#dovewrites

She stood by the gate, head tipped back to look up at me. With the sun behind, shadows hid her face: I couldn’t see her expression, but the rigid way she held herself told me all I needed.

I fought the urge to spur Wolfrunner on, but my hands tightened on the reins. He felt my tension and danced on his feet, turning slightly to put Ahni by his flank. She stepped sideways, out of kicking range. Good instincts.

“Can you please dismount? I don’t like talking to your horse’s shoulder.”

I tugged on the reins, pulling Wolfrunner back two steps so we wouldn’t tower over her. “This isn’t a good time to talk.”

“You’re leaving again.” Her voice was controlled. The statement didn’t require a response, so I stayed silent; there was little left to say between us, anyway.

“I can’t believe you.” Frustration seeped into her quiet tone. “If I’d come five minutes later, I’d have found an empty house. Did you even leave a message? An indication where you’re going? No,” she wrapped her arms around herself abruptly, startling Wolfrunner into a hostile snort, “you’re running off to Twin-Gods-know-where by yourself. What about the Field Fight? The First Parade? Tristan’s counting on you to be there. The investigation on Sir Rajel is ongoing, Lady Belen’s guards—”

“I need to go, Ahni.” I tugged on the reins, turning to the gate again. “I’m sorry. This is more important.”

“Than your duty as a knight? As a mentor? As a defender of this city?”

“I am defending this city,” I growled—then pulled up Wolfrunner as he bit the air in her direction. Our tone was making him antsy. “I’m not going off on a nice provincial jaunt—I’m going after the Prelate’s rogue magicker. To stop her before she unleashes the nethewings.”

“How?” Ahni stood her ground, unimpressed by Wolfrunner’s posturing. “Where are you going to find her? How can you stop her? She has fire magic—do you have a way to protect yourself against that? How many people does she have fighting by her side? Will you fight them all at once?”

My temper flared. “Do you think I’m some half-baked trainee? I know how to fight—”

“Against magic?”

“Against anything.”

She made a noise surprisingly close to a snarl, which startled me enough to douse my mounting anger. It occurred to me she’d come all the way here to find me. She wasn’t happy, plainly—but she’d ridden all this way in the icy drizzle, and now she was standing before my gate having, if not a public fight, at least a semi-public, firm difference of opinion. Uncharacteristic for the gentle Knight Healer, but I far preferred it to the cold silence of our last encounter.

Our gazes met, and I felt she could read my thoughts. Her gray eyes pinned me in place, sharp and knowing. Her lips thinned. Her arms tightened around herself. I could read her, too: she hated this. The anger, the confrontation—she hated it, but she did it anyway.

Her chin lowered a fraction, as she held my gaze, and with a cold shiver I realized: this was her battle stance.

Six years I’d dreamt about the day I’d finally fight the Prelate’s magicker. In my violent fantasies, I rolled over anyone who tried to stop me; cut them down from my path until it was just me and Ruchi, and I got to finish avenging Father and cut off the Prelate’s shadow hand once and for all.

“And then there are those few with healing magic,” Lady Danya went on, “so rare and precious to the Corps, that we’re willing to give them extra training and time, so they can pass the tests. But most children with healing magic don’t want to be knights.” She scoffed, and the knowing look in her eyes told me she’d read my thoughts—who wouldn’t want to be a knight?

She frowned, turning to the window. “Fighting is anathema to most healers. Once you’ve known the damage of battle wounds from our end, you’re loathe to deal those wounds. The sword is the enemy. Yet some children still come to us.” She looked back at me, “Do you know why?”

I shook my head, and the bite of her tone cooled into something like bitter resignation.

“Politics.” Her lips pressed together. “A knight spot brings power. Corps law makes no distinction between knights-healer and protector: we get the land rights, the authority, the right to train soldiers, all of it. So families send their healer children to train, and those children, if they succeed, take the knighthood as a necessary burden for power, and hope they’ll never see battle. Knights,” she snarled, suddenly, “anointed knights, hoping to never fight to defend others.”

Her words lingered in the air, and I clenched my fists, feeling scolded, ashamed, though her anger wasn’t directed at me.

Lady Danya met my eyes, and slowly, the anger dissipated, leaving behind her usual composure.

“So it is. Half the knights-healer secretly wish they were knights-protector, and of those who don’t, some secretly wish they weren’t knights at all. But once in a great while…” She closed her eyes, “Once in a while, someone comes along who doesn’t put one title before the other, or see the two as opposites.”

She joined her hands behind her back, turning to the window again.

“Ahni knew she wanted to be a healer, and her family didn’t push her to try for knighthood. She was training with the royal healer, yet she abandoned him for knight-training, even knowing she’d likely fail and he’d never take her back. You know why?”

I did. Ahni had told me that story. “Because he only healed people with money. And he directed the other Citadel healers to do the same. Ahni didn’t like that, but only the Knight Corps had high enough authority to overrule the royal healer’s methods.”

Lady Danya laughed, a short, humorless noise.

“The authority, yes, but until she joined us, we had little interest in it.” She sighed. “Ahni made us better. She’s a healer unafraid of fighting for others, and a knight who doesn’t see healing as inferior. She’s good at what she does, and she’s fought hard for the position she holds—and the Corps is lucky to have her.” She met my eyes again, and this time, the anger was definitely directed at me. “And you’re doing your best to get her killed.”

______________________

Lady Danya is an older knight-healer, who also has healing magic. She took Ahni as her squire back in the day, and has been her mentor and her champion ever since. 

She dislikes Sarra for a multitude of reasons, chief among which are Sarra’s personality betrayal of the Knight Corps and the fact that she keeps ending up in Ahni’s company, bringing all sorts of assassins explosions poison fist-fights trouble. Lady Danya has already warned Ahni against Sarra, but seeing how her precious grownup duckling is choosing to very politely ignore her, she decided to go yell at Sarra instead.  

And Sarra, currently feeling Excessive Guilt, takes the smackdown quietly.

Lady Danya has a small but important role in Knight Errant, she’s another badass lady knight, and I wanted an excuse to talk some more about how awesome Ahni is knight types, so here we have it. 

Bonus Facts: 

Lady Danya 100% sees Ahni as her duckling, even though Ahni is a grownup and technically now her boss. Ahni does not admit this because she is Too Introverted, but that makes her v happy. 

Ahni often tries to express her affection for Lady Danya by baking her cookies. Lady Danya v convincingly pretends to enjoy them, even though Ahni is a terrible baker. 

Lady Danya still maintains a semi-regular correspondence with Ahni’s mom, which they started when Ahni was a baby-knight-in-training and her mom was worried about her

Her grip on the sword was off. The handle was too big for her—likely a family blade, made for another. She was short for a Myrhi; whoever had wielded the sword before her must’ve had bigger hands.

“Fight me, traitor!” She shoved me with her free hand, and I repressed the urge to grab her sword and thwack her over the head with it. “I challenge you! Your mother’s grandmother was a cowardly doe! Your home is built upon a pile of mule dung!”

That stung unexpectedly. Wolf’s Glen seemed to have become a bit of a sensitive topic. Go figure.

“To the death!” Her blade drew an angry X in the air. “Dishonorable cur! Grease stain on the glorious Knight Corps’ flag!”

Twin Gods, but she was imaginative. “Who are you, again?” I checked the forming spectator crowd for a hint of who’d put her up to this, but among the smirks and scowls, no one stood out.   

The girl’s blade waved at my face, and I leaned back slightly, worried her uneven grip might slip and leave me short a nose tip.

“I am Dayoni Amel! Knight-appellant, next in line to take the Final Challenge!” She pointed her sword at my chest. “For the honor of the Knight Corps, I challenge you to a knight duel!”

“No, thanks.” I turned away. A stunned silence followed, but only for a second—then a hand gripped my arm and yanked me back.

“Coward!” shrieked the girl. “Weakling! Traitor! Too scared to face a true knight in—”

“Actually, you’re no knight.” I nodded to her training tunic. “Only anointed knights may fight a knight-duel. For anyone else to issue that challenge—such as agitated little knights-appellant who don’t know better—is a breach of Corps law.”

The girl looked off-balance, but only briefly. “I’m more of a knight than you ever were!” She spat on the ground. “You’re no knight! You’re nothing but a vow-breaking, dishonorable—”

“If I’m not a knight, then I can’t be challenged to a knight-duel.” I raised my eyebrows. “It’s right there in the name. Challenging anyone but another knight is also against Corps law... Don’t they teach you children anything in your Code classes these days?”

She stared at me, jaw grinding.

“Fine! Then I challenge you to a regular duel.” She stabbed her sword at the air, and gave me a defiant look. “Fight me!”

                          ~~~~~~~~~~

Dayoni Amel is a knight-appellant (i.e. advanced trainee) in her last year of training). As one of few girls in knight-protector training at the time of Sarra’s (staged) defection, Dayoni suffered not only the disillusion of seeing the lady she admired betray the Corps, but also the unintended consequences of Sarra’s actions: various sexist jerks in the Corps decided to take out their hatred against Sarra on all girls training to be knights, making their lives in training a nightmare. Did Sarra’s boss, who knew the truth, stop this? No. He did not care.

Dayoni was the only girl to make it through this adversarial training, through a combination of skill, stubbornness, and cunning, but over her six years of suffering she developed a hefty grudge against Sarra, whom she blames for the horrible experience. When Sarra returns, Dayoni decides to kill her, to avenge the dishonor to the Corps, prove that girls can make loyal knights-protector, and thus make the training experience of other girls in the future easier than her own.

Best qualities: determined, self-confident, hard-working, intelligent, good fighting skills, strong sense of justice and responsibility, loyal

Worst qualities: impulsive, resentful, a little insensitive, stubborn as heck, she and Sarra have more traits in common than either cares to admit prideful, easy to anger

 Goal: Kill Sarra for the sake of all girls who want to train as knights. LOGIC. altho in her defense anyone who had to listen to six years of ‘women are disloyal jerks’ might form some maladaptive cognitions around that

Biggest obstacle to her goal: Sarra isn’t easy to kill. 

Times she says ‘fight me’ to Sarra: 50+

Times Sarra actually fights her: 2 

Times Dayoni wins the fight: lol

Inventive insults hurled at Sarra: 4000

OTHER THEMES AND TAGS: #WLW, Brown/mixed-race protagonists, Found Family, Mental/Emotional Health, Challenging Misconceptions 

ASSORTED KNIGHT ERRANT EXCERPTS : Find them here

TAG: #knight errant. Find it here

SARRA/AHNI TAG: Here

WORLDBUILDING POSTS: Here

AMOUNT OF LOVE I HAVE FOR MY WLW LADY KNIGHTS:  ∞

Knight Errant tag list -- please let me know if you’d like to be added or removed :)

The smell struck me first. By the creek, wildflowers and the local pig herds had masked it, but as I neared the abbey wall, the miasma became overpowering. The burnt-garlic sting of heated ratsbane, the rotten waft of limestone, and the cloying decay of warm sulfur turned my stomach. I knew this smell. I knew what it meant.

Someone was trying to summon a netherwing.

Dread and thrill warred in my chest. A netherwing was one of the worst horrors magic could inflict; the curse that could be spun with netherwing blood was more awful still. I’d seen both beast and curse firsthand, and knew the suffering they brought.

But only a magicker could work a summoning spell, and the Prelate would only trust one rogue magicker with his plan. The Lion had told me the truth: the fire woman was here, just beyond the crumbling wall. Ruchi. The Prelate’s hidden hand, who delivered his horrors; the shadow that served as courier and ambassador and executioner, the woman I’d chased for years, but could never confront…

The woman who’d killed Father.

I pressed a hand to the wall, digging my fingers into its cracks.

Just one fight, Nita’s voice rang in my head. Even the best warrior can only win one fight at a time. 

She’d drilled the lesson into me day after day, each time my focus wavered or I got distracted. Pick your fight, she’d growl, whacking my ankles with her cane, and stick to it. 

Two fights waited for me beyond this wall, and I had to choose.

I couldn't.

I reached for the nearest grip and pulled myself up. The short wall made an easy climb, cracked and beginning to cave inward, yet I stalled, squeezing each grip like my life depended on it. With every move I repeated Nita’s advice. Breathe and think. Brains win battles, hearts lose them. But my heart kept pounding, and the clarity I called on eluded me. I knew I had to stop the spell and prevent a netherwing from entering our realm—but what I wanted was the fire woman, and the fight I’d awaited seven years.

Think. 

But all I could think of was the image of my sword running through Ruchi’s neck. 

Another voice replaced Nita’s, in the familiar soft drawl of the marsh provinces. Sometimes a cool head is better than a quick sword. Funny. I’d never realized how much Ahni sounded like Nita. All that talk of sweet tongues and even heads.

Too bad they’d never had a chance to meet; Nita would’ve found Ahni a better student. I’d only ever mastered half her teachings. 

The half that involved blades.

I reached for my sword, as I crossed the wall. My hand hesitated on the handle. One fight at a time. Below, the abbey’s side-yard looked deserted in the gray dusk. Old furniture and broken pottery and rusted gardening tools lay in a haphazard pile by the wall, next to a vegetable patch overrun with thornweed. Aiding the High Prelate’s coup must’ve not left much time for groundskeeping.  

Voices came from the main courtyard. I couldn’t see it past the chapel wing, but the smell and the tell-tale pale-yellow smoke of ratsbane told me enough. Ruchi was likely there setting up the spell. Drawing arcane symbols in limestone and sulfuric ash on the ground, ready to sacrifice some poor innocent to her summoning.

I could stop it. Set the Abbey on fire, cause a distraction, sever the irrigation lines to flood the yard, taint the spell field, if I had to, with Nanette’s spirit stone—I could think of ten ways to mess with the Prelate’s plan like I always did, silently, from the shadows…

Pick your fight.

But I wanted Ruchi.

I wanted her to pay for what she’d done to Father. I wanted her to suffer. I wanted to tell her she couldn’t hurt a Mendi and get away with it, that we never forgot our enemies.

I wanted her to die, and to die afraid.

I pulled my sword, cradling it against my chest, and with a few brisk moves I made my way down. I didn’t bother staying in the shadows: the Abbot and his flunkies could no more challenge me than ferrets challenge a hunting wolf. I marched across the side-yard, past the chapel entrance, and around the corner…

…and shock stopped me in my tracks.

I’d expected the dusty abbey courtyard, Ruchi with her spell and her sacrifice, perhaps a few priests assisting her. Instead, the yard was painted in white-and-yellow symbols, nearly wall-to-wall. A makeshift cage of wooden pikes stood in the middle, filled with people—thirty or forty of them, gaunt men, women and children in plain countryside garb, crying and pulling at the wooden bars, while men in priest robes pushed them back with sharp sticks.

Ruchi stood by the far wall, instantly recognizable by the red cloak. [Spoiler] stood beside her. I was too stunned by the sight before me to even feel anger at [their] betrayal. 

I pressed myself into the chapel wall. Breathe. Think. What was this? The scene looked unlike the summoning spell I’d seen before. Why such a large field? Who were the people in the cage?  

An alarmed shout told me someone had spotted me. All around, priests pulled out daggers and clubs, screeching as they rushed toward me. The caged prisoners cried louder, begging for help.

Across the yard, the fire woman met my eyes. She didn’t look surprised to see me: as she held my gaze, her lips curled in a satisfied smile.

The truth hit me just before the first priest’s rudimentary club.