“What was that?” Kai's tone is sharp, but not angry, at least I don't think.
I look back up from my book. Take a deep breath. “I said,” I begin, “you don't turn your back in fencing.”
Kai lifts his chin. “Astutely observed,” he deadpans and grabs the weapon resting by his feet—a saber.
With that resolved, I look back at the page, try to get myself re-immersed in the text. But if I'm being completely honest, and I feel like a traitor to my line of study for even thinking it, the theological work of Peter Abelard is…boring. It's not like the stuff that we read in Emrys’s class, where things are alive and pulsing with urgency, or half-finished and inviting you through a mystery. This is all theory about the nature of the divine and salvation and general hair-splitting that involves a lot of new Latin coinages I have to constantly flip around and look for, and conclusions that don't really have any bearing on anything meaningful. I get the sense that maybe the reason we're assigned this text is because it's so frustrating to translate.
And so my gaze keeps drifting upward, occasionally at first, at every page turn, but then a little more frequently, because…watching Kai is fascinating.
Lunges. Strikes. Thrusts. Jabs. I don’t have to know the terms to know it’s elaborate and exhausting.
And then he stops, panting, and looks at me. “Can I help you?” he asks, dragging a wrist across his forehead.
I sit up straighter. I know he doesn't hate me, or at least, I'm pretty sure he doesn't. Not after what happened after the Candlemas ball. And if he really did hate me, he wouldn't bother with any of this. Certainly not before I elected to come with him here to the salle. But just because we're in a relative detente doesn't mean he seems to actually like me.
At the same time, I'm not just going to let him steamroll over me either.
“No,” I say simply. “I was just watching because it’s…cool.”
Kai studies me for a minute, then snatches a water bottle from the ground, wrenches it open with his teeth, and funnels some into his mouth. “Yeah,” he says, wiping his lips. “It is cool. It's swords. They're cool.”
He goes back en garde for emphasis and flicks his wrist at the target, neatly hitting it square. “Try doing that shit in golf.”
I snort.
Kai frowns. “What?”
“Just…golf?” I say. “That’s random. What did golf ever do to you?”
Kai keeps his eyes intent on the target, whipping his arm around at the elbow and swatting it with the blade.
Swat, swat, swat. “Nothing in particular.” Swat. “Just another rich kid's sport that requires a lot of equipment.” He shrugs. Swat. “First thing that came to mind.”
A thought occurs to me, one that's absolutely none of my fucking bustiness, but that I can't resist wanting to know. “How'd you get started fencing, anyway?”
I know some of the origin story. From Morgan. The part where Kai joined the family, anyway. Everything that happenedafter that. At least the broad strokes. But before that, with Kai, it's a blank.
“Why? Because I have that white trash look about me?” Kai says. Swat. He lowers his saber. Stares me down.
I stare back.
“Because it looks like you were born doing it,” I answer.
Something shifts in Kai's gaze. He tugs at his glove, looks away. “I got started as a kid. Y8. That's Youth 8. We had a program in the rec center in Chicago. Just plastic weapons and shit. Only masks, no jackets or wires, but I kind of got obsessed with it. I guess I was good at it too, but mostly it was just…
“…cool?”
I offer. An actual smile flickers across Kai's mouth.
“Yeah.” He looks back at the target. “So they took notice of me and let me bust out for club practice in the suburbs. It was like two fucking hours each way. But it's not like I had anywhere else to be, so. And then I just kind of kept winning. I used club gear, until I earned a little money, then I bought my own shit, and then I beat a certain Kingston Pendragon in the Y12 foil at the Midwest Youth Invitational and—” He shrugs, lunges. The tip of his blade bends into the plush of the target. “The rest is fucking history.”
“Wow,” I say. “Just like that. What a coincidence.”
Kai's face goes dark. “Yeah,” he says. “A real fucking coincidence.”
I watch him a moment longer. “Foil,” I repeat. “But you fence saber now.”
“Yeah. Because that's what we needed.” Kai looks straight ahead, lunges a second time. He resets, shrugging. “And I'm the best at it. But I'd argue I'm the best at foil, too.” He slashes right at the dummy's head, almost knocks it clear off its wooden shoulders. “Fuck,” he mutters, and steps back, shaking his hand out.
