Krige spun around, startled, and she saw the dagger in his hand, the blade out of the scabbard, the edges of the dark Firenzcian steel glinting. His mouth opened in an “O” of surprise, and his face colored as he realized that he was still holding the weapon.
“Kriege,” she said. “Put that down. Carefully now. Your vatarh would be terribly angry if he saw you with that.”
The nine year old’s eyes widened. She saw his lower lip start to tremble. “I’m not angry with you, Kriege. Just put it down.”
He did so, a little too hastily, so that the blade clattered against the wood and rattled the boxes there. She slid forward quickly and grabbed the dagger, sliding it back into its well-used scabbard. Kriege watched her movements: he watched everything that had to do with things martial-in that, he was unlike his vatarh and more like her own vatarh, who had an obsession for edged weapons and possessed a collection of swords and knives that was the envy of even the museums. Kriege’s true name was Jan-for his vatarh as well as his great-great-vatarh; he’d quickly acquired the nickname “Kriege”-warrior-for his stubborn and colicky personality as an infant. The name had stuck; he was “Kriege” to everyone in the palais. Now it seemed he might be intending to live up to the nickname.
Brie herself had inherited her vatarh’s fascination for weaponry; in fact, she’d first come to her husband’s attention when she’d demonstrated her skill with swordsmanship at a palais affair she’d attended with her vatarh, dueling and defeating a chevaritt who had made a disparaging remark when she’d commented on his weapon. She generally carried a knife somewhere on her person, still.
But this wasn’t her weapon; it was Jan’s. She put the dagger back in the rosewood box where Jan kept it when it wasn’t on his belt, then crouched down in front of Kriege. The boy’s brown, curly locks tumbled over his forehead as he lowered his head, and she lifted his chin with a hand, smiling at him. “You know you aren’t supposed to be in here, don’t you?”
He nodded, once, silently. “And you know you shouldn’t be going through your vatarh’s things, don’t you?”
Another nod. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“What are you sorry for?” The voice came from behind them; Brie looked over her shoulder to see Jan standing in the door of his own bedroom, still in his nightshirt, his hair bed-tousled. He yawned sleepily, rubbing his bearded face.
Brie hesitated, but Kriege was already slipping past her, grabbing his vatarh’s legs. “Vatarh, it was your dagger. I wanted to see it.. .”
Jan glanced at Brie, still crouching in front of the dresser. She shrugged at him, shaking her head. “My dagger, eh? Well, come here.. .” He took Kriege by the hand and walked to the dresser. He opened the rosewood box and took out the weapon and its soiled, stained sheath. The pommel end of the hilt was decorated with semiprecious stones-Brie suspected that was what had attracted Kriege in the first place-the hilt itself carved from hard blackwood. The blade was double-edged, tapering to a precise and deadly point. An exquisite weapon. With an exquisite history.
Jan held the knife, sheathed, in his hand. “This is what you were after?”
Kriege nodded his head energetically.
“What do you know about this knife?”
“I know you always wear it, Vatarh. I see it on your belt nearly every day. And I know it’s old.”
Jan smiled at Brie over Kriege’s head. “It’s very old,” Brie told him. “It was made for your great-great-great-vatarh Karin when he became Hirzg, almost seventy years ago, and he gave it to your great-great-vatarh Jan when he was young man, and Jan gave it to.. .” She stopped, glancing at Jan, who shrugged. “… your great-matarh Allesandra.” She didn’t mention that Allesandra had used the dagger to kill the Westlander magician Mahri. Reputedly, both Karin and the first Jan had also killed someone with the same dagger. Her Jan, too, had found a reason to feed the steel with an enemy’s blood-when his sword had broken in the midst of a battle against the army of Tennshah. “And Allesandra gave it to your vatarh.”
Kreige’s eyes had gone wider and wider as Brie had given the history of the weapon. “Will you give it to me one day, Vatarh?” he asked Jan, and then his face clouded and he scowled. “Or will stupid Elissa get it ’cause she’s the oldest?”
Brie stifled a laugh as Jan opened his mouth, then clamped it shut again. “No one is going to get it until they’re much older,” he said finally. “It’s not a toy or a plaything.”
“I want a knife of my own,” Kriege persisted. “I’m old enough. I won’t cut myself. I’d be very careful.”
“I’m sure you would,” Jan told him. He took a breath, glancing again at Brie, who shook her head slightly. No, she mouthed.
“I’ll tell you what,” Jan said to Kriege. “I’ll tell Rance to have a talk with the weapons master for the Garde, and see if he can give you lessons on the proper handling of a knife. If he tells me you understand and have learned all of his lessons, then perhaps for your next birthday we might talk about something you could wear on state occasions.”
“Oh, thank you, Vatarh!’ Kirege burst out, hugging Jan again. He broke away, then. “I’m going to go tell Elissa and Caelor. They’re going to be so jealous!” He ran from the room, calling for his siblings.
“Don’t,” Jan said, raising a hand as Brie started to speak. “I know what you’re going to say. I know. Elissa will be in here in a few minutes, demanding to know why she can’t have a knife, too, and Caelor will be right after her.”
“And what are you going to tell them?”
“That Caelor needs to wait until he’s as old as Kriege.”
“And Elissa?”
“I think lessons in handling a weapon would be good for her. It’s a skill she may need one day.” He put the knife back in its box, closing the lid. “You don’t agree?”
It’s one of many skills she’ll need, she might have retorted, remembering Mavel cu’Kella, who was by now on her way to relatives in Miscoli. Brie was certain that Jan knew what had happened, and who had sent her away, though neither of them had spoken about it. Jan had come to her room last night, which told her that no one had shared his bed last night. “Sometimes,” she said to him, “you can’t have everything you want. Even the Hirzg.” His gaze rested on her more sharply with that, and she added: “Or Hirzgin. If that should be her fate.”
“Indeed,” he said. “Still, I think it might be good for her-and for her to take those lessons with Kreige. They might start getting along better.”
He lifted his head. They both heard the pounding of feet in the hall, the nursemaid calling sleepily and futilely after them (yes, she would need to speak to the woman, and perhaps replace her), and Elissa’s voice: “Vatarh! Where are you, Vatarh?”
Jan sighed, and Brie put her hand on his. “She’s your daughter,” she said. “Like you, when she wants something, she finds a way to get it. You can’t blame her for that.”
He might have answered, but Elissa came bursting into the room through the servants’ door in the next breath, with her younger brother Caelor trailing behind. “Vatarh, it’s not fair!” she exclaimed, stamping a foot.
“I’ll leave you to answer that one,” Brie told Jan, chuckling. “I’m going to call the domestiques de chambre to help me dress. I need to have a chat with the nursemaid…”
Varina ca’Pallo
“ Here it is,” Pierre Gabrelli said handing the device to Varina. “I hope this works for you,” he added with a wry grin.
She took the device in her hands, marveling. “Pierre, this is gorgeous…” His grin widened.
She’d put together most of the experimental versions of the piece herself, scrounging bits and pieces from here and there in the city and cobbling them together. Her own devices had been functional but ugly and clumsy in the hand. Pierre was a metalworker and artisan as well as a Numetodo. What he had given her wasn’t a crude facsimile of the idea in her head, but a piece of artwork.