Twelve Years Later
"Grandmother…" the little girl pleaded. "I cannot do anymore today."
"You can," Taro replied. Miran was in the courtyard, holding her practice wooden sword with both hands. The boy behind her was a head taller and a stone heavier than her. He also had five years on her. The swordmaster and grandmother both expected her to beat him at swordplay, but she didn't feel ready. "You will."
The practice ground was in the middle of the courtyard, depressed a few feet below the rest of the house. Three stairs bordered all four sides of the ground. The boy in front of her was ready. His reach was longer than hers, and he had started learning to fence at the age when she had been learning to walk. But he was the opponent her grandmother had chosen, and Miran knew her grandmother never changed her mind. Still, she had to try.
"He's so much older than me. And stronger," Miran complained. "Why can't I spar with children my own age?"
"Because you have to be better than children your own age," her grandmother answered. "You know this."
Miran pouted. It was easy for her grandmother to say those things. While Miran stood under the glaring sun getting tossed to the ground, poked with a wooden rod with rough unsanded edges, her grandmother sat in comfort on velvet cushions under a linen awning. Taro held her embroidered fan daintily and raised her eyebrows at her granddaughters, motioning for the girl to begin again.
The small table under the awning was loaded with fruits and pitchers of cool water. Miran licked her lips. She would be granted no breaks, no water or refreshment until she bested the boy behind her. She had failed over twenty times so far. Her muscles refused to obey, and the wooden sword in her hand felt like lead.
The boy was breathing faster than he was at the beginning of the day. Miran spun around to face him. Her grandmother never let anyone else get their way. If Miran collapsed onto the ground, she would be nursed back to health and carried back to the practice ground to continue. Worse yet, if she took a rest the boy would have the time to recover completely. It would be starting all over again.
The things she had more of than the boy were patience and resilience. She was used to being put against people stronger and bigger than her. She could take a punch, or a kick, the blunt edge of a practice sword, and stand back up like it was nothing. All she needed was one good strike, and she could retreat to her room. But the boy was better than all her previous opponents, five years older than her. The swordmaster had proudly stated that the boy was one of his best pupils even. Even one good strike was going to be difficult to achieve.
Miran closed her eyes and breathed out. She loosened her stiff joints, dragged a dirty arm across her sweaty forehead, and turned around. The boy stood ready, his sword extended in front of his body and a resigned frown on his face. No one her grandmother picked wanted to practice with her. The swordmaster made them. He was a teenage boy and she was a little rich girl. A tall little girl, but adulthood was slow in arriving. She was still gangly, with baby fat around her cheeks and dark curly hair that made her look younger than she was. There was no glory in beating her, and only shame if she managed to win.
His free hand went to the back of his neck, and he cast a look towards the swordmaster, silently asking if he had to continue. Miran knew she looked a mess. She always did near the end of one of her grandmother's tests. Her losing meant she had to try again, but if they let her win, their punishment was a few lashes across the back of their legs with the swordmaster's favorite switch.
There was no way she could beat him. Not in the traditional way.
Miran leaned forward, swallowing a gulp of air. She held her sword with one hand and clutched her knee with the other, making retching noises and finally squatting down with her head between her knees. It was only half an act, and half what she felt. She didn���t have his size. She didn't have his skill, yet. But she did have the appearance of innocence, and only the appearance of it.
"Are you alright?" the boy asked. She saw his feet, no longer in the solid stance of swordplay but the infinitely more vulnerable position of being off-guard. She offered him her left hand, and to take it, he dropped his own sword and held onto her hand gently. She had a finite amount of time to make it work.
"Are you alri-aaah!"
Miran twisted the boy's fingers backward, using all of the strength she had left. While he recoiled away, she adjusted her grip on her sword and thrust it into his abdomen. It was only wood, but if it had been steel the boy would be skewered and dead.
He stumbled back, nursing his injured hand.
"I beat him," she said. She knew it wasn't fair. She knew she had been deceptive, that such a tactic would never work in a real fight. But it had worked in the moment, and that was all that mattered. Miran waited for her grandmother's judgment.
"You beat him," Taro said, unimpressed. "You won, so you can go to your room."
Miran sighed in relief. She needed the rest. Her governess walked out from under the awning with a pitcher of water and a platter of fruit. She started to gulp down the water. The boy scowled at her, while the swordmaster only touched his beard in thought. Taro cleared her throat.
"However, next week you shall have another test. You shall fight Amos."
Miran turned around and looked at the line of boys the swordmaster trained, wondering which of them was Amos. The boy with the palest face, the one with the most unpleasant expression, she was familiar with how the boys reacted when her grandmother announced who would be her next opponent.
He was larger than the first boy. In truth, he wasn't a boy at all. Amos was a behemoth, taller than all the grown men in the courtyard and wide as a wine barrel. His sword was more a floorboard with a hilt. He wasn't like the boy she had just fought. There was meanness in his face, anger that she hadn't caused but would soon be exposed to.
"Grandmother, that's not fair!"
"Neither was your victory, darling."