Sarah Brennan - The Demon’s Surrender

Sin went around to Lydie’s table and tossed her braid over her shoulder, trying for a slight air of glamour. It never hurt a kid to have a cool older sister.

“Having fun?” she asked.

“Sure,” said Lydie, stowing away books and pencil case. Sin put a hand flat against her thin little back in case a hug would be going too far, and Lydie leaned into it a tiny bit. “Alan’s here,” she added in a tone of inquiry but with bright eyes. Sin was instantly very glad Alan had come in.

“Well, he was going up to the hill anyway, and when he heard I was picking you up, obviously he wanted to come along.”

Lydie went off to grab her coat from the cloakroom, and Sin went back to the teacher, who was standing with Alan, apparently deep in conversation.

“… mother and stepfather died in a car accident a while ago,” she heard him say in a confidential tone, and heard the teacher murmur sympathetically. “Their guardian’s a little elderly. It’s a challenge, of course, but Cynthia picks up a lot of the slack.”

“I do what?” Sin asked brightly, deciding that she had not heard anything else he’d said.

Alan gave her a slightly wary look, and she took his arm and squeezed it to show that she was impressed. It was a good lie: The teacher won over to Lydie’s side, the adroit mention of a stepfather meaning that there would never be a question of how she and Lydie were related, and neither parents nor guardian would ever be expected. Sin planned to remember exactly how he’d said it, but she doubted it would have quite the same effect.

“And you’re…” the teacher began inquiringly.

“Alan,” he said, and he shook her hand. “Friend of the family.”

There were not so many hillwalkers on a weekday afternoon in October, but Sin took Alan out to a field near where the Market wagons were assembled anyway, where people would be discouraged by all the don’t-notice-us charms and inclined to overlook whatever was going on without exactly knowing why.

Unfortunately, this meant that when she was setting up targets and Alan was trying out different bows the rest of the Market decided to wander by and take an interest. Jonas started to shoot in order to impress Chiara. Phyllis came and told Alan she hoped he was eating right, and Sin had to hide her smile behind her quiverful of arrows.

“Can I borrow him for a moment, Phyllis?” she asked after she was done grinning like a fool. “I promise I’ll return him. I know he’d be devastated if I didn’t.”

Alan gave her a reproachful look. Sin gave him a dazzling smile and a longbow.

She’d changed out of her school uniform into jeans and a bandanna. It was mostly for practicality but partly to see if being the daughter of the Market—someone who the older ones still sometimes called by her father’s childhood nickname of Thea—was the role Alan would warm to rather than Sin the dancer or Cynthia the schoolgirl. It was funny, which presentations of herself boys sometimes went for.

He hadn’t seemed to notice, though, so she’d decided to be all business.

“This is your most traditional kind of bow,” Sin said. “Not allowed at the Olympics. Pretty difficult to shoot. Best one if you want to kill people. I figured you’d like it.”

“I do like a challenge,” said Alan. “Though I weep for my Olympic dreams.”

He turned the longbow over in his hands as if it was a musical instrument, gentle and a little curious, the same way he touched everything. Then he laid it down on the grass, shrugged off his shirt so he was in only a T-shirt, and slid on a shooting glove. He picked the bow back up again.

“Okay,” he said. “Show me.”

“Right,” said Sin. “So—feet about a shoulder’s width apart, do what you need to do to be steady.”

She didn’t exactly know how to position someone whose balance was necessarily always off, and she was mortified to realize she was a bit flustered as well. There was obviously something to the way the Victorians had kept women all covered up so guys swooned at the sight of an ankle. Sin saw boys in T-shirts every hour of the day, but she’d never seen Alan in one. It struck her more than it really should have.

He wasn’t coiled with muscle like his brother, but he was lean when Sin had thought he was thin, shoulders strong, back a taut arch like the bow. If it hadn’t been for his leg, Sin would’ve thought he looked like a dancer.

Sin rested a hand on his waist and checked he was steady, fingers brushing over cotton and the edge of a hipbone. She made a mental note that it was possibly time for her to find a boyfriend.

“So you nock the arrow in the bow, like so. Firmly on the bowstring,” she said, and put her palm against his elbow. “Bring the elbow of your drawing arm up high.”

Alan was so much taller than she was that correcting the position of his drawing arm and trying to get some idea of his line of sight was pretty difficult. Sin had to lean in against him to do it, a bit too aware of his body against hers.

“Don’t,” Alan demanded, his voice tight.

“I wasn’t—,” Sin began furiously, and then realized that she’d been leaning her weight against someone with a bad leg. “I didn’t mean to,” she said quickly. “I’m sorry.”

“Not to worry,” Alan said, his voice a little too smooth, trying to let them slide past this moment as fast as they could. “What do I do now?”

Sin came around to his side, skirting him a little more widely than she had to. She saw him register that out of the corner of his eye and wanted to explain that she didn’t want to hurt him again, that was all, but she doubted that would help.

“Find your anchor point.”

“What’s an anchor point?”

“Where the hand is positioned and what the bowstring draws to. Choose a point on your face,” she said, and reached out to press her fingers lightly against the corner of his jaw. “Here, or the corner of your eye, or the corner of your—mouth,” she continued, and was angry with herself for the pause she hadn’t intended. “The anchor point is the most important thing in archery. It affects your draw length and the whole force of your shot stems from it. You have to choose your anchor point and always let the arrow fly from it.”

She withdrew her hand. Alan raised his bow from point to point, his face absorbed, and Sin watched as he settled on the corner of his mouth.

“Then hold, tense.” Sin ran a palm over the muscles of his back. She smiled. “Like that. And adjust aim, concentrate, and release.”

Alan didn’t fumble on the release. He let the arrow slip smooth through his fingers, drawing his hand back and loosing the bow. The arrow just missed its target.

“That really wasn’t bad,” Sin told him honestly.

She was expecting either frustration or pride, but Alan just smiled.

“Could be better.”

He took another arrow and strung it. This time he got it right first try, index fletch at his mouth, arms moving easy and graceful and sending the arrow in flight.

It hit the target, though just barely.

“Okay, that was actually good.”

Alan smiled. There was still nothing on his face but good humor and determination.

“Thanks,” he said. “Now can you teach me how to hit the bull’s-eye?”

Alan kept practicing, his draw getting smoother and smoother though his arms must have been killing him. Lydie and Toby were actually being very well-behaved, since he talked to them and they seemed to feel it was a great treat to sit and watch him.

At this point Sin’s role as teacher consisted of a few pieces of advice and a steady stream of insults and insinuations about how impressed Phyllis was going to be, so she sat back on the bank with her arm around Lydie and watched.