I've owned weapons my whole life. Practicing with them since I was five, bouting casually at six, competing by ten. But I'd only ever, ever thought of them as equipment. Thought of fencing as a sport. A noble sport, to be sure. An art, even. But not something that was supposed to hurt. To injure. Not beyond theoccasional bloody nose or scrape from over lunging and falling--well, more than occasional in my case.
A single eye flashes in my memory. And suddenly, I'm back there, in the cold, scrambling, parrying, lunging, feeling the give of flesh against blade?—
I close my eyes, banishing it.
I take a deep breath.
I force myself back.
"Thank you for doing this, Kai," I hear myself say. I open my eyes. "How can I help?"
"Thank me later," Kai says, "because you probably won't feel like it." He tosses me a box cutter, and we get to work.
The first few are jackets—pristine, thick, toothy white fabric—each with one of our surnames andUSAsewn on the back. Then masks, bundled tightly with foam and paper and plastic to keep the mesh intact and un-dented.
"These are lighter," Kai says, hefting one up on his fingertips as if it's a basketball he’s about to spin. "Am I wrong?"
He tosses the mask to me, and I barely manage to catch it before it hits the ground and dents. I balance it in my palm, considering.
"I'm not sure," I say truthfully. "It could be."
"Well, I am sure," Kai says. He motions for it back, and I hand--not throw--it to him. He peers inside to the padding by the cheek of the mask, squinting at a label. "Yeah, look." He points at a tiny inscription. "Next year's model. They gave us a little upgrade." He presses a hand to his heart. "How sweet." He sets the mask on the ground, delicately, for once, and pushes up to stand and open the next box.
"Thank you for doing this," I say.
"Already said that, King." Kai's busy stooping over a box and slicing with the blade. "Get too grateful, and I'm going to get cranky."
"I'm sorry," I say, automatically. "It's just--you're doing such a good job. You thought through all of this. You took all this care--"
"Yeah, yeah. Doesn't everyone care about their gear?” Kai says. He rips open the flaps of the next box and frowns. "Ah, fuck. They sent it all unassembled." He runs a hand through his hair. "I mean, I guess that's better, because who knows what kind of shit could come unsoldered in transit, but?—”
"I don't," I admit.
Kai pauses. "Don't what? Don't know what could come unsoldered?"
"No," I say. "I don't really care about my gear. I mean, not like this. I usually just took what I was given from Father or whichever coach."
"Huh." Kai looks up from the crate. "Well, I guess that's the difference, then."
I frown. "What do you mean?"
He rummages around in the box, starts pulling out blades and handles and pommels. "I mean, if you only have one set of shit, you're going to make sure it's the absolute best and guard it with your life, right?" He shrugs. "There was a long time there where I broke a blade and the blade was broken, period. Unless someone in the club took pity on me and gave me a loaner."
"Ah," I say. "Of course."
We unpack the rest of the box in silence, except for the rustling packing material and the occasional clink of blade on blade.
Kai's not wrong. Itwillbe a lot of work to put all of these back together, and we'll want each man to test his own weapon, obviously. Every fencer should know basic weapon repair, but actually assembling a full armory is a bit of a specialized task. Lanz is pretty good at it, a way to make himself useful as the alternate if he's not actively competing for the day. Callahan,not so much. He's too new. And me, I'm serviceable. Nothing special.
Kai, though.
He’s good.
A few feet away, Kai squints at two grips. "I think we're short one," he says. "You want a French and a pistol, I assume?"
"I wouldn't mind it," I say.
"Yeah, I figured." He pulls a slip of paper from his pocket and scribbles something down. "All right, next one. Can you hand me that--"
