One
Catherina
I thudded to the mat, using my legs to break my fall so that I didn’t have the air knocked out of me. Of all the skills Peval was trying to teach me, that was the one I’d truly mastered, mainly because I got so much practice from her bouncing me off the mat time and time again.
“Dammit,” I muttered as I roll over onto my hip and sat up.
I was panting and sweating, and Peval wasn’t even breathing hard. She extended a hand and pulled me to my feet and handed my grawufather—something or other—back to me.
I’d long stopped trying to pronounce anything in the native Fire language. Now I used the equivalent English word, or if there wasn’t one, found a sound in the word I could remember and pronounce and used that for the name. The nanites, through technology that might as well be magic for all I could understand it, did a good job translating words between languages, but every now and again it broke down and I heard the actual Firaspatciti word. Icelandic and Croatian had nothing on Firaspatciti for hard to pronounce languages, and my struggling attempts at Fire provided no end of amusement for the natives of my new home.
Peval grinned at me. “At least you fall well now,” she teased.
I grinned back at her as I took my practice blade. The blade was dull enough to not cut, and it collapsed when you were stabbed with it, but it still hurt when the blade got through. Peval called the sting of a failed block ‘inspiration to improve.’
“I’ve had a lot of practice.”
Peval’s grin spread as she took a step back and brought her blade to attack position and waited for me to get set to receive her attack.
Even though I had a minimum of two guards with me at all times when I was away from the safety of the palace, I’d decided I wanted to learn a few basic self-defense moves. Not because I didn’t feel safe, but because I needed something to help me burn off energy. I also wanted to please Stevan. He worried about me being away from the palace and I hoped that if I learned a few basic defense skills, it would put his mind at ease. Basic defense skills for the Fires would be enough to incapacitate just about anyone else in the universe.
The Fires respected strength and fighting skill, and I wanted to earn Stevan’s respect for more than my seeming innate ability to mix and match the cultures to produce mates. One day, when talking to Peval of my desire to learn, she’d offered to teach me.
The People of Fire were the finest warriors in the universe. They had taken on the role of soldier and peacekeeper for the rest of the Peoples of the universe millennia ago, and it was a duty they took very seriously. The palace guard was the elite of the elite, and they were charged with keeping Stevan, and now me, safe from harm. Stevan could take care of himself, a fearsome warrior in his own right, but I was another matter.
I’d been working with Peval for almost an Earth year, and I knew I was improving. Now it sometimes took her as much as fifteen seconds to get inside my guard and cut my heart out, or body slam me to the mat and slit my throat.
I was learning hand to hand combat and how to use a short blade. There was no such thing as projectile weapons, things like guns or bows, anywhere in the universe except for Earth. I’d found that amazing until Peval had explained to me that with the portals, an enemy can get in close, well inside the range where a gun or something similar would be effective. You had to be able to defend yourself with your bare hands, or if you were lucky enough to have one, a sword or knife. It was the reason nearly every Fire had a ceremonial blade on their hip, myself included. Now I was learning to use it as Peval taught me to defend myself with nothing but my hands or a short blade, what we called a knife on Earth.
The lessons I’d learned best was how to fall and how to control my anger and frustration. When I’d first started working with Peval, I would get irritated with my inability to get through her guard and my technique would get sloppy. She would then bounce me off the wall or floor, or slash me with her blade, to teach me the error of my ways. The pain of my failure would frustrate me even more and I would become even more aggressive and sloppy, only to have my ass handed to me again. That was a hard lesson to learn, but learn it I had. Now I could attack and block, staying in control and relying on the skills she taught me.
Peval came at me again and I began to backpedal, giving ground as she pressed me, our blades flashing and singing as we thrust and parried. She gave me an opening, an opening I knew from hard-won experience was a trap. I feinted for her weak side as if I were going to take the opportunity and bury my blade deep in her side.
She took the bait and began to turn, intending to use my mistake to bury her own blade in my back as my missed thrust threw me off balance. I turned with her, and kicked out, knocking the leg she was pivoting on from beneath her. As her balance shifted and she stumbled, I grabbed her arm and rotated my own hip, throwing her to the mat, my blade coming to a stop at her neck as I landed on her.
I smiled down at her, panting hard. I had finally taken her down, and I was pretty sure she hadn’t let me that time! She was smiling at me as I held my blade at her throat, then tapped me on the back on my neck with her own blade as her grin widened, letting me know the wounds would have been mutually mortal.
I didn’t care. I bounded to my feet and offered her a hand up. She bounced to her feet then held her hand up high for me to slap, a mannerism she’d picked up from me during our training.
“Congratulations, Catherina! That was excellent! Your skills with the short blade have greatly improved in the last three months. You didn’t fall for my trap and you turned my tactic against me. Perhaps I should talk to Commander Garth about finding you a position on the palace guards.” She beamed at me. “I’m sure our Lord wouldn’t mind having you close as his personal guard. Perhaps you could… protect him… during the night?”
I blushed. Stevan and I had bonded, the Fire term for married, almost six months ago and I was still adjusting to my new position as ‘Lady’ of the palace. Most of the staff still treated me with the stiff formality they treated Stevan, but Kergah, Stevan’s closest friend and advisor, Tokalas and Peval, my two personal guards, had continued to treat me as a friend, something I greatly appreciated. I smiled back at her as I mopped the sweat from my face.
“I hardly think our Lord needs my protection.” I smiled mischievously. “Besides, at night I’m often too distracted to protect even myself, much less our Lord.”
Peval giggled as her eyes twinkled. “Understandable. I’ve heard rumors that he’s often the same way. Perhaps you should simply exercise together? A personal guard has to be ready to aid in whatever manner is required.”
I laughed. I kept in touch with Quathaul, still my closest friend and confidant, but Peval was like the zany friend that was always up for an adventure. Her sense of humor ran to the bawdy side and she didn’t take herself, or me, too seriously. She and Tokalas were like breaths of fresh air when I was home in the palace and surrounded by the rest of the fawning staff.
It was amazing the changes that have occurred in my life in the last two Earth years. I had been a nobody, a thirty-two-year-old single woman trying to make her way in Glasgow. Through a series of events that started with me hitting a mugger in the face with a pineapple, Stevan had taken notice of me. He’d tunneled into my flat with a portal one evening, kidnapped me, and returned me to his home on Fire. I’d been terrified, of course, not understanding how he’d pushed me through a hole in the middle of my bathroom and onto another world. But then he’d introduced me to Quathaul, an Aquallian, and assigned her to be my guide for a week. Quathaul was the kindest, most gentle creature I could imagine, and she’d shown me so many things and explained to me why Stevan had taken me.
Her race, along with the Firaspatciti and the rest of the Peoples of the universe, were dying, their birth rates dropping too low to sustain the Peoples. She was part of an attempt, led by the Fires, to reverse the trend by having the various cultures of the universe interbreed. The attempt was failing, and in a moment of desperation, and against their laws, Stevan had brought me to Fire in a final attempt to save the Peoples.
Humans were descended from the Ancient Ones, like the rest of the Peoples of the universe, but according to Stevan, Humans were a young, vibrant race who still exhibited the many traits that defined the Peoples of the universe. Over the millennia, the various cultures had bred themselves into a corner, emphasizing traits they found desirable and suppressing those they didn’t until the Peoples no longer interbred. That had started their long slow slide into oblivion. Now the Peoples had bred within their cultures so often they were losing the ability to conceive or bear children and seemed unable to break out of their cultural biases. He’d hoped, since Humans bred like snaths, and were still an amalgam of traits, that would give me the ability to bring the peoples together to begin mating and producing children.
My heart had gone out to Quathaul and the plight the Peoples were in. I’d played matchmaker on Earth, and felt like it was my calling, and with Stevan’s promise to return me to Earth with riches beyond imagining, I’d agreed to stay and try to help.
My first task had been to have the Fires and Waters, the two peoples most endangered by their low birth rates, interbreed. They couldn’t have been more different, but with patience and hard work by all involved, I’d succeeded, and proved to the rest of the universe that perhaps there was still hope.
But more than that, I’d fallen hopelessly, madly, deeply in love. Stevan had asked me to teach him to mate with a Water so that he could lead by example, if necessary. As our lessons had progressed, I’d molded him into the perfect man. He was already smart, strong, handsome and brave, but after I’d taught him how to control his fiery passion and temper it with a bit of gentleness, I’d fallen for him, and fallen hard.
And that, as they say on Earth, was that. When I’d found out he’d fallen for me too, there was no stopping where we were going. Now here I was, the bonded mate to the Lord of the Fires, and their Lady. There’d been some grumbling that someone other than a Fire had been made Lady, but by and large, the people had been nothing but supportive, and I was working hard to learn their ways and fit in while still retaining my basic Humanism. Part of that was my training with Peval. Not only was it a great way to get some exercise and burn off stress, but it showed the Fires I respected and appreciated their ways.
Stevan had provided me with all the resources I needed to help other cultures as I’d helped the Fires and the Waters. Once I’d gotten the ‘dating agency’, as I thought of it, up and running, I’d taken a couple of steps back from the day-to-day operation, but I still keenly felt the pressure. Now I spent most of my time meeting the Peoples of the universe, giving speeches to promote the idea of interbreeding, while getting a feel for what pairings might work and those that would be a problem. I left the logistics of selecting the participants to the huge staff of people that were working hard to save the universe. I still occasionally dabbled in the day to day matchmaking, especially when things weren’t going smoothly, but I no longer felt like the fate of the universe was resting on my shoulders alone. It wasn’t a perfect system, and not every pairing we’d tried had worked, but we were making progress.
Despite the pressures, between Peval’s training during the day, and the pleasure of Stevan’s touch at night, I’d never been more relaxed or happy in my life. I still occasionally got homesick for Earth, and sometimes I would open the big portal in the receiving room of the palace to allow me to see and hear people of Earth going about their daily lives, completely unaware I was watching. Sometimes I would look in on my parents and watch them like an invisible angel. Just after he’d taken me, Stevan said I wouldn’t be missed, that my parents would mourn their loss but after a time would accept my disappearance and move on. I found it comforting that he had been right. By the time I’d learned to operate a portal, over eighteen months had passed on Earth, and Ma and Da appeared to be happy and content.
Often, I would have a good cry in the big empty room while I watched, feeling overwhelmed by my situation and the distance from my Human brothers and sisters. Afterward, wrapped in Stevan’s arms as he made slow love to me, I would feel refreshed and revitalized, and ready to face any challenges I might face.
It wasn’t a perfect life, but it was better than the one I had on Earth, and I wouldn’t willingly return to my old life now.
“I think that’s enough for today,” Peval said, sheathing her practice blade. “Tomorrow we’ll work on disarming an opponent who has a blade when you do not. You’re still weak there.”
I nodded. Peval was a better judge of what my strengths and weaknesses were than I was. She was a terrific teacher, pushing me while sporadically allowing me to succeed to build my confidence. She was always positive in her instruction, allowing the sting of her blade to point out my mistakes.
I stepped back and came to rigid attention then dipped my head slightly in a sign of respect for her teachings. She did the same but dipped lower in acknowledgment of my position. Our ritualistic exchange complete, we relaxed and walked out of the guards’ training room, laughing and talking about our workout.
I was super jazzed up. Had Peval and I been in a real fight, she would have severed my spinal cord at the same time I slit her throat, but taking down a palace guard, even at the cost of your own life, was no small thing. I knew in the real world, if she’d been going full on, I would have never gotten in close enough to even touch her before I was mortally wounded, but I was still feeling good about myself. When we reached the private section of the palace where Stevan and I lived, Peval turned away and proceeded to the area where Stevan’s and my personal guards roomed.
Being a personal guard was no picnic. My two personal guards and Stevan’s six were on duty twenty-eight hours a day, eight days a week. The rest of the palace guards that defended the palace and provided security when Stevan or I traveled, rotated in and out, but the personal guards didn’t have that option. It was considered a high honor to be a personal guard to the Lord and Lady of Fire, but I never forgot what these men and women gave up for the privilege to serve.
I entered our innermost quarters. Stevan was still away, busy serving the needs of his people. I hopped into the shower and allowed the cloud of nanites to scrub me clean, the fog of the microscopic machines eating away the dirt, sweat, and odors. Thirty seconds after I’d stepped into the shower, I was stepping out, my hair and skin glowing.
I smiled as I redressed for dinner. I wanted to be presentable for our Lord before I got sweaty again later tonight.