The Talented (34 page)

“
Everyone, this is Malokai
Kyzeka. He will be observing today.” She hoped that he would also
be participating, but she kept that hope to herself.

Everyone paired up for
sparring, using only bare hands and knives at this point, and
Adrienne pitted herself against Charles. Out of all of the guards,
new and old, he had shown the least improvement in the last three
months. She hoped that some more one-on-one training would be
beneficial for him.

Or convince him to
quit.

After twenty minutes
Adrienne was frustrated to the point of screaming. Charles kept
making the same mistakes, and no matter how many times she
corrected him, he kept falling into the same pattern. She cursed
ripely. “Malokai,” she said, knowing he had been watching the pair
of them the whole time. “Would you help me demonstrate this?” It
came out sounding more like an order than a request, but Malokai
just gave a small smile and stepped forward.

All activity stopped when
Malokai stepped up to face her, but Adrienne did not tell the men
to get back to work—more than just Charles could learn something by
watching her and Malokai spar today.

“
I’ll be Charles,” she
said, explaining that they would run the same pattern as before.
Malokai nodded and, without further words, slowly enacted the
sequence Adrienne and Charles had run through again and again. It
ended the same way it had before: with Malokai’s knife pressed
against Adrienne’s stomach.

“
Now I’m dead,” Adrienne
said. “Or at the very least out of the fight and in serious danger
unless a healer gets to me soon.”

There were murmurs amongst
the men. Charles snorted. “Why would I be fighting without a
sword?” he asked.

Adrienne had wanted them
to fight only with knives because different weapons presented
different weaknesses, but this had been Charles’ argument all
along. He had stated repeatedly that he would not go into a
situation like this armed with only a knife. “Are you always
wearing your sword?” she asked. “You never have it away from your
person, even on the other side of the room?”

Since his sword was along
the fence on the north side of the training area, the answer to
that was obvious. “You told us not to use swords,” Charles said,
casting the blame back on Adrienne.

“
And if we were attacked
now, armed only with knives?” She didn’t give the guard another
chance to answer. “Same moves,” she told Malokai.
“Faster.”

The speed with which she
moved now was probably faster than Charles could manage, but
Malokai’s moves were equally fast, and the result was the same.
Speed and agility were not the problem, or the solution.

“
Fighting is about
adapting,” Adrienne told the men. “If you can’t adapt and change
your moves based on your opponent, you’re going to end up
dead.”

She and Malokai repeated
the moves again, but where Malokai performed the same move as
before, Adrienne turned sideways and took half a step back at the
last second. The knife went past her, and Adrienne was able to grab
Malokai’s arm and unexpectedly flip him over onto his
back.

An experienced fighter,
Malokai moved with the flip and rolled onto his feet, but he made
no move to attack her. The exercise was over; Adrienne had proven
her point.

“
That time, I avoided
getting stabbed,” Adrienne pointed out somewhat wryly. “Being able
to flip him was another advantage. Some men might have stayed
down,” she added, eyeing Malokai speculatively out of the corner of
her eye, “but even if they don’t, it buys time.”

All of the assembled
guards but Charles seemed pleased with the demonstration and
impressed with Adrienne’s abilities. Charles looked
characteristically angry. “You expect me to flip you?” Charles
asked. “You’re a woman. You might get hurt.”

“
Then fight me instead,”
Malokai suggested, stepping forward. “Your lieutenant already
has.”

Another laugh nearly
escaped Adrienne as Charles’s eyes grew wide. He had backed himself
into a corner with his last excuse, and could not get out of
sparring with the large M’bai warrior without revealing his
cowardice. “You’re going to want to keep your center of gravity low
for the flip,” Adrienne advised Charles, hiding her smile with
effort. Despite her dislike of the man on a personal level, she was
in charge of his training, and that was more important than
watching him get hopelessly flattened by the M’bai
warrior.

Malokai went easy on
Charles, letting him evade the knife as Adrienne had, but nothing
short of Malokai jumping over Charles could help the guard complete
the flip. There were a few laughs amongst the watching men, no
doubt as they remembered the ease with which their short, much
lighter instructor had flipped the large warrior. The guards had
probably expected the flip to be the easiest part for
Charles.

Adrienne knew there was
value in knowing how to flip an opponent, but it wasn’t a necessary
skill for the guards, and was frankly more trouble than it was
worth to teach them. “Luckily, Charles did not need to flip
Malokai. Just grabbing the other man’s knife-hand can be hugely
advantageous.” Adrienne caught and read the glint in Malokai’s
eyes. “Of course, it is important to be sure that your opponent has
only one knife, and is not equally skilled with both
hands.”

Malokai pulled another
knife from where it had been secreted behind his back. He rolled it
end over end in his left hand—not the hand that he had been using
before—with all the skill of a performer. Then he drew back and
threw the knife so that it stuck in the fence post some twenty feet
away.

Since knife-throwing was a
skill Adrienne admired but did not possess to any great degree
herself, she deigned to retrieve the knife while the guards
clamored to ask Malokai how he had done that. By the time she
returned—she had taken her time examining the expertly balanced
blade—Adrienne thought she detected a hint of desperation in
Malokai’s typically unreadable expression.

“
I think that is enough
training for today,” Adrienne said, mindful of what Louella had
said earlier. “Report tomorrow at ten o’clock. Edward, see that the
men on duty today learn of the new time.”

“
I will,
Lieutenant.”

The men seemed pleased
that they were being released early, and that they would have a
shorter training period the next day. Adrienne figured it was good
for their morale, if nothing else.

“
Some of them call you
‘Lieutenant,’“ Malokai said when they were on their way back to the
inn.

“
I’m a lieutenant in the
army,” Adrienne said. “It’s a sign of respect from the
men.”

“
Not everyone calls you
that.”

“
Not my friends,” Adrienne
agreed. She couldn’t imagine Louella or Pieter addressing her so,
not in any serious way. Not only were they her friends, but neither
of them truly understood the title or the achievement it had been
to earn it.

“
Master Rynn and the other
commissioners? Do they refer to you as such?”

“‘
Lieutenant’ is a sign of
respect, and the commission doesn’t respect any soldier,” Adrienne
said. Ben had called her lieutenant before the commission, on the
occasions that he had found it necessary to speak up in support of
her, but she knew he did not think of her that way. It was all a
show.

“
Do you respect
them?”

Adrienne opened her mouth
to say yes, that of course she respected the commission, but the
answer did not come as quickly as she had expected. She hesitated.
“I try to,” she finally said. “I recognize their authority. I
respect what they were assigned to do here.”

She knew that none of that
was the same as respecting the commissioners themselves. She just
could not find it in herself to respect people with such misguided
fears and hatreds. The fact that they let their prejudices get in
the way of their goals was an obstacle Adrienne found almost
impossible to overcome. “Do you respect them?” she asked
Malokai.

Malokai shrugged his broad
shoulders as he made his way through the crowd. It was easy for him
to maneuver through the milling people in the streets; most people
hurried to get out of his way. He didn’t look at Adrienne as he
gave his answer.

“
I do not know them. I do
not know the ways of cities, of commissions.” He shrugged again,
his eyes looking further into the distance than the shops and inns
before him.

“
Why are you here?”
Adrienne asked.

“
Duty brought me
here.”

“
Duty,” Adrienne said,
wondering what duty Malokai could have toward the commission. “It
traps you every time.” Was it duty that had brought her here?
Surely it was duty that made her stay.

Adrienne’s eyes flew open
at the sound of a fist banging against the door she had locked
before crawling into bed a few hours earlier. The banging was
accompanied by the distant sound of screams, and Adrienne leapt
from her bed and grabbed her sword. She was halfway to the door
before she remembered she was naked.

She had just slipped on
her robe when her door burst open and Malokai came barreling in.
“Fire. In the stables.”

Adrienne swore and took
off in the direction of the back staircase. She could smell the
smoke, and mingled with the screams from the inn’s patrons were the
screams of panicked horses. She could hear Strider’s trumpeting cry
of fear and rage, and knew that she had to get to him before he
hurt himself, or anyone fool enough to try and lead him
out.

Malokai grabbed her arm to
stop her from charging into the stables, but she yanked free and
threw open the door with a force that sent it bouncing back off the
wall. Horses were kicking at the doors to the box stalls in an
attempt to get free, and as Adrienne went by she opened stall after
stall, fighting to see through the thick smoke as she made her way
to Strider.

She could see the whites
of Strider’s eyes as they rolled in fear, and froth was forming on
his mouth as the smells and flickering lights of the fire
terrorized him.

Fire created a primal fear
in horses that could overcome even the best trained animal, and
Strider was no exception.

Adrienne knew better than
anyone the dangers of the stallion’s hooves, but the destrier was
more than an expensive tool to Adrienne. He was the only thing she
had from Kyrog, and a gift from Captain Garrett. If he was too
overcome by fear to leave his stall now that the door was open, she
would have to lead him out herself.

Adrienne tore a strip of
fabric from her robe and slipped into the stall. She had no choice
but to get close to the rearing stallion, risking his shod hooves
to bind the strip of cloth over his eyes. His hooves caught her a
couple times, painful glancing blows along her ribs and legs, but
he never made full contact, and Adrienne finally managed to cover
the warhorse’s eyes.

Blinded, Strider stopped
his violent plunging and stood quivering in the stall as the air
grew thicker and thicker with smoke. Adrienne did not take the time
to find a lead rope, but grabbed on to the chin of Strider’s halter
and led him out of the stall, past bits of straw that were catching
fire in the aisle, to the safety of the street outside.

Away from the screaming
horses and roaring fire, Adrienne could hear again. She scanned the
crowd and saw Malokai calming a trembling gray mare with sweat
dampening her coat. “Are they all out?” she asked.

Malokai nodded, then let
go of the mare and stepped toward her. Adrienne frowned in
confusion until he reached out and pulled the edges of her robe
together, concealing her nakedness. “You might want to tie it
tighter,” he said, his teeth gleaming white in the flickering light
from the flames.

Adrienne ducked her head
in embarrassment as she knotted the belt tightly. She hadn’t
noticed the tie coming loose in her struggle with
Strider.

Once she was covered
again, Adrienne began to scan the crowd of people gathered around
the burning stable. After the third perusal she realized what it
was she was looking for. Thom was not amongst those gathered to
witness the fire.

Adrienne did not realize
she had said the boy’s name aloud until Malokai was once more at
her side, grabbing her by the arm. “I didn’t see him,” he
said.

“
The hayloft!”

They rushed through the
stable doors together. People outside were throwing buckets of
water on the flames, but the hayloft was consumed. If Thom was
still up there…

Malokai pushed Adrienne
toward the tack room and headed toward the ladder to the hayloft
himself. Adrienne bellied down to get under the smoke and searched
the small room, then went back into the main aisle. She saw Malokai
coming back down the ladder with Thom’s limp form slung over his
shoulder and wondered how anyone could have survived up
there.

“
Get out!” Adrienne could
not hear Malokai, but she saw his mouth form the words through the
smoke and hesitated only a moment before doing as he said. Once
outside, she hurried through the crowd, looking for someone who
could help.