Islands in the Sky

2.5

Cassa ran.

It was a cool clear morning, almost frosty, and the smoke of the city’s fires was rising straight upwards in the still air.

Cassa ran. She ran backwards and forwards across the private courtyard, halfway up her family’s tower. She was far above the city, with a view few would ever see. She ignored the view, and ran, touching the walls and turning, leaping barrels and crates left there as obstacles, ducking left or right as Konstantin called out that she should, keeping herself fast and alert and flexible.

Each morning began this way. Cassa bent and stretched and twisted, warming up, making her body more flexible, and better able to fight. She stretched, and then she ran until she was exhausted, and then she did weapons drills and learned the stances of formal combat. Finally, she ended her morning’s training with a furious melee using wooden mock-weapons against several men-at-arms at once. This was all at Konstantin’s behest. She did her drills after running, when she was already weary, because Konstantin said that assassins never came when one was alert. For the same reason, she was running in bare feet, and before she ate breakfast, while she was still hungry and tired.

Cassa was a good fighter. She was better than any but her or Konstantin actually knew. Konstantin had thought it wise to keep her skill a secret, for if she ever needed to fight off an attacker, that moment of surprise, of unexpected advantage, might actually save her life.

Cassa was quick. She was good with a knife. She was fit, and strong, and had exercised at length to build up the physical stamina required to outrun and outfight a foe. She had learned the formal movements of combat, almost all the formal movements, in order to recognise what another might do, and know how to counter it. She practiced each day, and fought her mock battles, her against the rest, and she did it all knowing that one day her life might depend upon her doing these things in truth as well as in training.

Most of all, she listened to Konstantin, and heeded his advice, and didn’t let her pride or self-satisfaction sway her into doing what he thought unwise.

Konstantin had told her over and over that only skills she needed in war, the only skill any member of her family needed, was to hold off an assassin with a dagger, or with fists and boots alone. Her family didn’t fight in wars, Konstantin said. They paid others to on their behalf. The only time that one of Cassa’s blood-relatives would need to fight personally would be the time when a mob of assassins came for them in a dark hallway, and so the only skill that she needed was hold a large number of attackers off until help arrived.

Dagger, fist, and boot, Konstantin said over and over. The rest didn’t matter at all.

Not all of Cassa’s family listened. Over the years, Konstantin had said as much to all of Cassa’s cousins and kin, but not all the family had heeded his advice. Several of her cousins had insisted on learning to wield a sword. One was deft with a bow, and another with the ancients’ firearms weapons. Others, lazy rather than proud, had abandoned Konstantin’s training as soon as they grew old enough to refuse. Cassa had stayed with it, stayed with him, a lot longer than any other. She had, because in her lifetime, two cousins and an uncle had been murdered in shadowy corridors and forgotten alleyways at night.

Cassa didn’t understand why so few others were bothered by that, and why so few could see how precarious her family’s place was in the city. She could, but she was more wary than most of her family, or perhaps more clever, she wasn’t sure. She was wary, though, so she made it a habit to begin each day with weapons practice, and to practise with only the weapons Konstantin thought she ought to know, the dagger, fist, and boot.

As she did now.

She ran until she was exhausted and breathing hard, and then began the slow repetitions of fighting stances and movements which even now left her slightly bored. Konstantin was fond of saying that although dagger fighting was the least formalised of all weapon styles short of the pitchfork, there were still some sixty stances and parries and offensive blows a student must master before considering their learning done with. Cassa knew around half, and was satisfied with her ability. Konstantin insisted she study the remainder, and dedicated a little of each practice session to that end.