“I am a Gentleman Bastard,” he muttered to himself.
It was the longest thirty feet of his brief life, that passage between the cold and waiting walls of roses.
He didn’t allow them a single taste of him.
At the center of the garden was a circular courtyard about thirty feet wide; here, two boys roughly Jean’s age were circling one another, rapiers flicking and darting. Another half dozen boys watched uneasily, along with a tall man of late middle age. This man had shoulder-length hair and drooping moustaches the color of cold campfire ashes. His face was like sanded leather, and though he wore a gentleman’s doublet in the same vivid red as the attendants downstairs, he wore it over weather-stained soldier’s breeches and tattered field boots.
There wasn’t a boy at the lesson who didn’t put his master’s clothes to shame. These were sons of the quality, in brocade jackets and tailored breeches, silk tunics and polished imitations of swordsman’s boots; each one also wore a white leather buff coat and silver-studded bracers of the same material; just the thing for warding off thrusts from training weapons. Jean felt naked the instant he stepped into the clearing, and only the threat of the glass roses kept him from leaping back into concealment.
One of the duelists was surprised to see Jean emerge from the garden, and his opponent made good use of that split second of inattention; he deftly thrust his rapier into the meat of the first boy’s upper arm, punching through the leather. The skewered boy let out an unbecoming holler and dropped his blade.
“My lord Maranzalla!” One of the boys in the crowd spoke up, and there was more oil in his voice than there was on a blade put away for storage. “Lorenzo was clearly distracted by the boy who just came out of the garden! That was not a fair strike.”
Every boy in the clearing turned to regard Jean, and it was impossible to guess what soonest ignited their naked disdain: his laborer’s clothing, his pearlike physique, his lack of weapons and armor? Only the boy with a spreading circle of blood on his tunic sleeve failed to stare at him with open loathing; he had other problems. The gray-haired man cleared his throat, then spoke in the deep voice Jean had heard earlier. He seemed amused.
“You were a fool to take your eyes from your opponent, Lorenzo, so in a sense you earned that sting. But it is true, all things being equal, that a young gentleman should not exploit an outside distraction to score a touch. You will both try to do better next time.” He pointed toward Jean without looking at him, and his voice lost its warmth. “And you, boy-lose yourself in the garden until we’ve finished here; I don’t want to see you again until these young gentlemen have left.”
Certain that the fire rising in his cheeks could outshine the sun itself, Jean rapidly scuttled out of sight; several seconds passed before he realized with horror that he had leapt back into the maze of sculpted glass walls without hesitation. Positioning himself a few bends back from the clearing, he stood in mingled fear and self-loathing, and tried to hold himself rigid as the sun’s heat cooked great rivers of sweat out of him.
Fortunately, he hadn’t much longer to wait; the sound of steel on steel faded, and Don Maranzalla dismissed his class. They filed past Jean with their coats off and their jackets open, each boy seemingly at ease with the lethal labyrinth of transparent blossoms. Not one said anything to Jean, for this was Don Maranzalla’s house, and it would be presumptuous of them to chastise a commoner within his domain. The fact that each boy had sweated his silk tunic to near translucency, and that several were red-faced and wobbly with sun-sickness, did little to leaven Jean’s misery.
“Boy,” called the don after the troop of young gentlemen had passed out of the garden and down the stairs, “attend me now.”
Summoning as much dignity as he could-and realizing that most of it was pure imagination-Jean sucked in his wobbling belly and went out into the courtyard once again. Don Maranzalla wasn’t facing him; the don held the undersized training rapier that had recently stung a careless boy’s biceps. In his hands, it looked like a toy, but the blood that glistened on its tip was quite real.
“I, uh, I’m sorry, sir, my lord Maranzalla. I must have come early. I, ah, didn’t mean to distract from the lesson…”
The don turned on his heel, smooth as Tal Verrar clockwork, every muscle in his upper body ominously statue-still. He stared down at Jean now, and the cold scrutiny of those black, squinting eyes gave Jean the third great scare of the afternoon.
He suddenly remembered that he was alone on the roof with a man that had butchered his way into the position he currently held.
“Does it amuse you, lowborn,” the don asked in a serpentine whisper, “to speak before you are spoken to, in a place such as this, to a man such as myself? To a don?”
Jean’s blubbered apology died in his throat with an unmanly choke; the sort of wet noise a clam might make if you broke its shell and squeezed it out through the cracks.
“Because if you’re merely being careless, I’ll beat that habit out of your butter-fat ass before you can blink.” The don strode over to the nearest wall of glass roses, and with evident care slid the tip of the bloodied rapier into one of the blossoms. Jean watched in horrified fascination as the red stain quickly vanished from the blade and was drawn into the glass, where it diffused into a mistlike pink tendril and was carried into the heart of the sculpture. The don tossed the clean sword to the ground. “Is that it? Are you a careless little fat boy sent up here to pretend at arms? You’re a dirty little urchin from the Cauldron, no doubt; some whore’s gods-damned droppings.”
At first the paralysis of Jean’s tongue refused to lift; then he heard the blood pounding in his ears like the crashing of waves on a shore. His fists clenched on some impulse of their own.
“I was born in the North Corner,” he yelled, “and my mother and father were folk of business!”
Almost as soon as he’d finished spitting this out his heart seemed to stop. Mortified, he put his arms behind his back, bowed his head, and took a step backward.
After a moment of weighted silence, Maranzalla laughed loudly and cracked his knuckles with a sound like pine logs popping in a fire.
“You must forgive me, Jean,” he said. “I wanted to see if Chains was telling the truth. By the gods, you do have balls. And a temper.”
“You…” Jean stared at the don, comprehension dawning. “You wanted to make me angry, my lord?”
“I know you’re sensitive about your parents, boy. Chains told me quite a bit about you.” The don knelt on one knee before Jean, bringing them eye to eye, and put a hand on Jean’s shoulder.
“Chains isn’t blind,” said Jean. “I’m not an initiate. And you’re not really…not really…”
“A mean old son-of-a-bitch?”
Jean giggled despite himself. “I, uh…I wonder if I’ll ever meet anyone who is what they seem to be, ever again, my lord.”
“You have. They walked out of my garden a few minutes ago. And I am a mean son-of-a-bitch, Jean. You’re going to hate my miserable old guts before this summer’s out. You’re going to curse me at Falselight and curse me at dawn.”
“Oh,” said Jean. “But…that’s just business.”
“Very true,” said Don Maranzalla. “You know, I wasn’t born to this place; it was a gift for services rendered. And don’t think that I don’t value it…but my mother and father weren’t even from the North Corner. I was actually born on a farm.”
“Wow,” said Jean.