Blade Archer ~ Twenty-Nine

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Kael was acutely aware of the families, the couples, the familiars and the strangers watching from the rooftops around him, watching him stare his brother down. Most were hurriedly vacating, wanting no part in the confrontation, but plenty still stared.

He wanted to run. What had they seen? He had to run. He’d played no part in this. He didn’t even know her name. He just wanted his mother’s house back. What had they seen?

Ynuk stepped slowly onto the roof that had been separating him from Kael. His hands were held out and he crouched down defensively, but Kael took a few paces back and brandished both daggers, slowly shaking his head in warning.

‘Kael,’ Ynuk tried.

‘Back off,’ Kael barked. His feet stayed rooted. He could see the body of the girl in the very edges of his vision, but dared not look at her. His muddled brain tried to explain the events as Ynuk slowly approached. Maybe the group living here hadn’t been squatters at all, but more assassins awaiting Kael’s return. But they had shared three rusted daggers between them, and the girl Kael had faced down, the leader Ynuk had killed, was no trained killer. These people had been just who they seemed.

‘I had to,’ Ynuk said, hands still spread in supplication. ‘She was going to kill ye.’

Kael scoffed and shook his head. ‘She weren’t.’ He kept his voice low. He didn’t want any of the prying ears to hear any more than they already had. ‘Ye saw as good as I did.’

Ynuk took a deep breath and shrugged expansively. ‘I panicked, right? I seen too much death now. Not seeing me brother die, too.’

Kael’s fingers worked at his dagger hilts as he narrowed his eyes suspiciously at his brother. ‘Ye wanted to scare the rest of ‘em off,’ he hissed. ‘Killing’s such a normal thing fer ye now, ye thinks nothing of it.’

Ynuk glanced at the closest of the terrified onlookers, and the action told Kael the truth of his words. To Ynuk now, killing was a convenience. ‘Take her away,’ he said as calmly as he could manage, ‘and leave me alone.’

He shoved the daggers back into his belt without taking his eyes from his brother. Ynuk’s teeth were bared, his brow knotted in a mix of desperation and anger, anger at Kael for not understanding him and anger at himself for expecting him to. Kael watched him for a moment longer, silently begging for Ynuk to return to being the brother he thought he knew, then swung down from the rooftop to the street below. He checked up and down the street before striding into his home, and slumped into his habitual spot against the wall, in the shadows with a perfect view of the door.

Time dragged on as he stared at the door, rolling the hilt of a dagger between his fingers, picking at his nails with its tip to distract himself.

Ynuk had become a genuinely terrifying individual, not just to others, but he scared Kael now, too. The lives of strangers were no longer things of value. If someone got in Ynuk’s way, it seemed, killing them was his primary method of removing them from it. Kael believed Ynuk when he said he wasn’t searching for their parents’ killers anymore, but he knew it wouldn’t last. Even if he had stopped searching, it was plain that Ynuk was still plying his trade as an assassin.

‘What am I doing?’ He slid the dagger back in its sheath and lay down on the earthen floor, though his eyes stayed wide open.

When Kael inevitably became the one standing in Ynuk’s way, how would his older brother react? He had to distance himself from Ynuk. When the search recommenced, as he knew it would, Kael wanted to be as far from it as he could get. Ynuk couldn’t be allowed to find him. If Ynuk could find him, then so could Ynuk’s enemies.

‘Sweep the desert and go to sleep,’ he muttered at his brain. It didn’t listen. He could save his money again, use it to buy a house of his own as soon as he could manage, somewhere away from this district. He could keep it with Ronanen, she was trustworthy. How much did a house cost, anyway? Surely more than he could make working at the stables for an hour or two a day. He’d need to start thieving again, he realised, and stuffed his fingers under his armpits. Still, better to lose a finger than his life. He couldn’t keep that money with Ronanen, or she’d disapprove of how he’d come by it.

The palace grounds. None would think to look there. He could loosen a cobblestone behind the archery range and hide a money box in there.

‘And don’t get caught,’ he muttered, forcing his eyes closed again. ‘Now just go to sleep.’

It was the sunlight and a blade in his ribs that woke him the next morning. He rubbed under his shirt at his skin, yawned and stared blearily out the door before realising what the grey light of dawn meant. He was late for training, and still wearing the stolen blade belts. He groaned and stretched, then slouched out the door and made for the palace. It was only palu training this morning, a weapon he saw as wholly useless for a blade archer to learn.

Possible hiding places for a money box rolled through his mind as he walked, along with new and safer plans for acquiring money to put in it.

He wrapped the blade belts in his spare shirt and slung them over his shoulder like a bag as he strode through the back door into the palace. The guards looked at him with suspicion as they always did, but went no further than that. They were more concerned with what he might take out of the palace than what he was taking into it.

Master Banok had a class of fifth year students when Kael came around to the archery range. He waited until the master’s back was turned and darted in to drop the blade belts in the bin with all the rest.

‘What have we here?’ Master Banok’s gruff voice loomed from halfway across the range just as Kael was turning from the box. He briefly assessed his chances, stuffed his hands in his pockets and turned to face his blade archery master.

Banok had his arms folded as he swaggered across the range. ‘Late again?’ he pressured. ‘And with palace steel on you, too.’

‘Me private business is me private business,’ Kael snapped.

‘Not when you’re taking palace steel to deal with it,’ the master warned. There was a harder tone to his voice this time, more than the joking ‘boys will be boys’ attitude he usually took. Master Banok was serious.

Kael hesitated, almost opened his mouth to give his master an explanation of sorts, but bit his tongue and stayed silent.

Master Banok sighed irritably and dropped his hands to his sides. ‘You’re late,’ he rumbled. ‘Go to your lesson, but I want an explanation for this. You come and see me, or I’ll come and see you. Got it?’

Kael nodded, not willing to verbally acknowledge his compliance.

‘Is that underst—’

‘Yes,’ Kael snapped. ‘I get it.’

‘Good.’ The blade archery master straightened and gestured towards the barracks. ‘Now get to your lesson.’

Kael could feel the man’s eyes on his back as he walked. Already he was trying to think of excuses. Practice? He was free to do that at the palace trainees’ range, easily the best facilities in the city. Showing off to his brother? Pitiful, and Master Banok would know he was lying. He chewed at his bottom lip, wondering if the truth was perhaps his best option this time around. Just as long as the weapons master didn’t press him on how his mother had died in the first place, and why he’d left the house unattended for so long.

Outside the barracks, he could hear the clack of wooden poles within the walls. He’d missed at least an hour of training. ‘Stupid weapon anyway,’ he muttered, and strode into the barracks.

Master Yonpo spotted him from across the room. The oldest and easily most patient of Kael’s weapons masters spared him a cursory look, lips pursed in disapproval. He gestured to the other side of the range with a terse nod where Wilari stood with arms folded, palu balanced in the crook of his arm, as he watched his two training partners for the morning.

By the door was the barrel of training palus, but in place of the plain wooden staffs that Kael had been using since Summer Solstice stood half a dozen real, bladed palus. A blade the length of Kael’s hand curved from each end of the eight-foot wooden staff to complete the most cumbersome weapon in Raykin’s army. The transition from training wood to real weapons could only mean one thing: Kael had missed the demonstration given by the current palumen of the Queen’s Own.

He grinned and selected one of the six remaining palus, balancing it back over his shoulder.

As soon as he began walking, though, a sharp whistle pierced through the training room. He glanced over to where Master Yonpo stood, shaking his head. He lifted his own palu, held upright, one blade pointed at the ground and the other at the sky.

Kael shrugged and flipped the palu from his shoulder to carry it upright. Looking at the blades now, he could understand why the master had been drumming into the trainees all term to never carry them over the shoulder. It was like going to the end of the archery range before everyone had finished firing.

Wilari grinned when he saw Kael approaching him.

‘You really missed something this morning,’ he said, almost bragging. ‘It was almost enough to make you want to be a stickman.’

Kael shrugged. ‘Still sticking with me daggers. Easier to throw.’

‘With their reach, you wouldn’t need to throw,’ Wilari argued. ‘They’d give the red shirts a challenge, that’s for certain.’

Kael gave a lopsided grin as he stood aside and readied his palu. ‘Now there’s something I could stomach watching. Cut down a couple of the high and mighty swordies.’

The archer grinned back at him, spreading his hands apart as he gripped his palu and crouching in readiness. ‘Something you and I can agree on,’ he said, and lunged forward with his palu.

Kael was more conscious than ever of the other end of his palu. The ends were always so far away that they almost felt completely out of his control. With the blades, he felt even more clumsy. Even holding his hands apart as the weapon master instructed, he found the blades sweeping far more widely than he was aiming for.

Wilari had the same issues, and Kael didn’t have to move too much to dodge out of the way of the cumbersome weapon.

‘There are far better ways of gaining range than this,’ the archer panted with a shake of his head. ‘Bows, for one.’

Kael shrugged and rested the end of his palu against the ground. ‘Who needs a bow?’

With the morning lesson over, Kael made his way over to the box by the door where the bladed training palus were stored. In the doorway stood the imposing figure of the blade archery master.