Steel in an Alley
She heard steel first. Not music, not cutlery — the particular metallic scrape of a blade clearing a sheath — and then a woman’s voice, sharp with fear rather than performance: “Get away from me.”
Hailesa’s hand found her sword before she’d finished turning toward the sound. A narrow lane branched off the market, people moving past its mouth without a glance — whether they hadn’t noticed or had simply learned not to, she couldn’t tell, and didn’t have time to wonder further. She crossed into it and found the alley behind, and four men, and one woman backed against brick in a dark blue cloak that did nothing to hide expensive clothing beneath it, her hair coming loose from its pins. One man had her wrist. Another held a knife.
Fourteen days into her holiday and this was where it had led. Of course it was.
“Excuse me,” Hailesa said.
Every head turned. The knife-wielder’s mouth curled. “Keep walking.”
She looked past him to the woman instead. “Are you acquainted with these gentlemen?”
“No.”
“Excellent.” The man holding her wrist tightened his grip at that, told her again to leave, and Hailesa looked at his hand and then at him and said, quite reasonably, “Release her,” which he found funny enough to laugh at, and so did the other two. The woman didn’t. She was watching Hailesa with wide, startled eyes, as if trying to work out what kind of trouble had just walked into a worse one.
“This isn’t your concern,” the knife-wielder said, stepping closer.
“Unfortunately, you’ve made it my concern.” He raised the blade. Hailesa drew her sword, and the sound of it changed the alley completely — not because the weapon was impressive, though it was, pale Grosvenor steel with fine silver channels etched along the fuller, but because two of the men had gone still in a way that suggested they recognized what they were looking at. She’s noble, one muttered. Foreign, said another. Hailesa smiled politely. “Both.”
The knife-wielder swore and lunged, badly. She stepped once, turned, caught his wrist against her guard until the knife dropped, and put her elbow into his jaw hard enough to end the conversation. The second man charged and met her boot at the knee — something gave with an unpleasant sound, and he went down screaming while she winced and said, entirely sincere, “Sorry.” The third released the woman’s wrist and reached for her instead; blue-white light flared across Hailesa’s fingers as a reinforcement sigil caught his arm mid-grab, and she used his own momentum to put him into the wall hard enough that he didn’t get up. The fourth man looked at his three companions on the ground, made the only sensible decision of the evening, and ran.
She put her boot lightly on the wrist of the first man as he tried to rise. “Don’t.” He stopped. “Excellent.” Then, to the woman still pressed against the brick: “Are you injured?”
The woman only stared at her, and for a moment Hailesa wondered if the fright had left her unable to speak. Then: “That was incredible.”
“You were attacked.”
“I noticed.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No. I’m certain,” she added, before Hailesa could ask again, and pushed off the wall to prove it — cloak torn at one shoulder, wrist reddened, otherwise intact. Good. Hailesa sheathed her sword.
“You’re a mage-knight,” the woman said, and when Hailesa admitted she was, only technically, having graduated two weeks earlier, the woman’s mouth fell open. “Two weeks? You did that two weeks out of academy?” One of the groaning men on the ground seemed to take exception to this and got a glance from Hailesa that silenced him. “They weren’t particularly skilled,” Hailesa said, and the woman laughed — not politely, but hard enough to need both hands over her mouth, delighted in a way that had nothing to do with the danger she’d just been standing in the middle of.
“I’m sorry,” she managed. “I’m sorry, you just — ” a gesture at the wreckage of men on the ground — “you apologized when you broke his knee.”
“I didn’t intend to break it.”
“That somehow makes it better.”
Hailesa wasn’t entirely certain it did, but before she could argue the point, boots sounded from the street and a squad of city guards poured into the alley, weapons drawn, their captain taking in the scene — four men accounted for in various states of consciousness, one missing entirely, a foreign noblewoman with her sword sheathed and her hands folded — with an expression that suggested this was not, for him, an unusual Thursday.
“My lady,” he said to Hailesa, and then, not looking at her at all, to the other woman: “Where are your guards?”
“Elsewhere.”
“Where?”
“I’m not entirely certain.”
The captain inhaled slowly, the particular breath of a man revisiting several life choices at once, and Hailesa looked between the two of them. “You know each other.”
That got her a strangled laugh from the captain and a hand extended from the other woman instead, entirely unbothered. “I’m Iridessa.”
“Hailesa.”
“Hailesa,” Iridessa repeated, testing the shape of it. “Foreign.”
“Yes.”
“Where from?”
“Rethane.”
“I’ve never been.” Her eyes brightened at that, and she was still asking questions — why here, why now, was tonight’s outcome usual for her — when the guard captain finally interrupted to insist she needed to go home. Iridessa’s face fell instantly. “I haven’t finished shopping.” “You were nearly kidnapped.” “I was not kidnapped.” “You were in the process of being kidnapped.” “That’s different,” she said, with total conviction, and the captain looked briefly at the sky as if hoping for intervention from somewhere higher than himself.
Hailesa found, against her better judgment, that she liked this woman enormously — possibly, she reflected, because watching someone else generate an administrative crisis was a novel and refreshing experience.
“Where are you staying?” Iridessa asked.
“The Aurelian.”
“Wonderful.”
“My lady,” the captain said, with the weary patience of a man who had had this exact conversation before, “perhaps don’t interrogate the foreign noblewoman who just rescued you.”
“I’m not interrogating her, I want to send her something.”
Hailesa raised a hand. “That isn’t necessary.”
“It absolutely is. I owe you at least one man’s worth of gratitude.”
“One man’s worth?”
“The other three barely counted.” Hailesa glanced at the unconscious one and conceded the point was fair, which made Iridessa grin and reach for the ring on her finger — a gesture Hailesa immediately waved off, until Iridessa clarified, amused, that she wasn’t handing it over, only showing her the crest. A silver stag beneath a crown, turned to catch the lantern light.
Hailesa knew that crest. Of course she did — she’d studied Alyuran heraldry the way she’d studied everything else, thoroughly and long before she needed it. House Edan. One of the kingdom’s oldest ducal lines, royal blood through the last dynasty, three provinces under military authority, currently held by Grand Duke Rhidian Edan.
She looked back at Iridessa, and the guard captain’s expression confirmed it before either woman spoke.
“Lady Iridessa Edan,” Iridessa said, with the particular satisfaction of someone who enjoyed watching a piece land.
Fourteen days in Alyura, and Hailesa’s brother had specifically told her not to start an international incident. This probably didn’t count. Probably. “You’re the Grand Duke’s sister.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Does your brother know you’re here?”
Iridessa’s expression answered that well enough on its own, and Hailesa sighed. “Oh dear.”
“You sound like Captain Maros.”
“Captain Maros seems sensible.”
“He’s terribly dull.”
“I’ve known him three minutes and already disagree,” Hailesa said, which earned her a vindicated look from the captain and a glare from Iridessa, who recovered fast enough to promise — over the captain’s attempt to hurry her toward the street — that a proper invitation would follow, whether Hailesa wanted one or not. “You really don’t need to—” “I want to,” Iridessa said, and Hailesa paused on that word longer than she meant to. Not obligation. Want. She was beginning to understand the difference better than she used to.
“All right.”
“Good.” Iridessa let herself be steered three steps toward the street before turning back. “Hailesa. Don’t leave Vareya.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Excellent,” Iridessa said, and vanished into the crowd surrounded by guards, leaving Hailesa alone in the alley with three groaning men, a dropped knife, and the distant, unbothered sound of the market continuing exactly as it had before any of this happened. She checked her pocket. The little green glass dragon had survived intact. Good.
She made it two streets before realizing she had no idea where she was — for the first time in her life, lost somewhere without having first memorized the route — and instead of the irritation she expected, found herself laughing out loud on a strange corner while a passing couple gave her a wide, wary berth. It took twenty minutes to find a carriage.
Back at the hotel, she set the glass animals on the desk, unbuckled her sword, and finally opened tomorrow’s itinerary — 8:00, breakfast; 9:00, Royal Museum; 11:00, cathedral district — before crossing out the entire page and writing, at the top, four words that struck her, once written, as faintly appalling.
Tomorrow: See what happens.
She smiled at it anyway, and went to bed.
• • •
At almost exactly the same hour, three districts away, Lady Iridessa Edan was escorted through the doors of the Edan residence to find a tall man in black waiting at the top of the staircase, arms folded, his expression composed with the specific calm of someone who has already decided how the next five minutes will go and is merely waiting to confirm it.
Captain Maros stopped. Every guard behind him stopped. Iridessa stopped.
The man’s gaze moved over her torn cloak, then her bruised wrist, then settled on Maros.
“Explain.”
Iridessa smiled, bright and entirely unrepentant. “Rhidian.”
His expression didn’t move. “Iridessa.”
“I made a friend.”
Grand Duke Rhidian Edan closed his eyes, and somewhere in the silence that followed, Captain Maros quietly decided he would rather have stayed in the alley.