We rode a few miles out of town, far from the lights and people, far from all the trappings of civilisation. The night air was cool and made me shiver. I was uncomfortably aware of just how quickly I’d got used to hot meals and a soft bed. Of course, not everyone is as easily shamed by an attachment to luxury.
‘I want a bath,’ Reichis grumbled, clambering from my right shoulder to my left and back again as if that would somehow convince us to turn back.
‘What’s he moanin’ about?’ Ferius asked.
‘You don’t want to know,’ I said, trying to spare Reichis the embarrassment. I needn’t have bothered.
‘I want a damned bath,’ he repeated. ‘Oh, and butter biscuits. Lots of butter biscuits. And tell Seneira’s father not to short us this time.’
‘You do realise they’re their butter biscuits, don’t you? I thought squirrel cats were supposed to be thieves and murderers, not spoiled brats.’
Reichis went dead silent, and I realised I’d made a huge mistake. He hopped from my shoulder to the front of the saddle and turned to stare at me, his eyes full of deadly intent and his fur suddenly black as night save for menacing grey stripes. ‘Say that again,’ he said in a soft growl. ‘Say it twice, just so I can be sure I heard you right.’
This was not going to end well. ‘I didn’t mean—’
‘Hey, kid,’ Ferius said, catching my eye. Normally she ignores Reichis when he gets like this, but now she was grinning, ‘Want to see something funny?’
‘Um … I really don’t think you should—’
Reichis turned and snarled at her. She ignored him. Well, not exactly ignored.
‘My, oh my,’ she said, gazing across from her horse. ‘Will you look at that fur? So sleek and shiny. Why, it’s like watching molten silver flow along a mighty river.’
‘Well, obviously,’ he said, now suddenly engrossed in inspecting the claws of his right forepaw.
‘And those claws! Each one like a deadly blade forged by a master Berabesq swordsmith!’
Reichis’s hackles had all but settled down now as he lifted his chin and his whiskers twitched. ‘Well, at least she’s not entirely blind. Guess she can keep her eyeballs for now.’
But Ferius wasn’t done. ‘And what muscles. Just look at those haunches! Why, I bet you turn the eye of every female in the world when you go by.’
Reichis seemed a trifle uncomfortable at the insistent praise. ‘Fine, fine. I’m beautiful. Kellen, tell the Argosi to give it a rest now.’
But she didn’t. ‘And don’t even get me started on that muzzle.’ She leaned over, peering at him. ‘Like a lion, only more handsome. Noble, courageous …’
Reichis gave a twitch and shook himself. I noticed something odd happening to his fur. The black becoming paler, the silver stripes fading away. ‘Okay, make her shut up now, Kellen.’
‘See those eyes? Full of intelligence. You can see it. And wisdom too. They’re like deep pools of captured moonlight, beautiful as any gemstone. Diamonds really – that’s what those are.’
Reichis’s fur was shifting colour, the pale grey becoming white, then the white something else … a kind of rosy pink that bloomed all over him. ‘Damn it!’ he swore.
Ferius broke out laughing. ‘Works every time.’
‘What did you do to him?’ I asked.
She pointed at his coat, which was now almost entirely pink. ‘They can make their fur change colour to match their surroundings, but it also reacts to their moods. This is what squirrel cats look like when you make them blush.’
‘Hell!’ Reichis growled, nearly falling off the horse as he kept shifting around to examine his coat. His face was scrunched in deep concentration. He looked like he was desperately trying to go to the bathroom. ‘Go back to black, damn it!’ He glanced back at the still-pink fur on his flanks. ‘I’m iron. I’m a monster. I’m the darkness of endless night!’ He looked up at me helplessly. ‘It’s changing back, right?’
I considered how best to answer, then remembered that in the months since Reichis had reluctantly agreed to become my ‘business partner’, he’d taken every opportunity to mock me, steal from me and, on more than one occasion, bite me. ‘You’re still kind of pink,’ I said.
As Reichis frantically tried to make his fur change back, Ferius said, ‘Here endeth the lesson, kid.’
‘Lesson in what?’
She pulled her horse to a stop and dismounted smoothly. ‘You said you wanted to learn the way I walk the Argosi path.’
I got off my horse and pointed at Reichis. ‘That? That’s the path of the wild daisy?’
‘Yep.’
‘So, when somebody decides they want to kill me, I should just compliment them into submission?’
She grinned. ‘Well, that or dance with them.’ She lit a small campfire and then set off for a flat patch in the desert and motioned for me to join her. ‘Come on, kid. Time to learn the second talent.’
‘Rosie said the second talent of the Argosi was defence.’
‘Words, kid. You really want to get hung up on words?’
Okay, that made an odd kind of sense to me. Ferius never did seem to like using the language of violence, so maybe she just had her own terms for the seven talents of the Argosi, the same as she did for things like the ‘way of water’ and the ‘way of thunder’.
I went over to join her and got into what I figured was a decent enough fighting stance, excited that I was finally going to learn Argosi fighting. Then I saw the smirk on her face and my optimism turned to panic. ‘Wait … You did mean “dance” as a metaphor, right? As in, “Hey, fella, you dance with me, you dance with death”?’
‘I mean “dance” as in dance, kid.’
‘But …’ Here’s something most people don’t know about the Jan’Tep: we don’t dance. Not ever. There isn’t a single form of dance practised in our culture. A mage has no use for dancing. Besides, it’s unseemly.
Reichis shot me an evil grin, delighted that now it was my turn to be embarrassed. ‘Oh, this is going to be good.’
Ferius gestured for me to take her hand in mine and put my other on her waist. ‘Now, you can find hundreds of styles of dance among the different folks on this continent, but they all boil down to one of seventeen basic forms. We’re going to start with the easiest, which is the chadelle.’
Her proximity made me uncomfortable. The only time one Jan’Tep adult gets this close to another is if they’re about to be intimate. Ferius was probably twenty years older than me and, well, just thinking about this dancing thing was making me exceedingly nervous. I was about to back away when Reichis chittered, ‘He’s going to chicken out!’
‘Shut up,’ I said, and clasped Ferius’s hand tighter. There was no way I was going to lose face in front of an animal that greets other members of its species by sniffing their butts. ‘What do I do now?’ I asked Ferius.
‘Just follow the music.’
‘What music?’
Ferius gave a whistle, just a single, clear note at first, like a flute player testing their instrument. Then without warning she went into a tune, each note playing up and down a scale that was unfamiliar to me as she steered me around the dusty desert ground. The Jan’Tep have music, of course, but it’s mostly for funerals or court events or things like that. This tune was different. Faster, almost jaunty. I was just starting to make sense of it when I felt myself fumbling and Ferius had to hold me up until I got my feet back under control. ‘Can’t we go slower?’ I asked.
‘This is slow, kid.’ She kept dancing even as she paused in her whistling, forcing me to imagine the tune was still playing in my head. ‘Just relax,’ she went on. ‘Let your feet find the movements on their own. The Argosi believe that every dance exists in the body of all living things, just waiting to be allowed out.’
Reichis chittered gleefully. ‘Hey, Kellen, the only dance I see in your body looks a lot like the death spasm of the long-tailed sand mole!’
‘Shh,’ Ferius warned him. She couldn’t have known what he said, but I guess he’s got a certain tone to him when he’s mocking me. ‘One more sound out of you and I’ll tell you a squirrel cat story that’ll make your fur go pink for a month.’
My furry nemesis temporarily chastened, I turned my attention back to the dance. The problem wasn’t just the movements, but catching the rhythm. I’d always thought of my people as graceful; even as kids we’re taught to stand and walk with perfect elegance, to weave our hands fluidly through the air when we cast our spells. Whenever my friends and I had seen the Daroman or Gitabrian traders who passed through our city dancing outside their caravans at night, we’d always mocked their barbaric gyrations. Panahsi used to joke that we ought to call the healers because our guests were having seizures. But out here? Under the starry sky in a wild and untamed countryside? I was the ungainly one. The dance felt right. Natural. I was just terrible at it.
‘I can’t do this,’ I said, pulling away.
Ferius refused to let go. ‘You’ll find the flow soon enough, you just need to let it come to you. It’s probably no different than those funny gestures you make with your hands when you work that Jan’Tep magic of yours.’
‘It’s not the same at all. Somatic shapes let you cast spells.’
She grinned and gave me a sly wink. ‘Let me tell you something, kid – there’s no better spell a man can learn than how to dance proper.’
I’m not stupid. I got that she was implying that women like a man who knows how to dance. No doubt in the countries outside my homeland that mattered, but it didn’t do me any good. The only girl I cared about ‘dancing’ with was Nephenia, and she was back in my city, betrothed to my former best friend, learning to become a mage, living the life I’d hoped for myself, probably forgetting about me in the process.
I pulled away from Ferius and ended up stumbling back several steps before I finally caught my balance. ‘This is dumb.’
‘What’s the problem, kid?’
I didn’t want to answer. I didn’t want to tell her that my legs were already tired and my face hurt where Freckles had punched me. I didn’t want her to know that my hands were starting to shake and any minute now I was going to start bawling like a two-year-old who can’t go to sleep because he’s afraid of the dark.
Except, I was afraid of the dark. I was afraid of who might be waiting for me out there. ‘People are trying to kill me – do you not get that? I don’t need to learn how to dance. I need to learn how to fight!’
‘Hit me.’
‘What?’
She took off her hat and set it on the ground. ‘Come on, kid. Hit me.’
Reichis trotted over. ‘This I’ve got to see.’
‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘You’ve trained in fighting your whole life. You don’t think I know you’ll just toss me aside?’
‘True enough, but I ain’t gonna do anything you haven’t done this past hour.’ As if to prove it, she put one hand up at shoulder height, palm facing in, and the other just above her hip like she was dancing with an invisible partner.
I was angry enough to take a run at her, but I kept my cool. Instead of rushing in like the clumsy oaf she was planning on turning me into, I pretended. At the last instant, I shuffled to the right, going for her unprotected side.
Ferius sent me flying like an empty grain sack.
She was still dancing with her invisible partner when I got back up, whistling that cheerful tune of hers and twirling around by herself. I made myself stop and watch for a few seconds until I could recognise the pattern of her movements. This time when I attacked, I didn’t go for where she was, but where she was going to be.
I felt the air rush by my cheeks as she sent me sailing past her a second time. When I turned back she still looked as if she was dancing by herself. This didn’t seem like any kind of martial art. Hell, it didn’t even look particularly graceful. ‘How are you doing this?’ I asked.
‘Come on, kid. One more try.’
Fine. But this time you’re in for a surprise.
The problem was that I kept trying to play by her rules, but she had the advantage of all her training and experience, so I decided it was time to cheat. As I got to my feet, I scooped up a handful of sand. When I made my run for her this time, I held out my left hand as if I was going to make a grab for her, but at the last second I threw the sand from my other hand right at her face. It’s going to work this time, I thought. The instant the sand hit her, she’d be thrown off and I could then push her with my other hand. Not hard of course, just a light touch to show I’d outsmarted her.
I was so focused on her movements that I saw every detail play out before me. The sand flew from my outstretched hand towards her face, but somehow she was already leaning back as if her phantom partner were dipping her as part of the dance. The sand went right over her head with barely a grain touching her cheek. I was still trying to figure out how that was possible when I felt her hand take mine as she turned. I hadn’t even realised how off balance I was from tossing the sand and now she was using that against me.
As I went tumbling again, I caught a glimpse of her face. She was smiling. It wasn’t a mean-spirited smile or the grim smirk of someone engaged in combat even as an exercise. I wasn’t an enemy or even a student to her. Ferius really was just dancing with me, no different than we had been before.
I was still marvelling at this when I landed flat on my back a few feet away. I had no clue how she’d beaten me, so I leaned up on my elbows and just watched her. She made it look so easy, so effortless. I would have felt incredibly stupid if it weren’t for the sight of Reichis a few yards away, standing up on his hind legs and awkwardly mimicking Ferius’s movements. When he caught me staring he went down on all fours and his fur rose up in deep black hackles with blood-red stripes. ‘What? What? I wasn’t doing anything. You tell anyone about this and I’ll—’
‘Who the hell would I tell?’ I asked. Reichis is remarkably vain, considering he sometimes likes to keep bits of rabbit meat in his cheeks just in case he gets hungry later. ‘Better settle down or your fur might go pink again.’
He glanced down at his coat worriedly, but then grinned, evidently happy at the fearsome colours he’d taken on.
‘Well, kid?’ Ferius asked. ‘You believe me now?’
I got back on my feet and nodded. There was no doubt this dancing of hers could be useful in a fight, and that meant it was a skill I had to master.
Ferius stopped and gave me an odd look. She sighed. ‘You’re still not getting it.’
‘What do you mean? I’m not—’
‘You can’t learn the ways of the dance until you find the joy in it.’
Joy. How much joy was I supposed to have out here in the borderlands with my life in danger at every turn? Everything I’d ever known was hundreds of miles away. There was no place for me in this rugged frontier any more than there was among my own people. I was alone, and probably would be for the rest of my life.
Ferius gestured for me to join her. I did, and once again found myself in the uncomfortable half-embrace of the chadelle. ‘I need you to listen to me, Kellen.’
I nodded.
‘This isn’t fighting. It’s not something you push at or try to control like you do with your Jan’Tep magic. Don’t try to find it; let it find you.’
‘How?’
‘Just be open to it. I’m not your opponent, I’m not your lover, I’m not even a woman.’
‘You’re not?’
‘Nope. I’m just another body, moving freely in the warm night air.’ She tilted me back a bit. ‘Look up at that sky.’
I tilted my head back and gazed at the stars. You couldn’t see them half so well in the city of my birth, where glow-glass lanterns cast a dim gleam over everything, but here, it was as if the sky itself was no more than a foot above me, like I could just reach up and poke it with my finger.
‘This desert,’ Ferius said. ‘Right now. Here. It’s the most beautiful place on earth, isn’t it?’
It was. I don’t know how or why, but somehow we were standing on the most beautiful spot I’d ever been. It wasn’t like it was my first night out in the borderlands. This was different though. I couldn’t stop staring up at those stars. It was as if they were moving now, rotating above me, dancing themselves to sleep.
‘You’re not Kellen, son of Ke’heops,’ Ferius said. ‘You’re not the Jan’Tep outcast. You’re a free spirit, not a single chain binding you.’
I was barely paying attention to her words, but the meaning came through nonetheless. I hadn’t felt anything like this in a long time. The closest sensation I could think of was the way a spell felt when you had it all perfectly in your mind, held motionless until the words came out of your mouth, and in that instant you let go of it completely.
‘I think I’m ready to dance now,’ I said. But when I looked back at Ferius I saw the landscape moving around us. We were already dancing, and probably had been for a while.
Very slowly, Ferius brought us to a stop. ‘Here endeth the lesson, kid,’ she said for the second time that night.
‘But we only just started. I only just got the—’
Ferius let go of my hand and gestured towards the fire. ‘Look.’
The flames had almost completely died out now, the wood mostly ash. Reichis was curled up into a ball sleeping next to it, his fur having settled into a dusky brown colour that matched the ground.
‘How long?’ I asked.
‘A while,’ Ferius replied gently. ‘But now we need to stop. Time to let the dance go.’
‘Why?’
‘Because there are bad things happening out there to good people, and even those of us who follow the path of the wild daisy have to travel in darkness sometimes.’