The War with the Mein Read Online Free PDF Page B

was coaching you on it last week. If you passed it, you could start spear training.”
    “I’ll pass it,” Aliver said. “You should worry about yourself. I’ll help you with the Fourth Form if you need it.”
    “You?” Melio asked, laughing. “My royal tutor?” He had a face that might go unnoticed in a room, except when he smiled. Then all the various components of his features fell into place as if they had been designed with only mirth in mind. The whiteness of his teeth beside his olive skin made him glow with health. Both boys knew that in matters martial the ground between them was not even. Aliver may have been training at a higher Marah Form than his peers—such was the long tradition—but Melio had been suggested for training as an Elite. The Elite was quite different than the Marah. It was an even smaller group selected purely for ability, without regard for rank or social status. The suggestion that Melio might join them was an honor that meant the instructors saw inordinate skill in the young man.
    “Look, there’s Hephron,” Melio said. “He’s getting quite good. He fought Carver’s father to a standstill the other day. You can be sure it surprised the old fellow.”
    As he spoke Melio gestured at the boy in question with his chin. Hephron Anthalar was a year older than most of the others, taller by a head, with reddish hair that sprung in disheveled curls from his head. The Anthalars were also Agnates, of a line that had intersected several times with the Akarans through marriage. Hephron could claim royal lineage. He could, in fact, count the steps between himself and the throne on the fingers of his two hands. He walked with his followers tight around him; a sycophantic group that clung to him because the status found in his shadow was greater than any of them could have managed singly.
    Hephron bowed on reaching the prince, a motion that his companions copied with less feigned and more genuine deference. “Prince,” he said, “ready to fight the ghosts?”
    Aliver knew what he referred to in an instant and felt the cut of the barb. A peculiarity of his training was that after the initial lecture and demonstrations, Aliver and the other boys parted company. The others paired off and went at each other with the padded swords, sometimes using the wooden variety, which had no blade to cut but could still issue a painful rap or jab, or even break bones when wielded skillfully. Aliver, on the other hand, trained only with an instructor who further worked him through the classic Forms, the teacher attuned to the minutest detail of his student’s posture and positioning, the intake or exhalation of his breath, the position of his head or even his eyes. Using the wooden swords, they fenced together in slow motions honed to the finest precision. In this Aliver had thought himself special. His training had a purity that would always set him apart from the others. It was a gift to be envied. So he had believed until Hephron undermined it all with a single question.
    “Ghosts?” Aliver asked. “I don’t believe in ghosts, Hephron. I do believe that the instructors know how best to train the nation’s next king.”
    “Yes,” the other said, “I suppose they do. Quite right, as ever.” As he turned away, his eyes canted upward in a signal to his companions. He said something Aliver could not hear, and the other youths moved away with amused murmurs.
    Aliver tried to forget Hephron in the hours that followed. The lessons began with a lecture. Today it was from the second instructor, Edvar, a bull-necked man of mixed heritage, his Candovian ancestry betrayed by the barrel stoutness of his torso. He talked about the technique of the sword soft block, a defensive tactic wherein one countered an opponent’s attacks with the bare minimum of force necessary. It was risky, he explained. You did not want to underestimate the opponent’s force, but it was a valuable maneuver in that you could use the