Drent’s mouth worked like a fish’s, and he ran his hand over the top of his short, spiky hair. Karigan had never seen him at a loss for words before. Several of his trainees stopped what they were doing to peer at the unusual scene of a coiffed and dressed-up female staring down their hulking, fearsome arms master.
“Of course, my la–la—” He choked on words he had not meant to expel.
Karigan smiled darkly. She had won.
Drent growled and bristled, trying to look his usual mean and hideous self. “I see your point. Ordinary sword work is not necessarily the best option thus attired, but it does present opportunities. We’ll begin with your hair.”
Her hair? Was he going to teach her to strangle someone with her tresses? He made her remove the various pins and combs that held her hair in place atop her head.
“These,” he said, turning them over in his huge, calloused hand, “can be lethal, used to gouge out an assailant’s eye, for instance, during close combat. And if sharpened, they can be like tiny daggers.”
He returned them to her and looked her up and down. “Weapons of various sorts can be hidden elsewhere. Lift your skirts.”
“What?”
Drent blushed and swallowed. “Er, just to your knees.”
Under different circumstances, even this would have been scandalous, but she did as he asked.
The arms master grunted. “Sheaths for throwing knives can be fitted to your calves and, uh, elsewhere if you wish. They’d also fit in your boots when you are being a Green Rider.”
Karigan raised an eyebrow. “Being” a Green Rider? She’d like to know what Drent thought she was “being” right now.
“I don’t know how to throw knives.”
“It can be taught.”
“And you will teach me.”
He sighed, still unable to look her in the eye. “Aye, I will teach you. Today we will start with close combat; knife throwing tomorrow.”
He made Karigan insert the combs and pins back into her hair. Without a mirror or Tegan to help her, she could only guess at how ridiculous she must look.
Drent couldn’t bring himself to attack her, so he enlisted the aid of one of his students, the one the others called “Flogger.” He was almost as big as Drent, and just as ugly, and he seemed to like the idea of attacking a lady. He licked his lips in anticipation.
Drent had him creep up from behind and grab Karigan in a stranglehold. She bashed the back of her head into his face and skimmed his shin with the edge of her shoe. Flogger howled and hopped away clutching his bloody nose.
Flogger was then instructed to grab her arm. She broke his hold by grasping his thumb and bending it backward until he was on his knees whimpering. Those who paused their own bouts to watch hooted and hollered, chivvying Flogger good and hard.
When Flogger tried another grab around her waist, she pulled a pin from her hair and jabbed it into the meaty part of his forearm. He fell away swearing. She wiped the blood off on her skirts and reinserted the pin into her hair. Apart from being breathless courtesy of the corset, she hadn’t even perspired during Flogger’s attempts.
“My father’s cargo master taught me such skills of defense,” she explained to Drent. “The thief at the museum, however, had a rapier and did not attack me in that manner.”
Drent scratched his head and ordered Flogger to fetch a pair of practice swords. Karigan took hers with trepidation when she saw the malice creeping into Flogger’s eyes. His expression seemed to say he’d pay her back for the bloody nose and the humiliation he suffered in front of his fellows.
“We’ll have a bout,” Drent said, “and see what we can do to help a lady defend herself should the situation ever arise.” He rolled his eyes probably doubting that a true lady would ever find herself in such a situation.
Karigan and Flogger stepped into a practice ring and tapped swords. As Karigan predicted, the humiliation was hers within minutes. Sword moves she had been trained to make hundreds of times were hampered by her skirts and corset, and Flogger did not hold back, battering her relentlessly. As before, she grew light-headed from lack of air, and the weight of the skirts dragged her down. Flogger slammed his sword into her gut for kill point, and she crumpled to her knees in a cloud of dust, sputtering.
Flogger beamed proudly, but his fellows cast him disgusted looks and shook their heads. He had taken advantage of the “lady.”
“A little excessive, Flogger,” Drent commented.
Karigan could only stay on her knees gasping and retching, attempting to suck air back into her lungs. She had asked for it.
When she could breathe again, a guilty looking Flogger pulled her to her feet.
“Again,” Drent said.
And they went at it again, Drent yelling instructions at her on how she should move her feet to cope with the restricting skirts, and how she might conserve her breath. Flogger still managed to “kill” her several times over before Drent finally declared the session over.
Karigan stood before him panting, sweat slicking her face and neck.
“A suggestion,” Drent said, still not quite able to look her dead on, “That thing you’re wearing…”
“Thing?”
“Aye, the thing under your…the thing women wear to—” He stopped as if biting his tongue.
Karigan’s mouth quirked into a half smile. “The corset?”
Drent made a garbled noise. “Aye, the corset. If you weren’t so unreasonably adherent to fashion, you could, uh, loosen it. Make it easier to breathe.”