I wanted to be treated like a boy, didn’t I? At the moment she was sitting on the ground sucking air, watching Shaso drink from a jar of watered wine. The old man had recovered some of his old bowstring-taut muscle during the days upon days they had been practicing; the sinews of his forearms writhed like snakes as he lifted the heavy jar. I didn’t want to be forced to wear confining dresses, or to be treated like a fragile blossom. Well, I’ve got my wish.

Thank you, Zoria, she prayed with only the smallest tinge of irony. Every day you teach me something new.

“Are you ready?” Shaso demanded, wiping his bearded mouth with the back of his hand. After keeping himself shaved and carefully trimmed all Briony’s life he had now let his whiskers and hair grow wild, and looked more than ever like some ancient oracle, the kind that had sailed across the sea on rafts to found the gods’ temples when Hierosol was little more than a fishing village.

She groaned and sat up. No doubt the old oracles had been just as hard-minded as Shaso. It explained a lot. “Ready, I suppose.”

“You have learned much,” he said when she was standing again. “But wooden sticks are poor weapons in many ways, and there are tricks that can only be learned with a true blade.” He squatted down and unfolded the leather bundle from which he had withdrawn the wooden dowels each day. Inside it lay four more objects, each wrapped in its own piece of oiled leather. “The first day we came here,” Shaso said, “I asked the boon of Effir dan-Mozan that I could choose among some of his trade goods. These were the best pieces he had.” He flipped open the wrappings, revealing four daggers, one pair larger than the other. The larger had curved crosspieces, the smaller barely any crosspieces at all. “They are Sanian steel, of excellent quality.”

Her hand stole toward the knives, but stopped. “Sanian?”

“Sania is a country in the west of Xand. The Yisti metalworkers there are of Funderling stock, and make weapons that all Xandians covet. These four would cost you the price of a pair of warhorses.”

“That much?”

“Yisti weapons are said to be charmed.” He reached down and took one of the larger daggers in his big hand, balancing it on his palm. He pointed at the simple, elegant hilt. “Polished tortoiseshell,” he said. “Sacred to their god.”

“Are they really magic?”

He looked up at her with amusement in his eyes. “No weapon can make a fighter out of a clumsy dolt, but a fine piece of steel will do what its wielder needs it to do. If it saves your life or takes the life from another, that is as powerful a magic as you could hope for, do you not think?”

Briony was a little breathless, and having taciturn Shaso turn poetic on her did not help. She reached out her finger and traced the length of one of the smaller, needle-sharp daggers. “Beautiful.”