t do much to him besides be irritatingly painful, and perhaps leave a bruise across his skin.
“Make no mistake, Siedhe. I do not need my magic to protect myself, nor do I need it to deal with the likes of you. Learn your lesson. No means no. Walk away now, without another word, and aside from the pain you are in at the moment, and that fact that you will never get to touch this,” she motioned at herself with the hand not holding the spear. “Ever again, tonight didn’t happen. If I ever hear the whisper of a rumor that you have done something like this to anyone else, or Octet forbid that you’ve ever tried this on someone else, I’ll come back, and tie you to a locust tree by your manhood, and drag you and the tree to the Long City behind my horse, with plenty of slack in the rope to let the tree roll around.” she said coldly. “Do you understand?” It was not a question.
He swallowed once, his face going pale, and nodded.
She took a step back and let him gingerly rise to his feet, then hobble out her door. Or try to hobble out her door, anyway.
A hand shot across the door frame as he crossed the threshold, and grabbed his shirt, while a second snapped up and chopped into his Adam’s apple sideways, causing him to choke again. His eyes goggled so hard she thought they might pop out of their sockets.
“Once you can speak again, I suggest you apologize to her, then do as she said. I’m nowhere near as patient as she is, and I’m twice as creative.” Radyn said coolly. Confusion crossed Dremhin’s face for a heartbeat before it was replaced by abject horror.
“I- I’m s-sorry.” Dremhin choked a moment later. Radyn let him go and he stumbled away. He watched him go before turning back to her.
When his small nod told her that Dremhin was gone, Morgain slid her spear back in the quiver and dropped back onto her bed, burying her face in her hands. She was shaking, and hot tears stung her eyes. It felt like she had tried to swallow a shard of glass, and that someone had replaced her heart with a fractured chunk of ice from a glacier.
“May I come in?” Radyn asked. She didn’t answer him right away. Instead, she stared through the gaps in her fingers at the ground. Adrenaline and anger faded and melted from her body. Those feelings were being replaced by fear, pain, and revulsion, both at what she had done and what had nearly happened to her. She shuddered and choked back a sob. This would not be one of those sessions of spilled tears that could make a woman appear innocent and beautiful. Rather, it was going to be one that left her blotchy, and as snotty as a three-year-old with a head cold. She nearly lost her grip on herself and started bawling, but she took a jerky breath, as though she were hyperventilating. Eventually she looked up, to see him still standing respectfully by the door, concern written in his eyes, though his face remained blessedly blank. She wasn’t entirely sure that she wanted him to see her like this, or if she even wanted to be near anyone at all.
Eventually, she nodded at him and he entered the room. He didn’t swing the door shut, and she wasn’t sure if she should be grateful or angry that he had not. In equal parts, she didn’t want anyone to see her crying like this, didn’t want to be shut in the room with anyone, didn’t want anyone near enough to touch her, and didn’t want to be alone. She needed a dog, a large and fluffy one that was useless for anything beyond warm hugs and rides for small children. She snorted at the imagery of a large fluffy white dog with a small saddle on its back, while a toddler used its ears as reins and then brushed it aside.
Her mind wandered in some of the strangest ways sometimes. Had Ironlake and life among the dead done that to her? No, she’d been struggling to keep her mind on track for years, and these random asides were nothing new. Perhaps it was simply an unconcious coping method.
“How long were you there?” She asked after a moment. “I’m sorry. I should have realized that trying to tie him to the wall would affect you as well.”
“I woke the first time he knocked on your door. You didn’t answer until the fourth.” Radyn said. She gave a half broken laugh.
“I don’t know if I should be angry, or glad you didn’t step in.”
“You had it under control,” he said with a shrug as he dropped to a comfortable crouch a few feet in front of her, putting their eyes at the same level, close enough to provide comfort, but far enough to allow her to have her own space. On the surface, it was an insignificant gesture, but one that meant more to her than words could express. With that simple statement and his choice not to try to throw an arm around her to comfort her, he’d signaled not only his faith in her abilities, but his willingness to help her. His respect for her as a comrade, a fighter, and a person who had just gone through an unexpected trauma involving another person’s violation, or attempted violation of her self. He’d known that needed a moment’s space, not a shoulder to cry on, at least not without asking for the shoulder. If she hadn’t given herself a snails trail of tears and mucus on her face, she would have offered to kiss him. No, not tonight. Later maybe, but she didn’t even want to think about anything that could potentially lead to physical intimacy right now.
“You did well. You almost moved too soon, though.” She chuckled again and wiped her eyes. The offhanded criticism did more to bring her mood back towards stability than leaving the door open or giving her the space had.
“I know.”
“You didn’t, though, which is all that matters, ultimately. My ego would like to say that it was all because of my delayed, and nearly refused, offer of training, but there was a certain creative flair to it I can’t take credit for.” This time, she barked a single laugh.
