A Magic of Nightfall

Jan ca’Vorl

Jan let the sweat pour from him as he jabbed and parried with his sword against an invisible opponent. Sometimes it was Semini, sometimes it was his matarh, sometimes it was the ghost of Fynn or ini, sometimes it was his matarh, sometimes it was the ghost of Fynn or his great-vatarh. Jan let all his anger out into the practice. He slashed, he spun, he thrust until all the ghosts were dead and his muscles were burning.

Finally, he sheathed his sword and stood with his hands on knees, panting. He heard faint, ironic applause behind him, and he turned-beads of sweat flying from damp hair-to see Sergei ca’Rudka standing at the door of the practice room, with two gardai standing behind him. “How-?” Jan began as ca’Rudka smiled.

“I asked your aide Roderigo where you might be. I wasn’t allowed to come without my friends, though,” he added, gesturing to the grim-faced and solemn gardai flanking him. Sergei entered the long, narrow room, with its polished bronze walls and the narrow row of seats along the other side, the wooden practice swords in their holders in one corner. “You’ve had a good weapons teacher,” Sergei said. “Though that’s worth less than you might think.”

Jan took a towel from the rack near the swords and wiped at the sweat on his brow. “What do you mean, Regent?”

“You can have all the technical skills-and you do-but they mean little when you actually face an opponent who’s willing to kill you.”

The way ca’Rudka made the comment, in a lecturing, superior tone, ignited Jan’s anger again. They were all acting superior to him. They were all telling him what to do as if he were too stupid to understand anything himself. Jan sniffed. He tossed the towel in the corner. “Show me,” he said to Sergei. “Prove it.”

“Hirzg…” one of the gardai hissed warningly, but Jan glared at the man.

“Be quiet,” he said. “I know what I’m doing.” Jan nodded his head toward the rack of wooden swords. “Show me, Regent,” he said again. “Platitudes are easy.”

Sergei bowed, as if to a dance partner. Glancing once at the gardai, he strode to the rack. Jan watched him-the man had the gait of an elder, and there was a grimace when he bent over to pull out one of the practice blades and examined it. “The great swordsman cu’Musa once said that experience is often better than raw skill,” he said to Jan. “There’s a tale that in a duel, cu’Musa once killed his opponent with only a wooden blade. Just like you, his opponent was armed with steel.”

The gardai both started forward, reaching for their own weapons and putting themselves between Jan and ca’Rudka, but again Jan motioned them back. “You’re not cu’Musa,” Jan said.

“I’m not,” ca’Rudka answered. He flicked the wooden blade through the air. It was a clumsy stroke, and Jan saw how ca’Rudka held his hand on the hilt, turned slightly underneath-his old teacher back in Malacki would have immediately corrected the man, had he seen that. “With your hand like that, you have no reach,” he would have said. But Sergei had already taken a stance-blade down, his legs too close together. “When you’re ready, Hirzg Jan,” he said.

“Begin,” Jan said.

With that, ca’Rudka started to bring his blade up: slowly, almost awkwardly-an amateur’s move. Jan sniffed in disdain and slapped the man’s blade aside contemptuously with his own. But the expected resistance of blade against blade was missing: ca’Rudka had opened his hand. He heard the wooden blade clattering against the tiles of the floor, saw it skittering away to hit the bronzed wall. Jan’s strike took the weapon from ca’Rudka, yes, but without resistance his own strike swept farther to the left than it should have, and Jan saw a rush of dark clothing and felt ca’Rudka’s hands slap him lightly on either side of his neck before he could react. The man was directly in front of him, the metal nose so close that Jan’s face filled its reflective surface. Ca’Rudka’s hands gathered in the collar of Jan’s tashta and the man took a step, pressing Jan against the wall. Jan’s sword was useless in his hand: ca’Rudka was too close.

“You see, Hirzg Jan,” ca’Rudka nearly whispered, “a person who wants to kill you won’t worry about rules and politeness, only results.” His breath was warm and smelled of mint. “I could have crushed your windpipe with that first strike, or I might have had a knife in my other hand. Either way, and you’d already be gasping your last breaths.”

He stepped away, releasing Jan as the gardai grabbed him roughly from behind. One of them struck ca’Rudka in the side with a mailed fist, and the older man crumpled to a knee, gasping. “But you’re a better swordsman than me, Hirzg,” ca’Rudka finished from the floor. “I’ll admit that freely.” The garda brought his fist back for another strike, but Jan lifted his hand.

“No!” he snapped. “Leave us! Both of you!”

The gardai looked at him startled. They began to protest, but Jan gestured again toward the door. As they bowed and left, Jan went to ca’Rudka and helped the man back to his feet. “Are you really that poor a swordsman, Regent?”

Ca’Rudka managed to smile as he held his side, leaning forward and trying to catch his breath. “No,” he answered. “But I made you think I was.” He took a long breath in through his mouth and groaned. “By Cenzi, that hurt. I trust that my point’s obvious enough?”

“That people might lie and deceive me in order to get what they want?” Jan laughed bitterly. “You’re not the only one trying to teach me that lesson.”

“Ah.” Ca’Rudka seemed to be considering that. He said nothing, waiting.

“My matarh and the Archigos seem to think that now is the time to attack Nessantico.”

Ca’Rudka shrugged, then grimaced again. “Do you want to be admitting that to a potential spy in your midst, Hirzg? Why, I might send a note back to the Kraljiki.”

“You won’t.”

Nothing moved on ca’Rudka’s face at that. He blinked over his silver nose. “Have you considered that your matarh and the Archigos might be right?”

“You’d agree with them?”

“Honestly, I’d rather that there be no war at all, that we settle our differences another way. But if I were your matarh…” He shrugged. “Perhaps I’d be thinking the same.”

“So you think I should listen to them?”

“I think that you’re the Hirzg, and therefore you should make up your own mind. But I also think that a good Hirzg listens to the message even when he has difficulty with the messenger.”

Jan looked away from the man. He could see himself in the bronze mirrors of the hall, his image slightly distorted in the waves of thin metal. He was still holding his sword. He went to the wall where ca’Rudka’s wooden sword had come to a rest. He leaned down and picked up the practice weapon, tossing it to the man.

“Show me something else,” he said. “Show me how experience beats raw skill.”

Ca’Rudka smiled. He took the sword, and this time his movements were fluid and graceful. “All right,” he said. “Take your stance.. .”