The Blind Valiant

IN THAT SWEET DAY.

 When Louscha first displayed her classical grace in dancing, she had been eight years old and it had been on one of those evenings her grandfather the king came to her parents villa to spend the first weekend of winter.

 And when her grandfather trimmed his fingers across the keys of the pianoforte, streaming music into the room, Louscha had danced barefoot, perfectly in time with the notes, twirling and jumping, perfectly in balance, her eyes gleaming, her hands flashing this way and that.

It had completely left her parents, uncle and grandfather speechless. The king more so than the others because his wife had been a troupe dancer famous across the continent.

  And he was more than happy and eager to break the tradition of placing his heir into the rigorous education to prepare Louscha for a future of the crown.

Instead he spent a fortune employing Dame Zepharia, a former dancer almost as acclaimed as the late queen, to tutor his granddaughter.

 Dame Zepharia was a particularly strict and unimpressed woman who harbored bitterness whenever people mentioned her talent second to the memory of Queen Andreja’s performances. And she had taken it out on her rival’s granddaughter.

 But Louscha had excelled still, impressing the embittered woman as well as a ballroom filled with nobles and gentry invited to the annual Hyidne Ball at the palace when she was but thirteen years.

 Piotr the infamous balletomane master and critic had promptly petitioned the king to enroll the young princess into his troupe which her grandmother had once performed in.

 But she would never train with Master Piotr because her mother died the following month of consumptive fever

 It was during the few years of Piotr’s instruction that Louscha had first met a Fell.

 She had been a girl much younger than Louscha and had the most beautiful skin- scales of varying liquid-like colors layered her body from neck to feet and they shimmered with every move the girl made.

 Despite the Concordat granting freedom rights to their race, most were still too cautious to reveal themselves, she always wore full length dark robes to cover them up and it was only by accident that Louscha knew.

 The girl’s name had been Erenei, from a village north of the Rhiomba. And she was one of the staff who came in after the dancers and trainers to clean the practice rooms.

 The day Louscha first met her, she had been crying after Piotr had harshly criticized her lack of focus in the current poses and styles he had bene teaching her.

 Louscha might have survived and impressed Zepharia but Piotr was another kind zealot dedicated to the acute finesse of his art. And lately that had made Louscha a target for his cruel jibes and regimens.

 And worse was she could not complain or tell someone. She never wanted to be the one who couldn’t meet up to the high expectations everyone had for her. She wanted to impress, to make them adore her.

 So even it had meant suffering under hours of Piotr’s zealous attitude toward perfection then it would be worth it, Louscha had thought.

 On that day, after her scheduled time with Piotr and the other instructors and their protégés had left her in the changing rooms, Louscha heard music coming from the practice room.

 She had wiped her eyes and went to investigate. She knew no one else could still be practicing as everyone had gone either to their allotted quarters on the Theaters’ grounds or home.

 It was there she found Erenei dancing so gracefully that it was like watching a fish swim through the air and across the floor as if it was still underwater.

 There was brutal serenity to the way she interpreted the sonnets which she had just been practicing to, into dance.

 It was all pain, chaos and joy rolled in one. Louscha had heard the way people had applauded and praised her own performance but anyone could see that the girl with shimmering rainbow skin was a flawless.

 When Louscha, bedazzled when the shimmering girl made the complicated spinning knot maneuver which she had failed over and over again, gasped out loud to draw the girl’s attention she suddenly stopped and started to flee in fear.

 Louscha had seen how the last servant had been punished for using the theater instead of working. She understood the girl’s fear so she ran after her and promised she would not report her.

 She only wanted to learn. “I cannot get that last part well. Piotr gets very angry and says cruel things about me and my family... please will you teach me?”

 The girl with the rainbow skin stopped and looked up at her through a mass of copper brown hair. “You have to see the song and move to it. You let it take you not you take it.”

 Louscha smiled softly at her and said. “Show me again. I promise I will not tell anyone.”

“Why should I teach you? You already dance well.”

Louscha shook her head. “Not good enough. I love to dance and I know you do too. But now I have to dance for other people to love it too.”

So the rainbow skinned girl showed her again and again, taught her to ‘see the song and move to it’ like she did.

 They always practised after hours, when both performers and staff had left. Soon it was no longer a teacher-student relationship they had, a friendship blossomed between these girls from two different worlds.

 A princess and a servant girl, both bound by their love for dance. A love that expanded for many things they soon discovered they shared in common.

 Louscha had never had a sister or a friend but in Erenei she found both.

 She could do anything for her new sister and two days before the grand show which Louscha had been training to perform in, she found just how extreme she could take her devotion to her relationships.

 The performers for the grand show were supposed to have had their costumes measured a week before so that they could have the last few days free from the pressure of the upcoming show.

 Louscha, being the princess, could have had the ateliers come to her father’s estate but she arranged for it to be at the theater so she could spend some time with Erenei; practice a few steps and eat the boxes of sugared peaches she bought because they were Erenei’s favorite.

 The building had grown silent when Louscha arrived, some minutes later than when she had told Erenei she would be coming.

 Dim lights shone at the far end of the otherwise darkened hallway. But she could hear music, loud and obtrusive unlike the ones Erenei was used to dancing in secret to.

 Louscha hobbled silently to the door of the anteroom of the large wood-paneled used by students and pushed through it, silently walked to the door of the solar that was reserved for only Piotr.

 She heard muffled whimpers and strained groaning before Louscha peered through the smoked-glass port in the cedar door.

She saw Erenei restrained and weeping on the wooden slats of the top bench, and on top of her was her balletomane master Piotr.

 Piotr was continuously grinding out his lower body into Erenei’s wide-spread legs and was poised over her like a great beast. His large wrinkled hands clasped around her neck, squeezing and choking.

 Through the glass, Louscha saw the angle which her friend’s hands had been tied underneath the bench, her eyes emptying tears helplessly. And somehow Erenei felt her there and her eyes moved to the port to meet Louscha’s.

 Without knowing what she was doing, later she would tell her parents and her grandfather the king that she was not of her mind, Louscha stepped silently through the door.

 She deftly dropped the box of candied fruits aside and picked up the rhythm cane which Piotr used to count steps and flog at her knees whenever she failed a pirouette.

 Piotr heard her but before he could pull himself away from the girl he was molesting, Louscha swung the cane with all the might the icy rage in her could raise.

 A distinct sickening crack snapped at her instructor’s face as the cane battered the back of his neck. The aged balletomane collapsed in a heap of broken neck and nude body.

 Louscha dragged her breath, her eyes widened in the shock of her actions but she still held the cane.

 “Louscha...” Erenei sobbed to take her out of her momentary shock, bringing her to the knowledge that she was still tied up.

 She helped her with ropes and they held each other in the corner. Erenei wept on her shoulders but Louscha did not mind, all she could think of was the dead nobleman in the room with them.

 “They’re going to kill me.” Erenei wailed through her tears.

That seemed to shake Louscha. “No, they will not. He was... he defiled you. You will tell them that, besides I am the one who killed him.”

 She met the servant girl’s bloodshot eyes, “You are a princess, no one will harm you. But me... the other servants know I was the one last here. They will accuse me and I will be burned.”

 Louscha drew herself back so she could look at her. Her hands closed at Erenei’s shoulders as she shook the determination of her words into her friend.

 “No one is going to touch you.”

“Louscha you do not have the power to ensure that. Thank you for saving me from him but you cannot save me from the law.”

  “If I cannot save you then you must run away. Leave Halgiers before they discover the body. I will tell the king that Piotr was a not a good man and what he tried to do to me. I will take the blame.”

 Erenei watched her friend with wide tear stained eyes. “I cannot leave, Lou. I have no money to buy transport and one look at me, anybody will take me to sell to another lord.”

 She paused to think. “I can get some of my jewels and buy passage for you. But you will have hide till after the show; no one must see you for the next few days.”

 Erenei nodded frantically and pulled her friend into an embrace. “Thank you.”

 “You are a sister to me, Erenei. I will not see you harmed. Maybe one day we will see each other again.”

 But they were not to see each other. Louscha had planned on taking some of her own jewels; presents she had no need of, and using them to get the transport papers away from the city for her friend.

 It had not been easy because she had to be careful so as not to rouse suspicion and questions from both her parents.

It was Hough, her personal guard who knew of her secret friendship with Erenei and who helped her pawn of her opal and emerald bracelet and a few earrings to get the money to acquire board on a ship leaving Halgiers for the Expanse.

 All Louscha had to do now was wait till her performance and then use Erenei’s coded message to find and give her all she needed to escape.

 As for the body, Louscha went home crying to her parents making sure her dress was torn in a way a struggle would make it.

 Her father was the first to see her in the music room where he usually read in the evenings before dinner. One look at her and he was on his feet and bounding to her, eyes wide with fear at the smear of blood on her hands and dress.

 Louscha had never thrown on an act before but it came surprisingly easy. Maybe the tears fell easy because of her scared and abused friend who was hiding somewhere so as not to be found and accused for murder.

 As she told her father through sobbing fits, her mother came in with some of her ladies-in-waiting. But one apprehensive look from her husband and a glance at the state of her daughter, had her dismissing them instantly.

 She told them what Master Piotr had done to her and how she had defended herself. She told then how she had heard some of the other dancers complain and weep about their own experiences.

 “Papa, I had no choice... I did not know what to do and I was so angry and scared...” her father, still on his knees before her, pulled her into an embrace and shushed her.

 Her mother was still standing by the floor to wall windows staring outside as she listened and didn’t speak till Louscha was done.

 “Piotr was not only a balletomane but a powerful lord. He’s been on my father’s council for decades and his dear friend.”

 “I do not care. He hurt our daughter and has been hurting many others. We must do something, Vivanka.”

 “Of course we must do something. Our daughter murdered her instructor who is also a nobleman.”

 Her father frowned and rose to his feet to face his wife. “She defended herself.”

“Which was very brave of you, my darling. But it is bad timing, the grand show so now we must make sure no one else knows of this until after. The body must be taken care.” Then her mother moved to her and brushed her hair aside.

 “You will go to your room and get out of these clothes then bathe thoroughly. Freda will come take your clothes away.” Louscha nodded and her mother kissed her on the brow before she left.

  She did not know what her parents did but when the grand show arrived, news had already spread that Piotr had absented his opening night credit to travel to his home in Arsinor.

 Two days later and Louscha finally had the chance leave her room, and with Hough’s help went to the hiding place Erenei had directed her to come meet her.

 But someone was waiting for her to arrive. Palace guards with a familiar brutish man at the lead whom Louscha had seen always at her uncle’s side. As he was at that moment.

 Her dread was overwhelming that she started to feel faint as her mind frantically spun off from her. Her uncle smiled at her and told her.

 “I never expected to see you here, dear niece.” With that adder’s smile on his face. “Have you come to see justice done on an enemy of the crown?”

 “Enemy?”

And her uncle waved her hand for his guards to part and reveal Erenei, shackled from neck to ankles and bloody bruises swelling on her scaled face.

 She was unconscious from the beating given her but from steady rise and fall of her chest, Louscha knew she still lived.

 Louscha tried not to move from where she was, only staring from her friend to her uncle’s leering half smirk. “She was found hiding in the cellar of the old theatre.”

“W-Why were you looking for her?” Louscha swallowed a breath. If she could feign her disinterest and ignorance well enough maybe her uncle would think he had the wrong girl.

 But her uncle was known in court as the Fox and he had more than earned that moniker for the way he easily fooled and manipulated people. But Aksel had somehow felt this niece of his could be just as cunning.

 “For the death of Lord Piotr. Some of the servants working at the Grand Theatres said she was last seen with him and I’ve gotten word that he isn’t at his country estate as it was said he had retired to. He was murdered.”

 “By her? She’s girl half his size and a slave. She would know the penalties for killing a nobleman.”

Her uncle c****d his head, “Except it was not her who killed our king’s dearest friend.” And he held a soft patronizing look as he dropped a hand on her shoulder.

 “Louscha, I’ve heard my things about Piotr. He was a disgrace to his name and our king, doing all those wretched things to the slave girls. If he wasn’t dead, I’d have him arrested and locked up forever.”

 With that Louscha broke down in tears and started rambling the tale of what happened into her uncle’s embrace.

She hadn’t known then as she did now that her uncle Aksel would not have arrested Piotr because the aged nobleman was his ally in his trying to usurp his father.

 That Aksel had been giving him slave girls to play with for years and Erenei had been one of them. Louscha had trusted foolishly and it had cost her quite some of her life.

 “Don’t worry, I will take care of it just like your parents did. We are family after all.” He had promised and waved his guards to take Erenei away.

 When Louscha had asked, he remarked. “You came to give her money to leave the city so she couldn’t be blamed for the murder. That’s what I’m doing, your friend will be on a ship bound for Montparnasse by dusk. She’ll be taken care of. But you keep this to us, no one must know I helped.”

 Louscha nodded and strained a look over her uncle’s shoulders to see the guards carry the slave girl who had danced like a dream goddess and who had been her sister for the shortest of time away.

 It would be only a month after that Louscha would find out how foolish she had been. In that week that Louscha’s mother died from a childbirth fever that descended out of the blue.

The next month, her grandfather the king followed his heir to the afterlife and Aksel was crowned in his place.

 The night of his coronation, the new king summoned her to the throne room. A grand state room Louscha had once played hide and seek with her grandfather in; titled with deep blue mosaics of their royal line, walls of stained glass that had a magnificent view of the waterfalls at the mouth of the royal gardens.

 It was a brilliant winter day and crescent moonlight streamed into the throne room.

Aksel motioned for Louscha to rise from her kneeling. He looked at her closely. She was wearing a charcoal grey dress with mourning shawl over her head.

 Yet she looked as beautiful as ever, even with the dark circles under her eyes and was noticeably thin. His niece had lost so much these past month, he motioned for her to rise.

 He looked evenly at his niece from across the dais. “I know it must have been difficult, a shock.” He leaned forward. “It’s over now, you can forget the unpleasantness. Of course, I don’t have to tell you about your duty, your responsibility, as princess of this nation.”

 It would’ve been the other way round; me sitting up there and you down here.

Her father had told her to always be careful around him, but she was too distracted and exhausted. Throat tightening, Louscha looked at her uncle.

 Her voice quavered. “You say ‘unpleasantness.’ My mother just died and my grandfather too, in the space of a few weeks.”

 “We must learn to put such distress if we are to lead with straight mind. You can mourn later.”

 “As you should be.” She threw back, raising her bloodshot eyes to the man a few feet from her.

Aksel spoke softly. “Niece, it is your duty to be always loyal, to do your utmost, to serve your country. There is no question of your discretion. It is absolutely required of you. Is this going to be a problem between us?” the new king looked at Louscha steadily.

Louscha somehow knew this was the exact moment where the next part of her life would be decided. The timbre of her uncle’s voice had changed, taken on an edge.

 In a telepathic flash Louscha realized it, remembered her mother’s last whispers before the end. Become impermeable.

 She looked up at her uncle, whom she was beginning to detest, and also beginning to fear. Their eyes met.

“You can depend on my discretion,” she said woodenly.

“I knew I could,” said Aksel. “Otherwise it is only a matter of retrieving your Fell friend from across the sea to testify against you and your father. She will be executed for being an accomplice and the worse for you and your father.”

 Louscha was a smart girl, he could see her instincts at play, as she made sure none of the shock and despair that gripped her on the inside did not show on the outside.

 This is why he never really told me exactly where Erenei was. Please let her be safe.

 No only I can keep her safe. Can keep my family safe. We cannot leave Jaskier with this monster.

“Yes I understand, uncle.”

 “There’s a good girl, I have a proposal.” He leaned back on the throne and crossed his legs at the ankles. “Will you agree to help your old uncle?” Aksel asked, his hands gripped the lion head arm rest.

He is a serpent, flicking its tongue, tasting the air before it struck. Louscha could feel her heartbeat in her throbbing foot.

Then her breath came back, and with it a hollow calm.

 Precisely because he expected her to refuse, Louscha accepted. She looked back evenly, seeing the narrowing of his eyes, seeing him calculate what she was calculating.

 She saw him searching her face, but she gave him nothing, and his face had reacted to that. “You will serve the crown and country as perfectly as you have entertained them both these past year, I am sure. I have enrolled you in the Crucible to train in the arts you will need for the job.”

  Louscha willed herself to remain expressionless, and was satisfied watching Aksel’s eyes searching her face for a reaction. “The C-Crucible?” she said.

 Even with her just beginning education in the political history of Halgiers, she knew what the Crucible was. A forging ground for young boys and girls in the volatile education of espionage, deceitful tactics and murder.

 It was pit where fewer candidates survived and graduated than the number who originally entered. Parents who sent their children there were asked to sign waivers in case of premature death during their education.

 And this was where her uncle was sending her to, a week after they had buried her grandfather. He would not have allowed this.

Mentally, Louscha marked the spot on Uncle Aksel’s shirt where she would plunge the ornamental pike at the corner.

 She lowered her eyes and kept her voice calm. “As long as it helps Papa... and you protect Erenei.” she said. Aksel made an ‘of course’ gesture with his hand. “I do not know anything of that nature. But I could learn.” she added.

 He nodded, dismissing her with a wave. “Indeed you will. You are a Lasace after all.”

 By morning, after watching her father break down at the news and kissing her baby brother, she was in a carriage escorted by her uncle’s personal guards to Karzai where the Crucible was located north of the capital, near the village of Alkech.

“Espionage, dearests,” the Spymistress of the Crucible would tell her and two dozen others later, at an assembly, “is of using people who do not believe in loyalty, whose tastes are enormous and unpredictable, and whose motives are always suspect. Anyone can be bought, everyone has terms to be negotiated by. The best spies are not those who work for money or out of fear or loyalty. The best spies are those whose deepest desires are fulfilled by their master.”

There had been so many lessons. There had been so many such nights. Nights soaked with promises, rewarded with praise. Others that left her bleeding and weeping for her Papa, her mother and for her long lost friend.

But Louscha was smart. Cunning. Insightful, nimble and quick. She knew when to keep silent, and when to speak up. She listened and remembered all she had heard.

It had been, still was, like opium, the power of knowing what others believed hidden. And she later found she was exceptional at exercising such power.