Dodge. Block. Parry. Strike.
It was a blessedly mindless routine that left Karu with little opportunity to let his mind wander. The bamboo sword his master held, identical to his own, was hardly lethal during normal practice…but, wearing no padding as they were, the thought of being struck with it was still quite unpleasant.
He wondered, not for the first time that day, how his brother was doing. It had been nearly a year since he’d left Tengu behind in
Because, childish as it might seem at his age, home was still wherever his big brother was.
That was when the bamboo sword struck him in the side.
“You do no good for your brother by letting your mind drift away, rather than learn the discipline for which he sent you here.” His master was a good head shorter than he was, with sparkling dark eyes set in ageless golden features. The truly old of the fey species were often like that. Their faces were unlined, their postures unbent, but they were invariably thin, frail looking, but intensely present, as if time had burned away everything from them but the essentials of their being.
“He did not send me, master. I asked to come.” He replied without thinking in flawless Japanese, head respectfully tilted down, and received another sharp blow to the shin from the bamboo stick for his troubles.
“Impertinent. Even still. If your mind must wander, then let us see if it can wander at the practice board.”
“I am sorry, master.” He removed his soft gloves and turned to make his way to the tall wooden post in one corner of the practice yard.
“Apologies do not change actions. Go.”
Oh, how Karu hated the practice board.
It seemed to loom over him whether he liked the fact or not, jutting imposingly out of the ground as it awaited his arrival, still stained with nearly a year’s worth of his bloody knuckles and who knew how many more years’ worth before him, deep rusty patches in the otherwise gray, weathered wood. But he knelt obediently, less than an arm’s length away, and took a deep breath, letting out a short, loud cry as he sent his knuckles flying forward to connect with the wood. There was no sense holding back in the hopes of sparing himself a little discomfort. With his master hovering behind him, giving the exercise anything less than his full enthusiasm would only draw the torment out for hours. He’d learned that the hard way in his first month’s arrival. Besides, it would be defeating his purpose here if he gave it any less than his best. The pain in his hand would soon fade, eroded by the endorphins clouding his brain, and all that would be left was the comforting rhythm of first one fist, then the other, connecting with their targets.
With a little luck, it would be enough to block the thoughts that spun around in his mind constantly.
Karu hadn’t at all liked the idea of coming here alone. He’d wanted Tengu to come with him, away from the influence of Queen Titania. He didn’t like the Irish queen, he didn’t like her in the least, and he trusted her even less. His twin brother had always been focused, driven, with a streak of blatant opportunism that Karu alternately admired and hated. Since they’d been very young, Tengu had been the one to take care of the two of them, he had made it his sole mission in life to make a better life for them both…to be fair, when Tengu said that, he mostly meant a better life for his younger brother, working to send him to private tutors and military instructors to further Karu’s wish to be a soldier. Lately, however, his secondary goal had become finding a way to reduce or eliminate the threat of humans to their kind….or, Karu sometimes thought, simply to punish the humans for daring to threaten them.
And Titania used that brilliantly to get Tengu to do her will.
This time, she had managed to get Karu out of the picture for an entire year. How different would Tengu be, he wondered, when Karu finally made it home? Privately, he felt that every time Tengu completed one of the queen’s “requests”, it sucked his elder brother just a little further into the shadows with her. There were means, Karu felt, that couldn’t be justified by the end, even if it were for so noble a reason as expanding Titania’s kingdom to protect their kind from the human encroachment. If Tengu would only listen to—
The bamboo sword rapped him sharply on the back of his head, knocking the thoughts right out of it. Willing himself to ignore the ringing in his ears, he plunged his fist forward into the board with renewed determination.
Tengu did not like
It reminded him of
Dealing with them was wearying and invariably resulted in violence, even when delivering a simple request. Really, Tengu felt, the Queen was well within her rights to command an audience with the sullen Hunt chieftain if she felt it necessary; the chieftain himself, however, had been in complete disagreement in the matter.
Tengu refused to cajole one of the Queen’s subjects to obey a royal command.
He was glad to see the Queen’s fortress appearing on the horizon, finally, with the promise of his own chambers, lit by a roaring fire and blissfully dry. But his first task was to ascend the winding flight of stairs that led to the Queen’s suite of rooms to deliver the news of the chieftain’s impending arrival. He passed no one on the way up, of course; even the servants were only permitted to enter at certain times of the day to clean. He was the only member of court permitted to come and go as he pleased.
Or so he had thought. The low conversation that reached his ears as he lifted his hand to knock suggested otherwise.
Foregoing the knock, he opened the door unannounced, customary manners falling to the wayside in his curiosity. He was Titania’s favorite, that couldn’t be contested. But his brother’s position in court when he returned was not nearly so stable, and besides, caution was the rule always when dealing with monarchs. Tengu wasn’t fool enough to trust anyone.
He frowned to see a familiar figure, tall and muscular, with long red hair tied back at the nape of his neck, in the queen’s antechamber. Niall, that was his name; he was a well known mercenary from a neighboring county. A soldier and mercenary and sometimes assassin. The tall sidhe’s eyes narrowed as he looked up from what was apparently a deep conversation with the queen herself, glaring openly at the interruption. Titania, on the other hand, just smiled her most gracious smile.
“Tengu,” she greeted him smoothly. “I trust your audience with the Wild Hunt went well…?”
Tengu pretended, as Niall murmured a quiet farewell to the queen and brushed past him on the way out the door, that the man was beneath his notice. He was, of course, but Tengu noticed him anyway. Niall had been rumored to have set his sights on leading the Queen’s armies….a position that Tengu had already decided his brother would have, upon his return. Not only would it provide a perfect opportunity for Karu to earn a reputation as the brilliant tactician and warrior Tengu knew him to be…Tengu was loathe to have anyone that he couldn’t trust implicitly in charge of the entire army. That could bode very unwell for his own position at court, and he had no intention of sleeping with one eye open. Unfortunately, Titania and Karu held no love for each other at all, and he disliked the scene he had just stumbled upon intensely.
His expression, however, bore no trace of fear or hesitation as he greeted the Queen with customary deference, bowing down to one knee respectfully before rising and launching into an account of his meeting with the Hunt. His mind had already formulated a course of action, and fear was not a part of it.
It was deep into the night hours when Tengu ascended the stairs again, his step far brighter than it had been some hours earlier. It had taken him most of the day to catch up to Niall, but their meeting had been quite short. Tengu clutched the object of his quest easily beneath one arm, leaving his other hand free to fling the Queen’s door open once again without warning.
Swinging the severed head of the foreign mercenary by its distinctive, now blood-matted red hair, he lobbed it directly into the Queen’s lap.
Her eyes, now open, widened briefly, then narrowed in annoyance as she sat up in her bed. “Tengu,” she began in a warning tone, “You should know that there are limits to the behavior I will tolerate. Even from you.”
“And you should be aware, your highness,” His voice was calm, even conversational. “I am an extremely valuable…and loyal….ally. There is only one thing I value over the pledge of loyalty that I gave to you, and indeed, I value it over my life. ….or anyone else’s.”
Titania smiled faintly. She didn’t fear Tengu, nor any threats he could make. She feared no one, as a matter of sheer principle. But it was good to know what his limits were. “I will keep that in mind.” She looked down at the grisly prize in her lap. The face that stared up at Titania was covered in oozing boils, mouth frozen in a silent scream. Niall’s death had not been pleasant.
“There is little magic in this world that can stand up to a healer’s power over living flesh.” Tengu spoke as calmly, as coolly as if he really weren’t covered in globs of blood and gore, and they were merely having a polite debate the way they had so many evenings in the dining hall. “Merely a bit of useful information for your highness. As loyal a servant as I can be…I can be just as loyal an enemy.” His boots squished slightly as he turned towards the door again. “Good night, your majesty. May the rest of your sleep be…peaceful.” With that he was gone, his footsteps echoing slightly as he retired to his own room.
