Two young men fenced at the center of the knoll, rapier and dagger against rapier and buckler. Blade Captain Ilego handed off his outer jacket, keeping a critical eye on the combatants as they strove blade against blade.
'What, colleague, is your opinion of the swordplay?'
'Swords should not be things for play.' Ugo Svarezi watched the thin rapiers lunge and sweep with undisguised contempt. 'Toy swords for toy soldiers.'
'Lethal toys-although it hardly ever comes to death. One or the other usually capitulates before the final curtain can be drawn.' Ilego draped his jacket casually across a broken tree. 'Still, I find honor to be such a delicious tool, don't you?'
The fencers seemed to notice the two Blade Captains simultaneously. As one they went stock-still, staring rigidly at the Sumbrian nobleman, then parted and reluctantly opened out the space between them.
In the center of a field of grass, a young man waited-a lean, brooding figure clad in scarlet velvets that swirled like flowing blood. He put out his right hand to receive a long silver blade, then his left, taking a metal buckler the size of a dinner plate.
Gilberto Ilego virtually ignored the man. He drew two weapons from his belt: the first a wicked rapier with a long, whip-thin blade, and the second a short, thick swordbreaker notched all down its leading edge like a lethal comb. He passed them to a gray-bearded dignitary, who inspected the steel in the light, sniffing like a bloodhound at the blade. Satisfied, he passed back the weapons; Ilego saw that the old man's breath had clouded up the flawless steel and frowned, polishing the rapier against his shirttails until it shone.
Ilego strode out toward his opponent, never even deigning to go on guard. He made a swat at the other man's sword, walked casually around his enemy and let his face droop in a sneer.
The aged umpire had never bothered to signal for the combat to begin. He watched with arms folded and black eyes glittering like beads as the two nobles circled one another with crossed blades.
The young man swept his blade at Ilego's calf and swirled forward hoping to punch his buckler into his enemy's face. Ilego, standing crouched and square with his blades held tight, simply shook his weapons and brought his opponent to a halt. Spitting with contempt, he straightened up and once again began his casual circling, letting his sword droop almost to the ground.
His enemy lunged. Ilego paid no attention to the blade; he whipped his sword across his opponent's forearm, raising the barest cut across the flesh. The blow minutely deflected his opponent's blade, causing the rapier to flicker past Ilego's ear. The young man leapt wildly back, fearing a brutal stab from Ilego's swordbreaker. Yet for his part, the Blade Captain scarcely seemed interested at all.
Gritting his teeth, the youth flickered into the attack. Finally he engaged Ilego's attention. The young man hammered at Ilego's sword with his tiny buckler, jabbed, lunged, and jerked his sword back from Ilego's reach. A second stab was met by a sharp flick of the swordbreaker; the comblike blade rasped against the rapier, nearly trapping it between the tines. Parrying wildly with his shield, the youth forced Ilego's rapier aside, staggered back from a slash of the swordbreaker, blocked a lunge at his bowels and stumbled free.
Ilego pursued him, and the young man could only meet attack after attack. The blades stabbed home time and time again, clashing against one another in a splash of sparks. Hissing evilly, Ilego rammed his opponent far aside, sending the dazed youth staggering back across the grass.
Fighting for breath and whipping sweat back from his eyes, Ilego's opponent drove himself lurching back into the fight. He stabbed low, skipped forward, stabbed and lunged again. With a cry of hate he stamped his foot, then tried to disengage and lunge, his blade moving clumsily aside. Ilego let the young man run clean onto his outstretched blade, ramming it unerringly through his opponent's heart. He whipped free his steel and turned aside to wipe his blade clean on a silken handkerchief, not even deigning to watch the body fall.
Seconds ran forward to the young man's corpse. Ilego walked casually away across the dead, dry grass, made a sardonic salute of his swordbreaker toward the old man in the shadows, and strolled to rejoin his guest. The Sumbrian sheathed his sword without a trace of triumph or satisfaction.
'The Riturba family is such a bore. I foreclose on their loan, and what do they do but cry me up as a cheat?'
The nobleman favored Svarezi with a smile.
'I do find honor to be a fascinating thing. If I had killed him with a dagger in the back, I should surely have hung. Instead, I run him through before two dozen witnesses, and am reckoned to be a gentleman.' Ilego adjusted the set of one glove. 'With luck, his brothers will raise challenge, and I can clean out the whole gutless brood within the week.'
Ugo Svarezi laid a hand upon his hippogriff's feathery mane.
'Unless they stumble on to your treachery, Sumbrian.'
'Stumble on it? Quite unlikely.' Ilego gave a smile. 'The poison, of course, was merely a soporific, something to slow his reactions and allow a killing blow. I do find it quite untraceable.' The noble retrieved his jacket from its tree limb, still not even bothering to spare his dead opponent a glance. 'Naturally enough, the venom was impregnated into the tails of my shirt.'
There followed a pause-a time where both men gazed at each other in the shadows of the killing ground. A cool night wind came to stir Gilberto Ilego's hair.
'You have desires, colleague. Desires thwarted and choked by rules.' Framed against the graveyard, Ilego fixed Svarezi with a snake's black, calculating eye. 'I can show you how to fashion the rules into your tool, colleague. Our tool.'
Ilego drew forth a parchment-the torn lower half of the same letter Svarezi carried against his heart. The torn pieces were a perfect match.
'You have asked, colleague, why you are here. The answer is simple. I have asked you to come in the interest of our mutual advancement. It is high time that we men of potential moved our sights beyond the bounds of a single city's walls.'
In the darkness beside them, the black hippogriff gave a sharp hiss of desire. Behind her, the moon rose across the killing grounds and stained the dry grass with lifeless gray.
'Tekorii-kii-kii!
'Tekorii-kii-kii!'
Miliana looked up from her books and charts, smiling as she saw the great long neck dangling down from the hole in the bathroom ceiling. Tekoriikii's giddy, crested head announced itself with pride.
'Tekorii-kii-kii!'
'Well, hello!' Miliana closed her books and leaned upon her elbow to regard the bird. 'Where have you been?'
'Glub glub!'
The bird jumped down through the broken ceiling in a swirl of feathers and landed on the blue-tiled floor. Thus far Miliana had kept the portal secret by ruthlessly chasing all maids and servants away from her room; a ruse that would only work until Lady Ulia freed herself from the distractions offered by the Festival of Blades.
Tekoriikii warbled happily and marched himself into Miliana's study room. The bird walked with a rolling seaman's gait, trailing a vast mass of gorgeous orange tail behind it. Silly plumes above his head bobbed and nodded as he walked, waggling like a gaudy helmet comb as he ducked his head about in avian curiosity. He sidled over to Miliana, cocked an eye at her books, and offered her a delighted smile.
Miliana unwrapped a rock-hard salted ship's biscuit, peering warmly at her guest.
'Did you eat? Here's something for dinner, if you want it. Just as a warning-don't eat any of the palace rats. They smell like cherries, but they're behaving very, very strangely…'
The bird extended a genteel foot and fastened it about the biscuit. Tekoriikii gnawed the tidbit with an air of concentration, keeping one golden yellow eye on Miliana's face.
Miliana ruffled her scrolls and settled the toadskin sheets back into order.
'You've been very quiet up there. Were you asleep, or did you go off for a flight?'
Aaaaah! Tekoriikii instantly launched into an attempt to relate his evening's adventures. The bird danced high, the bird danced low-he gaped his beak and wobbled his backside up and down as though it came equipped with springs. A slap on his chest and a proud puff of feathers ended his announcement, and the firebird clucked his tongue and let smug self-satisfaction shine like fire in his eyes.
Miliana adjusted her spectacles across her freckled nose.
