Stephen Hunt - Jack Cloudie

The marine drummers started the rattle of their instruments and the count began. Pasco had the size to make the lashes count alright. Jack got to seven numbing lashes before he passed out, the biting taste of the saliva-soaked cloth fading from his mouth.

‘Where is your mind today?’ demanded the cadet master, cutting left and right with the practice sabre as if he was punishing the air rather than Omar.

‘It is the day for the womb mages to sample his flesh for a new drak to be grown for him,’ called Boulous from the other side of the fencing mat.

The cadet master snorted at Omar. ‘Pray you can honour your sword when your drak is ready for you. It is not a womb mage’s ritual that is on your mind, cadet. Command. Tell.’

‘I was thinking of a girl,’ growled Omar, dripping in sweat from the exercise. ‘A girl I know who was taken by brigands.’

‘Well then,’ said the old swordsman, flicking Omar’s sword up to guard readiness with the tip of his sabre, the position called third tierce. ‘Brigands and guardsmen often meet, and when we do, the business is not much different from ours this morning. Except these brigands will not have Farris Uddin quite so angry at them for running a sword through a cadet’s foolish, mooning guts.’

Omar felt anger rise in him at the old man’s scorn and disrespect for his feelings towards Shadisa. Not taking his eyes off the old swordsman, Omar raised his free hand towards the weapons racked by the practice hall’s walls — swords of all shapes and sizes: sabres, rapiers, longswords, fencing foils, foreign blades. ‘I have mastered your weapons.’

‘Have you then, young fool?’ sneered the cadet master. ‘You are as blind as one of the snake charmers’ nobbled pythons down in the bazaar. Those aren’t weapons in that rack. Your sword is not the weapon. You are the weapon.’ Casting his own sword to the floor, the cadet master went over to the rack and pulled away what Omar had initially taken for part of the frame. He came back with two tall polished wooden sticks just shy of his own height, and tossed one to Boulous, throwing the other one to Omar.

‘What is this?’ demanded Omar. ‘Something for the palace gardeners to grow their beans around?’

‘A lesson,’ said the cadet master. ‘My father was a jinn trader and I grew up travelling with him across the infidel lands. Those bean sticks are what you get when you make duelling with edged weapons a crime for hundreds of years. The Jackelians call them debating sticks, and any Kingdom street rat would be able to stick one right up your sorry arse and make you twist around it as though it was one of their Maypoles.’

Omar felt the heft of the thing, deceptively heavy. Had it been weighted inside with lead?

‘Come on, boy. It’s not a real weapon, is it?’ said the cadet master. ‘Just a little stick. See what you can do against the commander’s retainer. Boulous’s blood runs Kingdom-red, even if his heart is as true a guardsman’s as ever walked this fortress. Have a little prod at each other. Show me your great mastery of my arts.’

Omar struck out at Boulous with the staff, but the retainer was as quick with it as he was with a practice scimitar, ducking back and not even needing to block Omar’s strike. Angered, Omar tried to windmill the staff, turning it and jabbing from multiple angles and directions, but Boulous was able to step around each strike, his boots flowing as though he were dancing. They hadn’t even touched wood yet.

‘Enough, Boulous,’ spat the cadet master. ‘Plant the cadet’s beans for him.’

Boulous swept his staff around, tripping Omar onto the floor before he could attempt to jump or manoeuvre, the flat end of the staff hovering an inch away from his nose.

‘That staff isn’t a weapon,’ the cadet master shouted at Omar on the floor. ‘A sword isn’t a weapon, nor a stick nor a stone. The guardsman is the weapon, and in his hands, so is anything he touches.’ He waved at Boulous. ‘Do I need to press my point, retainer? Shall I show this young fool how to take that staff away from you and give you a few lumps in payment for it?’

Boulous smiled thinly and shook his head. ‘I still remember you laughing at me during our empty hand sessions, cadet master.’

‘A little shame worked well as a spur with you, retainer.’ The cadet master shook his head sadly at Omar. ‘But you learn well enough without it, cadet. I don’t know why, but being a guardsman seems to run in your lazy, skiving blood. Have nothing on your mind when you train with me. Bring me some foolishness about a woman again and I’ll show you where the flat end of the length of infidel wood is meant to be inserted.’

Omar and Boulous bowed and left as the next cadet entered to receive his punishment.

Omar had imagined that his first visit outside the environs of the guardsmen’s towering fortress, venturing into the Jahan Palace below, would have been an occasion to partake of the legendary sensual pleasures of the Caliph Eternal’s bounty. Instead, Omar’s passage down the monstrous granite staircase that had been carved into the rock face in the shadow of the fortress was filled with dread. It was the retainer’s warning that had done it for Omar — that the womb mages who would sample his flesh to create a drak for him were bound up with the Sect of Razat. Omar had escaped the extermination of his house using the last of his slave’s luck, and now he had none left to protect him from the dark sorceries of his enemies.

What if the womb mages gave him a deadly disease when they sampled his flesh? Something to leave him gasping and rolling around the cells of the fortress in a week’s time, when the sect’s involvement in his murder could be denied? Or they might twist and warp his body in revenge for escaping the sack of Haffa. He remembered the work of the womb mages back in his hometown: creating changeling viruses to heal and cure, or curse and kill, depending on whose coin had been taken in payment. How welcome would Omar be among the ranks of the guardsmen if they found him growing a third leg or an extra set of arms one morning?

Omar felt a fraud every step of the way down to the great domes below, the wind whipping his cloak about his black leather armour. Even the presence of the retainer Boulous to lead the way and lend authority to his presence seemed only a salve to the situation.

‘A cadet is still invested with the authority of the order,’ said Boulous, as if sensing Omar’s mood. ‘You are a custodian of the Caliph Eternal’s law inside the palace.’

‘I will be quick to sever the hands of any courtiers I find fighting unlicensed duels,’ said Omar. ‘What did Master Uddin mean up on the walls when he warned you not to repeat what you said about the grand marshal? It is clear the grand marshal has lived a long life. Who would object to hearing that?’

‘It is not his age,’ said Boulous. ‘It is how the grand marshal came by it — or rather the speed by which he came by it. Until two years ago, the grand marshal was subject to the caliph’s bounty, you understand? He was given the drug that blesses a man with eternal youth. The grand marshal might have lived to be three hundred years old, but now its blessing is his no more and his true years advance fast on him.’

‘More politics,’ said Omar.

‘We are not in favour, Cadet Barir,’ said the retainer. ‘The guardsmen are traditionalists, and we live in an age of progress. That is why the Caliph Eternal’s new armada of the heavens was given to the control of the navy’s admirals, salt-stained fools who know more about tides and sounding depths than they do of aerial navigation in the face of sandstorms.’

‘There was an old nomad I was friends with at home,’ said Omar. ‘He would have shrugged his shoulders and said such a misfortune must be god’s will.’