Poem 86
It was time. In the middle of the devotions yard, Berdine caught Cara’s shoulder and pointed Raina out.
“That’s her.”
Looking bewildered, Cara glanced around as if she was trying to figure out what on earth Berdine meant. Then her eyes settled on the correct brown-leather clad form and her jaw dropped as she worked it out. “That’s her? Honestly?”
“Yes.”
“But she’s tiny. She’s smaller than…” Cara stopped. Berdine eyed her and considered exactly how much the knot at the top of Cara’s braid sat below her usual line of vision.
“Smaller than you?”
Cara glared. “Shut up.”
“Look, she might be petite, but she’s Mord’Sith.” There was no doubting that, not after seeing the lust that welled up in her eyes after choking the breath out of a comrade. “I’d even say she’s more of a Mord’Sith than you.”
Cara’s jaw dropped. She glared at Berdine, then looked at the girl standing over by the shrine, small and dark and stiffly casual, then back to Berdine. You did not challenge Cara on being a real Mord’Sith. It had started out as a worrying psychosis, but now it was mostly a joke. Still it was good to see that the goad was as effective as Berdine had expected. Cara shoved her way through the gathered Mord’Sith as they grouped into gossiping circles, waiting, bored, for devotions to begin, and marched right up to Raina. Barely repressing her amusement, Berdine hurried after her. This wasn’t going to go well, but it was going to be hilarious.
“Mistress Berdine claims that you are more of a Mord’Sith than I am,” Cara said stiffly. Raina blinked, jolting slightly at the name. She turned, staring at Cara with blank lack-of-recognition in her expression. Then she spotted Berdine coming up behind her and flinched.
“Sorry, what did… Mistress Berdine say?” This time, was an unvoiced corollary.
Cara choked, not wanting to repeat the shameful words.
“I said you were a better Mord’Sith than she was,” Berdine chimed in helpfully.
Cara flushed with some combination of anger and embarrassment. “I cannot let that go unchallenged.”
Raina considered this and gestured towards Berdine with a questioning eyebrow raised. “She was the one who insulted you. Why don’t you challenge her?”
Cara looked shifty, and Berdine grinned. Raina rolled her eyes when she finally realized what it meant. “She’s already beaten you. Honestly, if Mistress Berdine can beat you, I don't see why I should bother.”
Cara was shocked and looked at Berdine. “Are you going to accept that?”
“Avenge my honor,” Berdine said, still amused.
* * *
Cara was small, and she had compensated for it by becoming as strong as she possibly could. But she had never battled someone smaller than her before. Raina used her size to her advantage. She was a whirlwind, all speed and unpredictable twists and turns, impossible to hit.
Berdine leaned on the edge of the arena to watch. It was different than watching Raina train her students. Cara wasn’t raw; she didn’t make mistakes. But as they moved, engaging for a moment, agiels cracking against each other like whips, Raina watched Cara, with the eyes that saw everything, and learned all her strengths and all her weaknesses.
Of course the most obvious weakness was that Cara had all the finesse of a blunt instrument. It made her amusing to talk to and brutal against the helpless, but it gave her no advantage in this.
The blows were light, teasing, as they engaged, testing the power, testing the reach. Cara struck, and struck, and struck again, almost connecting, then connecting, Raina stumbling back, silent, a spray of sand flying up under her slipping feet. Then Cara redoubled, and Raina was gone, slithering past the strike and delivering a soft burn to the seam of her corset. Cara jerked back and spun to face her, suddenly wary. They matched each other’s pacing, moving in a cautious circle.
Raina closed the distance. She brought back her hand. Berdine leaned forward. Was she telegraphing the strike? Cara spotted it as well and lunged to take advantage of it, lunged straight into an elbow to the face. An agiel was planted in her gut, and with barely a touch to the back of her head, Cara was flat on her stomach in the dirt. Raina placed a foot delicately on her shoulder. “You would do better to learn to move with another’s attack, not just counter it with brute force.”
“Yes, mistress,” Cara mumbled into the dirt.
“I’ll train you.” Raina gave her a light kick. “I cannot allow you to add to the evidence that those of small stature are poor fighters.”
“Thank you, mistress.”
Berdine smiled. Raina looked up at her and arched an eyebrow. Berdine shrugged. She had won. Clearly no one could doubt who was the superior Mord’Sith there.
* * *
Nothing was ever really secret, not in a Mord’Sith temple. A hundred things were mistaken or misinterpreted or ignored, but there were no secrets. And the whole temple had seen the challenge being laid. No one was unapprised of the result.
Cara was considered one of the better, if not the best, of the younger fighters at the People’s Palace. When word got around that Mistress Raina of the Mountain temple had beaten her in the ring and was now training her, a lot of the hierarchies and betting pools had been overturned. Mistress Raina was now rated more highly, and the evidence of those who had been beaten and revived in the hallway was taken more seriously.
“A dark horse,” someone said, amused by the accuracy of the term, and the whispers changed. Perhaps Mistress Berdine had noticed something they hadn’t. That would be just like Mistress Berdine.
And Mistress Berdine smiled at hearing the rumors. That was one battle of words that she had won.
* * *
Raina accosted her in the library, like the first time. She was pleased and eager. All of the fear and cringing self-doubt usually haunting her dark eyes washed away. Some of her students had informed her that long standing bets had finally paid off now that the new (unofficial) rankings were in. Berdine laughed at hearing it, and took pride in being somewhat responsible. And for a few key moments, she was too distracted by the pleasure of seeing Raina flushed with confidence to notice that she was being tied to a chair.
“You always seem to like me better when my hands are tied.”
Raina sat across Berdine’s lap, admiring her handiwork and tugging at the ropes that wound around her wrists and through the spokes in the seat back. “If only I could chain your tongue as well,” she remarked dryly.
“Oh you wouldn’t want to do that!” Berdine protested. “I speak eighteen languages. And some of them have very interesting… consonants.”
Raina shook her head. “You’re impossible.” She cuffed her across the face with the back of her hand.
Berdine laughed and licked up the blood that welled up at the corner of her mouth. “What can I say-“
But Raina cut her words off with a hot open-mouthed press of lips. When she pulled away, Berdine had forgotten how to breathe. Raina looked down at her, a dark strand of hair, having escaped her braid, brushed against Berdine’s cheek.
“I like it,” she said softly, “when I kiss you, that you kiss me back.”
* * *
“Mistress Berdine.” A tall woman with a flame-red braid was addressing her. Berdine eyed her without recognition. She nodded slightly.
“Mistress.”
The woman smiled, a tight smile with a slightly feral cast. One of the mad ones, Berdine thought, though madness and Mord’Sith went together like red meat and D’Haran wine.
“You don’t even know my name, and yet you think you have the right to play games with my pet.”
Berdine’s gaze sharpened. Raina’s Mistress? Ugliness twisted in her gut. It was not so long ago that she had sat and listened as this woman took her fill. But this was what she had wanted. Her plans were unfolding as if they running downhill on a rail. The woman’s flame-red hair was familiar now, from the meetings with Rahl. Meditatively, Berdine examined her face. Had it been the rumors about Raina spending her nights out of the barracks that had precipitated this? No. It had been the shift in the rankings. Was the pet starting to catch up to the mistress?
“Well, clearly it was not my right to beg an introduction,” she replied, with syrupy sarcasm. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know the name. She wasn’t unprepared. It was Sinnach, Keltish for Fox, which was apt.
“No. It wasn’t.”
“Mistress Raina is a good soldier.”
“Yes, she is.” Mistress Sinnach’s eyes were narrow and her gaze lazy as a snake ready to strike. “I have plans for her. I don’t approve of your interfering in them.”
Plans like whoring her out to the Lord Rahl? Berdine refrained from asking that question, she would spit it like venom, and it would reveal far too much of her own self-interest. “I think most of us from the People’s Palace haven’t liked what we’ve seen of your plans.”
Mistress Sinnach’s expression turned ugly. “And are you planning to do something about them, Mistress of Words?”
“If you want.”
“What I want is for you to leave my pet alone.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You had better, or you’d better fight!” With that she struck out, and Berdine caught her wrist, halting her.
“Fine. I’ll fight you.” She twisted her wrist viciously. “For her. If she agrees.”
* * *
There are no secrets in the People’s Palace, and Raina had been caught by a group of her Mistress’ sycophants. She had had to brazen through their taunts, their scolding her for being faithless and whorish, for seeking out a new Mistress, for choosing the librarian’s company “when you could have had the Lord Rahl,” and it had been too much. She turned her rage at Berdine, for allowing this to happen, even though it had to happen. The rumors could not be stopped, only led down a different path.
“Why did you say that? Why did you accept?”
Berdine could see the strain on her face, the desperation. Raina knew it was wrong to be claimed as a pet, just as much as Berdine did. Her anger made her beautiful. She was never not beautiful. Berdine reached out and caught her cheek, cupping it in a firm hand and leaning in, licking her way into the mouth, and catching her lower lip between her teeth.
“Perhaps,” she said softly, after releasing the kiss. “Perhaps I want you to be only mine.”
There was a moment where Raina did not react, perhaps made longer by expectation, and then the blow came sudden and strong, out of nowhere, and cracked into Berdine’s jaw, sending her reeling.
“How dare you! How dare you try to steal my pride, my honor?”
The second shot was a knee to the gut, making her double over, her breath lost, and then a hammer-fist to the back of her neck, sending her to the floor, to her knees. She bent over them, putting her forehead to the floor, like she would during her devotions, and whispered.
“I submit.”
She had not tried to fight back, and Raina was standing over her, fists clenched, and frustrated, involuntary tears leaving tracks down her face.
“Why? Why do you submit to me?”
Berdine had no response.
* * *
“Good Morning, Mistress.”
My darling Raina.” The fox-haired woman reached out and caressed her cheek. “I have not seen you for far too long.”
“I have heard that you have been making challenges to my pet.”
Mistress Sinnach’s eyebrows arched together in momentary surprise. “Do you tell me that the renowned Mistress Berdine is truly your pet?”
“Why would you question me? I have bound her and trained her. She knows my agiel as well as I know yours.”
There were gasps of surprise amongst the surrounding Mord’Sith. Any pretense of disinterest was forgotten. Not just anyone would dare to train Mistress Berdine, and this foolish hick from the mountains had done it? But it was Cara who caught Berdine’s arm, fiercely tugging her back into an alcove.
“What are you doing, Berdine?”
“She only told the truth.”
“If she trained you, it’s because you let her.” Cara was fierce, but she could not understand.
“That’s my business.”
“She’s going to challenge her mistress.”
“I believe she will win. Don’t you?”
The fox-woman was speaking again. “But am I not your mistress? What’s yours by rights belongs to me.”
“Not her.”
Berdine let the warmth of the words flow through her. They were like poetry. Cara gave her a sullen glare.
“I know that smile. You’re playing a game.”
“I’m playing to win.”
“Win what?”
“Freedom,” Berdine said softly. “The only thing worth fighting for.”
The fox-haired woman’s face twisted in scorn. “You dare deny me?”
“I must.”
Mistress Sinnach lashed out, but Raina dropped under the blow, sweeping out her leg and knocking her off balance. Her Mistress recovered, and readied herself, pulling out her agiel. And then the battle began in earnest.
It was a fury that enveloped the floor, that rose to a furor. Mistress Sinnach was experienced, she was an older Mord’Sith, one of the ones who had survived. And she had survived in madness and savagery, like so many of them did. She took pleasure in the power of her strikes, and Raina was like a leaf, battered by the wind. Berdine could not bear to watch, but could not bear to look away. But then Cara, standing beside her, hissed in a breath. “Do you see it?”
“What?” Her eyes dropped to Raina’s feet, the light weaving pattern she was making on the floor, each time a blow seemed to connect, she was already moving, already had shifted. “Oh.”
And then she closed the distance, and, like she taught, it was over in a moment.
Raina’s Mistress was on the floor and not getting up. The gathered Mord’Sith were watching silently. Berdine felt eyes flicking to her, but she didn’t move. It wasn’t her place. She waited. Raina looked over, meeting her eyes. They were hot and hungry and furious, and Berdine bowed her head. It was fine, she tried to project, anything was fine. This was her choice. She could abandon her, ignore her. It was nothing she could blame her for.
And then Raina’s hand was on her throat, forcing her down to her knees. Berdine resisted for a moment, surprised, and then bent, kneeling in submission.
“How dare you make me fight for you?”
“I’m sorry, Mistress.” Raina struck her across the face.
“You are my pet, you make no claims on me!”
Raina jerked open the laces at the back of her neck, dragging it open. Berdine stiffened as her back was revealed, and Raina repressed a small gasp. The marks she had left, scabbing over, already healing, had been reopened, packed with acid and salt, until they were raised red scars.
The Mord’Sith read the name written on Berdine’s back, and they accepted it. And that was all they had to know.
(Raina, on the other hand, when they were in private, proceeded to slap her multiple times, and yell at her, and generally inquire why she had done such a disgusting thing to her back. Berdine didn’t really try to defend herself, just laughed, backing up, and dropped onto the bed.
“I didn’t want it to just fade away.”
“I hate you,” Raina said, and kissed her.)
* * *
Quintia is beautiful to many. To me she is fair, tall
and straight: This I thus alone concede.
But beautiful? I deny it: for nothing is made attractive,
when in the body there is not even an iota of wit.
Lesbia is beautiful. She is not only the most beautiful of all,
but she has also stolen every other woman’s charms.
Part 13