Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

None of us could eat, thinking about the next day, and the beer tasted off. We sat at the table, not talking much. Eventually we moved out to the snug, where the landlord had a fire going. It was warmer there than the common room, but no more relaxing. I turned the coming day over and over in my head as if it were a puzzle I couldn’t put down until I’d solved it. Lucky and Ro sat close together: their calves touched, then their thighs, then Ro’s hand found its way onto Lucky’s arm and she sighed, leaned into him, looking suddenly small and soft. When I looked away, Brax was there, next to me.

She cupped her hard hand around my jaw and cheek and left ear. “Don’t turn me away, Mars,” she said quietly. “It’s no night to be alone.”

“You’re right,” I replied. “But let’s try something a little different.” I felt wild and daring, even though I knew she wouldn’t understand. I took her by the hand and led her out to our practice area by the stable. They kept a lantern out there for late arrivals; it gave us just enough light to see motion, but the fine work would have to be done by instinct: by feel.

“You want to practice?” she said.

My heart was thudding under my ribs. This was the closest I had ever come to telling anyone what it was like with me. It was so tempting to say Take me down, Brax, challenge me, control me, equal me, best me, love me. But I only smiled and stepped into the small circle of light. “Put your hands on me,” I whispered, soft enough so that she would not hear, and centered myself.

They were fair auditions, and hard, and we were brilliant. I could tell they had never seen anything like us. The method was to put two quads into the arena with wooden swords. I learned later that they looked for how we fought, but that was only part of it. “The fighting is the easiest thing to teach,” Captain Gerlain told me once. “What I look for is basic coordination, understanding of the body and how it works. And how the quad works together.”

It was an incredible day, a blur of things swirled together: crisp air that smelled of fried bread from the camp kitchen and the sweat of a hundred nervous humans; the sounds of leather on skin and huffing breath interleaved with the faint music of temple singers practicing three streets away; and the touch of a hundred different hands, the textures of their skin, the energies that ran between us as we laid hold of one another.

After he saw our stormfighting, Gerlain started putting other quads against us, so that we fought more than anyone else. Most of the fighters didn’t know what to make of us, and I began to see that Gerlain was using us as a touchstone to test the others. Those who tried to learn from us, who adapted as best they could, had the good news with us when Gerlain’s sergeant read out the names at the end of the day; and Gerlain himself stopped Lucky and said, curtly, “You and your quad’ll be teaching the rest an hour a day, after regular training, starting tomorrow afternoon. Work out your program with Sergeant Manto. And don’t get above yourselves. Manto will be watching, and so will I.”

“Hoo hoo!” said Lucky. “Let’s get drunk!” But I was already intoxicated by the day, dizzy with the feel of so many strangers’ skin against mine. And I was a guard. I whispered it to Ad as we walked back to the inn through the streets that now seemed familiar and welcoming. I made it, I told her. Lemon City. I thought of Tom, and my mother: I’m safe, I found a place for myself. I saw Ad with her sheepskin and her special stick; I felt Tom’s tears on my skin, and my mother’s hand on my hair. Then Ro was standing in the door to the inn, looking for me, waiting: and I went in.

It was the stormfighting that kept us out of a job for such a long time. Gerlain and Manto saw it as a tactical advantage and a way to teach warriors not to rely on their swords. Tom would have approved. But many of our fellow soldiers did not. Our frank admissions that it was still raw, as dangerous to the fighter as to the target, and our matter-of-fact approach to teaching, were the only things that kept us from being permanent outsiders in the guard. Even so, we made fewer friends than we might have.

“Can’t let you go yet,” Manto would shrug each month, when new postings were announced. “Need you to teach the newbs.”

“Let someone else teach,” Ro was arguing again.

“Who? There’s no one here who knows it the way you do.”

“That’s because you keep posting them on as soon as they’ve halfway learned anything.”

“Shucks,” Manto grinned, showing her teeth. “You noticed.”

“Manto, try to see this from our point of view…”

“Oh, gods,” I whispered to Lucky, “There he goes, being reasonable again. Do something.”