“Run a little faster Princess,” Khu shouted, and I did try to do the same.

  The clothes I was wearing were strange. Of course they would. These linens and leathers weren’t made for people of my smaller size, nor for girls. It fit too big, and was completely strange against my body, yet was so normal against his.

  Still, I did as he said, finishing the laps he instructed before allowing myself to collapse for breaths.

  “When can I use a sword?” I asked, as he handed me the goat-skin of water. I drank it, quite tired, but not at all pleased that this was the end of the training.

  “You can use a sword when your body is ready for what that entails.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Can’t say,” he shrugged, smiling over me. “Depends on you.”

  “How long did it take you?”

  “Oh, don’t try to compare yourself to me Princess,” he said.

  Of course I couldn’t. Khu was quite the prodigy. His father, of course, played a role in that, being the head of the Medjay. He received more than just typical training, his father was directly the most skilled warrior in our lands, no question. If not his father, then his mother. The two of them held the highest combined skill imaginable. His father an unbreakable defense, and his mother unwithstandable attack force. On top of that, he had awoken his Blessing at a rate and strength almost unheard of.

  It was more than sensing vibrations in the dirt, and sensing the make-up of the ground beneath our feet. Any one of our people could do that– and that was all I could do. He could do much, much more, and his hadn’t even fully matured yet.

  So yes, I could not compare with him– to him. Yet it still stung.

  “You ought to get up and go to your dinner now,” he said. “Ai will clean you up.”

  So I did. I sat through dinner by myself as my parents attended to their business and my brothers were nowhere to be found. It was not so typical for me to eat alone, and I found the entire ordeal to be quite miserable. Ai then took me to the basin to wash the dirt from me and put away my training garments out of sight. She made no cover for her displeasure of me taking to something the Prince had suggested, but I truly did find it to be a far better use of time than simply lying around, or bothering those around the palace to entertain me whilst they had more important matters to tend to.

  “You don’t have to force yourself to do such things,” she said, cleaning the dirt from my skin.

  “I simply want to Ai, really, is that so difficult to believe?” I asked.

  “You wish to use a sword, not do all this exerting stuff.”

  “I hardly do a single thing that’s exhausting,” I said. “My father was doing much more at this age, this won’t kill me.”

  “Your father was a slave at your age,” she said. “I hardly find that it would be a good thing if you did the same as he had.”

  “I’m only saying resilience is in my blood, and something such as this will not use it up.”

  She only sighed. “You have been quite difficult lately. You’ll certainly let go of the matter on your own.”

  Everyone seemed quite certain I’d let go of a lot of matters that I had no intention of letting go of. Whether regards to the Prince or to my notion of taking on matters of self-defense. My father, for his part, at least seemed more concerned about the source of the idea than the idea itself.

  Khu wasn’t so against it as to not teach me, but he still held a sharpness in his eyes that could only be directed one place.

  The sharpness in his eyes, clear as it was to me, was not toward me. The upturn of his lips at ordering me around, on the other hand, certainly was. Between running faster, or more laps, or increasing the weight of things I would need to lift, it was becoming more and more clear that this was made to be entertaining.

  Of course it would be. Even while not being completely exempt from physical laborious tasks off the record, I still did not do enough to have nearly the strength as most of my people, man or woman.

  The tasks involving lifting, at least, served purposes to the greater wellbeing of the palace or my people, so that would never be something I found it in me to find unpleasant. Assisting in bringing water from the wells, or lifting other sorts of things that needed to be moved was helpful. I was greeted each day when doing such things with nothing but happiness to be of use, and my endeavor was treated respectfully of course, but still as an endeavor of a child. It was all well and fine for me myself to be treated as an adorable little Princess. I certainly was, but for the things I was doing to be was upsetting. There was nothing childish in using a sword. Not really.

  Perhaps it was because there was not to be any expectation on me for much of anything yet. I still carried a sidelock of youth, though it was not the only hair I carried on my head. Kamose had lost his long ago, and Madu would be getting rid of his in perhaps a year or so.

  Of course the people expected things from them, but certainly, it wouldn’t hurt to expect small things from me.

  Yet every day, that seemed more and more to be the case.

  There comes a certain point where my patience runs thin. It is not a lady’s quality, and indeed required much more work to move past, but as it stood, this repetitive routine with no clear sign as to when I might or might not begin with the thing I had asked for– learning to wield a sword, was tearing into me.

  That idea of taking matters into my own hands had not been completely abandoned, and I found it quite appropriate to consider once again.

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  With that idea in mind, I left my bedchambers.

  It was not uncommon for me to leave in the middle of the night to go off to my parent’s rooms, and so no guards made an ordeal of my wanderings. The stone floor of the palace allowed for the little Blessing I did have to do it’s work, and tell me of where people were moving around.

  No one was in the area of our archives.

  I took a torch from the wall, going into the space and roaming through the countless shelves of scrolls. There would be scrolls of training positions– I was certain of that much. Khu’s father would have written them all, everything he’d remembered from before our being shipped here. That memory, by the way, was everything.

  Khu’s great grandfather had not been sent here. He was “too important” to be sent off with slaves. No one can say what fate was left to him under the Asahdi, but he’d allowed his sons to be sent off, by simply not claiming them as his. They were made to protect the royal line that was sent home. Of course, they did not succeed. The family line that had ruled what was formerly Kemet had died.

  It was their death that had sparked what became our revolution. My grandfather had led it, and so now we were royal.

  Khu’s family had been close behind. The only carriers of Nuban blood we had with us, and therefore the most useful in battle. His family held more literacy and knowledge of former traditions than any other, and so many of these scrolls had been written by them.

  I had to stand on the tips of my toes to reach the scroll that caught my attention, written in his father’s handwriting, writing I recognized well.

  It nearly fell, but I caught it, stumbling into the shelf itself and freezing. I waited for this to catch the attention of guards. The floor was wooden, so the Blessing would not transmit the vibrations, but the sound alone had been enough. At least it seemed to be to me, the blood rushing in my ears was of no help.

  I could hear footsteps pass outside, heavy with the weight of the leather armor. They stopped not far outside the door.

  I held my breath, waiting for the door to open. It did not.

  I placed a hand on my heart, silencing it the best I could before allowing myself to open it.

  The scenes were drawn quite well– well enough I did not even need to be able to read the words I did not recognize. This would certainly be enough. I slid the scroll into my shawl, the night air quite cold. I pushed the door open, blowing out the torch and placing it back in its sconce.

  Nearly being caught, or at least perceiving to be already, I was far more careful, running back to my room lightly on my feet.

  “Up to something Princess?” It was Khu outside my door now.

  “Just taking care of… matters.” I said, hiding the scroll deep in my shawl, flushing from the lie I had just told.

  He flashed that smile of his and opened the door to me.

  “No need to feel shy. I just took care of some matters not to long ago.”

  I covered my mouth with my free hand. I didn’t mean releasing waste. “You can’t say such things.”

  He only chuckled.

  “Sleep well Princess.”

  The positions in the scrolls were unusual to hold for myself, but I had seen them many times, I recalled after attempting them myself.

  In truth, I had no idea what I was doing. After my sessions with Khu, I would run up to my room and make Ai to wait before cleaning me up until after I had made myself to do these positions for at least a quarter of an hour.

  I watched the training of the palace Medjay as often as I could get a glimpse of it, looking at the length of time they held each position and realizing I would need something to hold whilst doing them, or it would do me no good. Of course, finding something to replicate the weight of a sword would be difficult. Finding something to replicate its length, however, was not.

  An unlit torch worked well enough. Not perfect, but certainly better than nothing, and so began my new routine.

  “A little faster Princess!” Khu called out, smiling as always. “Oh, you’ve gotten stronger.”

  I had, but not strong enough to have the strength left to respond to his words.

  “You can rest Princess,” Ai said, watching me return from the latest session of his, tired as always, but I picked up my torch and stood in an attentive position.

  “I could,” I agreed. “But I simply have more important things to do.”

  “Rest is quite important for a lady.”

  “I’ll have plenty of time to rest after dinner and supper,” I said, pulling the torch from my side, and thrusting it in front of me with all the force I could, holding it out in front of me and feeling triumphant. If I could only take a sword and show Khu that I could in fact wield one well enough, he’d have to admit I could do it, and no longer force me to do nothing but run around and lift things.

  No sooner had thoughts of my victory filled my mind than the door opened. I dropped the torch. Of course it was Khu.

  And he of course knew what I was trying to do.

  He shook his head, sighing, but his lips were turned upwards as always. “I was hopping you’d drop the matter when you didn’t progress as soon as you’d like. Even hindered you a little, but it seems you really are set on this for yourself.”

  “Well I did tell you that.” I moved to an attentive stance.

  He laughed. “Better get you a sword then.”

  So we walked down to the armory, and he took a khopesh from the from the racks, handing it to me carefully. This was a proper sword, I was reminded of the strange shaped piece of wood Ryuu had given to me. It was too straight, too long. This was curved, proper, and it was mine.

  I turned to him, smiling. “Teach me!”

  “I just finished running you ragged.” He said.

  “Teach me the stances!”

  “Very well,” he said. “Though it doesn’t seem you need me for that.”

  “I do! I do!” I jumped. “Teach me!”

  “Alright, alright,” he put his hand on my head, keeping my feet on the ground. “First things first, be careful with that, or I’ll take it away.”