Derring-Do for Beginners by Victoria Goddard

Author:Victoria Goddard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Victoria Goddard

That night, Damian decided he needed to do something with his evenings when he wasn’t at the Inn. It was obviously inappropriate to ask Jullanar if she wanted to do anything, and anyway she would want to spend time with her aunt before she entered seclusion on taking her final vows. Damian couldn’t assume she would be there all the time, whenever he wanted to—and it wasn’t as if he needed company all the time. It was just that he had been brooding over Liro’s comment all afternoon, and could not help but come to the conclusion that his brother’s friend was right.

Damian had tried, over and over again, to read, but no matter how much he tried, how much he practiced, the marks on the page refused to turn into words without the greatest of exertion.

It had taken him three years to be able to run up the whole length of the Stair of Ten Thousand Steps, but his mother had started teaching him and Alezian to read when they were five or six, and Damian still couldn’t get through more than a page for an afternoon’s effort.

He tried that afternoon, pulling out one of his schoolbooks from the dusty shelf where he’d put them so thankfully after he was finally permitted to leave the guild school. He got out his wax tablet and stylus, too, but even with the stylus to help him mark his place on the page he received nothing better than a headache.

He was short with his mother over their early meal, and felt guilty when he left afterwards.

He ran into the night, but the reed plains were no refuge from his own thoughts.

He tried to dissolve into physical exertion, but the shame would not lift.

After a while he decided that what he needed was a legitimate reason to fight someone.

He turned east, cutting across dykes and streams to the higher land where the greyhound races were held. There was no race tonight, but beyond the track was another abandoned quarry where the cockfights happened. Damian slid through the shadows, silently and sure, until he came to the edges of the crowd.

He watched the predators, those men who stood with their central core of menace. They waited for someone to become prey: someone drunk or unwary, separated from his fellows, with a full purse just ready for the taking.

There. That big man had seen something. His attention had sharpened on the plump student who had stumbled off towards the bushes where people relieved themselves. The student (was it one of those who had been with Liro at the store? No matter that; Damian was not doing this for him, for them, but for himself) fumbled with his breeches, staring into the darkness and whistling.

The big man had drawn only a knife; he was twice the size of the student, and his intent was unmistakable. He didn’t even wait for the student to finish pissing, and Damian felt his lip curl in disgust at the idea

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