Joanna stiffened. In warrior circles words like pretty, beautiful, lovely, as applied to warriors, were usually setups to a further insult that would start a fight. Garvy had a mean look on his face. He probably had been drinking fusionaires somewhere, and she and Lyonor were the first potential victims he had found.
“So domestic, quiaff?”
Another fighting word. The last thing a true warrior was, was domestic. Warriors did not live in households, and words like family often made them sick to their stomachs.
“You know what the two of you look like? Like a pair of freebirth villagers during a— “
And, of all the words in a warrior’s vocabulary the word freebirth was the worst. It could be, and often had been, an invitation to a fight to the death.
Joanna started to lunge at Garvy, but the strong sudden grip of Lyonor’s good arm held her back. “He is mine,” she whispered. She stood up and wrested the comb from Joanna’s fingers.
Lyonor did not lunge, did not even look menacing as she strode casually toward Garvy. There was a hint of a smile on her face.
“Garvy,” she said. “Although you look like a canister mistake, you are a trueborn warrior, after all. I respect you for that and so I give you a shot at performing surkai.”
Surkai was an ancient Clan ritual, which gave a chance for warriors to extricate themselves from words or actions that had been too rash, too impulsive. When a warrior acknowledged surkai and asked for the forgiveness allowed by the ritual, the rash acts would be forgiven without penalty, without recrimination. Meaningless fights were useless, and surkai was a Jade Falcon way to eliminate them.
“Surkai!” he grunted. “I would not waste surkai on a freebirth like you.”
Lyonor nodded, turned as if to return to Joanna, then whirled around, holding the comb straight out in the hand of her good arm, and aimed it at Garvy’s neck. Its teeth broke the skin and she pushed it in. Lyonor wrenched it out and blood came spurting after it. Garvy’s hands went to his neck to stem the flow. It looked to Joanna as if he were strangling himself.
Lyonor wiped the comb off on her sling and walked casually back to Joanna.
“Guess we should get him some medical help,” she said, then looking back: “Or not.”
“How about it, Garvy?” Joanna yelled. “Want some help? Nod if your answer is aff.”
Garvy just looked at them, his eyes bugged out, and clearly was steadfast in his resolve not to answer her. His eyes glazed over, and he staggered. For a moment the eyes became clear, and he did nod, vigorously, then they returned to the glazed state and he fell. He must have been unconscious because his hand fell away from the wound and the blood began flowing freely.
Handing Joanna the comb, Lyonor quickly ripped a piece of cloth off her sling and went to Garvy’s side, where she knelt down and pressed the cloth to his wound. Joanna, remembering Lyonor’s useless compassion when she had refused to kill that freeborn, wanted to kick Lyonor away from Garvy’s body. On the other hand, she had admired the quick brutal way she had wielded the comb. There was hope for her yet. She was certainly the best warrior that Joanna had ever taken under wing. She might just win that Bloodname she claimed not to want as desperately as Joanna did.
“Think we should save this freebirth?” Lyonor asked.
“Well, he is a warrior and he is fairly skilled and we would just have to train a replacement … “
“That is it, then. I think I can manage with one arm. I will take his head; you take his feet. Just a minute first, help me to do a field compress.”
“With one good arm? Let me do it by myself.”
“I can do it.” Lyonor’s voice was low but menacing, then her voice became softer. “I can do anything, you know that, quiaff?”
“Aff. I do know that.”
It was a struggle, but the two of them did manage a tight field compress and got Garvy back to a medic, and he lived to continue his usually drunken unpleasantness.
• • •
Joanna smiled as her thumb ran along the edges of the comb’s teeth. They were not as sharp as they had once been, as they must have been when Lyonor shoved them into Garvy’s neck. She shut her eyes and saw Lyonor again for an instant, on her face that curious combination of confrontation and respect toward Joanna as if she realized that Joanna had made her into the fine warrior she was. One of the best. Maybe I do have a talent for training, maybe I do belong at this stravag facility, she thought.
She flipped the comb back into the lock-box and was about to close it, when a rare flash of light through the dirty window made something briefly sparkle in the box. Pushing other detritus away from it, she saw the piece of armor that was her most distressing memento. It had fallen from Lyonor’s Summoner on the day Joanna had learned what hell truly meant.
The armor
Twelve hours out from Tokasha, preparing for battle with the Ghost Bears, most warriors would feel elation. The call to Trial surging in their blood. But Lyonor had still been in a miserable mood, so much so that the scar Joanna had given her was a darker line than usual. She had not been selected to participate in one of the Trials of Bloodright rituals back home, and she was bitterly angry about it. Joanna, too, had not been selected, but that had happened so often, she just cursed and vowed to find a way to get the Bloodname at any cost. Twice now she had joined the melee that would produce the thirty-second contestant, and both times she had been defeated in the melee’s late stages, in each instance through a dirty trick rather than a one-on-one confrontation between warriors. She
