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Gideon felt the button of the blade press into her, pressing her chest plate against her heaving breath. At the same time, her extension reached Tern’s lamé. The score box lit up on both sides. Gideon flicked her eyes away from the box to the referee.
He had already called the halt. His arm was straight towards Gideon, the other held up and bent.
“Point, Tern.” He said it with an accent, abandoning the t.
The number on Tern’s side of the score box ticked up.
8-5.
Fuck.
Gideon turned, adjusting her grip on the foil. It was too light. The blade was too bendy. There was too much bullshit in foil, if you asked Gideon, which nobody had. She felt smothered in the lamé and with an electrified bib on Harrowhark’s obnoxiously painted mesh mask. Harrow had carefully painted a white skull on the mesh, a nod to the iconography associated with St. Francis of Assissi. As if anybody knew that. As if anybody but Harrow gave a flying fuck.
If you asked Gideon, which again, nobody had while they doted over Harrow’s devotion to St. Francis and the St. Francis College fencing team, she would have suggested that maybe Harrow painted her mask only to look edgier than she was. To have some advantage as a short as shit, tiny little foil fencer.
“Right of way!” Harrow was shouting as Gideon walked back to the en garde line. “Right of way!!” She was pointing one crutch at Gideon, shaking the rubber end of it to emphasize her point.
Gideon stuck her tongue out at her, but Harrow couldn’t see that through the mask mesh and the painted skull.
“Parry, then riposte!” Ortus seemed to think this was helpful advice.
It would have been better if Ortus had given advice to Harrow to fix her lunge, before she sprained her ankle, and avoided Gideon having to take her place on the squad all together. Harrow loved this shit. Right of way, all of foils little rules and tricks and keeping track of each action. While Harrow had been studying for the referee qualifying exam, Gideon had been studying how to make a hard hit in a proper weapon. Epéeists had the good sense to understand that right of way was a stupid concept in the middle of an actual fight. You’re either hit, or you’re not, parries be damned.
Gideon settled on the en garde line.
“En garde. Prêt?” The referee looked at Gideon, then Tern, satisfied that they were set. “Allez!”
For the third time, nobody had asked Gideon, but if they had they would have learned that Gideon was over the French refereeing. Plenty of referees had dropped it, but this one clearly had a Capital T for Tradition shoved up his ass to the hilt. Gideon advanced. Tern did the same. This part of the dance was familiar. Each gauged the distance on the other.
Right of way.
Right.
Gideon made a tentative extension. Tern parried. Gideon retreated.
Engaging him in a fight of right of way was not going to work. His bladework was too good, too careful. And he gave a shit about the rules of right of way. His foil danced circles around her the entire bout, disengaging each of her parries.
Time for a new plan.
This would only work once. Okay, maybe twice.
Gideon slapped her front foot down onto the basketball court floor. The noise cracked through the space between her and Tern. The vibrations shook the floor.
Tern flinched.
Gideon extended forward and lunged, not wasting any precious milliseconds on a parry, and landed the tip of her foil square into his chest.
One light on the score box.
“Halt!” the referee was calling it but Gideon didn’t need to look at him. One light, she could understand. “Point, Nav.”
8-6.
Turning back to the en garde line, Harrow was scowling. Ortus grinned, clapping his big clumsy hands together gleefully.
“That’ll only work once, Nav” Harrow was hissing.
Oh, fuck her.
Back on the en garde line.
Advance, advance, retreat, advance. The rhythm with Tern was back.
Gideon slammed her foot down again, harder this time. The wooden flooring, shining and squeaky against her shoes, shook.
Tern didn’t flinch. He parried, hard, absurdly hard, pushing her blade out of the way and planting the button of his foil into the electrified bib of the mask.
Again, the referee. Gideon ignored him, and walked back to the en garde line. She could understand a single light.
9-6.
“Don’t do it again, Nav!”
Harrow must have been exhausting her tiny lungs. Ortus stepped ahead of her and handed Gideon a water bottle. He held out a hand, to hold her mask while she drank though it was still tethered to her lamé by a coiled cord.
“You’re going to have to be creative,” Ortus advised while she drank. “You’ve got the height advantage on him. You might have the strength. Don’t play by his rules, play by yours.”
“My rules don’t have right of fucking way.”
“Right,” Ortus nodded, as if he had thought of that, “So imagine how frustrating it would be for Tern to fence against somebody who ignored all his favorite rules properly?”
That was worth considering. Fuck trying to be a careful little duelist.
The next touch was Nav’s. Tern had the right of way, but Gideon had twisted her body just enough, and he missed her lamé, missed her whole damn shoulder and spared her the off-target, while she hit him in the kidney. She tried to keep that aggression on the next touch. He wasn’t having it. Parry, riposte. Point Tern.
A couple messy ballestras later, too many long engagements with his blade, and one yellow card (for a corps-a-corps that would have been forgiven in épée), a small crowd had gathered around their fencing strip.
14-14.
Nav of St. Francis’ against Tern of St. Matthew’s. She would have gathered for such a bout, too. Especially if one school’s foilist had been replaced by a last minute épéeist.
Harrow would have called a time out if the girl from St. Matthew’s, blonde and haughty with tight whites, that had been coaching Tern hadn’t called it first. Again, Ortus held Gideon’s mask while Harrow nagged.
“You’ve got to win this,” Harrow hissed, rocking on her crutches.
“Why?” Gideon snapped at her. “Because two Catholic schools want to have a piety rivalry?”
“No. Because I would have won it.”
That…was not the worst reason Gideon had ever heard. But if Harrow wanted to win, she should have avoided spraining her damn ankle and leaving the foil squad without better options.
“And…” Harrow said, now in a whisper, leaning forward on her crutches and stretching up to Gideon’s ear, “I’ll give you a kiss if you win.”
Gideon flushed and shoved her water bottle back to Ortus to take her mask from him. Nobody could see her flush behind the mesh.
She faced Tern. He held his blade straight towards the sky, tipping it towards her. She mirrored the action, saluting him back before settling into her en garde stance.
“En garde. Prêt? Allez!”
Advance, advance again. She found the rhythm, but Tern wanted to engage in bladework. She tried counter parrying, but he disengaged her blade.
Ortus’s voice rang in her ears. Don’t play by his rules, play by yours.
She’d tried a few tricks to get here. Appels, balestras, a few times taking his blade in a prise-de-fer, because Ortus was right, she did have the strength.
There was one chance to get this right.
Ortus had her down towards her end of the piste, pressed against the endline.
He feinted. She parried, pressed his blade aside and let her weight all fall into her front foot until she tipped over, the tip of her foil pointed at his heart as she barreled forward into him, flèching, falling.
He missed the counter parry. His foil glanced over her side.
The score box emitted a screeching beep. The referee called halt.
“Bout, Nav.”
Gideon could hear the cheering behind her. Behind Tern, his team mates were clapping quietly, telling him it was a good bout. Gideon removed her mask, shaking the sweaty hair from her brow as Tern did the same. They approached each other and she offered him the standardly awkward left hand to left hand shake.
When she turned to unhook herself from the box, Harrow was already there, fumbling around the back of her lamé and white jacket to unhook the clip and disconnect the two pronged plug. Gideon opened her mouth to say…something.
But Harrowhark just smacked her on the ass, like all the girls in foil squad seemed to do after a good bout, and hopped away on her crutches.
⚔⚔⚔
Finally, Gideon was clean. She smelled awfully of Aiglamene’s coconut shampoo because nobody else on the team had remembered to pack any and the hotel was too dirt cheap to provide any extra. The little bottles had all been used up on the first day of the tournament.
Gideon was drying off when there was a knock on the door, pounding and too fucking loud after two days of listening to the screeching beeps of the score boxes.
“Give me a minute!”
The upside to shoving as many fencers into one cheap hotel room was that it saved money that could be better spent at the various vendors that hawked grips and blades and wiring kits around the tournament. The downside was that there was never enough time in the shower.
Harrow opened the door anyway and leaned against the door frame. “Foil squad is going down to the pool.”
“Ortus already left,” Gideon said, frantically covering herself with the towel. A stupid, cheap, hotel towel. Scratchy and not big enough.
Ortus had already left. Ortus had friends at both St. Matthew’s and St. Agatha’s, fencers from his high school team, or something, and he had abandoned the St. Francis team’s night of celebration in favor of a night with old buddies.
“Right,” Harrowhark said, as if this was not a problem at all, “Foil fun night.”
“I’m not a foilist,” Gideon said. She wasn’t, she didn’t want to be. This was a one time thing. Harrowhark would be all fixed up, ankle unsprained and lunging with the best of them by the time the next collegiate tournament rolled around. And Gideon would be back to the épée squad, fencing properly.
“Foil always goes to the pool…” Harrow said. She had put on the big black puppy eyes that got her good deals on her foils at the vendor and smiles from the referees.
Foil did always go to the pool, if the shitty hotel they booked for the tournament weekend was just unshitty enough to have a pool. Foil squad had all kinds of activities to stay tight knit, and it seemed that anything, no matter how mundane, could be deemed “Foil Fun Night” if enough foilists were around.
“Fine.”
⚔⚔⚔
Gideon had not brought a swim suit, because this was a fucking fencing tournament, so she ended up choosing a tank top and a pair of warm up shorts. Fuck the pool’s filter, apparently. “Foil Fun Night” had to be had.
Harrowhark was already in the pool when Gideon stepped through the doors. The place reeked of chlorine, the pool was over treated and otherwise empty. Harrow floated in it, weightless. Her crutches and boot, meant to stabilize her stupid ankle, had been abandoned at one end of the pool. Harrow was floating on her back, eyes closed.
Gideon gave a quick glance to the numbers spray painted along the edge. It was deep enough.
After dropping the crappy hotel towel she had brought with her, and slipping off her shoes, Gideon ran at the pool.
“Cannonball!”
She hit the surface of the water with a splash, rocking Harrow out of her peaceful float. Harrow sputtered, spitting pool water out of her mouth and pinching her nose.
“You are such a bitch, Nav,” she said Gideon came up from the surface.
“As always, my Lamentable Coach.”
Harrow splashed water towards her. “That was a shitty flèche, by the way.”
Gideon moved closer, weightless in the water, to splash her back. “But it worked. One fleche, one bout ended.”
Harrow wiped her face, glaring and jumped at Gideon, clinging to her as if she intended to sink them both in the pool of a roadside hotel. Gideon caught her, held her steady while Harrow made herself all dead weight, trying to push her down.
Gideon was too tall. She stretched her toes for the bottom and there was no pushing them both under. Harrow huffed.
“I won,” Gideon said, “What more could you want? Besides, you like, owe me.”
When she said it, she had forgotten Harrow’s stupid little promise. She had meant a bottle of whiskey from the liquor store across the motel, which was the épée way, the better way, of celebrating the end of a tournament. Or maybe Harrow could wash her sweaty white jacket and knickers.
Harrow had not forgotten.
Suddenly, Harrow’s big black eyes were too close and then closed and their lips were touching. Gideon found her hand against Harrow’s jaw, all smooth and wet. Gideon felt the rough bottom of the pool slipping away and she leaned back, to the edge of the pool. They both floated there, entangled, until her eyes band to sting from the chlorine vapors.