“Your Web page information suggested that you were ‘unrated in swordplay.’ Today we shall rate you.”

That sounded ominous. I said, “I’m unrated because I don’t know how to use a long sword at all. Only short swords, fourteen-inch vampire-killers. So can we skip this?”

“No.”

That was short and sweet.

“This is the proper way to hold a long sword,” Gee DiMercy said. “Feet thus, spine thus, knees and sword thusly.”

I walked closer, out of sword range, but close enough to study his weight distribution and the exact position of his feet. I copied his posture. And felt like an idiot. The sword was too long, too unwieldy. And my leathers were too constricting. I held up a hand like a traffic cop to tell him to stop and kicked off the boots, pulled off the jacket and the pants, trying not to notice the reactions of the others as I did so. The sudden silence. The sound of a slow breath taken nearby. It might have been Leo but I didn’t look to see. I didn’t even look at Eli when he appeared at my side to take my clothes. Eli was my second. It felt right to have him there, and I relaxed, shaking out my arms. I was standing there in bare feet, a long length of tight black spandex, and a sword. I rolled my shoulders to loosen up.

Leo appeared at my side and gave me a second blade, this one also dull-edged, but shorter, with a groove on the back of the blade for hooking an opponent’s weapon and pulling it away. This smaller blade felt good in my hand, nearly familiar, having the heft and balance of a vamp-killer. Leo smelled strange, his scent acrid and harsh, like rose thorns, but I didn’t look at him. Not while I was trying to find the balance of the weapons. Though they were of differing lengths, they were of similar weights, so the balance that my mind insisted was not there, was actually present.

“You will begin lessons in La Destreza, also known as the Spanish Circle,” Gee said. He spun his sword in a slow circle around him, behind him, left to right, always in an arc, the blade sketching and encompassing a sphere around his body. It sketched a cage of death anywhere his weapon reached. And then he sped it up. The blade moved faster and faster, until it was a flashing light all around him. I was going to be taught by the Obi-Wan of steel blades. Despite myself, my grin spread. I was either gonna hate it or love it.

“The books of history and books of teaching were incorrect,” he said, his body not tensing or pausing. “There is nothing stiff or static about La Destreza. It is fluid, smooth, like the flow of water or oil across an object. I will teach you the forms. You will practice. Many, many hours each day. You will be challenged to les Duels Sang by the Enforcers of our visitors. You will be expected to comport yourself well on the field of battle.”

“Okay. So I’ve got, like, three months to learn what the rest of them will have studied for centuries.” I handed the short blade back to Leo. I figured one at a time was smart, and the unfamiliar one first was smarter. “What are the rules?”

“Other than proper etiquette, there are few rules,” Gee said, his blade slowing. “One may fight with one blade or two, though two is more common. And most formal challenges are to first blood, though some few are to true-death. Deception and duplicity are looked upon with approval, as La Destreza—as the Mithrans practice it—is as much a mental game as a physical one.”

“Sooo.” I thought as I watched him dance with the sword, knowing I’d never get a cut through the circling blade. “Cheating is acceptable.”

“Indeed. One may—”

Two-fingered, I pulled a throwing knife and flipped it at him. For once, I hit what I was aiming at. The steel blade embedded itself into Gee DiMercy’s chest, slightly left of where a human’s heart would be. If he had a heart.

Just like the last time I stabbed him, light sparkled out, downy blue mist, soft and bright. The mist had weight and texture. A blast of heat followed, stinking of cauterized blood and burned evergreen. Charred jasmine. Unlike the last time I stabbed him, when Gee had been asleep, no dark bloodred wings unfurled. I didn’t get a glimpse of a dark-sapphire-feathered beast with crimson breast and wings, claws like spear points, glinting at wing tips and feet. His blood, trapped by the cloth of his gi, didn’t splatter like liquid flowers, perfume like rainbows hitting the ground. No sparks shot up where the blossoms landed. There was none of that. But the air around his body flashed a faint shade of blue for a splintered moment. Had I not been watching so closely, I would have missed it.

The mist retreated, fast as a flinch, and the punch of power snapped at me, electric and solid. It hurt, even though I was farther away this time, and was expecting the reaction. I felt/heard a sharp, sizzling hiss. If he’d been human, I might have killed him. But he wasn’t. Gee was something else entirely. Whatever he was, the layers of glamour around him reacted negatively to steel. He had been expecting me this time. But he hadn’t expected exactly what he’d gotten.

“First blood. Cheating. With two blades,” I said. “Like that?”

“First blood to the Enforcer,” Leo said, his voice coming from the side, where the spectators sat, amusement in his voice. “Does our Enforcer’s methodology fit within the parameters of the rules of etiquette?”

Gee pulled the weapon from his flesh and his padded suit. With a flick of his wrist, he sent it back to me. Had Beast not been so close in my mind, I might have gotten stuck. Instead, I batted the flying claw out of the air and down to the ground. With the new blade. Gee chortled, delighted. “Excellent. You will learn quickly, my little goddess. Or not.”

Crap. I was gonna learn how to fight with swords. And I didn’t know whether Gee’s or not meant that I’d learn fast or not, or that I was his goddess or not. Either way, I was so in trouble.

Behind me I heard mocking laughter. Without turning, I said, “I’ll kick your butt for that one, Eli.”

“You can try,” my partner said, still taunting. “I’m just glad I’m not the part-time Enforcer. Somebody’s gonna be sore.”

•   •   •

I was taught the positions for my feet for the Spanish Circle and how to step into a lunge. I was not taught how to parry, which I guessed was a move for wusses. And once I halfway had the basic moves in my mind, if not in my muscle memory, I was slapped half to death with the flat, beat with the dulled edge, and stuck with the point of Gee’s sword. I was disarmed, tripped, elbowed, tapped numerous times—over a kidney from the back or into my gut from the front—light blows and shallow cuts that would have killed me had they been delivered with any intent. Gee made me pay for first blood with a host of bruises and a little blood when I turned wrong and his short sword caught my arm. Skinwalker blood added to the vamp stench of the room. Once upon a time that had bothered me. A lot. Now I had no reaction at all to the smell of my blood in a room full of vamps.