Martin glanced at Thomas.
Their lord’s face had gone very still.
“Gently,” Amelia added.
Martin’s arm came around her waist.
Amelia hated how vulnerable the position felt, even in play. The memory of the class came back in fragments. The instructor’s voice, the rubber mat under her bare feet, the sour smell of old sweat and disinfectant, her own nervous laugh when a man twice her size had grabbed her from behind.
Breathe. Drop your weight. Turn into him. Take the balance he thinks belongs to him.
She planted her foot between Martin’s boots.
“Are you ready?” he asked, far too cheerfully.
“No,” Amelia said. Then she dropped her weight, twisted, hooked his wrist, and used his own forward lean against him.
Martin made a sound like a startled goose. One moment he was behind her, the next he was on his back in the dust, blinking at the sky.
For one suspended heartbeat, no one moved, then Wat shouted, Osbern nearly fell over the rail, and Hob slapped both hands on his thighs and laughed so hard that no sound at all came out. Someone by the stables bellowed, “She felled him!” and three more men came running as if battle had broken out and they were furious to have missed the good parts.
Martin raised one hand from the ground. “I withdraw all earlier remarks.”
Amelia pushed her veil back with as much dignity as she could manage while her heart tried to escape through her ears. “Good.”
Thomas wasn’t laughing.
That should have worried her, except his eyes had gone dark and bright in a way that made every inch of her skin remember it was alive.
“Well done,” he said.
Two words. Quietly given. They landed harder than all the laughter.
Alyson, sticky with honey and thrilled beyond sense, flung both fists into the air.
“Dung-souled hedgepig!”
Hob made a strangled sound. Osbern turned his face into the rail. Martin, still flat on his back, began to shake.
Amelia covered her mouth. Thomas looked as if he had taken an arrow and preferred it. Edith rounded on the entire yard. “Which flea-bitten sack of donkey spleens taught that child such filth?”
Alyson beamed. “You said blistered foot.”
“That was anatomy,” Edith snapped. “Different matter.”
The men roared. Wat collapsed against the rail. Hob actually wiped tears from his beard. Even Thomas turned away, shoulders moving once, twice, before he mastered himself.
Amelia looked at Alyson, who was glowing with the terrible pride of a child who had just discovered language could be weaponized.
“We are all going to hell,” Amelia said.
Thomas glanced back at her, mouth fighting a smile. “Some of us were already bound there.”
“Good,” Edith said. “Then you can carry Martin.”
When Martin had been hauled upright, dusted off, and mocked to within an inch of his remaining dignity, the yard settled slowly back into itself.
Then Walter came bustling from the yard, a roll beneath one arm and displeasure carrying him faster than his legs.