1 NICHOLAS
The salle at Kings Row was the most luxurious and gorgeous place Nicholas Cox had ever fenced in. He’d first learned to fence back in the city, in Coach Joe’s scruffy gym. He’d trained there so much and so hard that whenever he picked up a mask and an épée, some part of Nicholas always expected to walk out onto a wooden floor so old it was gray and worn white in patches, with a shredded rubber mat to mark their field of play, the piste. Coach Joe said fencing clubs with grounded pistes were only for millionaires.
Here in the salle at Nicholas’s new school, they had grounded pistes. The floorboards were glossy—but never slippery—and even and gleamed like gold. The sections of the two-meter-wide strip that was their piste were marked clearly with light gauge metal. The differences didn’t end there. At Coach Joe’s, there had been no historical swords fixed to the wall, no twirly wedding-cake twists at the corners of the ceiling, no triangular window with gold leaves swaying on the other side of the glass.
But, worst of all, Nicholas had not had a partner at Coach Joe’s.
Nicholas and Seiji stood facing each other, in en garde position.
“Allez,” commanded Seiji, who insisted on acting as referee during their practice bouts. His eyes were steady through the mesh of his mask. The long, light lines of their foils were poised.
Nicholas attacked. Seiji parried. Nicholas barely managed to parry Seiji’s riposte in turn and swung into another attack as quickly as he could. Nicholas’s speed was his advantage; he didn’t have Seiji’s skill, polished into glass over years of expert training. Every time one of his rough lunges made Seiji retreat, or even hesitate, Nicholas’s blood thrilled.
Seiji’s next riposte landed.
Just then, the double doors of their salle were flung open, and Eugene rushed in. Eugene Labao was a big guy, but he walked softly.
Right now, he wasn’t talking softly.
“Bros!” he yelled. “Big news.”
Nicholas turned his head. Seiji made a small impatient sound from within his mask.
“More proof of your total inability to focus, Nicholas?” he asked.
“I’m focused,” Nicholas promised, and lunged.
Parry, riposte, engagement, change of engagement, steps, and swords. Like a dance Nicholas could win, and he wanted to.
“Seriously, guys, I know you’re doing your thing, but this is important,” Eugene said.
“Halt!” said Seiji in a ringing tone.
He took off his mask and fixed Nicholas with the steel-cold stare that had made another student cry in class last week. Nicholas grinned over at him. Seiji used that stare on him at least once during every practice bout.
Seiji gestured with impatience. Even when he wasn’t holding a foil, Seiji seemed ready to parry the world’s attacks until it admitted defeat and surrendered.
“What is your news, Eugene?” he asked.
Eugene raised a well-shaped eyebrow, a slightly sardonic expression on his face. “It’s not my news, bro. It’s Coach’s news. She says it’s big, and we need to report to her office immediately.”
Coach’s office was one of Nicholas’s favorite rooms in Kings Row. It was small and cozy, and she had cool posters of sabers on the walls. When Nicholas once asked where she’d gotten the posters and if he could get some with épées, Coach Williams made a sour face and told him not to talk to her about épées.
She wasn’t making a face now, though. Her dark eyes were sparkling. She was a vision of joyful impatience, tap-dancing her fingers on her desk as they took their seats.
As soon as they were settled, Coach Williams burst out with “Have you heard about Camp Menton?”
Nicholas looked around the room for a clue. Their team captain, Harvard Lee, was already sitting in front of Coach’s desk, and Assistant Coach Lewis was in the corner with her notebook. Assistant Coach Lewis always took very meticulous notes.
The last member of their team, Aiden Kane, wasn’t here. Now that Nicholas thought about it, Aiden hadn’t been around much lately.
Harvard gave Nicholas a reassuring smile. Their captain was like that, always ready to carry the whole team on his capable shoulders. He never made Nicholas feel stupid for the gaps in his fencing knowledge. He’d drill with any of them whenever they asked.
Harvard seemed as though he was about to fill Nicholas in when Eugene spoke up: “I’ve read about Camp Menton! It’s a totally famous European fencing camp, on these amazing training grounds in France. A bunch of their fencers went on to represent France and Germany and England in the Olympics.”
Eugene and Nicholas had both started reading up about fencing so they would be more informed. Nicholas wished he’d gotten to the book Eugene had.
“Yes, everyone knows that.” Seiji spoke flatly.
Eugene looked slightly offended, so Nicholas defended their teammate. “Like you know so much about French fencing.”
“I know a great deal about French fencing,” Seiji claimed.
“Really, how?” Nicholas demanded.
Seiji raised his eyebrows in the way that made him look extra imperious. “I lived in France for a year?”
“Oh yeah,” said Nicholas. “Forgot that.”
It was weird, sometimes, remembering how different from Nicholas’s life Seiji’s had been. Spending a year in France sounded as fabulous and distant to Nicholas as spending a year on the moon. France and everything about it had always seemed like a symbol of ultimate luxury. Nicholas only had a passport because one of his mom’s boyfriends made a promise that he’d take them to Paris. His mom had believed him, because Nicholas’s mom always believed the boyfriends, but she was also always fooled. That boyfriend never even took them to the arcade.
Since Nicholas had fallen in love with fencing, France seemed even more special. The salle was called that because of the French term for weapons room—salle d’armes. And épée, the foil they fenced with every day, was the French word for sword. But Seiji Katayama, US Olympic prospect and fencing prodigy, knew all that. Seiji knew everything. For him, seeing Nicholas and Eugene memorizing this stuff must have been faintly puzzling. Fish didn’t try to learn about water.
No wonder Seiji and Nicholas hadn’t gotten along the first time they’d met. Or the second. Seiji had kicked Nicholas’s ass on the piste, then been standoffish, which Nicholas now knew was simply Seiji’s way. At the time, Nicholas had been infuriated. But he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the way Seiji fenced.
Seiji, and wanting to prove he could be as good as Seiji someday, was part of what inspired Nicholas to try for a place on the Kings Row team.
Seiji and Nicholas, in a world that made sense, would have stayed as distant from each other as the sun and the moon. In this world, though, they had both come to Kings Row, and they’d been assigned to each other as roommates. It hadn’t been easy at first, but who wanted easy? Fencing wasn’t easy. Winning gold was never easy.
Not that Nicholas had ever won gold. But he would. And being friends with Seiji was like winning gold.
Harvard nodded approval at Eugene, who glowed. Coach Williams swept on excitedly.
“Exactly, Eugene. Camp Menton is a highly prestigious training camp. It’s different from any other. It’s the breeding ground for champions. The camp used to be restricted to EU fencers only. A few years ago, they allowed some other international teams to participate, but Camp Menton has never been open to US fencers.” She paused for thrilling effect. “Until now.