Spero's Arc

Chapter 2 of 10

The follow-up quest sent them south, but they never got that far. On the first day, Valeria charged three road bandits alone. Spero watched her win, then bleed from a wound she never saw coming. He dragged her off the road and made a choice. Before the real quest, they needed to learn each other. He remembered a name she'd muttered in her sleep, and he went looking for the man who trained her. The abandoned sparring hall stood cracked and silent, its banners gray with dust. An old man swept the floor as if it still mattered. His beard was white and long, his arms thick despite his age. He glanced up and squinted at the boy in the hood. "Valeria's outside," Spero said. "She won't come in. She said you'd only tell me I fight wrong." He gripped the wooden pendant at his chest. "I need to know why she throws herself at everything." Emir set the broom against the wall. "You're the partner she got stuck with." He studied Spero the way a smith studies iron. "I found her half-starved, stealing bread. A child that size shouldn't have been strong enough to bend a door hinge. But she was. And under the strength was rage, enough to drown her." "She still has it," Spero said. "I taught her to swing it like a sword instead of choking on it." Emir walked to the center of the worn floor. "But rage makes you fast, not careful. She'd rather bleed than let anyone call her weak. And she'll never say she needs help. Asking, to her, means she's small again." Spero thought of the wound she hadn't seen coming. "So she fights first because stopping to plan feels like giving up." "Now you understand her." Emir picked up two wooden practice swords and tossed one. Spero caught it wrong. "The question is whether she'll understand you." The door banged. Valeria stood there, arms crossed, jaw tight. "You told him," she said to Emir. Her voice cracked at the edge. Spero stepped forward before Emir could answer. "He told me you don't ask for help. Fine. Then I'll cover you without being asked." He raised the wooden sword. "You go in. I watch your back. That's the deal." She stared at him, waiting for the pity she always braced for. It didn't come. Her shoulders dropped an inch. "You'd slow me down," she said. But she stepped onto the floor and lifted her sword. They circled. She lunged, wild as ever. This time Spero moved with her, blocking the angle she left open. Her blade stopped short of his ribs. She blinked. "Again," she said. By dusk they moved as two, not one. Emir watched from the doorway and said nothing. When they left, Valeria walked a half-step behind Spero, letting him lead. The quest was theirs to finish now. Somewhere south, the sealed report waited, and the road to his sister ran through it.