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  Uncle Mishnal stood against the wall near the weapons rack.

  Yanko tried a smile on him. “That was my fifth victory today. I believe I’m improving, honored Uncle. What do you think?”

  “That these peasants and outlaws are all boast and no bite—they claim they have a knack with weapons, but few of them have shown any skill. It’s unfortunate the Turgonian got away.”

  “Ah.” Yanko kept his tone neutral, trying to keep the disappointment off his face. Of course, he’d known he wasn’t facing great warriors, but he’d thought… at seventeen, surely it still said something of his competence to beat so many grown men, men who’d doubtlessly had to defend themselves at one time or another in their lives.

  “Are there any other challengers?” Mishnal called to the lurkers in the tunnel.

  This surprised Yanko. After his uncle had dismissed the men as unworthy opponents, why would he call for more? The question must have shown on his face.

  “Any practice is good practice for you,” Mishnal said. “With only four months until your entrance exams, the more fighting styles, however scrappy, you see, the better.”

  Some of the men at the entrance were jostled. Yanko waited, expecting a new opponent. After over an hour of practice and challenge matches, he wouldn’t have minded a break, but his uncle would only put him back to work swinging the pickaxe or pushing the giant screw that raised carts of salt from the mine depths. This was a more desirable way to spend an afternoon.

  The figure that shoved past the others wasn’t at all what Yanko expected.

  For one thing, it—she—was a woman. At least he was fairly certain she was. The way her short black hair stuck out in all directions made it look like she’d been the recipient of a lightning strike that morning. She wore brown trousers and a shaggy sheepskin vest that left her muscular arms bare, aside from a pair of faded leather arm guards, the sort favored by archers. Maybe she’d come from the surface? Nobody except guards was allowed weapons in the mines, and they had distinctive uniforms. She wasn’t carrying a bow, though. All she had in hand was a rolled up piece of parchment.

  “What is it, Lakeo?” Uncle Mishnal asked.

  She pressed her palms together for a quick bow, one that bordered on the edge of disrespect. “Sans Su sent me to find someone who knows what a—” she unrolled the parchment, “—yukliptika vine looks like. For the frieze. He wants accuracy.”

  Mishnal’s jaw had tightened at the brevity of the woman’s bow and lack of appropriate honorifics in her speech. “I am certain Overseer Sans Su intended for you to find a book and research this on your own rather than interrupting us.”

  “No, actually he said your nephew knew all about plants.” The woman—Lakeo—surveyed Yanko from head to toe.

  He straightened under her frank appraisal, realizing with some distress that even at his straightest, she stood two inches taller. She might have only been a couple of years older than he, but she certainly wasn’t cowed by her overseers. She must know that continuing disrespect would earn her punishment, especially if she was here as a prisoner of war or a criminal working off a sentence rather than as a salaried peasant. Of course, Yanko had never seen her before; maybe she wasn’t a worker at all, but someone with skills in the mental sciences, hired to craft a… what had it been? A frieze? But if she were a practitioner, one would expect her to wear her hair long and wrapped in a bun atop her head, the women’s version of the male topknot.

  “My nephew is busy with his training,” Mishnal said stiffly, his robes still twisted over her attitude. “Unless—” an unkindly smirk flattened his lips, “—you’d like to challenge him to a sparring match.”

  Yes, thank you, Uncle. Use me to sooth your irritation. That’s sure to add to my popularity here. He’d already had trouble making friends, both because of his youth and because he was moksu—an honored one—even if his family was currently on the bottom rung of the Great Chief’s ladder. He was beginning to look forward to the dreaded entrance exams for the warrior-mage school, if only because he’d be able to travel back to his village and see his cousins and friends first. And Arayevo… the woman who didn’t even know she’d been the reason Yanko had been sent to the mines for “hardening.” All because of that silly poetry his father had found on his desk.

  Lakeo propped her fists on her hips. “If I win, can I have him for a half hour?”

  Yanko wouldn’t have expected a bunch of hardened miners to titter, but that was exactly what the men in the tunnel did, along with murmuring lewd comments, just low enough that Uncle Mishnal couldn’t hear. Yanko, standing closer, caught a few.

  “With him, ten minutes ought to be enough.”

  “Probably doesn’t even know how to unfasten a girl’s robe yet…”

  Yanko wasn’t that young and inexperienced, but his cheeks warmed nonetheless. As his father’s son, he had the right to punish men who slighted him, but that wouldn’t earn him any friends here either, and it might make trouble for his uncle. Miners who accepted his authority might not appreciate an upstart seventeen-year-old wielding the snake whip.

  “If you best him, you may have him for an hour,” Uncle Mishnal said.

  Yanko did his best to ignore the second round of titters. Though he’d been practicing with his great uncle for more than ten years and he’d faced a variety of opponents here in the mine, he wasn’t as confident as his uncle, not against someone he knew nothing about. Though female warriors weren’t as common as males in Nuria, they did exist, with special training schools all their own. Some ambitious women even took the same entrance exams Yanko was studying for and became warrior mages in their own right, earning all the honor that came with the title when one fought for the Great Land. His own mother had been one of the most powerful, or so they said. She’d left when Yanko was so young that he couldn’t remember her.

  “Let’s brawl like rutting stags then,” Lakeo said and stalked to the weapons rack.

  This colorful metaphor made Yanko blink in surprise a few times, though the men gathered at the door laughed. Maybe they were familiar with the woman and her blunt tongue.

  While Lakeo was checking his saber and walking to the center of the room, Uncle Mishnal drew close.

  “Do not embarrass the family,” he said quietly but sternly.

  “Yes, Uncle.” Yanko knew Mishnal wouldn’t be pleased if he simply said he’d try.

  Lakeo pulled a scimitar from the rack. Yanko’s stomach clenched—that had been his mother’s weapon of choice.

  Just a coincidence…

  Without hesitation, Lakeo stalked toward him, stretching and rotating her shoulders to warm up. Yanko had cooled off since his last match, but decided to remain still, his saber tip to the floor, his face neither cocky nor worried, on the outside at least. No need to show that she concerned him. That would only give her cuts and parries more confidence.

  “I’m ready,” Lakeo said.

  “As am I,” Yanko said.

  Lakeo assumed a bent-kneed forward stance, the scimitar held in both hands out before her, the musculature of her arms prominent.

  You have muscles, too, remember. They’re just hidden beneath your tunic. She’ll think you soft, but you’re fast and strong.

  Yanko vaguely remembered a similar encouraging talk from the back of his mind before he’d faced Dak, the Turgonian prisoner, for the first time. He’d been flattened in the first three seconds of that match…

  Uncle Mishnal raised a hand. “Begin!”

  Lakeo didn’t charge the way Yanko thought she might, but she did test him immediately. Her scimitar lashed toward his saber, trying to knock it aside to open his defenses. He parried squarely, opening nothing. She was strong, but not compared to Dak.

  Wanting to judge her aptitude, Yanko let her lead the attack a few more times and simply parried or stepped back to evade her. The screech of steel sounded imposing in the confines of the belowground training chamber, its walls of salt doing nothing to insulate the noise, but neith
er the clamor nor the cuts troubled him, and he relaxed an iota. That relaxation allowed his muscles to move quickly and efficiently, and he found the pace of her attacks easier and easier to deal with. When her slashes didn’t grow any faster or more sophisticated, Yanko turned his parries into ripostes and lunged in during those heartbeats when she was vulnerable as she tried to recover from her own offensive maneuvers. She parried the blows, but lost ground. He pressed her back, and her blocks became reactive, all instinct and no finesse, no plan for a counter. Her eyes grew concerned, her breathing harsh.

  After striking hard and driving her scimitar up high, Yanko lunged in close and slapped the side of his blade against the inside of her thigh. Her eyes changed from frenzied to chagrinned, defeated. She’d felt it and knew it could have been a devastating if not deadly blow in a real fight. Nobody was calling points in these matches, though, so he’d have to disarm her or take her down, demonstrating the potential to kill.

  While he was considering these options, Lakeo tried to take the offensive again, but he darted to the side, eluding the series of attacks, and lunged toward her kidney. She jerked her torso away, but the awkward twist made her stumble over her feet and go down. Against a slower opponent, she might have been able to roll away, but he leaped after her and planted his boot on her thigh, pinning her for the instant it took for his saber to follow. He stopped with the toe of the blade pressed against her throat.

  The exit was behind her head, and movement in the doorway drew Yanko’s attention. For a split second, he glanced up. At least it was only supposed to be for a split second. He found himself gaping at a familiar face. Arayevo.

  Any man would stop to admire her lush raven hair, her flawless brown skin, her deep doe eyes, and those long lashes that dusted her cheeks when she blinked, though it was that hint of a mischievous smile that always made Yanko’s heart dance. That smile promised that if one followed her for the day, one was certain to remember that day, for even a trip to the market was bound to involve adventure. Bruises as well, possibly, along with the irate glare of a parent—or the constable.

  Something slammed into Yanko’s groin. Pain blasted through him, as if he’d been pounded by a cannonball. He stumbled back, hands instinctively covering the area, though that protection came far too late. His legs were swept out from under him. His saber flew out of his hand and clanked against a wall somewhere, but he was too busy falling to keep track of it. Before he could do more than slap his arms to the ground to keep from hurting himself in the tumble, he felt the unmistakable press of cold steel at his throat.

  Lakeo stood over him, one hand holding the scimitar, one hand propped on her hip. She glanced at the doorway—unlike him, her glance was too swift to take advantage of—then rolled her eyes and refocused on him. “Do you yield?”

  Yanko didn’t look toward the doorway—he didn’t want to see the amusement that would doubtlessly fill the eyes he’d just been admiring—though his uncle stood in his peripheral vision, and he couldn’t miss seeing the hand cover his face as he groaned and shook his head.

  “I must,” Yanko said.

  A churlish part of him wanted to point out that it wasn’t honorable to take advantage of a distracted opponent, especially when one had clearly been defeated, but he bit on his lip to keep it from flapping. Someday he’d be out there fighting for his life, against enemies who were fighting for their lives. People would take advantage anyway they could to stay alive, and he’d probably do the same.

  “Good.” Lakeo stalked over to the rack and replaced the scimitar. “I’ll take my hour now.”

  Yanko rolled to his feet. He chose the more challenging way of doing it—without using his hands—but somehow he doubted anyone would be impressed. The tittering in the tunnel had reemerged, this time as outright chortling, and Uncle Mishnal did nothing to stop it. This story would be all over the mines by dinner.

  “Now?” Yanko pointed toward Arayevo, though he couldn’t meet her eyes yet—just when he’d thought he was grown up enough that she might see him as a man and not the little boy she’d babysat in his youth. “But, uhm, I need to talk to—”

  “You can talk to the pretty girl later,” Lakeo said. “I need my hour now, or Overseer Sans Su will shove a burning brand up my—” She glanced at Mishnal. “He won’t be pleased with me. This is for the chapel. It’s important.”

  Yanko gave his uncle a pleading look. If Arayevo had traveled the two days from their village, she must have important news. Urgent news, maybe. He should be present to hear it. What if his grandmother was sick?

  “Go, boy.” Mishnal waved him away in the same gesture as he invited Arayevo to come into the chamber.

  Yanko wanted to linger, to at least give her a greeting and ask if all was well, but Lakeo grabbed his forearm and dragged him toward the doorway. He could have resisted, but if she was truly working on something for the chapel, it would be important. He’d heard that some delegate from one of the Smotran Desert city-states had been intrigued when he’d heard of the underground chapel and was on his way to wed his Nurian bride here. According to Uncle Mishnal, it would be the most important political event to happen on this side of the mountains in two hundred years. Yanko suspected it was one of the only important political events to happen out here in two hundred years, but he’d kept the thought to himself.

  “Good to see you so diligently practicing your falling skills, Yanko.” Arayevo smiled and bumped elbows with him as they passed each other.

  “I know. I mean, thanks. Er.” Yanko was dragged away before he could fumble his response to a greater degree.

  Lakeo didn’t let go of him until they had reached the lift, as if he would run back to further embarrass himself. He extricated his arm and straightened his tunic, attempting to regain his composure. At the least, he didn’t want to show this woman that he was still in pain from having his tamarind pods smashed.

  She didn’t say a word to him as they descended in the lift and walked through the second level, to a chamber that had been cut in the early years of the mine. In the beginning, it’d served as an eating room, but someone had carved statues of the gods, and it’d been turned into a prayer hall. Dozens of lanterns lined the walls, and a heavy chandelier hung from the ceiling, its decorative crystals made from the same white-gray salt as the rest of the place. A couple of times, Yanko had been assigned to fire duty, which meant that he and three other men used a large crank to lower the heavy chandelier for cleaning and lighting.

  All of the lanterns were lit now, though nobody else occupied the chamber. Lakeo walked to the back where canvas spread on the floor held numerous mallets and chisels. A half-carved frieze of remarkable intricacy sprawled across a stretch of wall between the fox god and the lily goddess.

  Lakeo pointed at the roughed-in trim. “This scene is based on Lo Min in the Ranger’s Garden. That story’s set about a thousand miles from here, and I have no idea what the fauna mentioned looks like.” She contemplated him, as if realizing she might have been better off looking for a book.

  You’re the one that hunted me down to annoy me and my uncle…

  He forced out a polite smile. “You want to know what a yukliptika vine looks like, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  Yanko closed his eyes to slits and concentrated on summoning an image in his mind. “You can actually find them in our mountains, albeit over on the wet side.”

  “I wouldn’t know.” Lakeo picked up a leather-bound journal and a pencil nub. “Never been there. Can you draw these vines?”

  “It’s two days’ walk to crest the ridge. You’ve never been?”

  “Takes money to travel. Never had any. So can you draw or not?”

  “Not particularly well, but…” Yanko spread his arms and placed two illusions in the air in front of him, one of the vine up close, with its vibrant green flesh and purple flowers, and another of it winding up the trunk of the elan tree, one it had a parasitic relationship with—something that the mytholo
gy tale didn’t mention.

  “Oh,” Lakeo said, her tone softening for the first time. “That’s… good. Just what I need. Can you hold that for a while?”

  “According to my uncle, I need to hold it for an hour,” Yanko said dryly.

  “Right, I’ll hurry so you can get back to picking fights with untrained prisoners.” She tossed the notepad aside and picked up a chisel and mallet. Her tone had grown sarcastic again, and Yanko was of a mind to snap back—his uncle was responsible for the sparring sessions, and Yanko had no choice in his opponents—but he decided it would be wisest to keep his mouth shut. Maintaining the illusions took concentration, and she’d doubtlessly have more sarcastic words if he faltered.

  “All right,” Lakeo said after a time. “I’ve got enough that I can look to the pattern to know how to finish the rest.”

  That sounded like a dismissal, and Yanko was tempted to escape the woman’s company, but he found himself watching her work. For someone with such a harsh tongue, she had a delicate touch. At the same time, she could take a powerful swing and sheer away great shards of salt when she needed to. In the last couple of months, Yanko had performed every type of manual labor in the mines at least once, including sheering chunks of salt from the mountain walls. He knew exactly how hard the task was. Crumbling table salt for one’s pork loin dinner might be a simple matter, but in this form, the mineral was as hard as marble.

  As the vine slowly formed, chiseled out of its crystalline bedding, Yanko compared the frieze to the other statues. The originals lacked the precision and artistic sophistication of Lakeo’s work, so he could tell they had been done by a different sculptor. He’d only seen one other spot in the mines with a statue this delicate.