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Cassiel's Daggers	By : bewaretheshort1 Category: G through L > Kushiel's Trilogy Views: 1881 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not now, nor will I ever, own Kushiel's Legacy, or its affiliates written by Jacqueline Carey. Any characters and/or ideas are the exclusive property of Jacqueline Carey. Furthermore, I do not make any money from this.

Chapter List
- 1-One
- 2-Two
- 3-Three
- 4-Four
- 5-Five
- 6-Six
- 7-Seven
- 6
- 7
As so often happens when life is as regimented as within the Sanctuary, the days flowed together. If I found it monotonous, still I was kept busy with near-ceaseless activity. Our stretch exercises grew to include more and more complicated forms, as often as not tested not only our flexibility but also our strength and stamina. Brother Vachel watched with his piercing eyes, and corrected any fault to our forms. As for tumbling, we were given wooden daggers so that we may learn to move while they were in our hands, and the same with our balancing and concentrations classes. Those, however, became increasingly complicated, and Brother Gaston was ever thinking up new ways to test our observational skills.

As for other things, Brother Guy’s lessons had grown to include what service each temple of the Companions offered. We were taught various prayers, from simple requests for guidance and assistance to prayers for the dead. If I have not said it before, Cassilines are priests as well as warriors, and we needs must learn such things. Every third day, for at times hours on end, we were to meditate on what we had learned in all of our lessons, but especially Brother Guy’s. Should he catch us falling asleep, he would strike us with a long stick, cut from a young tree so that it was still flexible. These blows were not gentle, to be sure, and more than once I and my fellow initiates sported bruises and betimes welts from it.

Another lesson, presided over by Brother Vachel, was given to us. It was forms exercises, which I had looked forward to since I had first seen them. As with the stretches, he started small, instructing us in various stances and how to move from one to the other seamlessly. The more we learned, the more complex it became. There are circles, we were taught, in everything. We are circle, and next to us or behind us is a circle where our companion was to go. Each enemy was also a circle, and we were to use the circles of our forms to fend them off.

The reason this was, Brother Vachel was fond of saying, was because circles offer no resistance. Their shape deflected without absorbing, flowed through with the world rather that stand against it. A line would break, given enough pressure and force. A box crumbled eventually, and even a building would fall. A line and even squares had a start and stop, and betwixt the two lay a great fault that an enemy could exploit. A circle had neither beginning nor end, and was closed. There were no inherent weaknesses in a circle, and as it deflected and flowed with the world, was perhaps the most powerful shape.

In addition to this, we were finally being taught weapons. I was eager to show my instructor that I was not ignorant in their use, but the style of the Cassilines is so wholly different from what Emil had taught me that rather than being ahead of my peers, I was flagging behind. Brother Grosvenor, who was teaching us weaponry, kept me behind one day.

“You are struggling,” he observed, his attention seemingly elsewhere as he adjusted the wooden practice swords we had been using.

“I’ll work harder, Brother Grosvenor, I promise,” I said red-faced.

“You are usually the first to master such techniques,” he replied, glancing up at me from the practice blades. “Where did you learn to use a sword?”

“Lord Bouscevre prohibited me from learning,” I told him, not meeting his eye.

He smiled. “Ah, but you are Camaeline, taught to use a blade almost from infancy, yes?”

I mumbled somewhat, I do not know.

“So you have already learned somewhat of swordplay?” he said, making it a question. “Against your Prefect’s orders?”

Again, I mumbled an answer.

“As Lord Bouscevre was not yet your Prefect at the time,” he began, “I will not send you to be punished.”

I looked up at him, surprised at being let out of it so easily. His expression was grave, however, and he in no way looked as though he were doing me a favor. My excitement died.

“What will you do, Brother?” I asked, fearing his answer.

“You will need to come here, every day, for further instruction,” he said. “I need to unteach you all that you learned from Camlach before you can progress in your Cassiline disciplines. It will be your responsibility to see me in between your other lessons and chores.”

Which meant that I would either have to wake earlier or stay up later than I was wont in order to accomplish this, as the rest of my day was usually filled with all of my other responsibilities. Had I known my lessons from Emil would have caused so much trouble, I would have listened to my father and Lord Bouscevre.

“I will try, Brother Grosvenor,” I said, bowing.

“You will try, or you will be punished,” he told me firmly. “I cannot stress enough how important it is that you keep pace with the rest of your peers.”

I nodded, swallowing hard. “I will do what I can, Brother Grosvenor.”

“Good,” he said. “Then I will expect you here before dawn, every day. Any day that you do not show up, you will be punished as though you had skipped a lesson. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Brother Grosvenor,” I said, and bowed. He returned my bow, and I was dismissed. I rushed to catch up with my peers. We had been assigned the task of working in the garden. I shuddered to see the whipping cross. Though I had not needed punishment since I had tried to shirk my responsibilities in the stables, Patrice and one of the other initiates, Laurent was his name, had both been punished.

Astin looked up when I arrived and smiled. I quickly went to work next to him.

“What happened?” he asked, whispering so that the Brother in charge of supervising us could not hear. He need not have whispered, for the Brother was explaining how to prune one of the new roses to Renault.

“Brother Grosvenor is going to give me extra lessons,” I whispered back. “I have to be there before dawn.”

“Oh! I’m sorry!”

“Shh!” I hissed, sending a significant look to the Brother, who was walking our way.

“Sorry!”

I woke early that first morning and dressed quickly. It was still dark, and quite chill, when I made it to the courtyard. Though most Cassiline Brothers begin their days early, the courtyard was still empty, with only a handful of torches to light it. Brother Grosvenor was there, looking as awake as ever and having already gone through his daily forms.

“I am here, Brother Grosvenor,” I said, bowing. My breath came too quickly from both the cold and my haste to arrive in time.

“Excellent,” he replied. “First, let us warm up.”

We did not speak as we went through the beginning forms. I watched him, trying to gauge his mood and failing. He was as impassive as every other Cassiline Brother who instructed us, with exception of Brother Guy. Though I knew that I had not yet learned many of the forms the Brothers begin their days with, he did not perform any I not already known. Odd as it may sound, it made me feel at ease.

Once we had finished, he offered me one of the practice blades, hilt first. I took it and held it at the ready, as I had been instructed, and looked to him for instruction.

“No, not like that,” he said and corrected my hands. “The way you are holding the hilt, you are more like to thrust. Remember, a full arc of the blade will give you the most momentum with the least effort.”

With my right hand closest to the crosspiece and my left down by the pommel, the sword felt both lighter and more secure in my hands. Experimentally, I tried one of the first swings we learned, one that I had still not mastered, and to my surprise, the motion was much easier to perform. It still was not near as fluid as Patrice or Renault’s swings, to say nothing of the Brothers’, but it was much better than my previous attempts.

Brother Grosvenor nodded approvingly. “Good, better. But you are still not standing correctly.”

To make his point, he pushed my leading shoulder, not back, but to the side, and I felt my balance tip dangerously.

“Keep your weight at the balls of your feet,” he told me, “and do not favor one foot over the other. To do so is to give your enemy a fulcrum to use against you. If you cannot maintain your balance in your body, you cannot hope to master even the most basic of forms. Remember what Brother Vachel, Brother Gaston, and myself have taught you in the beginning. Recall the stance I taught you to maintain for your drills.”

I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the weight of the sword in my hands. Brother Grosvenor had taught us a stance that kept our bodies at ready, and to ensure that we knew it well and could move from it at a moment’s notice, he would call out different tumbling and acrobatic feats for us to perform. Bring that to the forefront of my thoughts, I let my body fall into its familiar stance. Almost immediately, I could feel the difference. I no longer felt like an awkward colt learning to walk. The sword felt light as a feather in my hands and I could almost feel the beginnings of Cassiline grace in my limbs.

“Yes, like that,” he told me. “Now, I want you to try the first few exercises.”

I went through the forms and drills, and though I was not as graceful as I had hoped to one day be, I was still much improved from my first feeble attempts. The tip of the practice blade did not waver in my hands, nor did I feel my body tip or try to move in a different direction. I could almost feel the smooth, fluid grace fill my body and my confidence rose.

It was then that I made my mistake and allowed myself to fall into familiarity. Whether my hands moved closer on the practice blade or my stance changed to what I had initially thought was correct, I do not know. I lost my balance, and the tip of the practice blade skipped across the flagstones underneath me.

“No,” Brother Grosvenor said mildly. “You fell back into your old habits. You cannot think like a Camaeline if you are to learn our ways. Such things do not exist in the Sanctuary.”

“Yes, Brother Grosvenor,” I mumbled, rebuked, and forced my body back into the Cassiline stance of readiness, spreading my hands over the hilt of the sword as I had been shown.

I practiced until the sun rose over the mountains, struggling to maintain Cassiline disciplines and not lapse back into what I had learned from Emil. Elua, but it was hard.

“You may stop for today,” Brother Grosvenor told me at length, the sun just coming to warm the tops of the Sanctuary’s towers. “We will continue tomorrow, at the same time.”

“Yes, Brother Grosvenor,” I said, and bowed at him. “Thank you.”

He bowed back, dismissing me, and I ran to find my peers and eat. I was a boy, and ever hungry as boys are wont to be, and had been up for what seemed to be hours. Though they looked at me curiously when I ran in from the courtyard, they asked me no questions. Astin, however, dropped behind to walk with me.

“How did it go?” he asked, voice pitched low. “Did you get any better? Was Brother Grosvenor mad?”

“It went well enough,” I replied. “He helped me, but I still need to practice if I’m ever to catch up with you.”

“I’m sure you’ll get it,” Astin said with a grin. “You’re much better than I at these things. Remember that it took me weeks and weeks before I learned the forward flip, and I still cannot do the backward flip! You mastered that in less than a week, remember?”

I smiled, remembering the pride I felt in besting all of my peers. “Yes, I remember.”

Throughout the morning lessons, I felt wide awake, having already been up and working before dawn, and chaffed at the slow pace of the morning exercises. However, by the midday meal, I felt myself flagging as though it were much later. It was a struggle to remain awake during Brother Guy’s lessons, and how I did it, I still do not know. I do know that when it was finally time for us to go to bed that evening, I was the first asleep ere I hit the pillow.

I woke late that morning, and though I rushed to dress and ran through the corridors, by the time I made it down to the courtyard, Brother Grosvenor was putting away the equipment. I skidded to a halt and bowed.

“I’m sorry, Brother Grosvenor!” I gasped out. “I overslept!”

“Yes, I can see that,” he replied, looking at my shirt and breeches, woefully askew. “I am afraid, though, that you are too late. It is already morning, and breakfast will be served in half of an hour.”

I bowed again. “I’m sorry!”

“Do you remember our agreement, Edouard?” he asked mildly.

I flinched, face burning with shame, and nodded. “Yes, Brother Grosvenor, I remember.”

If I had hoped that my second punishment would go better than the first, I was wrong. My peers were woken from their sleep early to bear witness. I stood shivering, my back bear to them in the early morning light, and my wrists and ankles already bound to the whipping cross. By the time Lord Bouscevre had arrived, I was already struggling not to cry.

I will not detail the following events. It is enough to say that discipline and punishment are, by nature of the Cassiline service, harsh and severe. Afterward, I was sent to the infirmary, and by the time my injuries had been washed and dressed, I had missed breakfast. All throughout morning exercises, my stomach cramped painfully, to say nothing of the burning of my back.

Astin, Elua bless his kind soul, had thankfully hidden some of his bread and gave it to me as we were walking to our next lesson. I gobbled it down, thanking him profusely.

To be sure, I did not miss my next predawn lesson, nor any subsequent lessons.

I did improve, eventually, and learned to forget everything that Emil had taught me regarding Camaeline fighting. It was no easy thing, as it had been etched in my blood, but once I had imposed Cassiline disciplines on my body, and not like to forget them, I improved by leaps and bounds. It is no small thing to feel pride for mastering a skill that one already has some talent in, but to master a skill that one struggles against, which requires a great deal of discipline and hard work, is to not only feel pride but joy.

Be that as that may, I was still glad when I could bid farewell to my extra lessons, for I was heartily tired of them.
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Cassiel's Daggers