The king's sword twisted like a snake and Matxin deflected it, but barely. The tip whispered past his bare chest. There was no chance of beating Piran at the sword; staying in one piece was all Matxin could hope for at this point. A negligent twist of Piran's wrist sent Matxin's sword spinning from his grasp and Matxin grunted with irritation. One day he was going to learn not to let that happen to him.
Piran's sword flicked back toward Matxin's throat and Matxin could see the calculation in his king's eyes. It would take two steps to get to the fallen sword and Piran would have him by then. Matxin abandoned all pretense at being a swordsman and dropped to avoid the point of the sword.
One sweeping kick to one of Piran's ankles left the king off-balance but still on his feet. Matxin kept low, moving forward and caught Piran in the belly with one shoulder. He could hear the air go out of Piran's chest as he stood up in a smooth movement, taking the king off of his feet, up and over Matxin's back.
Piran managed to fall gracefully enough, taking the impact on shoulders and heels, but by then Matxin had spun around and kicked the sword from his hand. It tumbled away through the grass, glittering in the lamplight. Matxin scooped up his own sword and brought it around to Piran's throat as the king was pushing himself up again.
"That was hardly dignified, Mercé." Piran fell back into the grass as Matxin held him at sword-point. "And I don't remember that move as one sanctioned by the ancient sword masters. This is supposed to be a graceful art." He glared up at Matxin, but there wasn't much heat in his green eyes; Matxin knew him well enough to recognize when Piran was trying not to laugh.
"Playing by the rules hardly leaves me in a good position to properly defend your Majesty," Matxin pointed out. He slid his sword back into its sheath and held his hand out to help Piran to his feet. "I would do you a disservice were I to suppress my natural instinct."
"It's a good thing you're not wearing a gun," Piran said, letting Matxin pull him up. "You might well have shot me for the sake of expediency. Remind me not to challenge you down at the range."
Matxin shook his head. "I would never harm your Majesty," he said, feeling a little stubborn, especially where firearms were concerned. That Piran wouldn't allow the royal guards to carry personal weapons in the alcazar still grated on him. He understood Piran's reasoning that the king wanted the alcazar to feel like the haven it was, away from the world, but it felt wrong.
Piran pulled his shirt off and shook the grass out of it. "Not my body, only my pride?" He gave Matxin an arch look. "You're hard on an old man."
Piran was hardly old. Matxin wasn't even thirty and he and Piran could have been brothers born within a handful of years. The king was in perfect condition: solid muscle under smooth skin, without a hint of gray in the golden hair that fell to his shoulders in loose curls.
"You can't use your age as an excuse yet, your Majesty," Matxin said, trying not to roll his eyes at his king. "I hardly would have done anything of the sort had we an audience." He crossed the soft grass and picked up Piran's sword for him.
"You're a thoughtful, young man." Piran tossed his shirt onto a bench and crossed the garden so that he could splash water from a small fountain onto his face and shoulders, washing away the traces of effort from his skin.
Piran's private garden was empty save for the two of them, neither courtier nor attendant in sight for once. Golden orbs on twisted iron posts lit the grassy heart of the garden and cast the flower beds and shrubberies into deep shadows. Matxin ran a hand through his sweaty hair and looked up at the starry night sky where a pair of swelling moons skimmed the arch of it without a single wisp of cloud to dim them. The soft hum of a black flyer patrolling the perimeter of the alcazar reminded Matxin to find his earpiece in his pocket and put it back in place.
"Speaking of privacy." Piran's voice brought Matxin's attention back to him as he came striding across the garden, holding out his hand for his sword. "Did you finish with your new surveillance system?"
"Captain Solan has been running tests on it all day before stepping down the old system." Matxin handed Piran's sword back to him. "But it seems to be working well."
"If you keep being so efficient and useful, I'm going to have to promote you to Captain at this rate." Piran sheathed his sword and continued walking past Matxin and into the shadows at the back of the garden. Matxin followed a few steps behind him as he took a narrow path through the tall wall of greenery around the garden.
"It was nothing," Matxin said quietly, turning his attention outward, listening for anything ahead of them. His hearing was better than human, thanks to tinkering by the palace physician. It was a risky alteration that could have ended his career but it had been worth taking his chances with it. "Just something that had been in my head for some time."
"Too bad you didn't have it when Eiran was a lad." Piran laughed and shook his head. "You'd have saved yourself some grief."
"He was something of an inspiration," Matxin admitted. Piran's eldest child was a man now, but as a child, Eiran had delighted in making Matxin sweat by finding ever more remote hiding places within the huge alcazar. The exercise of finding him had turned Matxin into something of an expert on the alcazar and all the things one needed to know in order to keep an eye on the entire structure.
"I always did feel a little guilty about saddling you with him. But I think I made a good choice in the end."
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