The Mark of Ran by Paul Kearney

killing.” She offered him her hand and hauled him to his feet. Tall as she was, he towered over her now. Her small breasts, taut and glistening, brushed against him. They stood like that a moment, like two lovers sharing a whisper, and then she turned and left the earthen practice ring to fetch her towel.
    They stood in the clammy dimness of the chamber in the bowels of Psellos’s Tower, and stared silently at one another as they wiped the dirt from their bodies. Rol had a scratch above his left eye that oozed blood, and Rowen’s forehead was bulging purple.
    Fighting men, ordinary men, subjected to the force of the blows that had just been exchanged, would be dead by now, one with a broken skull, the other with a burst rib cage. For Rol and Rowen, however, there were only scratches and bruises. If anything had finally convinced Rol of his … inhumanity, it had been the last year in Psellos’s house. He was not
cattle,
as Psellos jauntily referred to the mass of everyday humanity. He was something else. Part of him reveled in the sense of superiority—Psellos encouraged this—and part of him mourned the fact that he was set apart from the everyday concourse of life as surely as a freak in a traveling circus.
    The main thing, though—he had finally accepted it.
    This secret complex near the Tower’s foundations was where the bulk of Rol’s combat training took place. He and Rowen left the practice circle without exchanging another word, and limped down a candlelit corridor to the plunge-pool. Discarding their stinking breechclouts, they dived in within seconds of each other, as once they had leaped from the wharves of Ascari. The water was freezing cold, fed by some subterranean spring whose origins were in the roots of the mountains. The cold stole Rol’s breath, but he was used to that now. It was good for his wrenched muscles and battered skull. He floated, staring up at the bare rock of the ceiling, and felt the kindly chill numb his aches and pains. He rubbed dirt from his limbs, emptying his mind as he had been taught, discarding whatever preoccupations floated there. Finally, at a nod from Rowen, he pulled himself heavily out of the water again. The pair padded naked across the bare stone toward the steam chamber. Within it, heated rocks had raised the temperature to the limits of endurance. They ladled water over the rocks and sat side by side in the scalding billow of steam that ensued. A single oil lamp guttered and fought for life, flashing out broiled shadows. The air was hot enough to sear the lungs, but Rol breathed in the steam deeply while fresh sweat popped out of every pore. Rowen scraped the running moisture from his body with a curved strigil, and her deft hands explored the places where she had hurt him, much as a farmer might feel over a horse he meant to buy at market. There was something soothing in the touch of her hands. Her business was killing, but her gift was in healing. She seemed to drain away the pain, leaving Rol limp and relaxed as seaweed abandoned by the ebbing tide.
    “You fought well today,” Rowen said quietly. “The impatience is that of youth, and will be remedied in time.” Her strong fingers kneaded the flesh of his shoulders and he leaned into her, closing his eyes. For him, the pain of the practice bouts was worth this, the almost-dark of the steam chamber, the intimacy of their two bodies close in the stifling warmth. Perhaps Rowen felt the same way, for she was always a little less reticent after their contests. She would talk to him not quite as an equal, but as a favored subordinate. A fellow-traveler perhaps.
    “I have broken more bones in the past year than I did in the fifteen that came before it,” Rol said dryly. “If time does not remedy it, a broken neck will, one of these days.” He twisted to meet her eye, and for a treasured instant she was smiling back at him. Then she eased his face away from her and began massaging the sore meat of his muscles