When she comes at you it’s like a needle in and out and side to side, and every stroke she makes, even if there’s not a man’s physical strength behind it, with such a thin, sharp blade, every thrust is deadly precise and hits home.” Mendoza spoke quickly as she demonstrated with her own sword, a blur of silver motion. “She bobs around you quick as a fox and the moment you leave even the tiniest part of yourself undefended — zzziiippp!” and here Mendoza stabbed Little Jane with her finger, making her jump.
“Aye, I believe I get the picture,” said Little Jane. “What about my father then? Don’t see him lollygagging around studying lessons, wasting time practising.”
“Just because you’ve never seen him at it, doesn’t mean I don’t instruct him privately,” revealed Mendoza.
“What? Really? By himself? Is he an absolute disaster, then?”
“No, actually he’s quite good,” said Jezebel Mendoza, staring down the length of her blade, studying its perfect line for any hint of deviation from absolute symmetry. “Just not terribly graceful, that’s all. And he’s rather vain about such things.”
“Oh,” said Little Jane, disappointed. Her father just couldn’t be good at fencing! Couldn’t she ever be better than her parents at anything? It wasn’t fair! “But surely he must have some truly spectacular gimmick to make up for his bad leg?”
“Well, he’s crack with a pistol, no question. Excellent aim and a speedy loader, too. With the blade, he’s got a nice supple wrist, I suppose. But above all that, I’d wager your father’s tongue against even George Silver’s sword any day.”
“His tongue?” asked Little Jane incredulously.
“Don’t look so surprised, my dear, it is the strongest muscle in the human body, and the courtly art of interfering with another fellow’s mind is not to be underestimated. To make an opponent so angry he strikes without judging, to force your enemy to question his motivation and delay in attack for just that one crucial moment, to surprise a foe with your level of expertise when he anticipates a quick and easy victory — that, my dear, is real talent. Pure skill with a sword can only get you so far.”
“But that’s rather unfair, isn’t it? What’s brave and noble about winning a duel by tricking someone?”
“Nothing. But who said the art of the sword was about bravery and nobility? Certainly not I. It’s about not getting yourself killed. All the rest is just window dressing. As I understand it, all the fancy techniques in the world won’t help you if you’re sliced through the middle. But then again, I may just be old-fashioned.”
“But what works with Ned, then?” asked Little Jane, suddenly desperate for a definitive answer. “How would you fight him?”
Mendoza peered shrewdly at Little Jane, searching for the motive behind such a question, but the pirates’ daughter said nothing.
“Ned is big,” Jezebel Mendoza said slowly. “Tall, broad in the shoulders — a man like that can intimidate a fellow just by standing still. Some people make the mistake of assuming all big men are slow, but it’s not true. Old Ned, for example, is quick as lightning and tough as they come.”
“So he ain’t got a vulnerable spot? Nothing?” asked Little Jane in dismay.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. He’d work for anyone for a bit of coin — that’s one vulnerability. That, and he’s got no imagination.”
“Imagination? That’s it? Isn’t there anything more to it?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Jezebel dreamily. “A wise man once told me that imagination is the root of all kindness. Once we can truly imagine ourselves in the shoes of our brothers, only then can we do them no harm.”
Little Jane gave Mendoza a sidelong glance. “But you’re a weaponsmaster. Doing people harm is your bleedin’ job!”
“Well, so it is,” said Mendoza briskly, “which is why I carefully choose when and where to exercise my imagination.” With that she sprang to her feet, on alert once again. “Now let us finish our lesson.”
They drilled with footwork first, no sword. Mendoza explained that some schools of fencing didn’t even let the student use a sword until six months into training as a way to focus solely on the importance of proper footwork. (Little Jane was very glad she didn’t belong to such a school.)
After this they drilled with actual weapons, practising straight thrusts and basic lunges. Then they practised parries and cutovers. Back and forth and back and forth. Little Jane pushed on, though her strength was flagging. Eventually it was Mendoza who commanded her to stop with a brusque “Arrêt.”
The weaponsmaster poured a dipper of water over her flushed face. “Let’s just rest for a bit,” Mendoza said, more breathlessly than she had anticipated. Little Jane had given her an unexpectedly thorough workout.
Unaware she’d managed to impress the usually unflappable Mendoza, Little Jane sat down on a box of mouldy breadfruit and drank some of the water, wishing it was cool and refreshing instead of tasteless and warm.
Idly, Little Jane noticed that the red rag wrapped around Melvin’s grip had come slightly undone during her practice. With a little picking she managed to detach the cloth from the wooden grip. The rag had been on the sword for so long that the grains of wood underneath had been stained a reddish colour. To Little Jane’s surprise, someone had carved something into the wood underneath. Letters … no, words, cut thick and deep into the surface read: MASTHEAD EAST LAMP VERGALOO IN NAKIKA.
Jibberish? Or some odd foreign language? Vergaloo? Wasn’t that some spicy Indian dish? No, that couldn’t be right, could it? And what did the direction east have to do with anything?
“Wake up, Little Jane!” snapped Mendoza.
“Eh?”
“What’re you looking at there?”
Little Jane showed her the handle of the sword and the strange carved words.
“Huh,” grunted the weaponsmaster, her brow furrowing.
“What’s it mean?” asked Little Jane.
“Most likely a name,” said Mendoza. “Maybe the workshop that first made the sword?”
“Or the bloke it was stole from,” suggested Sharpeye Sharpova.
It seemed a rather long and unlikely sort of name to Little Jane, but she had met some people with exceptionally odd names in her travels.
“Maybe it’s a spell or a mantra,” Dvorjack, the powder monkey, said. “Secret words that give the user special power.”
“Could be, could be,” said Mendoza.
Changez, the cooper, busy constructing storage barrels, nodded seriously.
The Nakika part, though, seemed familiar, if vaguely Hawaiian to Little Jane’s ears. For some reason she thought of the little purple octopus that didn’t really look like an octopus that was inexpertly tattooed on her father’s back, between his shoulder blades.
She resolved to ask him about it the next time they had a moment
