author's note: For archival purposes. Originally written for a challenge at the Livejournal community 31 Days.
disclaimer: Ellen Kushner owns Swordspoint and all the characters thereof.
Conversations with the Mad
Sword tells more truth than books; its parting wisdom from vanity.
-- August 22nd
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It rained more often in Riverside than was necessary; the result, Alec declaimed to the fireplace as the tempest seethed, of Nature, who had clearly taken note of all the annoying punks taking up residence on her soil and was not enjoying their company. And, no doubt, of the too-fragile folk that often attracted the attention of the aforementioned toughs, and had probably caused the birth of one or two through the temptation of their constant vulnerability.
The swordsman looked at him mildly, leaning against the chair the scholar had insistently refused. "You could learn," he said. "You could try to protect yourself—"
"But then what need would I have of you?" Flames shifted in his eyes, evaporating as his lashes drew shut, sharp curves over the drawn line of his cheek. They moved, twining in each other, in irregular patterns.
It could be very useful, he thought, put to a sword's motions. Aloud, St. Vier said, "Whatever need you wanted. You'd be in control."
"Am I not already?" The scholar inquired doucely. "Anyway, think of how silly I'd look, banging a great sword into chairs whenever I sit down to a gambling table."
St. Vier said his name, but he was caught in it; he rolled suddenly, locking his shoulderblades against the bare hearth as he raised a slender hand, stark in firelight, against the ceiling. "And afterwards, if someone hired me to duel you. It'd be like a book. Very romantic."
The swordsman, who had far clearer ideas of what romance was, said, "You're very drunk."
"The legendary St. Vier," said Alec dreamily, to the rotting boards and the stones sunk in the floors, "and his first thrown match. They would write poetry to it, throw songs at you whenever you went by. Like rotten eggs."
"I'd ask them to throw fish instead. We could save money. It'd buy you a few more minutes at dice."
"They might write great books about it."
"About how much you lose at gambling," said St. Vier.
"About fighting, and drinking, and loose women," the scholar said, with a certain satisfaction. "It might even outsell that trash that keeps getting reprinted – The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death. The Swordsman Whose Name Was Muck. The Swordsman Whose Name Was Really Embarrassing."
Remembering the girl, St. Vier said, "You don't have any women. You chased off the last girl who came by."
"She was trying to learn your sword," he slanted a coy look to see if he had caught the innuendo; the swordsman's face remained impassive, and Alec sighed and continued: "Which is why all the highborn noblewomen would fall in love with it. Girls are very interested in that sort of thing. Possibly because they can never be involved. Rather like me," he said cheerfully.
"You are involved with me," he pointed out. "Do you think they haven't noticed?"
"I think that somewhere in the city there's probably a blind, deaf beggar that hasn't been told about me, yes. But don't worry, Richard – I can stand a challenge from someone like that." He curled languidly over the floor, an esoteric marking whose language the swordsman did not recognise. After a moment, he said, "I always thought that learning the sword would be – interesting. Daring and intriguing, the days full of blood and gold…" He twisted over, elbow hitting the ground as he raised himself to look at the swordsman.
He stared at Alec, waiting for some answer to filter through what he understood of what the scholar was asking. None came. "You want me to teach you."
"Yes," he breathed - laughed. "Yes."
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They began with the stance, and progressed quickly into elementary lunges and parries as Alec showed signs of passing into ennui. He'd thought of pins and daggers under cover of darkness when he'd talked of protection; not of a sword Alec would never wear, positions he slouched into with a bad grace. But it was better than nothing, and the rain splattered sharp lines across the glass, so under the eyes of the dying hearthfire, Richard taught him.
"So when," said Alec eventually, "do I get to fight?" He tilted brightly towards St. Vier, who looked expressionlessly at the wrist he'd turned, the elbow he'd pushed back. Rather flawed, he thought, but it would do. "You're here, I'm here. I'm not going to fight a wall, you know. Not everyone likes to pick fights with inanimate objects the way you do."
"There's only one sword."
"We can fight with sticks, then," he poked disdainfully at one of the thinner branches destined for an ignoble end in the hearth. "This one looks sturdy enough."
"I'll use the stick."
"Generous," said Alec. He hovered sketchily, and sprang.
The sword had been sharpened the previous evening, and could break through the wood as glass. The point, then, was to guard against the slippery clumsiness that might bring a new, unconventional movement into play, and to make sure that they clashed, but never enough to snap it entirely. Playing at a disadvantage against someone without an interest in fighting wasn't quite the challenge he had been looking for, but Alec was contagious.
As the fire flared, tossing out a dying spark, the swordsman saw his face. His eyes were bared of all the coy indirection; at the heart of all the masquerades, something burned in flickers pale as madness. Meeting his gaze, Alec smiled.
He paced across the floors, lashing out in long reaches without technique. St. Vier evaded each silver stroke as it came, stepped close to bar the last and see the sweat beaded like glass on his skin, his teeth like a hunted fox's. It had been carefully cloaked beneath the guise of drunkenness, of boredom, of Alec being inscrutable.
Now, maskless, it was unmistakable as he struck, again and again, against a guard he could not break. His face was flushed, mouth taut, the thin inconsistency of first blood. "Why can't you attack me, Richard? Why won't you attack?"
The swordsman said, vigilant as the hand that gripped the sword, as he pushed it against Alec's to hold them balanced: "If you'd wanted me to teach you how to kill yourself, you could have said so."
"You're not that stupid." Abruptly, the scholar gave a long, unsteady laugh. His movements slowed, though the swordsman watched him as carefully as ever. "Even you aren't. You'd never teach me to do what you're nearly doing to yourself. Playing in the middle of games you don't understand, doing only what you're told to do…"
"They like me, on the Hill – more because I don't ask questions, I do the job and it's done." It seemed absurd to be answering in logic, Alec asking for answers to something that he hadn't said out loud. But it was the only answer he knew to each – a basic parry that moved too slowly to push Alec back to the beginning. "Swordsfighting is popular right now."
"And what happens," said the scholar nastily, "when the fad changes and they all turn to pacifists with heads of cabbage?" He stepped back; the sword fell noiselessly to his side.
He shrugged. "I'll do something else."
"And am I to go out it with the fashion because I don't match your new job? What am I—some fad, some thing that you've picked up off of the streets—" The blade clattered from his fingers in the ring of a golden clock against stone. His face was sharp and ancient – something that the swordsman might have remembered out of the pictures in an old fairy story, or a nightmare.
This, he thought incoherently: this was what a sword did to its servants – made them see, farther and clearer, until their sight faded from all that they had glimpsed. Alec was in no danger now, not even from himself. But there was still something terrible about the sight, the way he stirred as though in a dark dream…
The swordsman moved forward, carefully, and held him; eventually, he felt him exhale at his collarbone, a stroke of heat. "We can go the bookstore tomorrow," he said, hardly knowing what he was saying. "A book – you tore out the pages of the last one, but I've just had a commission. Get another, or three."
After seconds passed and fell, Alec laughed, long and low. "Richard," he murmured, and that was the end.
-
On another day, remembering as they stepped out of the bookstore, he asked what the scholar thought.
"Books are considerably less boring than whacking at people with a big stick of metal," Alec said complacently, absently tucking the tail of his hair beneath the shirt as they ducked under a dripping overhang. "And I've no interest in earning money, anyway."
end
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feedback: is consumed by tiny silver spoonfuls and treasured.