Page 9 of Death's Mistress (Sister of Darkness: The Nicci Chronicles 1)

Bannon felt a flush come to his cheeks. “I’ll have to do that some other way, sir. This sword will be for my own protection.” He lifted the blade, tried it in both hands, swung it in a slow, graceful arc. Oddly, it felt good—perhaps because otherwise he had had no sword at all.

“It’ll do that,” said the swordsmith.

Bannon squared his shoulders, nodding absently. “A man never knows when he might need to protect himself or his companions.”

The dark edges of the world infringed upon his vision. Marvelous Tanimura seemed to have more shadows than before, more slinking, dark things in corners, rather than bright sunlit colors. Hesitating, he held out the coins, everything that the thieves hadn’t taken from him. “You’re sure this is enough money?”

The swordsmith removed the coins, one at a time, the two silvers then four of the coppers, closing Bannon’s fingers on the last one. “I would never take a man’s last coin.” He gestured with his bald head. “Let’s go outside. I have a practice block in back.”

Mandon took him behind the smithy to a small yard with barrels of scum-covered water for cooling his blades, a grinding wheel and whetstones for sharpening the edges. An upright, battered pine log as tall as a man had been mounted and braced in the center of a dirt clearing strewn with straw. Fragrant piles of fresh pale wood chips lay around it on the ground.

Mandon pointed to the scarred upright log. “That is your opponent—defend yourself. Imagine it is one of the soldiers of the Imperial Order. Hah, why not imagine it’s Emperor Jagang himself?”

“I already have enough enemies in my imagination,” Bannon muttered. “We don’t need to add to them.”

He stepped up to the practice block and swung the sword, bracing for the smack of impact when the blade hit the pine wood. The vibrations reverberated up to his elbow.

The swordsmith was not impressed. “Are you trying to cut down a sunflower, my boy? Swing!”

Bannon swung again, harder this time, resulting in a louder thunk. A dry chunk of bark fell off the practice block.

“Defend yourself!” yelled Mandon.

He swung harder with a grunt from the effort, and this time the impact thrummed through his wrist, jarred his forearm, his elbow, all the way to his shoulder. “I’ll defend myself,” he whispered. “I won’t be helpless.”

But he hadn’t always been able to defend himself, or his mother.

Bannon struck again, imagining that the blade was cutting not into wood, but through flesh and hard bone. He hacked again.

He remembered coming home barely an hour after sunset one night on the island. He had been working as a hand in the Chiriya cabbage fields, like all the other young men his age. He had to work for wages rather than working his family’s own land, because his father had lost their holdings long before. It wasn’t even dinnertime yet, but his father was already out of the house, surely halfway drunk by now in the tavern. Getting drunk was about the only thing at which his father showed any efficiency.

At least that meant their cottage would be quiet, granting Bannon and his mother an uneasy peace. From his fieldwork in the past week, Bannon had earned a few more coins, paid that day—it was the height of the cabbage harvest, and the wages were better than usual.

He had already saved enough money to buy his own passage off of Chiriya Island. He could have left a month ago, and he remembered how he had longed to be gone from this place, staring at the infrequent trading ships as they sailed away from port. Such vessels stopped in the islands only once every month or two, since the islanders had little to trade and not much money to buy imported goods. Even though it would be some time before he had another chance, Bannon had made up his mind that he wouldn’t go—couldn’t go—until he could take his mother with him. They would both sail away and find a perfect world, a peaceful new home like all those lands he had heard of—Tanimura, the People’s Palace, the Midlands. Even the wild uncivilized places of the New World had to be better than his misery on Chiriya.

Bannon had walked into the house clenching the silver coin he had earned that day, sure that it would finally be enough to buy passage for himself and his mother. They could run away together the next time a ship docked in port. In order to be sure, he intended to count the carefully saved coins he had hidden in the bottom of the dirt-filled flowerpot on his windowsill. The pot held only the shriveled remnants of a cliff anemone that he had planted and nurtured, and then watched die.

Upon stepping into his cottage, though, Bannon had immediately smelled burned food, along with the coppery tang of blood. He stopped, on guard. Standing at the hearth, his mother turned from the pot she was stirring, trying to force a smile, but her lips and the side of her face looked like a slab of raw liver. Her pretense that everything was fine failed miserably.

He stared at her, feeling sick. “I should have been here to stop him.”

“You could not have done anything.” His mother’s voice sounded hoarse and ragged, no doubt from screaming and then sobbing. “I didn’t tell him where you hid it—I wouldn’t tell him.” She began to weep again, shaking her head. She slumped to the inlaid fieldstones on the hearth. “I wouldn’t tell him … but he knew anyway. He ransacked your room until he found the coins.”

Feeling an acid sickness in his stomach, Bannon ran to his room and saw his meager keepsakes scattered on the floor, the straw stuffing of his pallet torn out, the quilt his mother had sewn wadded against the wall—and the flowerpot with the cliff anemone upended, the dirt poured all over his bedding.

The coins were gone.

“No!” he cried. That money should have been a new hope, a fresh life for them both. Bannon had worked hard in the fields and saved a year to get enough for them to leave Chiriya and get far away from that man.

His father had not just stolen the coins, he had robbed Bannon and his mother of their future. “No!” he shouted again into the silent cottage as his mother wept on the hearth.

And that was how his father had taught Bannon never to keep all of his coins in one place, because then someone could take everything. It didn’t matter how good the hiding place was, thieves like his father could be smart, thieves could be brutal—or both. But when thieves found at least some money, then Bannon could make a convincing plea that it was all he had, and they might not think to look elsewhere.…

“By the good spirits, my boy!” The swordsmith’s voice cut through his dark haze of memories. “You’re going to break my testing block, break that sword—and break your arm while you’re at it.”

Bannon blinked and saw what he had done. In an unconscious frenzy, he had chopped great gouges into the pine log, spraying splinters in all directions. His hands were sweaty, but they squeezed the leather-wrapped grip in a stranglehold. The discolored blade thrummed in the air, but the sword was undamaged, the edge not notched.

His shoulders ached, his hands were sore, his wrists throbbed. “I think…” he said, then swallowed hard. “I think I’ve tested it enough. You’re right, sir. It seems to be a good blade.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the last copper coin. “One more thing from you, sir. Would a copper be enough for you to sharpen the sword again?” He looked at the mangled practice block and suppressed a shiver. “I think it might have lost some of its edge.”

Mandon looked long and hard at him, the

n accepted the copper coin. “I’ll put an edge on it that should last a long time, provided you take care of the blade.”

“I will,” Bannon promised.

The swordsmith used the grinding stone to resharpen the sword, throwing off a flurry of sparks. Bannon watched but didn’t see, as his thoughts wandered through a quagmire of memories. Before long, he would have to get back to the Wavewalker so he could be there when they sailed out on the evening tide. The rest of the crew would be hungover and miserable, and just as penniless as he was. Bannon would fit right in.

He fashioned a smile again and touched his bruised lip, then ignored the soreness as he imagined everything he could do to the thugs if they ever bothered him again. Now he was prepared. He dipped briefly into his fantasy—no, his belief—in a satisfying life, a happy family, kind friends. That world had to exist somewhere. Throughout his childhood on Chiriya, during all the times his father had shouted and struck, Bannon Farmer had built up that picture in his mind, and he desperately clung to it.

By the time he had reconstructed the rosy image of how things should be, Mandon had finished sharpening his blade and handed the weapon back to him. “I give you this sword with my fervent wish that you never need to use it.”

When Bannon smiled, this time he did feel the sting in his lip. “That is my hope, too. Always my hope.” But he doubted that would happen.

Bidding Mandon farewell, he left the shop and made his way down to the docks and the waiting Wavewalker.

CHAPTER 7

Nicci reached the docks in Grafan Harbor after making her way from the darkly cluttered buildings to a more spacious district of merchants’ warehouses and administrative offices. The harbormaster’s hall was a busy place, with the windows and doors thrown wide open to let in the breezes. Clerks in high-collared jackets bustled along the docks with their papers and quills, interviewing ships’ quartermasters to inventory and tax the exotic and ordinary cargo.

Dockside inns and taverns were adorned with garish signs and unappealing names. The Snout and Maggot was unusually busy, filled with people who conversed in shouts instead of normal voices. In front of the tavern, a pudgy boy offered burned meat pies to sailors who lounged on the steps or leaned against the outside wall.

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