creabimus said: could you write a sarah/six medieval AU? "Teach me the sword," said the lady Hart, and Ser Elizabeth began to fall in love. At the time, however, she only recognized it as a faint discomfort, a sudden lost balance in the world. "Tell me you jest," she replied. "You could not lift my sword, for one." Lady Hart raised an eyebrow. "They are not so heavy as that. I have yet to see even a new squire struggle to hold up his sword." She absently stroked her hair; its long, straight golden-softness contrasted sharply with Ser Elizabeth's, wild and dark as a raven's wing. "And I've yet to see a new squire who did not swing his sword about like a blind, drunken idiot," said Ser Elizabeth with some dryness. "And injure himself, like as not." "I need not injure myself if you teach me," said Lady Hart, patient and relentless. Her manner was kind, sweet, even; but Ser Elizabeth knew from experience that she had her way in the end, and convinced you that it was yours into the bargain. "You need not learn the sword at all," she said. "You are a sworn and loyal ally of the Nine Knights, the Fourth in particular, and that is all the protection you will ever require." Yes, whispered a nasty thread in her thoughts, she is dear to the hearts of us all, but only one is dear to her own. It bothered her, and she knew not why, and so she ignored it. "Can you keep that oath?" challenged Lady Hart. "Are you certain?" Of course, rose on her tongue, and died behind her teeth. It held the heavy, awful, ringing quality of a question she had been asking herself from the beginning, and not known. "Nine Knights you may be," continued the lady Hart, "with power to shake the world and call the rains and tear down the gods, if you wished it, but in the end you are only six." Ser Elizabeth knew she spoke of the five remaining knights who had kept and held high their title of Nine, as well as a Tenth who was no knight but a queen; but she could hear nothing but you are only Six, and her throat and chest and heart and hands tightened with the truth of it. "Teach me, Maren," murmured Lady Hart, drawing closer, setting the trail that led to the part of her that was Sarah. I cannot keep her safe forever, thought Maren; and then, I cannot keep her back. "As you wish, milady," she said, and bowed her head in what no longer felt a surrender.
