Unlike Francesca, I had been looking forward to finally being done with school forever. It wasn’t that I was a bad student; my marks were generally fair to good. It simply didn’t feel necessary. My time would be better spent fencing and tinkering and sleeping till noon whenever I saw fit, with the occasional bout of productive labor whenever it was unavoidably demanded. Same as my father.


    But I did not regret my choice. I had never left my titled lands, and although Francesca’s florid missives from her travels had never engendered any particular wanderlust, it did at least give me a vague, uneasy sense that I might be missing out on something. Here was an opportunity to find out.


    What really sold me on my own harebrained idea was realizing that a new location would have new girls.


    Francesca had been quick to reach the same conclusion. “Really couldn’t wait to start making those babies, eh?”


    I adopted a martyred expression; she had been saying this all year. “I’m doing this for you.”


    She lobbed an apple core at me from where she was sitting in the orchard. “You’re doing this for your salami.”


    I batted the apple away. “You’ve got three, four years to work out an alternate arrangement, now that I am unavailable for the duration. And you can remind the Duchess that she wasn’t married until she was the ripe old age of twenty-five.”


    “A stay of execution,” Francesca said sepulchrally.


    “You’re welcome.”


    “Franci?” The Duchess was standing in the courtyard, rearranging her shawl. “Come, dear, it’s time to go.”


    Francesca sat up. “Already?”


    “We’re not staying for dinner. Leo needs to be fitted for his new waistcoats.”


    I sighed. Once Renella had recovered from her initial shock, she had taken to the notion of me being a university man with delight. She still wasn’t thrilled about my chosen course of study, but it was enough to be Educated. The schooling up until this point evidently did not count. And Education, according to her, required a new wardrobe. I was the emissary from my family to the Educated World. She was in sartorial heaven.


    “Ooh, can’t make you late for your waistcoats.” Francesca stood up and brushed off her dress. “Your big-boy waistcoats for your big-boy school.”


    I spat an apple seed at her as I stood.


    “Well, if I don’t see you again before you leave, Big Boy,” she said, pulling a leaf from her hair, “please remember to write.”


    “Of course.”


    “Don’t break my kiss record too fast.”


    I smiled. “Impossible.”


    “No, just unlikely.” She grinned and clapped me on the back. “Write me!”


    “I will.”


    Francesca vaulted the orchard fence where it had crumbled to waist height. “I mean it!”


    “So do I!” I called after her. She gave me one last wave before disappearing into the carriage after her grandmother.


    I traipsed inside and did my best not to slouch as my measurements were taken. Renella kept whacking me with her fan whenever she felt I was not succeeding.


    I don’t know what possessed me, other than a disinclination to continue to be delicately beaten about the head and shoulders, but just as Renella wound up for another genteel strike, I blurted out, “Why do they say it is good luck if a Winged One lives in your tower?”


    Renella stayed her hand and blinked. “Who says that?” she asked at last, with uncharacteristic slowness.


    I shrugged a shoulder—the tailor tsk’d at me for ruining his measurement—and replied, “Nobody specific. I’ve heard it a few times.”


    “Where?”


    “Town. School.”


    Renella tapped her chin with her fan thoughtfully. “How long have they been saying this?”


    I shrugged again, prompting the tailor to escalate to a full-blown tut. “Years?”


    “It’s because they stir away the bad humors in attics with their wings, m’Lord!” a maid said cheerfully, as she passed through with a basket of laundry. I turned to look at her until the tailor tutted again.


    “No,” countered another maid, piping up from where she was trimming a wick, “it’s because they are favored by God as children not cast out by Eden. They are innocent, and do not know they are naked. God favors those who shelter His lost children in their homes.”


    Renella raised her eyebrows.


    The tailor gave one last tut, this time of pious objection. “Certainly not,” he snipped. “What balderdash—no more than a folktale. Causation and correlation all muddled up, as always.”


    Renella turned to him. “What do you mean?”Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    He waited to pull a pin from his mouth before replying. “The Feather Folk only build their eyries on structures they consider to be sound: healthy trees, cliffs not prone to rockfalls. If one is nesting in a tower made by man, it means they have observed that it is well-built, and unlikely to suffer damage. As a consequence, the tower’s longevity is falsely attributed to the Winged One’s presence, not the other way around. Turn to your left, please, m’Lord.”


    I obeyed. “I thought it was because they preyed on bats,” I murmured.


    “Well, all of these sound like perfectly acceptable reasons to me,” Renella said, back to her usual brisk self. “Leo, straighten up! My goodness, it’s like looking at a longbow!”


    But when the tailor had left with my measurements, and the maids had moved their business to other rooms, Renella caught my sleeve. I turned.


    She was looking at me very hard. I was suddenly put in mind of the glare of the kitten that had vanquished the rat, then paraded its grisly prize through the old stone halls.


    “They say it is good luck if a Winged One lives in your tower,” she said, voice low, “because words have power. And I wield that power well.” Her grip tightened then—on her fan in one hand, my sleeve in the other. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. “Remember that, Leo. You will always have more than your sword at hand.”


    And then, before I could find the words to reply, she had swept out of the room.


    ??


    “Today,” said Master Fiore Gravely, “is about drinking.”


    I stared. “What?”


    He gestured for me to take off my mask. “Put that away. We’re not crossing blades.”


    I obeyed, intrigued. It was our last lesson before I left. I had wondered if it might be an atypical lesson, but had expected, if so, that it would be something more akin to silly, last-ditch dueling maneuvers. Screaming and charging. Distracting the opponent with a jig. Slicing through the rope suspending a chandelier and riding it up to the balcony.


    But it was to be drinking.


    “I’ve been drinking before,” I pointed out. “Gotten sick, even.”


    Master Fiore shook his head and pulled a flask from within his coat. “Not out with the lads, though, eh?”


    “…no.”


    “By yourself, I’ll warrant. Down in the wine cellar.”


    “It was with Francesca,” I said defensively.


    Fiore snorted. “Did you try to refill the bottles with water afterwards, or just hope the absence would go uncommented?”


    “The latter.”


    “Wise.” The fencing master handed me the flask. “Water will out, eventually. But a lost bottle is simply lost. Drink.”


    I took a swig from his flask and immediately began a spate of coughing. The drink, whatever it was, burned. He took it back and drank a sip.


    “Is this wise?” I asked hoarsely. “Are we going to wind up face-down in our own vomit on the piste?”


    “I don’t have enough for that,” Fiore replied, sounding vaguely regretful. “Not for me, anyway. You—perhaps.” He handed it back. “We’ll see.”


    “Why?”


    “Because you don’t have my liver.”


    “No I mean—”


    “Drink!”


    I drank another swig and coughed again, eyes watering. “No, I mean; why are we drinking?”


    “I’ll tell you when you’re good and drunk.”


    By the time he told me, the piste was swaying beneath my feet, and it was hard to follow his words.


    “We are drinking,” the flesh-toned blur before me said, “because that is the state in which one traditionally speaks of love.”


    “Love?” I said muzzily. The piste dipped, and I staggered. “Who’s in love?”


    “All of us,” he replied sadly. “Even when we don’t want to be.”


    “I’m not in love.”


    “Oh?” His voice was behind me now. I turned to follow it, and stumbled to my knees. This felt more stable. I stayed down.


    “No,” I slurred, “I’m not. Francesca—”


    “I’m not talking about Francesca.”


    “—Francesca likes girls,” I continued doggedly.


    “Yes, thank you, Lord Obvious. Her reputation is not unknown to me.”


    “…kissed thirty one…” I mumbled.


    “I am not talking about platonic or familial love,” Fiore interrupted. “You love your father. You probably love Renella, too, if you stop to think about it. You love Francesca, yes, but as a sister. You are not in love with her.”


    “Why are we talking about this?” I asked loudly.


    “Because it is my job to teach you how to defend yourself.”


    “From love?” I asked incredulously.


    He barked out a bitter laugh. “I’m afraid that would be quite beyond my tutelage. No. From what will come of it.”


    “What will come of what?” I was completely lost, and the piste would not hold still. I gripped it harder.


    “What will come of being in love.”


    “I’m not in love!”


    “Perhaps. Perhaps not.” His voice was coming from somewhere overhead. “If not now, later.” And then, suddenly, his voice was right in my ear. “And when it comes, will it be clad in flesh, or feathers?”


    I reared upright again, nearly overbalancing, fists clenched. “You—”


    “Sins of the father,” he said. I couldn’t even see him anymore; his voice twisted from the shadows behind me. “Sins of the son. That is what they will say. And that is not all they will say.”


    “Stop.”


    “Pervert. Abomination. Mongrel.”


    “Stop!”


    “I’ll stop,” the darkness said evenly, “when you defend yourself.”


    I groped for my epée. Fiore laughed. “Boy, you couldn’t stab a pig on a pole right now. Forget your blade. Defend yourself.”


    I raised my fists. Fiore clouted me on the back of the head. It wasn’t hard, but I fell again. “That won’t work, either,” he said. “Try again.”


    I snarled an oath at him.


    “Not bad,” he replied. “But I think you can do better.”


    I had more than my sword at hand.


    I took a deep breath. “You are a sot and a failure,” I said, voice shaking only a little. “A washed-up Queensguard, reduced to teaching quarter-breeds in backwater provinces just to keep you in coin for your drink. And I don’t know who—or what—you love,” I continued, realizing the truth of it even as I spoke the words aloud, “but whatever it is has you so unmanned, you have to get drunk to even think about talking about it. Coward.”


    There was only silence. I swayed.


    At last, Fiore let out a shaky laugh. “I of all people should know by now what a quick study you are.” He stepped before me once more. “Well done. I fear for any lad that crosses you.”


    “I question your didactics,” I replied calmly, and vomited at his feet.