Chapter 14 #2
"Not at all. The fresh air is nice." Evran gestures at the clearing. "You fight well."
The compliment lands exactly where he aims it. Torsten's face brightens, not the controlled brightening of the mask but something more genuine, the involuntary pleasure of vanity being stroked. He straightens up, pulling the sword from the dirt and tossing it from hand to hand.
"I would have performed better if I'd known I had an audience," he says.
"I doubt that. You looked very impressive from where I was sitting."
Torsten's smile widens. The stocky man, still rubbing his wrist at the far side of the clearing, gives Evran a look that is equal parts suspicion and amusement. Evran ignores him.
Torsten closes the distance between them, stopping a few feet from the log where Evran sits. He is close enough that Evran can see the sweat on his temples, the rapid flutter of the pulse in his throat, the flush of exertion and, beneath it, the heat of being watched by someone you want.
"Do you have any skill with a sword?" Torsten asks.
The question is casual, inviting, an open door.
Evran has been training with Kellin for six months.
He can hold a guard, throw a combination, block a strike and counter.
He is not a warrior, will never be a warrior, but he is competent enough to surprise someone who expects nothing.
Kellin said as much last week, in the closest thing to praise the man has ever offered: You won't win a fight, but you might survive one.
"I've always been more interested in books and gardening than the blade," Evran says, and makes his voice a little sheepish, a little self-deprecating. The harmless southerner. The pretty bird who does not know which end to hold.
Torsten's eyes light up.
"Let me show you," he says.
What follows is the most awkward and uncomfortable training session of Evran's life, and that includes the time Kellin made him practice footwork drills for three hours straight in the rain while shouting corrections that were more insult than instruction.
Torsten fetches a second practice sword and presses it into Evran's hands, adjusting his grip with fingers that linger on Evran's knuckles.
He positions himself behind Evran and reaches around to adjust his elbow, his chest against Evran's back, his breath on Evran's neck.
He demonstrates a stance by placing his foot between Evran's feet and pressing his knee against the inside of Evran's thigh to widen his base.
Every correction is a reason to touch.
Evran endures it. He keeps his breathing even and his face appropriately flustered, which is not difficult given that his skin is crawling, and pretends to be a worse fighter than he is.
He fumbles the grip Torsten shows him, though his hands know the correct one.
He stumbles on the footwork, though Kellin drilled it into his muscle memory months ago.
He swings too wide on the practice strikes, leaving openings that a child could exploit, and Torsten steps in to correct him each time with the solicitous patience of enjoying the power imbalance far too much.
"Here," Torsten says, sliding behind him again, his hand closing over Evran's on the hilt. "Your elbow is too high. Drop it. Like this."
Evran drops his elbow. Torsten's hand stays on his.
"Now turn your wrist. Feel how the angle changes?"
Evran turns his wrist. He can feel the heat of Torsten's body along his back, the press of his chest, the curl of his breath past his ear.
Every instinct he has is screaming at him to drive his elbow into Torsten's solar plexus and step away, which is, incidentally, exactly what Kellin would tell him to do.
He does not. He stays where he is and says, "Like this?" in a voice that is breathy and uncertain and makes him want to wash his own mouth out.
"Perfect," Torsten says, and does not move away.
The lesson continues. Torsten shows him how to parry, badly, with none of Kellin's precision, and how to block, with more force than necessary, creating opportunities to grab Evran's arm and reposition it.
He demonstrates a dodge that involves putting his hand on Evran's hip and pulling him sideways, and a counterattack that requires Evran to step into Torsten's space, their bodies close enough that Evran can count the flecks of green in his blue eyes.
Evran notices the differences between what Torsten teaches and what Kellin trains.
Kellin teaches efficiency, the shortest distance between intent and result, no wasted motion, no wasted energy.
Torsten teaches performance, moves that look impressive but leave you open, strikes that are flashy but imprecise, a fighting style designed to be watched rather than survived.
Everything Torsten shows him has a hole in it, a gap, a weakness that Kellin would exploit before the motion was half-finished.
And the corrections Torsten offers are wrong, subtly but consistently, the elbow angle too steep, the weight distribution too far forward, adjustments that would make a fighter worse rather than better, and Torsten does not know they are wrong because no one has ever told him.
Evran is not a warrior. But he is almost certain he could beat Torsten.
The realization settles into him quietly, without fanfare.
He files it away alongside everything else he is learning about this man, the vanity, the insecurity, the hunger for admiration, the fragility of an identity built from borrowed pieces, unable to tell the difference between what is real and what is performance.
The afternoon stretches on. The stocky man left an hour ago, and they are alone in the clearing, the empty stable at their backs and the open farmland stretching away on all sides.
The sun has shifted, throwing long shadows across the packed dirt, and the air is cooling as the day tips toward evening.
Finally Torsten seems satisfied. He steps back, rolls his shoulders, and drives the practice sword into the dirt with a flourish that Evran privately finds ridiculous.
"You're a quick study," Torsten says.
"I had a good teacher."
"Come back tomorrow and I'll show you more. With enough practice, you'd be able to hold your own."
I can already hold my own, Evran thinks. Against you, at least.
"Thank you," he says instead, and means none of it. "For your patience. And your friendliness. It's been nice, having someone willing to spend time with me."
The words are deliberate, calculated, implying loneliness, a gap, a space that Vaike does not fill. They imply that Evran is here not because he is investigating a conspiracy but because he is lonely, and Torsten is the one who noticed.
Torsten absorbs this with deep, settled satisfaction, told exactly what he wants to hear. "Think nothing of it. The pleasure was all mine."
Evran crosses to the makeshift weapons rack near the stable, a rough wooden frame propped against the wall where the practice swords are stored, and places his blade back. He takes a breath and turns around.
Torsten is right there.
Evran takes a step back, startled, genuinely startled, not performed, because he did not hear the man move and the silent approach sends a bolt of adrenaline through his nervous system that lights every alarm in his body.
His heel catches on the base of the rack and he stumbles, arms pinwheeling, and for a lurching moment he is falling backward.
Torsten's hand catches his waist. The grip is firm, stabilizing, and Evran's momentum stops with his back an inch from the stable wall.
Torsten's fingers are splayed across his hip, pressing through the fabric of his tunic, and his face is close, too close, close enough that Evran can see the individual hairs of his beard and the thin sheen of sweat on his upper lip.
Evran is stock-still. Every muscle locked, every nerve alight, his body caught between the instinct to run and the knowledge that he cannot.
Torsten does not let go.
He steps forward, one step, slow, deliberate, closing the distance between them until Evran's back is flat against the stable wall and Torsten's body is a wall of its own, blocking the light, blocking the air.
His hand is still on Evran's waist, and his other hand comes up and grips the front of Evran's tunic, bunching the fabric in his fist, pressing Evran back against the rough wood.
Evran's hands are against Torsten's chest, palms flat, fingers spread, as though he could push him away.
He cannot, or rather he will not, because pushing him away would end this, would end the plan, would leave them with nothing but suspicion and a ticking clock and a husband who is still in danger.
So his hands stay where they are, pressed flat against a chest that is not Vaike's, feeling a heartbeat that is not Vaike's, and the wrongness of it is so complete and so total that Evran's vision blurs at the edges.
Then Torsten's mouth is on his.
The kiss is nothing like Vaike's. Where Vaike is thorough and patient and achingly gentle, Torsten is fast and hard and taking.
His mouth presses against Evran's with a force that pushes Evran's head back into the wall, and his hand on the tunic tightens, pulling their bodies flush, and the hand on Evran's waist slides around to the small of his back and presses him forward and the two opposing forces meet in the middle with Evran caught between them.
Torsten kisses him for a long time.
Long enough for Evran's locked muscles to start aching.
Long enough for the initial shock to fade and the cold, tactical part of Evran's brain, the part that has been running the calculations all week, the part that sounds like Bran and Leona and Kellin all at once, to start screaming at him to respond, react, do something, because he is supposed to be seducing this man and he is standing here rigid and unresponsive and every second of his stillness is a crack in the performance.