By the time the sun was on its way to setting, Faye and the others were exhausted. They had trained for hours, disguised as various games that assuaged the adventurer’s consciences. Well, mostly Arran’s conscience as he was the one most unwilling to risk furthering the Guild’s censure.

The last rays of the day were still edging over the western mountains, casting a harsh glare of light across the courtyard when the rarely used courtyard door that led onto the street opened. Two figures stepped inside, the light at their backs making it hard to discern their features.

“Guests usually knock,” Arran said. He was glaring at the pair but made no move otherwise. Faye took a leaf from his book, watching the pair but keeping her training sword held in a loose grip — completely nonthreatening.

“The Guild doesn’t need to knock, Arran, you know this.”

Shading his eyes, a little with his hand, Arran turned his head and looked at the two figures again.

“Ah, representatives. Official business. What can we do for the Guild?”

“We received a report that you have broken the trust of the Administrator. Already.”

The small wooden door gently closed, the second figure securing it and stepping just to the right of the first figure. Now that the harsh sunlight was streaming over the tops of their heads rather than through the open doorway, it was much easier to see.

Faye’s breath caught at the unexpected sight of Maggie, the woman from the Guild that had saved her life when she’d passed out in the hot room.

Maggie’s gazed flickered to Faye’s, then away. Faye didn’t catch whatever emotion was hiding behind the mask of professionalism the woman was wearing.

The other figure resolved into Iain’s features, and something inside of Faye instinctively flinched away from him.

“The Guild should know better than to listen to rumours,” Arran replied. “You know me well enough to know that I wouldn’t willingly break my word.”

Iain shrugged. “Perhaps.” The faint sneer accompanying his words belied his true feelings. “Though, I wouldn’t have said that you would have taken a… child outside the safety of the walls, either.”

At his words, Faye bristled. She was about to say something but felt Ailith’s hand on her shoulder.

“Not now,” the woman said. She hadn’t lowered her voice, so at her warning Iain sneered and turned a look of pure disgust on Faye.

“Listen to your betters, child.”

Arran took a step forward.

“So, what exactly does the Guild believe I have done?”

Iain looked around the courtyard, the adventurers weren’t exactly the most organised or tidy people Faye had ever come across, and their training equipment was strewn across the ground, or piled into haphazard bundles in the corners where they didn’t need to move.

“Is it not obvious?”

“Look,” Faye butted in. “They haven’t broken any promise to the Guild. We haven’t been training. Exercise isn’t training, or you would have to stop them from running beside me wherever I decide to go.”

Iain’s sneer returned to his face, and he turned back to her with a whiplash of a snarl.

“If you know they must not train you, they have already broken their promise, girl. Now, be silent!”

Taking three violent steps forward, her wooden blade pointed at Iain’s throat, Faye said, “Call me a girl once more, you piece of trash. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that they weren’t allowed to train me when they suddenly refused to talk about anything around me other than what we were about to eat… and when I had to basically force them to join me in some exercise.”

Iain’s nostrils flared, and he turned from Faye’s incensed face to look at Arran.

“Regardless of what you claim, the Guild has a right to inspect your behaviour to determine whether you are following the rules laid out for you and your companions.”

After this, Maggie stepped forward. She wasn’t as filled with invective, but her voice was firmer than her words.

“You were seen practising with the sword. As this is Arran’s area of expertise… the Guild has reason to believe that his word has been broken.”

Iain’s head twitched, as if he wanted to turn and snap at Maggie but thought better of it at the last moment.

Faye tried to ignore him and looked only at Maggie.

“I will practise with the sword regardless of what those around me practise. The Guild has no say in that.”

“Of course not, but as there are mitigating circumstances—”

“Mitigating circumstances or not, girl,” Iain’s venomous tone cut through Maggie’s carefully measured words, “you are subject to the Guild’s rules whilst within the walls of this town.”

Faye’s eyes narrowed, and her grip on her wooden sword tightened, but before she could let her anger get ahead of her, she noticed that Iain’s officious cloak did seem to be hiding a scabbard.

“Fine,” she snapped. “You want to prove that Arran taught me something? Fight me. If you can truthfully say that you recognise my technique as a copy of his, I’ll go along with whatever you say.”

Maggie’s face reflected the shock she felt the adventurers would be in, she’d heard their in-drawn breaths. Iain, on the other hand, simply grinned.

“The adventuring spirit, of course, is to be commended,” he began, “but I’m afraid I cannot bring myself to duel a child… no matter—”

Faye lunged forward, putting her anger and frustration with the Guild and the guards into a single attack.

The tip of her wooden blade was approximately the same length as her previous training sword. A traditional German style hand and a half sword, though they varied, was generally around 90 centimetres long, putting the whole sword at just over a metre long.

Iain had been standing three paces away by the time Faye had made her challenge.

She wasn’t the tallest fighter, never had been and never will be, but she made up for it with violently quick movement and fast footwork that would often confuse and tangle up her opponents at home.

Now, she used all the power of her legs, shoulder, and arm to extend fully into a lunge.

A lunge is more a fencer’s attack than a longsword fighter’s but the explosive action of a lunge appealed to Faye’s anger.

She had no idea how much experience with fighting or duelling that Iain had, but she figured that as such a low levelled fighter, she wouldn’t be able to come close to actually hurting him.

Her surprise when her blade came within millimetres of impaling the man’s throat, saved only by an instinctive flinch, didn’t prevent her from following it up.

She stepped forward into the space she’d crossed with her lunge, bringing the sword back into an inside guard where the blade is held parallel to the ground, tip towards the opponent, with her left elbow in line with the blade, the right angled down to present just the right side to the opponent.

Iain’s splutter of protest didn’t sway her, either.

She stepped forward, aiming a diagonal cut at his head.

He knew that she was coming for him, this time, and he launched himself backward, putting a few steps between them.

His wide eyes told her that he didn’t find people attacking him regularly. In the fierce burning centre of emotion in her chest, Faye reasoned that this was probably good for him on some level.

She felt herself adopt a grin that probably looked more like a maniacal grimace.

Stepped forward again, she switched into a high guard and used fast horizontal attacks that switched from right to left in a swift, chopping style with each step forward.

Iain scrambled backwards. He finally got his own weapon free of the scabbard, which Faye saw was a thin, straight blade akin to the Chinese jian. Though real examples of the jian would match the longsword in length, it seemed that the bureaucrat had decided on a shorter blade.

A noble’s weapon.

Inadequate.

Grinning still, Faye advanced. She stopped attacking incessantly, watching to see what the man would do. The others had faded away to the edges of the courtyard. Unwilling to get in their way, despite Iain’s desperate glances their way.

She saw his Adam’s apple bob, and a moment later, he launched forward into his own hasty attack — a fast vertical chop. She dodged aside, leaving the blade to swish past her, and she attacked his leading hand. He flinched backward instinctively, abandoning his plans.

Adopting the Fool’s guard, her sword tip pointed at the ground, Faye stared into Iain’s eyes, waiting for him to make a move.

Iain darted forward a few times to make feinting attacks, pretending to cut her left, but each time she calmly moved out of the way, or lightly parried — she didn’t want her wooden blade to gain any nicks or damage. Eventually, she saw in his eyes and the tension he carried in his arms when he was about to launch the real attack.

He came in high, his jian coming around in a circular motion to diagonally cut left to right. But before he could get close, Faye dropped her stance, crouching down and pushing her left hand down toward her crotch, with the pommel of her hilt gripped between thumb and fore finger the levering motion rapidly moved the tip of her sword from aiming at the ground to being level with Iain’s heart as he came charging in.

She realised before Iain did that, he wouldn’t be able to halt himself, and his blade was still hurtling down. She snapped her blade forward into a thrust, jabbing him, hard, in the chest. She immediately riposted into a high guard, stepped forward inside his swing and shoulder checked him.

Her shoulder caught him directly in the solar plexus, it’s where her height had some advantage because she was usually at the exact right height to hit someone in the soft, squishy part of their chest, directly under the breastbone — hit someone there and you’ll wind them, ten times out of ten.

The breath gushed out of him with the blow, and the gargled noise he made was repeated when his back hit the ground.

There was silence from the spectators.

Gavan’s soft shoes whispered over the courtyard floor until he was stooped over Iain’s supine form. A gentle light emerged from beneath his cupped hand as it rested on the downed bureaucrat’s chest.

“He’ll be fine,” the mage muttered as he ministered.

“Faye is the victor,” Arran muttered. As if it really needed to be said.

Checking the tip of her sword, she saw that it had an inch or so of blood. Grimacing, she wiped it off on Iain’s trouser leg. Expensive material, from the looks of it, but it was absorbent. She’d give him that.

“Faye, that…” Maggie sighed. “I’m not sure what I should say, but that was not what I would have expected from someone in your position.”

Faye shrugged. “I tried telling you, I’ve trained for years.”

Looking down at Iain, who was still laid on the floor, looking up at the sky as if it was the most interesting thing in the world, she said, “I’m not sure what I expected from him, but it wasn’t that. I guessed he would be a lot higher levelled than I am.”

“Oh, he is,” Arran said.

Once again, there was nothing more forthcoming. Faye frowned.

Maggie seemed to catch it, because she spoke up.

“His class isn’t combat oriented. His stats are geared towards a non-physical application and despite the fact that you’re a much lower level than he is, I assume from the way you fought that you’ve practice in the ring against real opponents?”

Faye just nodded.

Maggie nodded too. “In that case, it was never going to be much of a contest. I think I’d have a hard time against you in a fair fight, too.”

At the looks that Arran and Ailith were giving her, Maggie shrugged. “I’m not bound by any such rule. I deem it in the Guild’s best interest that Faye not be held back. We need everyone we can get.”

“Damn right we do,” Ailith said. She strode forward and draped an arm over Faye’s shoulders. “And this one will be right there with the rest of us when it matters most. Unlike some.” The last was said with a sniff.

Though Ailith pointedly didn’t look down at the man laid out on the ground, Faye had the distinct impression that he’d flinched as if the big woman had screamed the accusation in his face regardless.

Maggie cocked her head, “Faye, I’m curious. It seemed to me that you displayed a few different forms.”

Shrugging was hard with the weight of Ailith’s arm on her shoulders, so she half-shrugged and tilted her head to the side to somewhat agree with her.

“How do you have more than one form already?”

Here, Arran answered for her.

“I’m not sure that she does,” he said. Maggie’s arched eyebrow indicated he should continue, but he looked at Faye and raised an eyebrow of his own.

“I see,” Maggie said, frowning. She shook her head, then repeated herself. “I see. No, there’s no need to go into that now. Arran, Ailith, Gavan, thank you for your time. Faye, my apologies for the… inconvenience. I’ll inform the Administrator that the rumour was unfounded. However, I cannot say that more checks won’t be required.”

“I understand,” Faye said. “The Guild says ‘jump’, and you have to say, ‘how high?’, right?”

Maggie blinked at the expression but nodded her head. “Something like that.”

She bent and grabbed Iain by the scruff of his neck. A few moments of struggle later and he was standing, though he wouldn’t look anywhere near Faye. In fact, he didn’t say anything and just brushed himself down — ineffectually — before stalking over to the courtyard door and leaving.

Maggie stopped at the gate and nodded to each of them, holding a hand up in goodbye. She closed the door behind her, gently.

They each waited a few breaths before the laughter started.

Somehow, Faye got the impression that unless Iain had started sprinting the moment he had gotten out of sight, he’d have heard the guffaws.

She wasn’t the slightest bit sorry for that.

After they had stopped howling with laughter, Faye wiped her eyes and let out a huge breath.

“Wow, that felt good.”

“He will not forget that,” Gavan said, with a grin.

“So he shouldn’t!” Ailith guffawed. “He’s worse than you when it comes to the physical attributes.”

“More importantly,” Arran said, with a smile of his own, “is that at least some of the Guild are already aware of Faye’s talents.”

“So why are they doing this to me, then?” she asked.

“Ahh, who knows what they’re thinkin’,” Ailith said, clapping a hand on Faye’s back. “For now, we carry on as we are. Then the next time they send someone to check in on us, you make sure they end up on their back again, eh?”

Ailith broke down again into more laughter and Faye couldn’t help but grin.

The oppressive weight of the past few days still had not let up in its pressure on her, but that had helped.