Marissa in her armory repairing a leather-and-wire-mesh fencing helmet. As she got caught up in my story, she abandoned her task and left the protective mask to lie in pieces on the cluttered worktable before her.
“I told you we should kill Dromis before the duel,” she said. “Luckily, it’s not too late.”
“Actually, it is,” I replied. “He’s hiding behind a wall of his students, and he’ll stay there until he comes to keep our appointment.”
“In that case, go to Lords Baltes and Pivar.”
“Without proof?”
“You shouldn’t need it. They owe you. They’re your friends.”
“They’re also committed to governing Mornedealth in a less arbitrary manner than their predecessors, and that’s a good thing. I won’t ask them to set aside their own rules of law just to save my arse.”
“Then what? You can’t simply refuse to fight, or people will think you a coward. No maestro or hiresword can afford that.”
I felt a jab of anger. “Don’t worry about that. Despite everything, I
Marissa made a sour face. “That’s so contrary to common sense, it makes my head hurt just to think about it.”
“Mine too. So why don’t we try thinking like warriors?”
A dank mist blurred the mausoleums and grave markers, and the dawn was just a luminous smear on a wall of gray cloud. The birds hadn’t yet begun to sing.
I’d done my best to keep Dromis’ prophecy of doom from affecting my morale. But perhaps the dismal morning helped to dampen my spirits, for as we approached one another, I did indeed have the fey sense that my fate was sealed. That all that was about to happen had, in some ultimate sense, happened already.
I couldn’t afford to feel like a helpless sleepwalker, so I focused on Dromis’ sneer and Olissimal’s gloating smirk, stoking my hatred for them both. It wasn’t something I would have done ordinarily; I prefer to fight with a cool head. But in this instance, it steadied me.
We took our places, and then Olissimal said, “We, your friends, urge you to seek a peaceful resolution to your dispute.” I doubted that anyone in the history of swordplay had ever made that traditional plea with such a transparent lack of sincerity.
“I do not apologize,” Dromis said, “and I know for a fact that my opponent won’t, either. Isn’t that right, Selden?” He grinned at me as though sharing a secret jest.
“Yes,” I said.
“I’ll always wonder: Could you simply not accept the truth of your situation, or did your notions of honor oblige you to show up even so? Either way, you die a fool.”
I looked to Marissa. “Let’s get on with it.”
“As you wish,” she said, backing away to give Dromis and me room to fight. Shifting his crutches, Olissimal likewise hobbled clear.
Marissa then lifted a white cloth and whipped it through the air. Dromis and I started to circle one another.
Fear welled up inside me, and of course, given the life I’d led, it was scarcely the first time. But it was the first time it balked me. For a heartbeat, I couldn’t attack because the craven part of me
I screamed a battle cry to jolt myself into motion.
I sprang into the distance, feinted to the chest, and cut to the head. Dromis ducked under the stroke and thrust at my torso as he’d surely watched himself do while using the power of the stone.
It was a nasty counterattack, but fortunately, I was ready for it. I deflected it with a heavy beat-parry that weakened his grip on his hilt, then slashed at his face.
Dromis had boasted he was a good swordsman, and it was so. He didn’t drop his weapon, and he managed to jump back and evade my cut. But his eyes were wide with shock. Whereas I wanted to laugh, because from this moment forward, nothing about our encounter was predestined. Now it was just another sword fight.
Having experienced the turbulent power of the stone, I’d conjectured that, while Dromis had learned to use it, the process wasn’t easy for him. For after all, he was a warrior, not a mystic, and, moreover, the artifact was damaged.
And if Dromis had to struggle mightily to swim through the time currents in the same way I had, then it stood to reason that he couldn’t navigate to a scene he wanted to witness with any extraordinary precision. He had to flounder about until he happened across it, then fight to hold his position long enough to obtain a serviceable glimpse.
So I’d called in the favor owed me by the players of the Azure Swan Theater. On the previous morning, they, Marissa, and I had thrice staged a mock duel, with actors made up to resemble Dromis, a band of his students, and Olissimal. Each time I attacked with a feint to the chest and a cut to the head, and each time my adversary dispatched me with a stab to the body. His sword was blunt, but still capable of bursting the bladder of pig’s blood concealed inside my doublet.
The idea was for Dromis’s spirit, adrift in time, to observe one of the fraudulent duels and mistake it for the real one, and I admit, I’ve hatched schemes that inspired greater confidence. Even if all my unsubstantiated guesses were correct, there was still one chance in four that my foe had watched the actual combat. But now I knew the trick had worked.
We traded attacks, neither scoring as of yet. But as the moments passed, I felt more and more in control of the action, and he had to give ground repeatedly.
I judged that if I could stop him retreating, I could finish him, and there was a marble tomb, crowned with a statue of a dove lighting on the hand of a goddess, several paces behind him. I started the process of backing him up against it.
Then Dromis used the thumb of his off hand to rotate the gold ring on his middle finger, perhaps another keepsake he’d carried away from his cult’s desecrated temple. The medallion I wore next to my skin turned icy cold, warning me of hostile magic. Unfortunately, the warning was redundant. I was able to guess that my opponent had cast a curse stored in a talisman from the way the world suddenly went black.
Acting by reflex, I parried, and steel rang as I stopped Dromis’ sword. I riposted, and felt my blade cleave flesh and stick there. When Dromis fell, his weight dragged it toward the ground.
My feat was lucky, but not, I think, pure luck. Throughout the duel, I’d studied Dromis’ fighting style and learned his favorite attack. Thus, even blind, I was able to defend. And when our blades met, it gave me a sense of his position. That made it possible to land a cut.
Much to my relief, my eyesight returned a moment after Dromis dropped. Blinking away a certain residual cloudiness, I checked to make sure he was dead, then pivoted to find Olissimal. I wanted to witness his dismay at his champion’s demise.
But in that regard, I was disappointed. Supported by his crutches, Olissimal stood shivering with his lips parted and his eyes half closed, a picture of perverse delight. He didn’t really care who’d died a bloody death, only that someone had.
I suppose no moment is perfect. But, Olissimal’s bliss notwithstanding, this one came close, and tasted sweeter still when Marissa strode up to me, a rare smile of genuine admiration on her face. “Nicely done,” she said.
“You have no idea,” I answered.
“So what happens now? We find the black stone and try to use it to prove Dromis’ duelists cheated?”
“No, because they didn’t. Not knowingly. They didn’t understand Dromis used sorcery to determine how they should fight. They just thought he was a brilliant teacher.”
“Then I guess we’re done. We can get down to the serious business of using the stone to pick winning horses.”
I was reasonably certain she was joking. But since coming to Mornedealth, I’d lost a ridiculous amount of coin wagering in the hippodrome, and I confess that, just for an instant, I was tempted.
