Anne looked between me and Luna. “Ah . . .”
A sharp voice spoke from a little distance away. “Anne.”
I looked up to see the Sikh boy frowning at us. He made a quick beckoning motion to Anne. “I’m sorry,” Anne said. “Could you excuse me a second?”
I watched Anne walk away. “Very polite, isn’t she?” I said once she was out of earshot.
“She’s always like that,” Luna said absently. “Okay, help me out here. I have no idea how to use these.”
The Sikh boy was talking to Anne under his breath, making quick hand movements. He kept his face turned away, but from his stance he looked tense. I watched a second, then shook my head and turned back to Luna. “All right. How much has Lyle taught you?”
“A lot of stuff about how to bow and curtsey.”
“Square one then.” I nodded to the giant tuning forks at either end of the hall. “Those ceramic things are azimuth duelling focuses. When they’re activated, they maintain a conversion field around the person they’re targeted on. The conversion field takes any external magical energy that tries to penetrate it and transforms it into light. Basically, it’s a wide-spectrum shield. If a magical attack hits you, there’s a flash and nothing happens. The flash is used for scoring. One flash, one point.”
Luna nodded. “Okay.”
“That covers defence. But some mages can’t do direct magical attacks.” I gestured to the table. “That’s where the focus weapons come in. They act as conductors. You channel your magic through them. Hit the other guy with one and it’ll trigger the conversion field.”
The table Luna had been looking at held what looked like training weapons. There wasn’t a great selection and they had a worn, chipped look; the kind of things I’d sell at a deep discount. Luna hesitated, then picked out a sword made out of some kind of pale wood. As she touched it the silver mist of her curse flowed around it, soaking in.
Luna’s an adept, not a mage. Adepts are the next step down on the magical pyramid from mages, and the best way to think of them is as mages who can only cast one spell. That doesn’t mean they’re weak—in fact, since adepts spend so much time practising and refining their one spell, they tend to get really good with it—but they don’t have the range and breadth of abilities that mages do. Luna’s unusual for an adept in that her magic doesn’t come from within, but from without: Her spell is actually a curse, passed down from daughter to daughter. It brings good luck to her, and bad luck to everyone else, which can range from “paper cut” to “struck by lightning,” depending on how careful she is and how close you get.
Usually a curse like that just keeps working on its subject forever, but in this case something unusual happened. The curse has grown up with Luna, woven into her so that it can’t be removed—but just as it’s a part of her, she’s a part of it, and over the last year she’s started to learn to control it. She can’t shut it off and she definitely can’t let herself touch anyone, but she’s gotten a lot better at guiding her curse away from people she doesn’t want to hurt—not to mention sending it at people she does.
It’s not actually forbidden for adepts to train as apprentices, but it’s not customary either. So far it hasn’t come up, partly because no one wants to be the first to get between a mage and their apprentice, and partly because Luna’s area of magic is so poorly understood that not many mages can tell the difference between a chance mage and a chance adept anyway. It’s probably going to cause trouble one of these days, but that’s a worry for another time.
Luna studied the sword as her curse twined lazily around it. To my mage’s sight Luna’s curse looks like a silver-grey mist, shifting and changing, constantly seeping from her skin and soaking into everything around her. To living creatures that mist is poison, invisible and utterly lethal. I’ve seen people survive brushes from Luna’s curse with nothing but a few bruises—and I’ve also seen a man die a violent death within seconds of touching her. That’s why it’s so dangerous—you can never predict what it’ll do. “What do I do?” Luna asked.
“You’re doing it,” I said. “As long as you hold it, your magic’ll keep it charged.”
Luna looked down dubiously. “It doesn’t look like . . .”
“Like anything’s happening?”
“Yeah.”
I smiled. “Focus items depend on who’s using them. Your magic’s subtle, so the effect’s subtle.”
“Is it okay to hit her with this?”
“The azimuth shield’s enough to take most of the punch out of a magical strike. Don’t go sitting on her, but a couple of hits won’t do her any harm.”
I became aware that the rest of the room had gone quiet, and looked up to see that everyone was waiting for us. Natasha was standing at one end of the azimuth piste. Unlike Luna, she wasn’t wielding a weapon. “Luna?” Lyle said. “Are you ready?”
Luna nodded. “Ready.” She walked out onto the piste. I saw Lyle concentrate, channelling his magic, and to my mage’s sight the two focuses lit up with power, energy extending from them to weave a shield around the two girls. Luna flinched and glanced back as the effect touched her, and I saw the silver mist of her curse flicker and twist, merging with the shield. Natasha just looked bored. Anne and the two boys had spaced themselves along the wall.
“Er,” Lyle said. “Let’s say first to three. Ready and . . . go!”
Luna darted forward, sword raised, and blue light welled up around Natasha’s hands.
* * *
The bout was to three points. The score at the end was 3–0. Natasha and Luna fought two more bouts. The score at the end of each of those was 3–0, too.
It’s not that Luna’s clumsy or anything. And she’s no stranger to fighting; there are fully qualified mages who’ve seen less combat than Luna has. But all the fights Luna and I have been through have been the nasty, lethal, anything-goes kind, where you stab the other guy in the back before he does the same to you. A duel is very different. It’s not combat, it’s a sport, with rules and regulations and a referee. Winning a duel and surviving a combat are very different things, and being good at one doesn’t necessarily make you good at the other.
