“Out in the world, things can be different. Where village toughs or bullies might try to start a fight with a Blackguard man for status—because win or lose, a bully wins respect from his fellows simply for daring to fight a Blackguard—that won’t happen to you. Even if a bully beats you, to his fellows, he’s only beat a woman. And if he loses, he loses everything. You may, however, get groped or spit on or slighted. We’ll talk about how you deal with that, and you’ll find there are no fiercer defenders than your brothers.

“There are privileges for the sacrifices we make, sometimes privileges in their own right, and sometimes privileges that merely negate the privileges of others. Essel, you want to share about the governor’s ball?”

Essel grinned at the memory. “We escorted the White to a ball at the Atashian embassy—so the grounds are technically Atashian soil. The ambassador thought that gave him rights. He liked me. In fact, I liked him. I was on break and he found me. He kissed me—which wasn’t unpleasant, but it was unprofessional. I felt it would reflect badly on the Blackguard if we were found. So I told him so. He thought I was being coy. I told him I wasn’t. But he got aggressive. He kissed me again. I told him I wouldn’t warn him a third time. He put his hands on me in a way I found objectionable. So I broke his fingers. Most of them.”

Teia didn’t know what impressed her the most: that Essel could break the man’s fingers so easily, that she would dare to do so, or that she was so nonchalant about it.

Continuing, Essel said, “When he recovered, he went to the White, furious. Demanded redress. He told some ridiculous story. The White didn’t even ask for my side. She asked, ‘Essel, did you act improperly?’ I said no, and she told him that he was going to be lucky if she didn’t decide to have him expelled from Big Jasper.”

Samite said, “If anything, the Prism is even harsher with those who interfere with us. We occupy an odd position. In some ways, we’re mere slaves who must be ready to die for those above us in an instant, deserving or not. In other ways, not even ambassadors, not even the Prism himself can interfere with us.

“Now,” Samite continued, “after Essel has just spent time warning you about generalities and how they often don’t apply, I’m going to use some. Because some generalities are true often enough that we have to worry about them. So here’s one: men will physically fight for status. Women, generally, are more clever. The why of it doesn’t matter: learned, innate, cultural, who cares? You see the chest-bumping, the name-calling, performing for their fellows, what they’re really doing is getting the juices flowing. That interval isn’t always long, but it’s long enough for men to trigger the battle juice. That’s the terror or excitation that leads people to fight or run. It can be useful in small doses or debilitating in large ones. Any of you have brothers, or boys you’ve fought with?”

Six of the ten raised their hands.

“Have you ever had a fight with them—verbal or physical—and then they leave and come back a little later, and they’re completely done fighting and you’re just fully getting into it? They look like they’ve been ambushed, because they’ve come completely off the mountain already, and you’ve just gotten to the top?”

“Think of it like lovemaking,” Essel said. She was a bawdy one. “Breathe in a man’s ear and tell him to take his trousers off, and he’s ready to go before you draw your next breath. A woman’s body takes longer.”

Some of the girls giggled nervously.

“Men can switch on very, very fast. They also switch off from that battle readiness very, very fast. Sure, they’ll be left trembling, sometimes puking from it, but it’s on and then it’s off. Women don’t do that. We peak slower. Now, maybe there are exceptions, maybe. But as fighters, we tend to think that everyone reacts the way we do, because our own experience is all we have. In this case, it’s not true for us. Men will be ready to fight, then finished, within heartbeats. This is good and bad.

“A man, deeply surprised, will have only his first instinctive response be as controlled and crisp as it is when he trains. Then that torrent of emotion is on him. We spend thousands of hours training that first instinctive response, and further, we train to control the torrent of emotion so that it raises us to a heightened level of awareness without making us stupid.”

“So the positive, for us Archers: surprise me, and my first reaction will be the same as my male counterpart’s. I can still, of course, get terrified, or locked into a loop of indecision. But if I’m not, my second, third, and tenth moves will also be controlled. My hands will not shake. I will be able to make precision movements that a man cannot. But I won’t have the heightened strength or sensations until perhaps a minute later—often too late.

“Where a man needs to train to control that rush, we need to train to make it closer. If we have to climb a mountain more slowly to get to the same height to get all the positives, we need to start climbing sooner. That is, when I go into a situation that I know may be hazardous, I need to prepare myself. I need to start climbing. The men may joke to break the tension. Let them. I don’t join in. Maybe they think I’m humorless because I don’t. Fine. That’s a trade I’m willing to make.”

Teia and the rest of the girls walked away from training that day somewhat dazed, definitely overwhelmed. What Teia realized was that the women were deeply appealing because they were honest and powerful. And those two things were wed inextricably together. They said, I am the best in the world at what I do, and I cannot do everything. Those two statements, held together, gave them the security to face any challenge. If her own strengths couldn’t surmount an obstacle, her team’s strengths could—and she was unembarrassed about asking for help where she needed it because she knew that what she brought to the team would be equally valuable in some other situation.

The Archers were uncompromising and unapologetic and yet in total balance. They respected each other and they respected themselves. Some of the Blackguards, Teia knew, had come from slave stock, others had come from noble blood. Some were blues, some were yellows or greens or reds. Some were bichromes, some were tall, some were skinny, some were as muscular as Commander Ironfist. They were different from each other—but the Blackguards looked at those differences and asked where they were useful, not who they made better than whom. Being a Blackguard was the central fact of their identity. All else came behind that.

For a girl who was a slave and a color-blind drafter of a useless color, that was like the impossible dream, dangled in front of her nose. She’d been ordered to join the Blackguard by her owner, she’d been trained for it for years at the direction of others and for the profit of others—but now she wanted it for herself, for her own reasons. And she wanted it with all her heart.

Chapter 29

Kip and Teia finished their laps—for Teia punching a boy who’d dismissed her as a ‘little girl,’ this time—and had no time to clean up before heading to practicum: drafting practice, Teia called it. She seemed to dread it. Kip was looking forward to it—even if he was a sweaty, stinky mess.

As usual, Teia led the way. It was on a different floor than their other class, sun side of the Prism’s Tower. But when they got to the room, Kip saw that Grinwoody was waiting outside the door.