Ch.32
Ais kicked me into the wall for the third time before sunrise.
The stone was cold against my back. I'd gotten faster since Level 2, fast enough that her first swing missed and her second one only clipped my shoulder instead of flattening me. The third swing connected clean and I went backward and the wall stopped me and the dust I'd been kicking up all morning settled on my head.
I stood up. My ribs ached. The wall had a new crack where my elbow had hit it.
"Again," I said.
Ais tilted her head. A fraction to the right, recalibrating. She'd been pulling her strikes since the first session. Today she was pulling less. The impacts hit harder. Her swings came faster. She was adjusting for Level 2.
She came again. Low strike, testing my guard. I blocked it with the flat of the knife and the vibration went up my arm to the shoulder. She reversed the rapier and came from the opposite side and I ducked it and got inside her reach for half a second before she pivoted and put me on my back with a sweep I didn't see.
The training ground was a flat strip of packed earth along the interior of Orario's western wall. The wall itself was high enough to cast a shadow across the ground until mid-morning, keeping it cool. A few other adventurers used the space for drills, but most of them had cleared out when Ais arrived. The Sword Princess showing up to train a Level 2 was unusual enough that people gave us room.
"Your footwork is better," Ais said. She was standing over me with her rapier at her side and her gold eyes looking down and her expression was the same as always, which was none.
"Thanks."
"Your guard is still slow on the left."
"I know."
"You know because I've said it four times."
"I know because my left side hurts."
She held out her hand. I took it and she pulled me up and her grip was small and strong and she let go the instant I was standing. Efficient. No lingering.
"Hey! Hey hey hey!" Tiona's voice came from above. She was sitting on top of the wall, legs dangling, her dark hair catching the morning light. Her giant double-blade Urga lay across her lap like she'd brought it along for the scenery. "That last one was good! You almost got inside her guard!"
"I almost broke my back."
"Same thing! When Ais first kicked ME into a wall, I couldn't sit down for a week! You're doing great, Little Rookie!"
She'd been calling me that since the epithet was announced. She said it like a fan chanting at a stadium.
Tione was next to her on the wall. I hadn't noticed when she'd arrived. She sat with her legs crossed and her arms folded and she was watching the sparring ground with the focused intensity of a woman evaluating a purchase she wasn't sure about.
"Fight me," she said.
I looked up at her. She was already standing, her twin kukris on her hips, her dark-green eyes fixed on me.
I looked at Ais.
Ais looked at Tione. Then at me. Her head tilted. She nodded.
Tione dropped from the wall. Fifteen feet. She landed in a crouch on the packed earth, her kukris already in her hands, and she straightened and she was taller than me and wider in the shoulders and she had the build of someone who had been killing things since she could hold a blade.
Level 6. Twin kukris. Amazon berserker.
"I should mention that I'm Level 2," I said.
"I know."
"And you're Level 6."
"I know that too."
"Just establishing expectations."
She attacked.
There was no warmup. No circling, no testing strikes. She came at me full speed and her first kukri carved the air where my head had been and her second reversed and slashed low and I jumped the low slash and her knee came up and caught me in the ribs and I folded.
I hit the ground rolling. Came up with the knife. She was already there. Both kukris came down in a cross-cut and I blocked with the knife and the force hammered through both arms and my feet slid back in the dirt. She twisted the kukris against the knife, tried to wrench it from my grip. I held on. She kicked my knee. I dropped to one leg. She disengaged the kukris and came around from the right and I threw myself left and rolled and came up and she was there again and a kukri tip touched my throat.
"Done," she said.
I was on my back. Breathing hard. The kukri was a half-inch from my jugular. Tione stood over me with the same evaluative expression she'd had on the wall.
She held the kukri there for a second. Then she pulled it back and sheathed both blades.
"You lasted longer than Raul," she said.
"Is that a compliment?"
"It's data." She looked at Ais, who was standing at the edge of the training ground watching us. "He gets up fast."
"Yes," Ais said.
"His guard breaks too early."
"I'm working on it."
Tione looked back at me. I was standing again. My ribs from where she'd kneed me were sending a steady pulse of pain down my left side and my right wrist ached from the block and my knee was going to bruise where she'd kicked it.
"Level 2 in three weeks," she said. "You survived thirty seconds against me. Nobody's explained how either of those things happened."
"Luck."
"That's what you told Riveria."
"It's what I tell everyone."
"It's a shit answer."
"It's the one I've got."
Her jaw tightened. Same look she'd given me at the Hostess. But softer.
She turned and walked back toward the wall. Tiona was leaning over the edge, both arms waving.
"That was AWESOME. You totally almost dodged the knee thing!"
"I totally didn't."
"You ALMOST totally didn't! That's progress!"
Under a tree at the far end of the training ground, Riveria sat on a stone bench with a book open in her lap. She was wearing her green cloak and her jade hair was loose over one shoulder and she was reading the same page she'd been on since I started sparring with Ais an hour ago. Her jade eyes moved from the book to the training ground and back to the book. The book was a prop.
I caught her eye once. She looked back at the page.
A voice came from the direction of the main road. High-pitched, urgent, getting closer.
"Ais-san! Ais-san, where did- oh."
Lefiya Viridis came around the corner of the wall at a half-run, her golden ponytail bouncing, her staff in one hand and her pink cape fluttering behind her. She was looking for Ais and she found Ais and then she saw me standing next to Ais, dusty and bruised, and the half-run stopped.
Her dark-blue eyes went from me to Ais to the training ground to the fresh marks in the dirt and back to me.
"You're the boy," she said.
"Bell Cranel."
"You're the boy Ais-san trains." She said "Ais-san" with the emphasis of a student who'd fight God for her mentor's approval. Possessive and loud about it.
"Yeah."
She straightened her spine. Drew herself up. Her staff shifted in her grip and her chin came up and her expression settled into formal hostility.
"Lefiya Viridis," she said. "I'm Ais-san's-" She stopped. Started over. "I'm Ais-san's student."
"She talks about you," I said.
The formal hostility stalled. Her dark-blue eyes went wide and her mouth opened and she looked at Ais for confirmation, and the stiff posture collapsed.
"She does?"
"Lefiya works hard," Ais said. She said it the same way she'd said "Your footwork is better." Flat, factual, Ais.
Lefiya's face went through three colors in two seconds. Her ears turned red first, then her cheeks, then the bridge of her nose. She looked at Ais and then at me and then at Ais again and the rivalry reassembled itself on top of the blush and didn't quite hold.
"I- that doesn't- I mean, of course she would, I've been training very hard, and I don't- you shouldn't-" She stopped herself. Took a breath. Pointed her staff at me. "I won't lose."
"Lose what?"
"I won't lose!" She turned and marched back the way she'd come, her cape fluttering, her staff held like a sword, her ears still red.
Tiona was laughing on the wall. Tione was watching Lefiya leave with an expression that was either sympathy or amusement and I couldn't tell which.
Ais watched Lefiya go. Her gold eyes were steady. The corner of her mouth did the thing it had done during the Minotaur corridor. The almost-twitch.
"She works hard," Ais said again.
"You said that."
"I meant it."
She walked to the wall where she'd left a waterskin and picked it up and brought it to me. She held it out with one hand. I reached for it and our fingers overlapped on the leather.
Her hand was warm from the sun. Mine was cold from the ground. She didn't pull away. The waterskin hung between us and her gold eyes were on my face and the morning light was behind her and her blonde hair caught it and for two seconds neither of us moved.
I drank. She let go.
Riveria turned a page.
Lefiya, who had stopped at the corner of the wall and looked back, saw the finger overlap. Her jaw tightened. She turned away and walked faster.
I finished the water and tossed the skin back to Ais. She caught it with one hand.
"Same time tomorrow?" I said.
"...Mm." She nodded. Her gold eyes stayed on mine. Then she walked back to where her armor was stacked against the wall and started putting it on and the morning was over.
Tiona waved goodbye from the wall. Both arms. Tione didn't wave. She watched me walk away with her arms folded and her dark-green eyes tracking me until I turned the corner.
The bite mark on my palm had reopened during the bout with Tione. Blood in the crease of my hand, dark against the red-purple crescent. I wiped it on my pants.
My left side ached where Tione had kneed me. The wrist was stiff from blocking her cross-cut. Ais's kicks had done the rest. The Falna hummed in my spine, warm, absorbing all of it. Level 2 excelia from a Level 6 opponent. The growth from this morning was going to be noticeable.
I walked toward the church and tried not to think about how warm Ais's fingers had been on the waterskin and failed completely.