1.13. Prey-Type Face

Dawn found Seth and shook him awake with the sound of clattering wood.

He rolled to one side; he jolted with the realization that he was about to touch an unlit, then found that A. he was alone in the tent and B. he’d spent last night quietly yearning to do just that.

Both realizations discomfited him.

From outside, Annalise’s son called, “Touch!”

“That was just my pant leg,” came Ofelia’s reply. “No meat.”

“Nine opponents out of ten that’d be a touch. You just got chicken legs.”

“Get back to your corner. Dick.”

“You’re a dick.”

“You.”

“You.”

Seth sat up, cast last night’s quilt from himself, and opened the flap of the tent to a bright mint-colored morning. Dew dappled the rushes and wildflowers around the canvas tent. Beside the wrought-iron spectre of their mother’s carriage, Tiago and Ofelia were sparring with wooden practice swords.

They moved with precision, and steely focus, and the same intentional gravity in each step that their mother displayed in the forest. First circling silently and then launching into rapid sequences of attack and parry that whistled the air with the passage of their blades. Draco and Draka watched silently as their owners fought, huge glassy eyes attentive from under their jet shags, thinking whatever horses think when they observe tawdry little biped struggles.

Seth crawled the rest of the way out of the tent and stretched to his feet. “Morning,” he said.

Tiago looked his way. “Morn—”

A span of birchwood practice sword sank into his gut and doubled him over.

“Touch,” Ofelia sang, and then “no no no stop no back to your corner” as Tiago advanced on her with a clod of dirt in his fist.

Seth wandered to the carriage while the al Ydrises chased one another and peered through its door at the merry clutter inside: bedrolls, books, bread, boots, bladed weaponry. A space had been cleared on one seat upon which sat a birdcage with a fluttering, peeping wood thrush in it. “Where’s Annalise?” Seth asked.

“Went on ahead of us to Laramme incognito.” Tiago threw the dirt at his sister, who mostly dodged. “She’s doing what she did in whatsitcalled. Your town.”

“Prossimo?”

“That’s the one.”

“Why?”

“She likes to get the measure of a place before the carriage rolls in,” Tiago said. “How it treats an unaccompanied Necropolitan-looking woman of clear means.”

Ofelia, perhaps sensing an escape from sword work, perched herself on the carriage step. “How’d you like cuddling our mom last night?”

“You know, Miss al Ydris, you’re giving the impression you’re preoccupied with this.” Seth reached into the carriage and came out with the waterskin Annalise had assigned him last night.

“My life is devoid of gossip, Mr. il Gutierre,” Ofelia said, as Seth drank. “How is a twenty-four-year-old teenager meant to survive on the road? Unless there’s some kind of courtly scandal in Laramme.”

“Doubt it,” Tiago said. “It’s a logging town, right?”

“That’s right,” Seth said. “Maskayans and Plainfolk, mostly. Prossimo trades with them on the regular, since they’re not shackled up to an iron artery yet. Timber, potash, wild onions. That kinda thing. When I was visiting, there was a murani hardcamp that was moving in.”

“Not bad.” Tiago retraced his footwork in the freshly turned earth. “Get us some game, maybe.”

Seth wiped his lip. A little fuzz on there; he needed a shave. “From the murani? They don’t really trade with humans.”

“We’re not human anymore, Mr. il Gutierre.” Ofelia waved the tip of her sword like a conductor’s baton. “We’re unlit.”

“Not sure they see it like that.”

“They’ll trade with Anna.” Tiago flapped a dismissive hand. “You want a lesson, il Gutierre?”

Seth returned his waterskin to the carriage’s cluttered bench. “You wanna teach a rank amateur?”

“Not exactly, but if you’re sticking around, I ought to. Come on.” Tiago stepped next to him and reached through the window. “You’re good, Feeli.”

Ofelia swung herself to the carriage roof and sat on its edge, tapping her heels against the leering skeletons carved on its rear quarter.

Tiago edged a map of West Plainland and its criss-crossing iron arteries aside, and found Polecat’s cutlass beneath it. “This is you?”

“Yep.”

Tiago pulled the sheathed cutlass out and handed it to him, handle-first. “In an actual fight, we’re gonna just hand you a gun or a spear and keep you back.”

“I love that.” Seth cinched the braided buckskin belt around his waist and felt the weight settle on his hip. “Great idea.”

“But you can carry that chopper there into a lot more spaces than you can bring a spear, so you might as well know how to use the thing.” Tiago swung his sword up to his shoulder. “Now, you’re a little guy—”

“We’re the same height.”

“I’m physically sixteen and you’re a little guy—don’t interrupt, by the way—and you’ve got a blade fit for drunken stormshippers and a prey-type face.”

“A what-type, now?”

“So if you draw blades with someone, don’t look brave and don’t act tough. Look afraid. They’ll underestimate you. And the best way to win a sword fight is very quickly.”

“Look afraid to swordfight?” Seth wiped his bangs from his face. “I’ll do my best.”

“A lot of what you’ll learn, keep under your hat until you’ve got your range and your opportunity just right. Don’t wanna stance up and spin a moulinet when someone thinks you’re about to go at them like you’re chopping steaks.”

“A moulinet being?”

Tiago’s sword flickered in a balletic figure-eight across his body and then snapped back to its position. His face registered no effort.

“Oh,” Seth said.

“It’s mostly for peacocking and getting your wrist up to snuff. You’ll get there.” Tiago held up a hand as Seth went to draw his blade. “Don’t draw. We’re not using it yet. Just wear it around wherever you can; get used to the weight and the feeling.”

“That’s lesson one?”

“That’s lesson one-half. Pass me the broom, Feeli.”

A lacquer-handled broom shunted from the carriage’s roof and plopped into the dirt.

“Good pass, Feeli.” Tiago picked up the broom and tapped it against a carriage wheel, dislodging a cloud of dust. He held it out in front of him, headfirst, and dropped into a lithe combat stance, off-hand held behind his back.

“Mirror me,” he said.

Seth did so, and felt like a wading duck.

“Foot’s too far out.” Tiago indicated it with the head of the broom. “Straight under your knee. Good. Now what we’re—”

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Tiago took a sudden lunge forward and the broom shoved hard into Seth’s midsection.

Seth stumbled backward a pace and wiped hastily at the streak of pale dust that Tiago had marked his borrowed shirt with. “Ouch. Bastard.”

“Not a bastard, il Gutierre. Dad’s a dead drunkard, but he had a ring.” Tiago took a slower step forward and rested the broom head against Seth’s chest. “So what we’re gonna do is this. Without crossing your feet or dropping out of stance, keep the head of this broom right where it is. Just barely touching you. Don’t let it get too far away, and don’t let me—”

He took another sudden flickering step. Seth staggered back this time and the broom danced with him upon his sternum.

“Good.” Tiago returned to stillness. “But don’t cross those feet.”

“Don’t cross the feet,” Seth repeated, and as the two fell into slow exercise, the broom between them, he watched Tiago’s marshfire eyes. They had the same round expressiveness as Annalise, but the customary smile which lifted the corners on the Verdugo’s face was absent on Tiago’s. His skin was a deeper shade of gray, his mouth wider and thinner. Little hallmarks of the departed father they all clearly despised. Seth wondered how much more Tiago looked like his mother now that they were both unlit; what other differences had been snatched away along with all the color?

“How is it?” he asked. “Being an unlit?

The broomhead wiggled with Tiago’s shrug. “Fine. I like flying.”

Ofelia found a book seemingly at random and cracked it open. “Mom thinks it’s a curse.”

“Well, she would,” Tiago said. “She loves kids, and going unlit sterilizes you. Probably wishes she could’ve given us a sibling or two. Plus, she got snuffed when she was forty, so the slow-age thing isn’t quite as sweet as it could’ve been.”

“Thirty-eight,” Ofelia said. “Mom got unlit at thirty-eight.”

“Whatever.”

“Two whole years is not whatever.”

“What I’m saying is that unlits age about five times slower,” Tiago said. “And now she’s gonna be in her forties for the next half-century. Stay loose, Seth. Don’t bend your knees that much.”

Seth obeyed. “Some curse.”

“Well, we’re twenty-four,” Tiago said.

“Twins?”

“Yep. And we look sixteen. That’s annoying. It’s all well and good for Feeli. My voice has been cracking for, what, seven or eight years now. Twenty or so to go.”

“It’s not all well and good for Feeli,” Ofelia said. “I used to have the loveliest eyes, you know, and now they’re pitch black. And my ta-tas are coming in with the speed of a continental shelf.”

“Thirty-year puberty has to make dating tricky,” Seth said.