Page 21 of Garden of Poisoned Delights

“No, thank you.” Crystelle kept circling. “When did you start, boy?”

“Start?” It took Sabre a moment to realize Crystelle was talking to him. “I don’t understand.”

“This.” Crystelle moved closer, then stopped. “There, look at your feet. You’re bracing for a fight. Someone taught you how to stand so you don’t fall. They had to teach you early, if you do it instinctively. Was it your father? A tutor?”

“Mostly Isiodore de Mortain,” Sabre said, “but my father taught me the basics of swordplay, if that’s what you mean. He said he could never stand up to Isiodore?—”

“I thought your submissive was honest,” Crystelle said, and Sabre felt heat pool in his cheeks.

“I spoke the truth. What does any of this have to do with you insulting Laurent at that party?”

Crystelle stopped circling. “Isiodore de Mortain is a swordsman of leisure. He can kill if he must, but he has no reason to do it personally unless he has no other recourse. You can see it in his eyes. No matter how skilled he is, he will never be the best. Now, look at you.” They took Sabre’s chin in one hand and tilted his head to the side. “How many died by his hand, Laurent?”

Laurent went quiet. The air of Sabre’s suites was deathly still.

“Enough,” Sabre said. “I killed enough.”

“And you’ve seen death,” Crystelle said. Their voice was low, almost gentle. “Your own, on the gallows. The best swordsmen know their death when they see it, Sabre. That’s why so few nobles can ever be truly great. They are protected from death, coddled by the wealth they’re born into. Your father was an exception.”

“You—” Sabre felt like his breath had been knocked out of his lungs. “You knew my father?”

“I also know you,” Crystelle said, and Sabre was suddenly twelve again, sitting on a garden bench with his father during one of the endless, deeply boring parties his neighbors threw at the start of spring. Their next door neighbor had hired a pair of swordfighters from the lower city to duel for bets, and when they suggested Arthur de Valois call the points, he’d taken one look at the duelists, bowed, and politely declined. Sabre could just see the flash of swords and a flicker of bodies through the crowd, but he dutifully sat by his father instead, feeling a little let down.

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t watch,” he said.

“It isn’t a competition,” Arthur said. “And it’s hardly fair. Harrison, the older one—he was good in his day, but if he doesn’t retire soon, he’ll be dead by the end of the season. It’s why we’re putting a stop to it in council this year.”

“A stop to what? Swords?”

“Dueling,” Arthur said, “or duels for money. You know, in Queen Solange’s time, some nobles had a habit of going into the lower city and throwing money in the street to see a fight break out. This is just the official version, dressed up for a garden party.”

There was a shout from the crowd, and Sabre watched as the older duelist, Harrison, was carried out by the winner. Blood was pouring down Harrison’s left arm in rivulets, and Arthur let out a disgruntled sound and got up.

“Stay put, Sabre.”

Sabre sighed. Arthur walked out through the same side door as the duelists, and Sabre waited a good five seconds before following. He found them in the alley between their houses, with Arthur and the other duelist helping Harrison bind his wounded arm. The other duelist was young, with dark brown hair tied back out of their delicate face, and they didn’t look like they’d even broken a sweat.

“Sorry I didn’t say hello,” Arthur was saying. “They would’ve wanted an exhibition if they knew.”

“Which would work out fine,” the other duelist said, “if you didn’t forget who you are every time you picked up a goddamn sword.”

Arthur smiled at them. “Can’t help it. I just don’t want a repeat of last time. You’d think I was skewered through the heart the way they carried on when you nicked my sleeve at the Beaucourt ball.”

“Yes, well, you’re a noble. Your life means something.”

“Can you two stop flirting for one fucking second?” Harrison asked, and they laughed.

Sabre pressed himself against the wall and snuck back into the garden. When his father returned, he looked almost bored—just as respectable as any noble father—but Sabre wondered why he would be on such close terms with the kind of people that others hired to stab each other at garden parties.

“Who was the other one?” he finally asked, when he couldn’t take it anymore. “The duelist who won?”

Arthur shrugged. “The best swordfighter in Staria, or they are until the next one comes along. Which is why we need to pass this measure fast, eh?”

But they hadn’t, in the end. Arthur de Valois had died before the council could vote one way or the other, and the measure disappeared among a slew of others in the wake of his passing, only to be dragged back up by Adrien almost a decade later.

Now, Sabre looked into the eyes of the best swordfighter in Staria, and found himself choked by all the questions he’d never had the chance to ask.

“Perhaps he thought you could be a proper noble if you didn’t love the sword as he did,” Crystelle said, “if love is the right word. I’m not certain there is a word for what we were, then. But there would be moments when he wasn’t a noble at all—and he would talk about you and your sister. I would like to speak to the Sabre who isn’t a noble, right now. Would you need a sword in your hand for that to happen, like your father?”

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