Master Fiore was waiting for me at the villa after school the next day, right there in the courtyard, holding a single epée. He made a point of catching Giacomo’s eye, and bowed with an ostentatiously sober flourish. Giacomo scowled.


    “No piste today,” he declared, as I started automatically towards the armory. “We’re going to the orchard.”


    Intrigued, I followed him through the lopsided opening in the tumble-down old wall to the cluster of trees generously referred to as “the orchard.” The terrain here was far too sheer and shadowed for any meaningful husbandry; effectively all of the household’s produce originated from the sweeping valley below, paid for with mining coin. Nevertheless, a handful of gnarled and stubborn apple trees had persisted in a small sunny patch, hellbent on fruiting.


    Master Fiore plucked an apple and tied a string around its stem, then looped the other end of the string over a high branch and tied it off. The apple hung there, swaying slightly, approximately level with my shoulder.


    “Today,” he announced, “is about point control.” He flipped the epée handle into his hand and deftly poked the apple. The blunt tip sent it swaying. He moved back, then lunged. Once again, he connected. The apple was swinging wildly now.


    “It’s one thing to do this once or twice.” He tossed the epée to his left hand and lunged again. The apple was beginning to get bruised. “It’s another thing to do it every time.” When he connected with the apple for the fourth time, the stem came loose. The apple fell to the ground with a soft plop.


    He picked it up and took an absent bite, then handed me the string. I took it as he said, around a mouthful of apple, “Now it’s your turn. Get another apple.”


    That was all I did, for the rest of the afternoon: poke apples. He didn’t even let me lunge. Extend, recover. Extend, recover. He walked around me as I practiced, correcting my form. I started out with a reasonable hit rate, but as my arm tired, it got worse. Master Fiore had me switch to my left hand when he saw my right arm begin to sag and waver. My success rate immediately worsened.


    I was beginning to regret insisting on this level of educational rigor.


    My arms were so exhausted by the end, I was unable to lift a fork for dinner without it trembling. Renella noticed, and raised her eyebrows, but I refused to whinge or mewl or even explain myself. I simply chased my radish around the perimeter of my plate with ineffective stabs until one finally connected.


    Father didn’t notice anything. He never did.


    And neither of them noticed when I made a detour to the kitchen after dinner and snagged an egg.


    My hands were too weak for lockpicking tonight. It was a struggle to even make my writing legible, as I printed shakily on the shell of the egg: MIDNIGHT TOMORROW HERE


    I opened the window, set the egg gingerly on the sill, and closed it again, taking care not to nudge it into a roll. Feeling immensely pleased with myself, I climbed into bed and promptly fell into a dead sleep.


    I felt decidedly less pleased when I exited my tower the next morning to find the egg splattered on the ground below my window.


    I stared at it, troubled. The most reasonable explanation was that it had simply rolled off sometime in the night; blown by a breeze, tipped by the inexorable settling of the tower itself. But my mind immediately conjured visions of Sheshef alighting at my window, picking up the egg, sneering scornfully, and dashing it to the ground. I spent the entirety of my schoolday attempting to convince myself that the same motives that would compel her to come to my window in the first place were precisely the opposite of those that would lead her to deliberately demolishing the egg—but I was a very skeptical audience.


    I didn’t attend to a single lesson, and was consequently treated to my first caning by Master Norelli’s dreaded switch. I had to stand for the duration of my afternoon deportment lesson; it hurt too much to sit.


    All told, I was thoroughly miserable by that evening. My misery compounded when midnight came and went, with no sign of Sheshef.


    There was no sign of her the next night, either, nor the one after that. I tried writing a note, on regular paper, rather than something that would roll away; nothing came of it. I tried leaving the window unlatched, and sat bolt upright, tingling with anticipation, when it banged open in the middle of the night—but it was only the wind. On the days when the setting sun shone brightest, I found an excuse to linger in my room, and spun the whirligig. The sparkles danced, so bright I could see snatches of shimmers flashing over the Observation Tower, but she did not come. No one did. The distant figures circling in the sky over the mines remained aloof and indistinct, an insular flock.


    When the next Hesh came and went, with no sign of Sheshef, I dismantled the whirligig. It was in the way.


    ??


    “Today,” Master Fiore said, “is about lunges.”


    We were back in the apple orchard, but there were no apples now. It was cold. Our breath steamed, clouding our view of the bare branches. A rook croaked mournfully somewhere above.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    I was currently in a lunge. I had been holding lunge position for quite a while. This was, in fact, the third time he had reiterated that today was about lunges. I was getting tired of hearing him say it.


    But I said nothing. I was improving, and we both knew it.


    I had rematched with Francesca once already, at a dinner about a month after the first, and I had won. But it was closer than I would have liked: three to five. I would be dining with her again two days hence, and was looking forward to a resounding victory.


    “Lunges,” Master Fiore went on, “are more than just the principal method of attack. It’s a strong method of delivering a riposte. And if you’re quick enough, your back isn’t left exposed for long.” He tapped me with the epée, and I returned to guard.


    “Foot,” he barked.


    I corrected my stance without further elaboration.


    “Good.” He set the blunted tip of the epée on his boot and pressed, contemplatively, until it bowed. “Again.”


    I lunged until my legs were jelly.


    When the Duchess’ carriage clattered to a halt in the courtyard, I was too impatient to wait at the entrance with the rest of the household. My exuberance, however, was being indulged; Renella, mistaking my competitive streak for budding romance, smiled fondly at me as I strode down the steps and awaited the opening of the carriage door. I helped the Duchess down first—I hadn’t yet fully abandoned my manners—but passed her off to the footman after only a perfunctory bow over her hand, and turned to her granddaughter.


    Francesca took my outstretched hand with a docility that instantly set me on edge. There was a gleam in her eye.


    “Thank you, my Lord,” she purred, stepping down as lightly as a deer.


    “My Lady.” I bowed over her hand as well, but it was shallow. I dared not take my eyes from her. She was up to something. I did not for a second mistake her manner for flirting.


    “I hope you won’t think I am too forward,” she continued, unable to keep a wolfish smile from her face, “if I ask that we have an epée bout before dinner this evening? I’m afraid I’m suffering from a bit of a stomach upset—” she patted her belly softly, a ruse I did not believe for a second, “—and I would hate to exacerbate it by jostling around an entire meal’s worth of food.”


    She looked at me challengingly, daring me to call off the match entirely under her feigned circumstances, knowing I wouldn’t.


    “Of course, Lady Francesca,” I replied, adopting her supercilious tone. “I couldn’t very well have you at a disadvantage.”


    Her eyes glittered like flints. “How chivalrous.” She nodded at the footman, who disappeared around the back of the carriage. “I knew you would be, of course. And I have a gift for you!”


    The footman came back around, carrying a long slim case in his hands. I stared at it, sensing a trap. At another nod from Francesca, the footman opened it.


    I made a noise despite myself.


    Inside the case were the two most beautiful dueling swords I had ever seen, set on a bed of lush black velvet. The steel blades gleamed in the evening lamplight, and the bell guards were etched with some sort of repeating motif. I leaned forward to make them out. They were not identical, I realized. The sword whose tip was bound in blue satin ribbon had a fish motif; they chased one another around the bell guard, set amongst sapphire water droplets. The sword whose tip was wrapped in white bore birds, inlaid with opal stars.


    “One for me,” Francesca confirmed, grinning toothily, “and one for you.”


    My mouth fell open. I couldn’t speak.


    “You’re welcome,” she prompted.


    “Thank you!” I brayed belatedly.


    “Want to spar?”


    “Yes!” I was practically screaming in my excitement.


    We both rushed down to the piste, but not before Francesca had the footman unload another, larger case, and bring it down after. I lifted the sword—my sword—from where it rested and held it reverently. My God, it was beautiful. If asked, I would marry her on the spot.


    So preoccupied was I with handling my new sword—checking its balance, its tip, the give of its blade—that I did not notice what Francesca was doing until she called, “Are you going to dance with that thing all night, or duel me?”


    I turned around, and immediately began to comprehend the nature of the trap that I had sprung. Francesca had somehow removed her skirt—the footman was now holding it over his arm, with a disturbingly smug look on his face—and was kitted out in an elegant new sparring uniform. No, not quite new; even in the dim light of the armory’s piste, I could see it had punctures and tears, expertly mended.


    She had been practicing, too.


    Well. I set my jaw. So be it then. I donned my own uniform, decidedly more worn, and squared up on my side of the piste. We saluted each other, lowered our masks, and dropped to guard.


    I lost, five to one, in ten minutes.


    I wish I could say I was gracious. I wish I could say I took off my mask, and tucked it under my arm, and laughed heartily, and shook her hand, and commended her remarkable improvement, her fine swordsmanship, and thanked her again for the magnificent gift of the sword.


    I wish.


    What I actually did was rip my mask off, throw it on the ground, and scream out a word that was absolutely not appropriate for having a young lady over for dinner. I turned away, fuming and clenching my fists. The only thing that kept me from storming off was the look on the footman’s face.


    I took several deep, gulping breaths, wiped my face on my sleeve, and turned back.


    “Well done,” I said tightly, and was rewarded by a quick flash of approval in the footman’s eyes before he restored his look of blank servitude.


    To her immense credit, Francesca neither gloated nor glowered. “I practiced almost every day for two months,” she admitted.


    I wiped my brow again. “I only get two days of practice a week.”


    “Not particularly fair,” she acknowledged, “especially since I’m taller.” She wiped her own brow, scrubbing hair so sweat-soaked it was no longer blond but brown away from her eyes. “That won’t always be true though. You’re already an inch taller than when we first met.”


    “Am I?”


    “Definitely.”


    Even if she was lying, I appreciated her words.


    I was still going to beat her next time, though.