Chapter Twenty-Four: Diversion Tactics

Val wound up taking the middle house and Niko the right. It was too bad that she and Niko both had to be corporals, because Val would have loved to be on a team with her. Niko had a feral grace when she was fighting, like a sleek and ferocious panther… it was a joy to watch her spinning away from punches and blade thrusts and rolling her opponents to the ground. Val shook her head - she had to focus.

Her squad scampered down the semi-secluded stretch of awning. Bolt-casters clicked and clacked from the roof of one of the house - they didn't have bolts, obviously, but instead shot little sticks of balsa with a spongy tip. They only flew about fifty feet and they still hurt a bit to get hit with, but it was a decent approximation of fighting with bolts. Or so Ette said - Val had never fought with real bolts, obviously.

One of the bolts bounced right off the ground and under the awning - a one in fifty shot. "Crap!" Colin Wrecks said - it had just hit his leg.

"That's one," Val said.

If you got hit twice on your armor or once anywhere else you were out. Similarly, if you got tapped twice anywhere with a sparring blade, you were out. Once if it was somewhere unarmored. Fortunately, Colin was armored where he'd been hit. They ducked into an even more-secluded alleyway and crouched in a little circle.

"I'm going up the back, and Colin, you go up the side…"

"But…"

"Don't complain, just do it," Val said. "You three… you've got the front. But don't go through the front door, obviously, unless somebody steps out and exposes themselves. Instead, wait for the signal and then go through one of the windows."

Part of the rules of the exercises was that the windows and doors had to all be unlocked, since they weren't supposed to be damaging the buildings, and otherwise somebody might have to smash through to enter through them. Since there would inevitably be somebody around the front door, it made more sense to open a side window, gauge the response inside, and then either enter there or find somewhere safer to enter. But Val didn't need to worry about that because she'd assigned herself to be a climb monkey.

Val scrambled up the side of the building - there was enough texture to the stone that she could climb right up without using a gutter, as Colin did. There was a reason Ette called them his 'Monkey Squad' - if you gave them good gloves, they could climb up just about anything vertical. Usually, they didn't even need gloves. She thumped the window pane with the flat of her fist, shimmied down to the next window, and cracked it open as quickly as she could. Then she rolled inside, her practice knife already in her hand.

The woman who'd been guarding that half of the upstairs ran to the window that Val had thumped and then ran back toward her as soon as she heard the other window opening. She was too late, though - Val was through, knife drawn. She tossed it at the woman, hit her square in the chest with the blade, and then lunged in with her second knife, tapping the woman's leg.

"Damn!" the woman said, prompting Val to roll her eyes. If they'd been fighting for real, she wouldn't have had the chance to practically announce Val's location.

Fortunately, the other guard patrolling the upstairs was too busy dispatching Colin to notice.

"Don't feel bad about it, boy," the man said, and he offered Colin a hand up. He never saw Val coming.

Tap-tap. "You're out," she said.

The man just chuckled and sheathed his practice knife. "Sabine said you lot were good. I think she forgot to mention fucking terrifying."

Val nodded - that was fair. She'd be terrified to spot the Monkey Squad rapidly converging on her location with ill intent, too. They swarmed around buildings with singular purpose and had them infiltrated in seconds flat. Good thing she was one of them. Speaking of which…

"Damn…" Val said. She hadn't heard anything from downstairs, and she'd been keeping an ear out. That meant something was amiss. They were supposed to start their incursion when Val had thumped the window. She glanced toward the stairs down…

Fortunately, the building had a dumbwaiter, just like the rooms at the palace. Val peeped down the shaft and, seeing it was clear down to the ground floor, climbed right down the cable, crouching down in the service window to get a bearing. She didn't see or hear a soul - not the three people she'd tasked with entering from the first floor, nor any of the guards who were presumably down there. If they'd done five per building, it should be at least two… perhaps one in the basement, if it wasn't flooded.

Val eased herself down from the dumbwaiter and crept across the floor, utterly silent. She could hear shouting outside - somebody upset over whatever had occurred in one of the other buildings - but the only sound in there was Val's own breath in her ears and one of the 'dead' folks upstairs pacing, which they weren't supposed to do.

Practice knife in hand, she crept toward the door, senses primed for breathing, footfalls, suspicious shadows, anything. She peeked out into the atrium, again sensing nothing. Nothing had been piled in front of the front door to act as a barricade and deterrent, which was unusual. Defenders almost always did that…

They had to be somewhere. One of the people in the house had a ducal crest and, if you killed them, they were supposed to give it to you. Whichever team had at least two crests at the end of the exercise was the winner… generally, either the offense team captured all three or the defense team kept theirs. The only other outcome was when time ran out. Satisfied that nobody was there, Val crept out…

Tap, went a practice blade against her vest. She rolled out of the way and scrambled up six stairs to get away from the second tap.

"Hell's bells, you're fast," Sabine said. Where in the world had she come from?

It scarcely mattered. If Val turned and ran, Sabine would just throw her knife up and 'kill' Val. If she came down, she'd have to grapple with her, which was an even worse idea. But the door was unblocked - if she could escape, and if one of the other squads was successful, they could regroup and make another go at the building. Knife still in hand, she made a run for it.

Val dodged Sabine's lunging attempt to grab her, but the bondswoman was too experienced. She swept Val's legs out from under her and had Val on the ground in no time flat. With her body weight on top of Val, there was absolutely nothing she could do beyond play for time. She deflected Sabine's thrust once with a strike of her own, but soon found herself mounted and immobilized, an arm painfully wrenched to the side. And Sabine relished her victory for a fraction of a second before striking Val's exposed flank.

The basement door opened. Sabine's practice knife came down. And somebody tackled the bondswoman from the side. Val leapt to her feet and gawped at the sight of Niko grappling with Sabine on the ground. And, while Sabine was stronger and a lot more experienced, she wasn't so strong or so experienced that Niko couldn't hold her off for the time it took for Val to double-tap the bondswoman.

Sabine sighed and rolled off of Niko, helping the orphan to her feet.

"The ducal crest, please, Ms. Bonnikin," Val said.

"My man in the basement had it," she said. "I suppose Nikoli has it now?"

"I do," Niko said. "If your man in the middle building hadn't made a run for the tunnel, we might never have found it. I snuck right through and got your man on the other side."

"Very impressive, girls," Sabine said. "Now… Val, you're already in the employ of my old pupil, and I'm frankly a bit jealous. Do you know what would make me feel a lot less jealous, though?"

"No, Ms. Bonnikin…"

"If Nikoli was to become my apprentice. What do you say, dear?"

Nikoli hugged her, visibly surprising the usually-steely bondswoman. "Call me Niko!" she said.

+++++

Val lay awake in bed, the image of Niko tackling Sabine to save her replaying in her head for the hundredth time. She couldn't get it out of her head, and every time she recalled that determined and fiercely protective look on Niko's face, it made her feel warm and happy. Niko was the perfect warrior, strong and graceful like a cat. Val could dream about it all night. But she couldn't sleep. Not with her heart pounding like that. Normally, she only got like that with…

Jasil. It was how she felt when she thought about Jasil. Val sat up in bed, suddenly very distraught. Yes, Niko was a friend… but she liked her, too. By way of experiment, she imagined what it would be like to kiss Niko… those blue eyes looking into hers, her hand smooth but slightly calloused from long hours training, her lips soft…

Oh. Yep. She liked Niko in that way.

At some point, Ginn had stopped asking whether there were any boys that Val liked… actually, it had been on Mittvanter night. Oh. They knew, Ginn and Ette did. Somehow, they'd known while Val remained supremely clueless. She'd always assumed that she would like boys when she got a bit older, but when she thought to all of the boys in the sept that Gus gushed over… or the strapping lords and knights that the girls in Val's finishing class seemed to favor… Val could understand, objectively speaking, what they liked. But there was nothing objective about the way the image of Jasil leaping into a perfect tumble made her feel. Niko leaping to tackle Sabine…

Did Niko even like girls? From what Val gathered, most girls didn't feel that way, and the Pale Order definitely thought they shouldn't feel that way. Notably, Niko never chimed in when Gus gushed, but that didn't mean anything. But Val hoped it did…

Or did she? What about Jasil? Didn't they have something? They'd kissed. Twice! And it had been really, really nice. Val did a little prayer to whatever gods might be listening to grant her some clarity in the matter.

Tap! That had definitely been something against her bedroom window. Tap! Val rolled out of bed and stumbled to the window, cracking it open to peer down. And there, in the indigo gloom of moonslight, she stood. The gods were working fast tonight.

"Jasil?" Val hissed. The cool night air made her shiver under her nightshirt.

She nodded. "Can I come in?"

"Sure. Give me a sec."