SOON AFTER SHIFTING to two legs for the first time, Aiti had taught me to use a cudgel. “Why do I need to know this?” I’d complained, sounding like the whiny teenager I was at the time.
Aiti had merely smiled indulgently—her beak had been more of a crest to her lips then—as she answered. “In Court, you may need to protect yourself.”
“Then why can’t I have a sword?”
“A sword is an invitation to a more permanent type of fight.”
So I’d never learned proper swordcraft. And I could tell after Zip Boot’s first testing attack that my cudgel skills weren’t precisely transferable to bladed objects.
“Why look,” he murmured, barely scratching my skin as he drew a line from my throat down to the hollow between my breasts. “A zipper. I wonder what it will look like when I open you all the way up?”
