PodCastle

* Author : Charlotte Ashley
* Narrator : Tatiana Grey
* Host : Matt Dovey
* Audio Producer : Pria Wood
*
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Previously published in Fantasy & Science Fiction.


Rated PG-13 for honorable duelists and some less honorable warfare.
A Fine Balance
By Charlotte Ashley
My mistress, Shoanna Yildirim, was the greatest shot in the city.
Each morning, according to her wishes, I cleaned and loaded her revolving pistol. I oiled the clip on her holster and checked the stitches in the leatherwork. I strung a fresh sash of weighted bullets and laid it by the vanity over her scarves.
“Your pistol, Mistress,” I would say to her as she rose from the mirror, her wide, brown lips and dark, sly eyes painted to perfection.
“Thank you, Emin,” she always replied. “But I will not need it today.”
Each morning, she left the gun where it lay. Mistress Yildirim was the greatest shot in the city, but she hunted Kara Ramadami with a blade. That was just one of the many rules of sahidi.

That summer, Kara Ramadami hunted Mistress Yildirim with a pair of shashka, also in accordance with the rules of sahidi.
It was only recently that she had taken up the second weapon, causing the bookmakers to shake their heads and adjust their odds. How could the Dushiq mistress fight and climb with both hands occupied? But Ramadami was goat-like in her movements and did not need hands to scale walls or leap rooftops. She, like my mistress, appeared unbound by the laws of nature that hampered other duelists. Only her Kavalye — her nemesis, my mistress — could challenge her, just as no one could challenge my mistress but Ramadami. They were the most perfectly paired Kavalye the city had ever known.
In their last duel, a clash the tanners of Ceset Alley were already calling the Three-Thrust Fleece, my mistress beat Ramadami when she broke her thumb against the wooden frame of a beamhouse with her first strike. Even thus injured, Ramadami evaded Yildirim’s next advance, delivered backhanded in a whirlwind of ribbon, scarves, and braids. She mounted a clothesline, cartwheeled past my mistress, and took cover behind a red hind-skin curing in the sun. But Yildirim merely spun wide, slicing through the leather like canvas. Her third thrust split Ramadami’s purse and spilt her favor, which my mistress claimed with the broad edge of her sword before it even hit the ground.
We did not see Ramadami for a long time after that, not until I spotted her during the ten mile run Mistress Yildirim had assigned me for my rigors. I spied her unmistakable white-gold hair as I dodged traffic along the busy Ridge, towering over the common people who could match her neither in height nor radiance. She must have seen me before I did her, for no sooner had she caught my attention than she abandoned whatever business she had with the clerks spilling out of the Gentian Courthouse. Narrowing her eyes at me, she slipped around the grand marble staircase and ducked into the first alley beyond. I last caught sight of her alighting on a domed roof like a golden eagle before vanishing around the other side. I swore and sprinted down the Justice Way in the hope of spotting her again, but it was pointless; she was gone.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to press an exact copy of her into my memory. White blouse, white pants, white boots, as usual. The two shashka strapped about her chest like a harness. Her unlikely golden hair had been cropped short.