The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner

from books only my brothers were allowed to read. There were also arcs and swirls of flowers and leafy plants of different heights and colors, set throughout with benches and bowers, though no one ever was sitting in them. And long grassy alleys ran down to the river. The more I practiced my sword, the more I felt like running down them, especially as the last of summer began to take on the bite of autumn.
    In my boy’s clothes I could hurtle along the banks and slopes without pausing to think about my skirts. Stone walls were easy to get over. I never had to go around, and even falling down never meant a torn hem or ruffle. I did tear a sleeve once, but that was a piece of foolishness, stretching my arms out over my head and rolling all the way down the grass to the river landing. The duke’s barge floated there, wrapped in canvas. I wondered when I’d get to ride in it. I mended the sleeve myself as best I could, but it showed. When Betty took it away from me I thought she was angry and might tell the duke, but she only had it mended by a real tailor, good as new.
    If my family had had the money for lessons, I might have learned to sketch and paint well enough to portray the gardens. If Artemisia had been a true friend to me, I might have invited her by now to do just that, for I was sure she had all the accomplishments. If ever I saw my uncle the Mad Duke again, perhaps I would ask him why I could not have a drawing master, in addition to Master Venturus? I could not spend every minute on swordplay. Why should he mind if I learned watercolors or something nice in my spare time?
    Certainly I was not failing in my lessons. Venturus watched carefully as I strove against my straw doll, Fifi. He gave me pointers, and I began to realize that despite the bluster, his advice was always solid. I couldn’t help giving Fifi a personality and clever countermoves to go with it—one day, when Venturus was being unpleasant about a failed move of mine, I said, “But what else am I to do when Fif—when my opponent comes at me with a high disarm?”
    “Here.” The swordmaster took a weapon from the rack. “I show.” He came at me with a high disarm, which I failed to disengage and pass under until he showed me how. And, so simply, that was how we started sparring together.
    I came to know the bright blade, first as something like a dance-partner as we rehearsed our patterned strokes and counters, parries and ripostes, and then as an unexpected visitor, to be anticipated in a half-breath, and turned as brusquely away.
    The hardest part was looking in my teacher’s eyes as I fought, but this he said I must do, although it felt horribly bold and immodest.
    “No watch sword,” he rasped, “watch man. Man is mind of sword.”
    As often as we sparred, my teacher grumbled that I was a waste of his time. “I fall asleep practicing you, duke-boy. Other students of Venturus learn on each other. You all alone with straw man and me, too much alone. Lucky have great teacher, very lucky he be practicing you. Why you crazy father make you live alone?”
    “He’s not my father,” I said automatically for what was surely the hundredth time. “I’m not a boy.”
    “Venturus not fight with no girls.” He raised his sword high, and pointed it downwards to signal a pause in the bout, so he could attack me with his temper. “You got no respect for teacher, you! Other students beg Venturus for lessons. You argue him. Ha!”
    In the end, always we went back to practice, all morning now. I liked the feel of my teacher giving way on the floor before me, even if it was only an exercise. But I thought I deserved a chance at watercolors, too.

    T HE DUKE’S LOVER SAID, “I WISH YOU WOULD MAKE UP your mind.”
    He shivered as the duke ran a cold finger down his back. “My mind is quite made up. The problem is, you don’t like the way it’s gone.”
    “I want to stay here in Riverside.”
    “And so do I. But not tonight. My poet must have