The Queen's Rising(56)
The following day, I returned to the Laurents’ a few minutes shy of noon, Luc on my heels.
“I am not opposed to this,” my brother insisted as we stood on the front door and rang the bell. “I only think it best that we focus on other things. Hmm?”
I had told him about the sword lessons but not that my foremost motivation was to convince Jourdain that I could protect myself, that I could be sent to Maevana for the stone’s retrieval.
“Amadine?” Luc pressed, wanting an answer from me.
“Hmm?” I lazily returned the hum, to his amused annoyance, as Yseult opened the door.
“Welcome,” she greeted, letting us inside.
The first thing I noticed was she was wearing a long-sleeved linen shirt and breeches. I had never seen a woman wear pants, nor look so natural in them. It made me envious that she could move so freely while I was still encumbered by a flurry of skirts.
Luc hung his passion cloak in the foyer, and then we followed her down the hallway into an antechamber at the back of the house, a room with a stone floor, mullioned windows, and a great oaken chest. Atop the chest were two wooden long-swords, which Yseult gathered.
“I must confess,” the queen said, blowing a stray tendril of her dark red hair from her eyes, “I have always been the student, never the teacher.”
I smiled and accepted the scuffed training sword that she extended to me. “Don’t worry; I am a very good pupil.”
Yseult returned the smile and opened a back door. It led into a square courtyard enclosed by high brick walls, sheltered overhead by woven wooden rafters that were thickly knotted by vines and creeping plants. It was a very private space, only a few splotches of sunlight caressing the hard-packed ground.
Luc overturned a bucket to sit against the wall while I joined Yseult at the center of the courtyard.
“A sword has three foremost purposes,” she said. “To cut, to thrust, and to guard.”
So began my first lesson. She taught me how to hold the pommel, then the five primary positions. Middle, low, high, back, and hanging guard. Then she transitioned to the fourteen essential guards. We had just perfected the inside left guard when the chamberlain brought us a tray of cheese, grapes, and bread, along with a flask of herbal water. I hadn’t even been aware of the hours that had slipped by, fast and warm, or that Luc had fallen asleep against the wall.
“Let’s take a break,” Yseult suggested, wiping the sweat from her brow.
Luc woke with a start, wiping drool from the corner of his mouth as we approached him.
The three of us sat on the ground, the tray of food in the center of our triangle, passing the flask back and forth as we ate and cooled off in the shade. Luc and Yseult teased each other with a familial affection, which made me wonder what growing up in Valenia must have been like for them. Especially Yseult. When had her father told her who she was, that she was destined to take back the throne?
“A ducat for your thoughts,” Luc said, flicking a coin from his pocket my way.
I caught it on reflex as I said, “I was just thinking of how you were both raised here. How difficult that must have been.”
“Well,” Luc said, popping a grape into his mouth. “In many ways, Yseult and I are very Valenian. We were raised in your customs, your politeness. We don’t remember anything of Maevana.”
“Our fathers have not let us forget it, though,” the queen added. “We know what the air tastes like, what the land looks like, what a true brogue sounds like, what our Houses stand for, even though we have not yet experienced it wholly for ourselves.”
An easy lull came about us as we each took a final swig from the flask.
“I hear you are Maevan on your father’s side,” Yseult said to me. “So you are similar to Luc and me. You were raised here, you love this kingdom, embrace it as part of yourself. But there is more to you, which you cannot begin to fully know until you cross the channel.”
Luc nodded his agreement.
“Sometimes I imagine it will be like our time here was all just a dream,” the queen continued, glancing down to a stray thread in her sleeve. “That when we return to our fallen lands, when we stand in our halls among our people once more . . . it will feel like we have finally woken.”
We were silent again, each of us lost to our own thoughts, our own imaginations quietly blossoming as to what it would be like to see Maevana. Yseult was the one to break the reverie, brushing the crumbs from her shirt, and then she tapped me on the knee.
“All right, let’s do one more guard, and then we will call it a day,” Yseult said, drawing me back into the center of the dirt. We gathered our swords, Luc lazily chewing the last of the bread as he watched us with hooded eyes. “This is called the close left guard, and . . .”
I lifted my practice sword, to mirror her as she demonstrated the guard. I felt the wooden hilt slide in my sweaty palms, a steady ache drum up my spine. And then she was suddenly, unexpectedly lunging for me. Her practice sword shed its wood and shimmered into steel as it cut for me. I lurched back, fear piercing my stomach as I tripped and heard an irritated male voice snap, “Hanging left, Tristan! Hanging left, not close left!”
I was no longer standing in an enclosed courtyard with Yseult. The sky was cloudy, troubled above me, and a cold wind washed over me, smelling like fire and leaves and cold earth. And him—the one cutting his sword at me, the one who had barked at me as if I were a dog. He was tall and dark-haired, young but not quite a man yet, as his beard was still trying to fill in along his jaw.