6. Chapter Six #2
“I’ll lose.” Rafi knew his friends would be unhappy with that, so he added, “I suspect everyone here would. But I expect to lose, so I don’t mind as much, as long as I learn something from it.”
Something flickered across Viau’s face but was also smoothed away. “That is not the impression of your skills that I got from your instructors.”
Rafi absently brushed his hair from his face, with Viau tracking the motion. “They spoke about me? Oh,” Rafi realized almost in the same instant, “you asked. That was reasonable of you. You didn’t know me.”
“I still don’t,” Viau pointed out, but with the faintest quirk at the corner of his mouth.
Rafi had deliberately not spent a lot of time wondering what Briene had said about him when he’d contacted Viau. Now he wondered what Briene and the other instructors had said after that, once Viau had stepped into the Arms Room and laid eyes on Rafi for the first time, after Rafi had lost control.
“I’m nearing my final year here,” Rafi informed him calmly, despite his racing thoughts. “I’m twenty. There isn’t much else to know.”
“Twenty?” Viau echoed, probably thinking that was on the late side for a nex’s first aedis. His frown was as elegant as the rest of him, though it didn’t last long. “You forgot to mention your loyal friends.”
Rafi glanced over his shoulder to find his friends only to notice the many others also observing him. He quickly turned back. “I’d introduce you, but you already met, unless I remember things wrong.”
“In a sense, I suppose we did.” Viau’s mouth quirked again. Rafi wasn’t trying to be amusing, but evidently was. “You have no protective kit on. What were you planning on doing with your friends today?”
“They were going to wrestle together,” Rafi admitted. “I mostly work with dummies.”
Viau didn’t lose the curl at the corner of his lips. “No one on your level available to play?”
Rafi opened, then shut, his mouth. “I hit hard.” He swallowed. “Even in practice.”
“Yes.” It was almost a satisfied hum. “That’s what I was told.
You fight with everything you have.” His expression brightened when Rafi startled and shook his head.
“Do you think you can hold back today? I am not in the mood to slow myself with padding, although I will use a practice sword. I don’t mind bruising. ”
That wasn’t against the rules of the Arms Room, exactly, but neither was it best practice.
Rafi nodded anyway, and then went to grab two sparring swords.
He chose spada, because that was what he’d seen Viau with and it was the weapon swersoldi in the court usually displayed.
Practice spada were not made of wood, but had blunt tips and smooth, rounded edges to the thin, folded metal.
Rafi took up a position facing Viau and lost immediately, Viau stripping his sword from him and sending it clattering to the ground.
Rafi hadn’t expected to be aware of Viau’s scent now that he was out of aedis, and he wasn’t, at least, not as strongly. But the field of flowers had hit him the moment he’d handed Viau a sparring weapon and his aer had probably given him away before he’d ever started to move.
He had his congratulatory smile ready, but Viau bent over to pick up Rafi’s sword. He flipped it to hand it to Rafi hilt first.
Closer, his scent was even stronger, and Rafi spent a panicked moment worrying his aedis had returned early.
“If you don’t want to attack me,” Viau said, painfully sharp, “then stand there and try to get a defense up.”
Rafi pulled in a breath. He couldn’t tell if others had heard the remark but they would have seen his easy defeat.
He wondered faintly if anyone would believe him if he told them Viau had just reprimanded him after defeating him.
Viau was too clever not to know his reputation, even if it was apparently, at least partly, false.
“Sorry,” Rafi answered, first because of who he spoke to and then because he hadn’t provided much of a challenge. He’d been too lost in Viau’s scent to think clearly, although he wasn’t going to admit to such a thing.
He struck out, as he might have been deliberately goaded to do, without bothering to take a stance first. No one in a real fight would warn their opponent anyway.
Viau got his sword up in time, responding like lightning.
Rafi stood his ground, but took a blow to his shoulder that would bruise and then another in a same spot that finally made him retreat.
In a judged match, that might have been considered a casualty.
It didn’t exactly feel like defeat, though Rafi was in pain and breathing harder. Viau was breathing harder too. That was probably why.
The lights had not returned to Viau’s eyes.
Rafi checked them again and again while they stood at arms’ length from each other and caught their breath.
It should not matter whether or not Viau was pleased with his skill.
Rafi hadn’t expected to please him. But he’d never thought Viau would goad him, either.
Rafi wasn’t even a final-year. It was beneath Viau to bother.
Beneath the idea of Viau. Viau himself might not be anything he was said to be. He grew plants, Rafi thought nonsensically. He murmured in his sleep, at least, in his sleep when exhausted. Viau was not only the thoughtful courtier.
Except he’d been considerate of Rafi’s desperation and worried for Rafi’s reputation enough to loan Rafi his cloak to hide his dampened clothing. His first question to Rafi at speaking to him again had been to ask if he was well. Something of his reputation was also true.
Or Rafi was imagining things, embarrassed by the eyes on them and distracted by wildflowers.
“Is it that you believe you shouldn’t try?” Viau wondered, and the fact that his tone was polite made the question meaner than Rafi had ever expected Viau to be. “You might—you will—go up against people stronger and more ruthless than I am. What then?”
Rafi glanced around the room, hoping most people had gotten bored of watching him lose. “I don’t believe I could beat you right now. And I thought,” presumptuous, but he had, “that you wanted to hit something. I do that, at times. Come in here to whack a training dummy until my limbs are water.”
Viau stuck his sword under his arm while he better tied his hair back. His gaze did not leave Rafi. “You are not a training dummy.”
“You wanted a real challenge?” Rafi considered that for a moment. “I can get an instructor.”
“I know how they fight.” Calmly and carefully said, though it implied boredom with even the more skilled instructors. “I wanted…. I suppose it doesn’t matter.” Viau took his sword in hand again and swung it to aim its blunt tip at the ground. “You must wish to return to your dummies.”
Rafi should accept his failure and scurry back to Laure to confront him for pushing him forward like that. He didn’t, although he also didn’t know what to say to explain why he hadn’t left.
“You’re dismissing me?”
Viau’s eyebrows flew up—understandably, as Rafi’s tone had been close to belligerent.
“I haven’t dismissed you. I’m simply not keeping you,” Viau corrected him.
“I have been fighting. You have not.” All his attention was on Rafi again, and despite how overwhelming the scent of him was, there was no aedis, but Rafi wished there was because it would explain why his heartbeat wouldn’t slow.
“I’m not going to force you to stay with me. ”
“Is that why you were sharp?” Rafi asked, then winced and ducked his head. “I was failing. I deserved the scolding.”
“Do you…? Do think I am an instructor here?” Viau considered him with some disbelief.
“You are a year away from being the same as me—oh, for that you will fight?” Some amusement returned to his tone when Rafi jerked his head up and frowned.
“There are no official ranks among swersoldi. Yes, there might be one experienced swersoldi serving as the head of a noble house’s protection, and in those cases, working as a team is encouraged.
But I am as disposable as anyone else here, and if you want to tell me to be quiet, there is nothing to stop you.
” He paused, his study growing more intense.
“Now you seem confused and I am confused. Are you always like this?”
Rafi copied Viau and also pointed his sword tip at the ground while he tried to think of how to answer a question he didn’t understand.
He settled on, “I don’t tell anyone to be quiet,” then heard how lost he seemed and forged ahead so Viau hopefully wouldn’t hear it.
“I’ll try to do better.” A reasonable answer.
Viau blew out a breath. “This,” he said, sounding, well, like Katoh at her pissiest. He took a step forward, a line between his eyes, but smiled when Rafi tensed and started to bring his sword up.
“I was rude to you. I baited you. And despite the irritation all over your face, you responded with a fragment of temper but that was all.”
Rafi had no idea how to answer that either, but breathed out and forced himself to be calm and unremarkable. Rafi meant to be memorable enough to get a good placement, not to get into trouble.
“You saw irritation all over my face?” He’d hoped he’d gotten better at keeping his expressions professional.
Viau looked away. “I spent some time learning your face. That is, to ensure you were well even if you could not say so.”
Rafi opened his mouth, then snapped it shut and swallowed. His cheeks burned.
“My apologies,” Viau added quietly. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
Now Viau didn’t want to anger him. Rafi must have missed something, some step that those with lovers, even temporary ones, usually took. Or this was how they communicated at court and he was certain not to get a placement there.
He stared at Viau, who finally looked back at him as he said, “I don’t know what you want.”