Live By The Sword

Chapter 3

She walked slowly out onto the road, suddenly reluctant to get home. Nevertheless, she walked, because she knew that if she wasn’t home in time to help with the ‘womanly’ chores, her father would kill her. Realising this, she quickened her pace, because by the angle of the sun, she could tell that it was nearly the sixteenth hour and she had promised to be home at half past the fifteenth.

Suddenly she stopped, thinking she had heard a noise. She looked around, not really expecting to see anything, and because she didn’t expect it, she didn’t see Tam duck off to the side behind a convenient tree. Shrugging it off to paranoia, she continued walking, and Tam, after an appropriate pause, followed. This time he was making a better attempt to be quiet; he had not counted on Kestrel’s near superhuman hearing.

Kestrel checked the sky again, winced, and broke into a run. Taking no notice of the pebbles and roots growing in her path, she leapt and bounded with wild abandon, crashing into carts as she passed.

“Kestrel! What do you think you’re up to, running like this?”

She looked around, saw the face of a farmer she was mildly familiar with and waved.

“I’m half an hour behind schedule, no time to talk!”

He shrugged, and grabbed the lead of his donkey, which was slowly plodding behind him. Kestrel once again increased her speed, giving Tam an advantage. He was running along the side of the road, and using the trees and shadows for cover in a way that only someone with exclusive training in tracking could. The crunches of his feet on twigs coincided with the soft thud of Kestrel’s boots on pebbles, so that she heard not a sound besides the thumping of her own heart. When she slowed, which was rare, he slowed, and he took the same turns as she.

When she finally came to a spot outside of her own little cottage, and looked around once again, he blurred into the background and she turned her attention to the house. It was a small place, with a decent sized lot. Behind it and rising slightly above the neatly painted red roof, was a tree from which bunches of grapes swung. And not only the grapes, either. Her two brothers were up there scurrying from branch to branch like monkeys, collecting them. Jay, the older one, looked down at her and gave her the cocky grin which annoyed her to no end.

“Sister, I would get inside if I were you. Father is pacing.”

Kestrel pretended not to have heard him, but inside she was panicking. When Father paced it generally meant bad things for everyone, especially her. Despite the warmth, she shivered slightly, and began to walk over to the round door, when another voice came from behind her; cold and hard and demeaning.

“Cold are you?”

She recognised the voice, and turned. Seeing Tanimbar standing there, hand on hilt, she immediately reached for her swords, only to meet empty air. He held out his hands, and in them were the katanas that Kestrel valued above nearly everything she owned.

“Looking for these?”

The look of anger that flashed across her face was startling, and he laughed.

“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt them. “

She stepped forward and ripped them out his hands, automatically settling into the fencing position that she had become accustomed to in the last seven years.

“Come and have a go. If you think you can take me, that is.”

He laughed again.

“No Kestrel, I don’t want to fight you. I have no doubt that you could kill me in a second. I came to warn you. You’ve made a lot of enemies today. Lord Dularke and I are among them, but every single person who was in the room when you threw that knife now hates you for making a fool of them. If you want to live through this, I would suggest making some allies. Contrary to your beliefs, you can’t win this alone. Diplomatic immunity can only go so far.”