Games Creatures Play (The Southern Vampire Mysteries Series Book 18) by

Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2014-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

PRISE DE FER

ELLEN KUSHNER

Ellen Kushner’s award-winning novels include the Fantasy of Manners Swordspoint, The Privilege of the Sword, and Thomas the Rhymer. Kushner’s own audiobook recordings of her three Riverside novels, with herself as narrator, were released by Neil Gaiman Presents. With Holly Black, she coedited Welcome to Bordertown, a recent revival of Terri Windling’s original urban fantasy series. The longtime host of public radio’s Sound & Spirit, she lives in New York City and travels a lot. Ellen says: “When Toni and Charlaine asked me for a sports story for this anthology, there was a long pause, during which I must confess I was thinking: ‘Just what about me says sports to you?’ Then I realized that I am best known for novels in which people stick each other with long pointy bits of metal, and that in some cultures that evolved into a sport . . . if, sometimes, a dangerous one.”

“You’re not deceiving anyone, you know. It is perfectly obvious that you are a woman.”

I nearly dropped my foil, but did not. It’s not just that unescorted men aren’t allowed in the halls of Saint-Hilaire. Even if someone’s visiting brother had escaped the eagle eye of Madame la Directrice and wandered into the fencing salon for some reason, surely he would be wearing something a bit less . . . showy? And not be presenting himself in a tight jacket of wine-red brocade, with white lace and ruffled sleeves, like an ambassador from a London Carnaby Street boutique?

“Monsieur,” I said, standing at rest. “Your grasp of the obvious is astonishing.”

He made a little bow—just enough to acknowledge the touch. His hair was even longer than that of the boys I’d seen in Paris, who had so scandalized my grandmother. It was tied at the nape of his neck with a ribbon.

We were speaking French, that being the language of the school, and of the country it was in. The Academie Saint-Hilaire des Jeunes Filles is situated in an old chateau snuggled between the fields and orchards of Basse-Normandie, just far enough from Paris to make it next to impossible for its students to get there and back in one day (or night) to indulge in the sort of behavior that got them sent there for the summer in the first place.

“And you, mademoiselle, you do not fear discovery as you are?”

He had a point. He was not the only one who might want to know what I was doing alone in the Saint-Hilaire salle d’armes after hours, when I should have been in my room in the south tower, snoring across from pretty little Madeleine de Mailly—or possibly studying. Not that I had a Bac to pass. I was returning to New York for my senior year at Norton at the end of the summer. But there was no point in failing, where I could pass.

When attacked, you have two basic choices: retreat or parry.

“Sir,” I said, “since I am already discovered, what need to fear? Unless, of course, you propose to raise the alarm.

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