Fencing Academy Read online

  Fencing Academy

  A.W. Freyr

  Uruk Press

  Uruk Press

  Great Britain

  © A. W. Freyr 2015

  All rights reserved.

  The right of A. W. Freyr to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Cover by Alice Duke.

  Fencing Academy

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Acknowledgements

  Also available from Uruk Press

  Fencing Academy

  This book is dedicated to Phoebe. Wherever she is and whatever she was, I could never know.

  Prologue

  The peninsula of Zachon is a land of brooding forests, low, jagged mountains, ruined castles and a dour, serious folk. But from anywhere in this land a line of smoke always rises, like a black tear in the sky. To follow it leads to Rotham, the city built on blood and iron and lead. Here, coal powers the city's machines in the day, filling the crooked streets with the metallic din of heavy machinery. At night, electric lamps buzz and cut islands through the gloom. Whores, murderers, rakes and thieves stalk this artificial twilight. Blood cements itself between the stones of cobbled streets.

  Lyza had returned home.

  She had fled Rotham as a girl with one family name, and in amongst the mossy ruins of Arbalea she chose another. As she stepped down the plank, she wondered what her next would be.

  "Dunwall," she said to herself. That had been the last name of a kind old man she'd made friends with, his only possessions a carving knife and a sack of potatoes. He'd scrape the skin off the potatoes until they were like perfect little spirals on the ground. When he was done, he'd give her half while he had the other. They were hard and dry, but spiced by generosity; she had never had better, hungry and poor as she was.

  It was a time like that the old man pointed at her rapier. "That's a fancy sword."

  Lyza was sitting on the rough-hewn planking, beneath the decks, nursing the blade on her lap.

  "His name is Brass Pig. My dad gave him to me," she replied.

  He chuckled at the name, and spoke in a sing-song voice. "Ah, I see why you keep him, then," he said pulling a new potato from the sack and sinking his knife into it, "I was thinkin' you fixed to sell him, but you'd lose those memories, wouldn't you?"

  The burlap sack was a large, lumpy thing, threadbare in parts, but it hadn't left his side the entire trip. The man had no sea legs and little strength to pull it top deck, so he had stayed in the hold. Lyza nodded at it."Your father give you those potatoes?" she asked.

  The old man Dunwall laughed. "Her name is Sack of Potatoes. My father's farm did, but I couldn't keep a hold of that," he said sadly. He looked again the blade, his eyes tracing the intricate brass wiring around the guard. It wasn't greed that flashed in his eyes. "Someone'll try to kill you for that sword."

  "Let 'em try, I'm good for it," she grinned toothily, pulling Brass Pig just a tad from its scabbard, so that the cold steel glinted.

  The old man looked her up and down. His eyes were clouded with a gray film, but she could tell they must have once been a brilliant blue years ago. After that long and strange appraisal he closed his eyes and nodded, like he had come to some realization.

  "Ah, I see, you're a virgin."

  Lyza's eyes flared, and recoiled defensively. "What? You sick old man, what's that gotta do with anything?"

  The man chuckled as he returned his attention to the potato. "You mistake me. There are two sorts of virginity in Rotham, or so I was told once by a young man. The one sort when you're with someone you love y'see, but what I'm talking about is the second sort, the one you lose when you're with someone you hate. The innocence that flees you when you end your first life."

  Lyza nodded slowly and with understanding. "Ah, I see..." she sniffed, "I'm a virgin both ways then."

  That was their last conversation. The old man was dead the next morning, a smile on his face and a final potato clutched in his hand, white and skinless. They lowered him into the sea after that, potato and all. He left a last will and testament on his person, scrawled in child-like letters the back of some old documents. A barrister who happened to be on the ship read it declared all his earthly possessions were now Lyza's.

  They gave Lyza his sack of potatoes.

  Lyza could count her possessions on one hand: Brass Pig and his scabbard, rags, potatoes and counting beans. The beans were important, because if she saw numbers past ten she ran out of fingers. There was nothing she had that wasn't important. She would need it all to survive. The city she looked out on was not her home. Even in the day, the shadows between the streets seemed long and sharp, the rooftops thorned with wires and churning chimneys. And the horizon was as though divided in half by the smokestacks of the factories. This was a city that ate people up.

  The sack of potatoes shifted ponderously on her shoulders as she walked onto the wharf. The passengers stood in loose lines, awaiting the attention of a customs officer with a pointy goatee that glared at each immigrant in turn. They moved too slowly, according to the whims of the officers, but soon she was face-to-face with the man. On his fancy blue tunic he wore a badge bearing a peacock. She recognized it as a symbol of Rotham, she'd heard, and marked a person who worked for the government.

  "What's your name?" he asked, a posh reservoir pen dancing in his fingers.

  "Lyza Dunwall, if it pleases you."

  The officer didn't say if it pleased him or not. He scribbled the name down. He bellowed, without looking up, "Weapons?"

  "I got one," she said.

  The officer eyed the sword at her belt.

  She opened her sack. "These potatoes are hard as rock. You throw these at someone's head it's bound to break a skull."

  The officer did not seem amused. He gestured at the scabbard. "What's that you're wearing?"

  "Oh that? Nothing but a toy sir. My daddy didn' let me have a real sword."

  The officer frowned, his goatee retreating up his chin. "Could I take a look at it?"

  There was no way that Lyza could refuse, and the officer reached to pull Brass Pig from her regardless. He held the blade to the light, and watched it ripple across the surface like water.

  "Hand-forged, sturdy grip, beautiful artistry..." he remarked. He stroked the edge, and flinched when he cut skin. "Bloody sharp too. What was an urchin like you planning on doing with a weapon like this?"

  Lyza smiled innocently. "Oh, it's just fer meself."

  To Lyza's horror, the officer slipped Brass Pig into his own belt, with an ingratiating frown. "This should have been confiscated before you got on the boat."

  It was as if another memory of her father had been snatched from her. Her legs tensed and fingers twitched, she was prepared to spring at him. "That was me father's blade, sir..." she said darkly.

  The customs officer patted the hilt. "Your father's toy, you said it yourself. And you've grown too old for toys."

  Lyza made a grab for it, but the officer drew back quickly and slapped her across the face hard, so hard she stumbled into some guards. They both gave cruel chuckles as they took her by the arms and dragged her from the harbor. "Gimmee my sword, you cocksucker!" she shouted and cursed, but he merely stroked his goatee and moved onto the next immigrant.

  The guards threw her onto the street, followed by her sack of potatoes. They knocked the wind out of her. They really are as hard as rocks, she thought as she pushed them off her back. She wanted to s
ling one of them at the guards to see if they really could break a skull, but of course, they had swords and guns and she didn't.

  #

  The potatoes were so dry they crumbled like plaster in Lyza's mouth. Each swallow was forced, and the labor caused her jaw to ache afterward. She would sell her soul to the Darkness itself if she could get a mug of ale to wash it down with.

  But in Lyza's experience neither the Darkness nor the Saints of Light answered any of her prayers. Which was odd, considering how the priests were always droning on about how the Darkness was around every corner, always hungry for souls to steal. Maybe only some sorts of darkness were special.

  "Darkness, you wanna sack o' potatoes?" she tried half-heartedly. No answer.

  Somewhere out there in the sea of murkiness, an idjit screamed in despair, a long one like an animal howl. Definitely got stabbed, prolly a murder, she thought idly as she forced another chunk of potato into her mouth. She imagined it being the customs officer, crying like a babe while the ghost of her father pulled Brass Pig from his fat chest.

  She was hungry still, but full enough. She had to make sure there were enough potatoes. Tomorrow morning, she would need to find a flesh-and-blood buyer for them.

  #

  There were many streetside markets near the harbor. This was a fish district, and fish they sold by the barrels. Such places had her pining for home. Arbalea, too, had a big fish market, but the fish there were bigger and meatier and heartier. Rotham's fish were smelly and stunted. They called them "oilfish", after the texture of their raw innards. Only a Rotham native could stomach them. The difference was the rivers: Arbalea's waters were blue and clean, Rotham's Blackwater river was a sewer so thick and putrid it moved like molasses.

  She chanced a bystander. "You want this sack of potatoes?" she hawked, "Two pounds!"

  "Is that a joke?" remarked the bystander as he hurried past.

  She spat at his shadow, then tried the next one. "Sack of potatoes! Two pounds! Two pounds!"

  "I'll trade you that sack for this one," said a voice from behind.

  She spun around.

  The boy had a rash of dark stubble around his square chin, a shock of hair as brown as it was lustrous. His white shirt was open at his neck, revealing a tuft of chest hair. His eyes and lips were full of mischief.

  Most importantly, he had a sword at his belt.

  "What's in the sack?" she asked.

  "I'm not telling you," he said.

  The burlap sack at his feet certainly looked full of... something. And heavy.

  "You trying to cheat me?" she said, raising an eyebrow.

  "Yes."

  She had to laugh. "Now I'm curious. What's worth less than a sack of potatoes?"

  The boy grinned. He had nice teeth, strange enough, like little pieces of white stone. They stood out well against his sunkissed skin. "You'll have to do the swap to find out."

  "You cheeky bastard," she huffed, not able to stop herself from smiling, "What makes you think I'm so stupid as to take you up on your offer?"

  He cocked his head at her. "Oh, maybe that you're trying to sell a sack of potatoes for two pounds."

  The reason she chose that number was that, at the very least, she could count to two, and she knew a pound was a lot, so she wasn't wasn't going to get cheated. But she said:

  "Two pounds is a fair price."

  "Yeah... for a potato farm," he said chuckling, "Who taught you numbers?"

  "Oh, I'm just a natural."

  "What's six and five?"

  "Go fuck yourself," said Lyza, folding her arms and growing red.

  The man laughed hard, and it stung more because he was also handsome. Of all the orphans that thronged Arbalea's streets, she was the worst of all counters. Hopeless they called her. They thought her an idjit because of it, no matter how quick her tongue and how tough she was.

  When he was done, he walked up to her and put his hand on her shoulder. They felt heavy and warm.

  "What you need is someone who's going to sell these for you," he said, "we could even split the profits in half. But first, you have to trade me that sack for my sack."

  Her arms were still folded as she looked dubiously at heap of burlap. What's worth less than a sack of old potatoes? Unless it's not about the sack...

  "Alright, gimme that thing," she relented.

  The man brightened and they took the other's sacks. Lyza found his surprisingly light, and when she opened it up, her heart sank.

  "It's a sack, full o' sacks..." she said, pulling out a crumpled piece of burlap.

  The man bowed deeply, too deeply to be serious. "Liam Waters, at your service, heir to a sack empire. You might know my father. Jon Waters, famous sack merchant."

  Lyza raised an eyebrow. "Y'sell sacks?"

  Liam Waters shook his head. "No. My father sells sacks."

  "My name is Lyza... Dunwall," she said, then added, "I'm not the heir of anything."

  #

  Liam Waters had a clever scheme going. He divided the big sack of potatoes into many, smaller ones. Then he began to sell them all individually. They managed to find a place to hawk their wares... just outside the brick wall of a foundry. There was plenty of traffic but the town guard didn't venture here much, it was just between precincts.

  Business was brisk. An old peasant woman with a mustache was molesting a sample of their wares aggressively, sucking at her own lip as if she couldn't decide what she felt about them.

  "Do you mistake me for a general? Are you trying to sell me cannon balls?" she said finally, "Those are as hard as iron."

  Liam laughed falsely. At least, Lyza thought he did. It was different from how he laughed with her. "Of course. They're supposed to be. These are special mashing potatoes from... a valley way north called... Northvalley."

  The old lady's eyes flickered to life. "Mashing potatoes? Northvalley?"

  Liam nodded. "Oh yes. Northvalley mashing potatoes. Very famous. You won't find Northvalley mashing potatoes any cheaper than here. Snows have closed off the valley for the winter, y'see, so there's no more for the season."

  "Oh!" remarked the old lady, "Northvalley, you said? Very fancy. I'll take two sacks."

  The old woman poured her payment into Liam's fingers like water. When the old lady was gone, he divided the coins into two piles, one for him, one for Lyza.

  Lyza tried to compare the sizes of the two piles. They looked equal, but Lyza would need to get out her counting beans to know for sure. Such a count would take hours for her.

  "How do I know your not cheating me?" she said with a cocked eyebrow.

  Liam rolled his eyes as he shoved the old woman's coins into a purse. "Please, Lyza. I'm trying to get away from the merchant business, not into it."

  "So what are you tryin' to get into, then?" she asked.

  Liam pulled out his sword and lifted it into the air. The sunlight shone blindingly off the blade. He seemed so proud, like he was looking at himself in ten years, somewhere in that blue sky.

  "I want to be a professional duelist," he declared, "What sort, I don't know yet. Maybe a performer. Maybe some nob's champion."

  Your head's in the clouds, she wanted to say, but she ended up nodding, saying, "Sounds fascinating."

  He slipped the sword back in with a clink. "I'm saving up to go to the right school. I don't want to start my career in some back alley..."

  Lyza let him talk, and instead she watched the passersby... the dockworkers, the old women, the fishmongers and the beggars, all moving past each other in a noisy, chaotic procession. She regretted asking him about where he wanted to go, she hated it when people started talking about their dreams. She knew why too, she didn't have any of her own, except dreams of blood and vengeance, of plunging her blade into the hearts of the filth that took her family away...

  "...I've even picked out the school I want to go to. The Sunderland Academy of Fencing, to study under the famous Sara Sunderland..."

  ...But they had taken away Brass
Pig from her, too. She'd defended and hid him for so long, from bandits and thieves and jealous children, even when she was too young to defend herself she'd make sure that blade was safe. It was almost as if the sword wasn't there to protect her, but she was there to protect it. But it wasn't a ruffian who ended up prying it from her, it was the law and pieces of paper.

  "...and I've heard the Duchess goes there too..."

  Her ears suddenly pricked up.

  "I'm sorry, what was that?" asked Lyza, scarcely believing what she had just heard.

  Liam blinked at her. "I said, the Duchess goes there too..."

  Lyza suddenly stood up and shook Liam by the shoulders. "Which Duchess? Which!"

  Liam spoke through the shaking. "Adriana Challette, Grand Duchess of Rotham..."

  Thank you Light, or Darkness, whichever one of you did this...

  Lyza burst out laughing. "That's great!" she said, grabbing Liam by his collar and kissing him straight on the lips. She would've done it longer, too, if he'd kissed her back. His eyes widened so much Lyza couldn't help but think it was cute. "Wonderful! I've always wanted to meet the Duchess. I've got so much to share with her..."

  ...Like a knife in the ribs...

  Liam scratched his head, his lips formed into a deep frown. "Yeah, but by the time we scrounge enough money to go, the Duchess will have long graduated..."

  "No, no, no..." panicked Lyza, feeling the opportunity slipping, "we need to meet the Duchess. You're clever! Tell me what I can do, and I know we can put together the money!"

  Liam shrugged. "Well, what can you do?"

  I was trained by the greatest fencer that has ever lived, she thought.

  "I'm pretty good at that," she said, crooking a finger at Liam's sword.

  Liam glanced down at his sword. He unbuckled it and allowed Lyza to pull it from its scabbard. When she put her fingers on the cold metal she immediately felt herself again. The sound of the steel sliding against leather was like her father's own voice. Just holding it in her hands gave her the sensation of power swelling in her, like it was a lightning rod filling her muscles with thunder. She watched the light play across the surface. It did not ripple like Brass Pig did, being factory-forged with a steel of not such exceeding quality, but still impressive as swords went. If it was a true sword, she might have felt invincible.