24 - Sparring with Sticks, and with Letters

His wooden stick in his hands, Kyrus reminded himself of simple sparring.  One strike, one block, back off. 

“Shion!”

“Loess!”

There was nothing in the world but Verpiccaus and the staff in his hands. It was as though he were on fire and a flake of burn floating on the heat alone. Kyrus stepped to one side as Verpiccaus lunged, tapped the lunging boy lightly on the back of the head, then just over the kidneys and the back of his knee, finished the turn and stopped. Waited.

The Zon touched his arm.  "Remember, one strick, one block, stop."

"Yes, Zon!" he snapped, never taking his attention off Verpiccaus who shook his head, rubbed his back, shook the tapped leg as if stung.  The look on his face was priceless.  How had a blackstick even come close to him once, much less three times?

“Shion!”

Verpiccaus, furious, bowed back to him and they took up stance again.

“Loess!”

This time Verpiccaus waited. Kyrus smiled. All right. He stepped forward, feinted high, touched the inside of Verpiccus’s knee, stepped back before Verp’s staff could come down.

“Shion!”

“Verpiccaus, down.” There was a barely suppressed rage in his gaze as he bowed and took his place in the line again. Twice. Kyrus could see Haraklez’s grin, which vanished as he came up from his own bow.

This time Zon Elemfias stepped across from him and Zon Pirzifon took the referees place.

“Shion!”

“Loess!” He couldn’t remember what happened, felt a shock against his stick and then a double tap on his body, a flurry and his feet came up slowly enough for him to watch before he landed hard. For a long second he couldn’t see, couldn’t make his chest expand, couldn’t breathe and then it all came back with a wonderful, wild inhale and he found himself lying, looking up at Elemfias who was just lowering her own stave. What? What? He realized he still had a smile on his face.

“Good. Anything broken?” She asked quietly. Was that an enthusiastic glint in her eye? Yah, to dump me on my ass.

What? Broken? “Broken?” he repeated a little stupidly. “Ah, no, I don’t think so.” She said ‘good’? She praised me? What the Dark is going on?

“Down.”

“Yes, Zon.” His reply was breathless and he limped as he took up his place and watched as she called up everyone to spar, even little Malyissen. It was the oddest thing. He could see the careful attention the Zon were paying, and the yellow staves. It was as though they were staring through each pair of fighters. The Zon herself didn’t step up to spar anyone else, though he thought he saw her pay particularly close attention to Mal. It made sense in a weird way, though he didn’t know what specific she was looking for.

**

 

“Naser Oltarios?” In the guise of a porter, Dukir salaamed ostentatiously. The old man had just been released from the cage after his hard night and crouched against the wall, his robes clutched in his hands.

The guards had let him out and passed him his clothing and the traditional water, a small bladder that once punctured would only be three mouthfuls. His face and head, bare of any cloth in the face of the Light, shorn of venerable hair, had blistered in the vicious sun the day before. He sat out of the rising sun, out of the wind, behind one of the bridge rails, recovering from his exposure. He raised his sun and wind scalded face to Dukir. “Yes.”

“I have a message for you Naser, and am instructed to assist you.”

“Someone hired you to help me?”

“Yes, Naser.”

This old scholar might have answers I need. “You didn’t need to ask, you would have seen my name posted at the root of the cage,” he said and pulled the robes on, careful of his raw skin, before standing up. His sarband and scholar’s veil went on just as carefully, and gratefully against the fast-rising heat of the morning, his face disappearing behind the respectable veil. Though I shouldn’t call him an old man since he and I are of an age.

Dukir offered Oltarios the letter he’d written himself the night before. “I am instructed to wait answer, Naser.”

“Hmm. Well let us go back into the city and get me some mead and food before I fall on my face.” He tucked the unopened letter into his newly donned robes and set off in a determined hobble for the Gate and the in-city bridge.

“Yes, Naser.”

For a man who had been exposed for a day and a night he was surpisingly firm on his feet as he led Dukir to an upper basin cafe, ‘The Letter’s Nest’. He had a quiet word with the host and signed himself and Dukir in. “I’ll buy you a cup of tea if you like, while I read my letter.”

“Thank you, Naser.” The Emperor’s spy master sat quietly, sipping his tea while the other man read. He’d sweated over how exactly to ask the questions.  

How do you politely ask a man who has just been exposed for his sexual attractions, about other young men he has... been with? Thankfully the cafe was still cool from the night, the dark sun-panels above the windows angled to keep the young sun safely outside.

“Your letter says you have been with this legal group some time, is this correct, Naser?” The scholar had his hand flat on the paper.

“For years, Naser, since the old head of the group died.” That had been Riphalam, the Emperor’s man unto death. “I know that the most senior of the group is searching for a young man... over the matter of an inheritance.” Even though the one doing the bequeathing is not yet dead. “I understand there is a substantial amount of money at stake.” The whole farking Empire is at stake.

The old scholar thought for a while longer and called for pen and paper from the host’s stock. He scrawled a quick letter and swirled his signature onto it. “You’ll witness that I didn’t have my scholar’s seal to verify my name-sign.” Dukir nodded. “You tell your senior that that is all I know.”

“Of course, Naser.”

The old man pushed himself to his feet, nodding politely to Dukir. “You might as well stay and finish your tea. I am going home to rest.”

“Yes, thank you, Naser.”

The trail of the bastard line from Diryish had led to what at first seemed a complete dead end, the champion, Kyrus Talain, dead in the Milari war ten years ago. But then someone had let slip that the man might have had a bastard of his own.

It had taken Dukir days to find someone who would speak of the scandal at the time, actually one of the old general ‘d’Wold’s rare supporters, willing to say anything dark about Kyrus Talain.

Talain’s own mother had been extraordinarily closed mouthed about any women in her son’s life and knew nothing of a possible grandson. Dukir had had to track a rumor from the veterans of Talain’s unit, the Leftmost Claws, to the woman to the Refuge of the Soul, from the Basin neighbourhood of Drown.

The woman, Dagdohva, in the hospice had not always been sure where or when she was, but she had clung tight to who her son’s father had been and how good the champion had been to her before, even without knowing she’d been pregnant before he left for the Milari mountains. She’d been very clear what her boy looked like and how good he was to his mother as well. He had paid for her care in advance, according to the hospice matron, saying that he would be away for some years.

Dukir finished his tea and walked out toward the Mid-town Risers where legal groups held their market, catching sight of the old scholar who, rather than having merely taken his word and gone home, had waited discretely to see if his mysterious letter porter had done anything out of the ordinary. Good for him.

The letter in his robes would hopefully have the information, the confirmation, from a completely sane source, where the boy might be. Diryish would be pleased to know that he might have a great grandson, older than little Ty, still living, where ever he was. Lainz might still have a young prince, a Siwion.