A Kiss for Queens

Your highness. Kate suspected that she would never get used to being called that. Especially not by the man who had been one of the first to give her a place in the world where she fit in.

“And there’s really no need to call me that,” Kate countered.

Lord Cranston pulled off a surprisingly elegant courtier’s bow. “It’s who you are now, but all right, Kate. Shall we pretend that we’re back in the camp, and you’re learning tactics from me?”

“I suspect I still have plenty to learn,” Kate said. She doubted that she’d learned half of what Lord Cranston had to teach in the time she’d been a part of his company.

“Oh, undoubtedly,” Lord Cranston said, “so, a lesson. Tell me, in the history of Ashton, how has it been taken?”

Kate thought. It wasn’t something that their lessons had covered so far.

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

“It has been done by treachery,” Lord Cranston said, counting the options on his fingers. “It has been done by winning the rest of the kingdom, so that there is no point in holding out. It has been done in the distant past through magic.”

“And by force?” Kate asked.

Lord Cranston shook his head. “Although cannon may change that, of course.”

“My sister has a plan,” Kate said.

“And it seems well done,” Lord Cranston said, “but what happens to plans in battles?”

That, at least, Kate knew. “They fall apart.” She shrugged. “Then it’s a good job that we have the finest of the free companies working for us to fill the gaps.”

“And it’s a good job that I have the girl who can summon mists and move faster than a man can follow,” Lord Cranston replied.

Kate must have hesitated just a second or two too long before replying.

“What is it?” Lord Cranston asked.

“I broke away from the witch who gave me that power,” she said. “I… don’t know how much is left. I still have some skill for reading minds, but the speed, the strength, is gone. I guess that kind of magic is too.”

She still knew the theory of it, still had the feeling of it in her, but the paths to it felt burned raw by the loss of connection to Siobhan’s fountain. It seemed that all things had their price, and this was one she was willing to pay.

At least, if it didn’t cost all of them their lives.

Lord Cranston nodded. “I see. Can you still use a sword?”

“I’m… not sure,” Kate admitted. That had been something she’d learned under Siobhan, after all, yet the memories of her training were still there, still fresh. She’d won what she knew through days of “dying” at the hands of spirits, over and over.

“Then I think that we should find out before a battle in earnest, don’t you?” Lord Cranston suggested. He stepped back, giving a formal duelist’s bow, his eyes carefully on Kate, and drew his sword with a hiss of metal.

“With live blades?” Kate said. “What if I don’t have the control? What if—”

“Life is full of what-ifs,” Lord Cranston said. “Battle, even more so. I’ll not test you with a training blade only to find that your skill falls apart when there’s real risk.”

It still seemed like a dangerous way to test her skills. She didn’t want to hurt Lord Cranston by accident.

“Draw your blade, Kate,” he said.

Reluctantly, she did so, the saber fitting neatly into her hand. There were the remnants of runes etched into the blade where Siobhan had worked on it, but those were dull things now, barely there unless the light caught them. Kate took her guard.

Lord Cranston thrust at once, with all the skill and violence of a younger man. Kate barely parried it in time.

“I told you,” she said. “I don’t have the strength or speed I used to have.”

“Then you must try to find a way to make up for it,” Lord Cranston said, and immediately sent another thrust at her head. “War is not fair. War does not care if you are weak. All it cares about is if you win.”

Kate gave ground, cutting an angle to avoid being pressed back against the railings of the ship. She parried and parried again, trying to protect herself from the onslaught.

“Why are you holding back?” Lord Cranston demanded. “You can still see every thought of attack, can’t you? You still know every move that can be made with a blade, don’t you? If I make the Rensburg feint, you know that the response is…”

He made a complex double feint. Automatically, Kate moved to bind his sword halfway through.

“You see, you know this!” Lord Cranston snapped. “Now fight, damn you!”

He attacked with such ferocity that Kate’s only option was to fight back with all her skill. She watched his thoughts as best she could, seeing the flickers of coming movements, the patterns of attack. Her body didn’t have the speed it once had, but it still knew what to do, putting the blade where it was needed, beating and parrying, disengaging and pressuring.

Kate took Lord Cranston’s blade and felt the slightest of weaknesses in the pressure as he presented it. She circled with the bind, applying more pressure, and his sword clattered to the ship’s deck. Her own sword swept up for his throat… and she managed to stop just a hair’s breadth short of his skin.

He smiled at her. “Good, Kate. Excellent. You see, you don’t need some witch’s tricks. You are the one who has learned this, and you are the one who will cut the enemy to pieces.”

He clasped Kate’s hand then, wrist to wrist, and Kate was surprised to hear clapping from below on the ship. She turned, seeing other members of the company there, looking on as if she and Lord Cranston were players there to entertain them. Will was there with them, looking relieved as well as happy. Kate ran down the steps from the command deck to him, kissing him as she got to him.

Of course, that got a different sort of cheer from the others there, and Kate pulled away, red-faced.

“That’s enough, you lazy dogs,” Lord Cranston yelled down. “If you have time to ogle, you have time to work!”

The men around them groaned and got on with their preparations for the battle. Still, the moment had passed, and Kate didn’t want to risk kissing Will again in case any of them were still watching.

“I was so worried about you,” Will said, with a nod up toward where Lord Cranston stood. “When the two of you were fighting, it looked as though he was really trying to kill you.”

“It was what I needed,” Kate said with a shrug. She wasn’t sure that she could explain it to Will. He’d joined Lord Cranston’s company, but there always seemed to be a part of him that wanted to be back, working in his father’s forge. He’d joined up for the chance to see the world, the chance to go somewhere else.

For Kate, it was different. She needed to push into the spaces where things didn’t feel safe, or she wasn’t sure that she felt alive. She didn’t feel like she could deal with the extremes of the world unless she went out and did it. Lord Cranston had understood that, and he’d pushed her into the place where she’d truly been able to test herself.

“Even so,” Will said, “I thought that there would be blood on the deck before it was done.”

“There wasn’t though,” Kate said. She hugged him, simply because she wanted to. She wished that there were enough privacy on the boat for more than that. “That’s the important thing.”

“And you were amazing up there,” Will admitted. “Maybe we shouldn’t bother attacking tomorrow, just send you to fight them all one by one.”

Kate smiled at that thought. “I think it might get a little tiring after the first few. Besides, would you want to miss out on the action?”

She saw Will look away.

“What is it?” she asked, resisting the urge to read his thoughts and find out.