The Borrowed Blade

The estate was dark when Zelda moved through it.
She carried a small pack—water, dried meat, a flint stone. Nothing else. In the room where Boreas kept his unfinished work, blades leaned against the walls like sleeping soldiers. She chose one near the door: a short sword, light, the edge still raw but the balance perfect. She belted it around her waist.
Before she left, she looked up at Sigrid's window.
The candle was out. The curtains were drawn.
Zelda waited at the bottom of the mountain for an hour, watching the stars wheel overhead. Then she stopped watching the window and started watching the road.
A twig snapped behind her.
Zelda's hand went to the sword. She spun, dropping into the stance Boreas had drilled into her—knees bent, weight forward.
Sigrid stepped out from the shadow of a pine tree. She carried nothing but her own blade, already sheathed at her hip.
Zelda let out a breath. "You scared me."
Sigrid walked past her without a word, heading down the slope toward the pass.
Zelda smiled and hurried after her.


They walked through the night and into the next day. They crossed rivers that ran cold with meltwater, speared fish in the shallows, built small fires in the lee of rocks. They did not talk. They slept in shifts, one watching while the other dreamed, and in the morning they walked again.
By the second afternoon, the air turned dry. The green of the foothills gave way to yellow grass, then to dust. Donnerfels was close.
"You don't talk much, do you?" Zelda asked.
Sigrid glanced at her. Said nothing. Kept walking.
A thick-bodied snake slid across the path ahead of them, scales rustling against the dirt. Zelda held up a hand. Sigrid stopped. They let it pass.
"Why didn't you kill it?" a voice asked.
A man sat on a boulder just off the road, cleaning his nails with a small knife. He wore a dusty coat with no insignia, and his eyes were the color of old copper.
"It wasn't doing anything wrong," Zelda said. "It was just passing through."
"Those snakes grow," the man said. "They start hunting cattle. Sheep, goats, cows. Whole herds disappear."
Zelda looked at the spot where the snake had vanished. "I didn't sense any cattle mana in it."
"Maybe not yet." The man smiled. It didn't reach his eyes. "But it's inevitable. And it's good to stop inevitability while it's small, girl. Before it becomes a problem for everyone."
Zelda and Sigrid looked at him.
"Sir Qualm!" A younger man jogged up the road, breathing hard. "We found a lead."
Qualm slid off the boulder. He sheathed his knife and looked at Zelda—really looked at her, as if he were reading something written on her skin.
"One day," he said, "you'll understand what I mean."
He walked away with his companion.
Zelda watched him go. Then she looked at Sigrid.
They kept walking.


The gates of Donnerfels were not gates at all, just a gap in a low wall where two men sat on overturned barrels. One was thin and unshaven, picking at his teeth with a matchstick. The other was heavy, his uniform straining at the buttons, fanning himself with a folded map.
The thin one—Toni—stood up and swayed slightly.
"Halt," he said, though they had already stopped. "Where you from? What's your business?"
"Just passing through," Zelda said.
Toni squinted at them. "Mage rank. Let's see 'em."
Sigrid pushed up her sleeve. On her forearm, a lion had been inked in blue and gold.
Toni whistled. "B-rank. Fancy."
Zelda showed hers: an elephant, smaller, less ornate.
"C-rank," said the heavy one—Marc. He didn't get up. "Girls your age already registered. Don't see that every day."
"Go on, then," Toni said, waving them through. He was already losing interest, looking back toward the horizon. "You know, some places got powerful women mages. Like Yanga..."
"Yanga the..." Marc started.
Their voices faded behind them as Zelda and Sigrid walked into the village.
Zelda looked around. The ground was cracked. The houses were bright with faded paint, but the people moved slowly, their eyes hollow. No cattle in the fields. No smoke from cookfires. It looked like a place that had forgotten it was spring.
"It's getting dark," Sigrid said quietly. "We should find shelter."