backdated 06/01
word count: 2500
To wield the new whip was to feel in some ineffable way its corresponding new power.
Unfortunately, it was also new in the sense that she did not know how to use it. The previous weapon had had a familiarity to it - as she had explained with too much pleasure to a grim-faced Gouvernail - but the new one was entirely out of the realm of her experience, and she had not yet figured out how one went about discreetly practicing something that by design was flashy and made a loud sound.
So she arrived at the Garde equipped with nothing but the leaky memory of a few dozen YouTube videos - most of which were lost to a haze of wine and White Claw, not that she was going to admit that - and the whip itself, and had swallowed her pride long enough to inform him that she required something in the way of more active instruction.
It had been easier than she'd thought to do it, in part because he had not again knelt over her hand. Apparently this was a formality and a distinction that only needed to be observed once, and the usual dispassionate gesture was a relief. It had even, in a way, felt more like dispensing a command - "teach me "- than it had like begging a favor.
Still, if there was something that reliably got her temper as hot as Gouvernail's, it was being confronted with her own shortcomings and with having to receive instruction, and his detached tone of lecture was infuriating in its own way. Asking was easy. Complying, less so.
"You insist upon straightening your arm, "he said, patient but implacable, and she repressed a sigh. "Unlock your elbows. "
It should have been enough to remind herself that he was being helpful - that this was, in fact, information that it was good to have. But her natural disdain for taking orders was bubbling up in sharp irritation, made sharper by the fact that she was straightening her arm, and knew it.
He stepped up to, once again, mimic for her the turn of her wrist and her elbow; to show her where to plant her feet. For all his outward patience she could see the tension in his jaw, the restless fidgeting of his hands, whether from her lack of quick learning or her sulky defiance or from the simple fact that he could not reach out and physically put her arm into the position that it ought, ideally, to have.
It probably tested him more than anything else when, after several more minutes of efforts towards severing a large white flower from its stem, she gave the whip a swing and almost immediately followed it with a string of cursing. He stood by in silence, his face grim, while she wore out her vocabulary.
"Ow, "she finished, rubbing her arm. "s**t, "she added, just in case she hadn't covered that one already. "You'd think the chain mail would have done more than it did. I think it made it worse. "
"Your arm was straight, "he observed.
"You could have said something sooner. "
"Why? What good has it done to this point? Perhaps it is good to let a cat burn its paws on the hearth once, if shooing it away has done nothing. "
She shot him a scorching look that might have burned the entire cat up. "So you're letting me hurt myself? Real noble of you. "
"It is for your own benefit that you must sometimes do so, "he said flatly. "You are not harmed. Again, "he added. He had the good grace not to observe aloud that she did not, this time, straighten her arm.
"You could be less snippy. "
"I am not snippy, as you put it, Lady, "he said, as mildly as possible. But she had learned to identify the sarcasm in that mildness already. "But you are. "
"You're getting impatient, though. Like, you're covering it up but not very well. I can tell. "
"Consider that if you were a soldier with a sword I might have more idea of how to instruct you efficiently. But I have never taught the whip to another, and I have never taught a lady of leisure anything in my life. "
"I teach men things all the time, "she said, with an especially savage crack, which yielded a less-satisfying noise than she had hoped.
"So you have told me, again and again, "he said dryly. "Not the sort of things that will serve them on a battlefield. "And then, unable to help himself: "You swing with too much force, again. You cannot bully it into submission. You will lose your control if you have to struggle to exert it. "He made a demonstrative swing of his arm. "It does not require savagery. Coax it. It wishes to go where you lead. "
"Oh, I bet you hated that, "she said, with a grimness to equal his own as she attempted to comply and was immediately irritated to feel the improvement in her next effort. "To not simply be able to berate it into compliance. "
He was silent for a long moment. "Do you take what I do for berating you? "
"Yes, "she said immediately, and he was again long silent, while she, feeling her cheeks flush, pursued a series of experimental swings, yielding one crack so loud that she startled.
He was, again, wordless for some time. "You concern yourself too much with the movement of the lash, rather than where it is landing. You do not trust it to move as it ought. Your prior mistake has made you timid. "
"Well, yeah. It ******** hurt, "she retorted. "So I'm being craven, as you put it. "
"If you will persist in taking everything I say in the most hurtful light possible then I will have little motivation to pursue kindness, "he observed testily.
"Fine. Don't sugarcoat it, then. Tell me whatever you wanna say, just however you wanna say it, "she said.
Another pause. And then, detached: "You think too much. You make a simple thing complicated. Consider that the fall will land where the hand points, and that nothing else requires your attention save for the direction from which it strikes. "It was not the vitriol or even the hollow disappointment she had expected. It was, instead, the same simple sort of advice that he had been patiently giving all day.
She hesitated, and dared a glance at him. He was watching the end of the whip with an expressionless but vacant stare: his attention somewhere else, dispensing his advice with mechanical habit while his mind wandered, his glance a thousand miles - or perhaps a thousand years - away.
After a moment, she assumed again the stance he had shown her, and she did not straighten her arm. She tried, as he had suggested, not thinking about the curve of the lash in its flight, and instead she pointed with the handle of the whip as if directing a blade as long as the lash. As if to make a mockery of her resistance, the fall snapped with graceful ease through the center of the flower she had been aiming at, shearing it down to the courtyard tile.
"Better, "he said, quiet and gentle.
She hated when he made her feel guilty. It would have been easier if she'd maintained that initial impression of a callous, cold-hearted, barking drill sergeant. But she had long since realized that she was stubbornly rebelling against a mostly-imaginary figure, and the last visit should have cemented it. She was aware - and it was a wretched kind of awareness - that anyone outside looking in on her would identify her as the problem in this situation. The imagined disapproval of this inward audience was enough to humble her. She did not feel much like a dignified queen, at the moment, and felt more like the petulant child she knew she was being.
"Thank you, "she managed, feeling herself choke on the words.
"I do not berate you, "he said.
"I know, "she said, aware she was contradicting herself but also aware that she couldn't make her poor showing much worse. "I'm just pissy because I don't like being bad at things. "
"I believe, "he said after a pause, "that you feel you are also ill equipped to receive instruction in general. "
"That's true. "
"I would have thought that I am well-equipped to dispense it, "he said, with a certain creeping dryness, "but as I said, I have no experience dispensing it to a lady of leisure. So perhaps we are both working at a disadvantage. "He paused. "Perhaps we have done enough. "
"Are you only saying that because you're tired of me being a b***h? "
"Not only, "he said, and she snorted.
"I can try to be less of a b***h. "
There was a long hesitation. "I think, "he said at last, "that you would do well with something that is easier to command than the whip, for a time. "
"You think I need appeasing. "
"Yes, "he said flatly. "But also, it will serve you well to learn more than the whip. You have other means of defense at your disposal. "
It was a little uncomfortable, then, that he led her down into the chapel she had made into a bedroom, and her panicked mind went to some unpleasant places, but he only gestured at the little alcove near the altar where she had put down what Viatrix had brought to her: the little casket, shaped like the head of a hound, which she had found herself unable to open, having to content herself with shaking it and listening to its unknown contents rattle. She gave him a curious glance, picking it back up, and following him back out into the sunshine of the bailey.
"I told you that it would be of use to you in time, "he said, and to her surprise it fell open in her hands, as if it had never been locked at all. The general opulence of all that she had uncovered in the Garde had led her to expect something truly beautiful and magnificent indeed inside the ornate little case, but she found within no elegant worked gold or painted enamel: instead, a simple circle of chipped gold, from which there dangled three iron links from some broken chain. She wrinkled her nose and she glanced up expectantly, but he was only looking at the useless little trinket in her hands instead of at her, patient and silent.
A moment later this reticence made sense. She felt the same inexorable sense of understanding that she had when she had first come to this place: an instinctive knowledge of what to do next, as if she could reach her mental hands into the aether and pluck out what was needed. And so she did so, feeling a bit dreamlike.
For a moment she thought she heard the distant barking of dogs. But that was impossible - there were no dogs here - even the nightingale had been a surprise. But she looked up towards the trees, wind-tossed over the ramparts, and felt her skin prickle into goosebumps as the baying grew louder. She felt herself backing up towards the chapel stairs with a sudden sense of unease, and barely noticed when Gouvernail, with his usual instinctiveness, put out his useless hand as if to stop her even as the noise fell silent. The hound-shaped casket clattered to the ground in the stillness.
She saw it, then: the movement of brush near the ruined gatehouse, of some large thing moving, and then a snaking, awful head, moving with sinuous elegance and bearing two pearlescent, empty white eyes, which fixed on her with a certain expression of expectation. And then, all along the stem of that snakelike neck, more eyes blossomed like opening flowers, and then a series of horrible jaws, which erupted into the same cacophonous baying. As the jaws snapped and barked, the creature looked as though it might tear itself apart from within, and it suddenly barreled towards her where she stood rooted to the spot.
"You need not– "said Gouvernail, but it was too late. She snapped the whip, and would later realize with some satisfaction that without thinking about it she'd done so with a loose and relaxed arm. It shot out its loud crack, echoing off the stone, and the monster - for so it seemed - almost skidded to a halt, flattening itself down to the broken tile and giving her a look of such wounded sadness that she immediately regretted it. It then lifted its head and let loose a mournful, wailing howl.
"You have hurt her feelings, "observed Gouvernail dryly, with a touch of reproach.
"She scared me! "she retorted, but she was already tentatively approaching the creature, which rolled over onto its back in an unmistakable gesture of canine appeasement, wagging its long and elegant tail, all its many eyebrows wrinkled in sad consternation.
"It's OK, "she said, in the sing-song you give to a frightened animal that you are also, in turn, a little frightened of. She added flatly: "Nail, this thing is ******** horrifying. "
"She can be intimidating, "he said, with distinct satisfaction.
The tail-wagging increased, and she extended a trembling hand and gently stroked the closest forehead. This yielded immediate results: the animal, in very doglike happiness, accepted this kindness with wriggling enthusiasm, and she found herself half-mauled by overjoyed forgiveness which made her laugh despite herself. Her efforts to calm her only resulted in a sudden explosive fit of what could only be called zoomies, the monster tearing off to run tight circles around the bailey, sneezing excitedly from a dozen noses at once.
"Good god, "she said, laughing again a little weakly. "I thought I was done with scary dogs for a while. "
"This one is at your beck and call, "he said. "And I believe you will find her more compliant than the whip, while you learn to master that as well. "
She sat down on the tiles, calling off the dog-thing's attention with a few clicking noises, and it obligingly wriggled its long neck into her arms, rolling onto the ground to try and shoulder its way into her lap in the way of overly-large dogs everywhere while she vigorously dispensed scratches to its many foreheads.
"Jesus Christ and Mother of God. She's ******** awful. She looks like a nightmare. I love her, "she finished simply, and Gouvernail rewarded her - for so it felt - with one of his rare laughs.
"As do I, "he said quietly. "It is good, to see her. "
"Tell me about her, "she demanded, and she looked up at him to see that although he was not quite smiling, it was something close to it.
"If you wish, "he said, and there was something in it - in her dispensing of an eager command and of his ready acquiescence to it - that felt like a return to something far more comfortable and natural than the reversed roles of an hour before.
She realized that she was still looking at him, and she smiled suddenly the full and beaming smile that he did not give her. "I do wish, "she said.
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