shoulder wrenched. He moved too slowly. A whispered edge of the blade sliced across the crown of his scalp, leaving a line of fire behind.
Below, in the cabin, he found Rogger staring up at him, unable to help.
“Go!” Tylar shouted. Hot blood ran through his hair, past his ear, along his throat.
Delia responded. The Fin jolted forward.
Tylar hoped the sudden movement would unsteady the Shadowknight. Using this moment, Tylar leaped straight up and rolled out of the hatch.
At the stern, Darjon had fallen to one knee, but he was already rising, a surge of shadow.
Tylar focused on wrenching his arm free. Luckily, his own flesh had slowed the bolt. It had not struck the pod with much impact. He yanked his wrist free, taking the arrow with it.
Agony blackened the edges of his vision. But Tylar had lived with the daily tortures of a broken body. The pain focused him, reminded him of his fury.
The pair rose as one atop the back of the vessel: Darjon on one side of the tall central maneuvering fin, Tylar on the other. Darjon’s sword stabbed with Grace-borne speed, but Tylar anticipated it. He danced forward, using the fin as cover.
Only then did he realize his mistake.
Darjon had intended only to drive him away from the open hatch. The Shadowknight stepped around. He stood now between Tylar and escape.
It was a foolish slip, one Tylar would never have made before. He may be hale of body, but he was far from his former sharpness of mind and reflex. But he knew enough to cast aside the mistake. It was done. A knight had to stay focused on the moment.
The pod bounced regularly as it sped across hummocked waves. Footing was tricky on the wet surface of the craft.
Tylar eyed the open hatch. If he could get below and seal the hatch, the pod could sink away. Darjon would be washed from its surface, forced to swim for his ship.
The Shadowknight read the intent in Tylar’s gaze. With a sweep of cloak, he kicked the hatch closed and positioned himself atop it. “Where is your daemon now?” he taunted.
Tylar did not parry words. With his good arm, he slid free his sheathed sword, letting moonlight trace its length in molten silver.
A hiss of recognition greeted its appearance.
Tylar held Darjon’s own blood-sworn sword, stolen in the Summering Isles.
Tylar stepped around the maneuvering fin. He cradled his wrist, still impaled by the crossbow’s bolt, to his belly. He noted movement through the Fin’s window below. Delia leaned forward, a hand pressed to her cheek, her eyes bright with concern as they met his. She reached from her face to the glass, laying her hand on it.
He turned away. It wasn’t good-bye yet.
He studied Darjon. Tylar knew it would be impossible to lure the knight away from the hatch. He’d have to go to him, meet him.
Darjon kept his sword low, waiting, ready.
Tylar edged along the Fin, keeping his balance as the waves rattled the craft. Past Darjon’s shoulder, the fleet of corsairs continued their pursuit, lamps aglow. Tylar recalled the ebbing power in the Fin. They did not have time to spare.
He stepped past the end of the maneuvering fin, facing Darjon.
They were beyond quips or barbs. A dead stillness lay upon them both. As in a match of kings and queens, the opening move was the most important. Feint or attack. Advance or retreat. Guard up or down.
The matter was settled in a flash of silver, lightning strikes in the night. Neither could tell who attacked first. Both moved swiftly, speed borne of Grace, fury, and desperation.
Tylar turned his wrist, blocking a thrust to his heart. The knight’s sword slid down his blade and struck his hilt’s steel guard with a resounding blow. Tylar felt the impact all the way to the shoulder. Darjon was damnably strong.
Forced back a step, Tylar shoved the knight’s sword up and away. Bringing his own point low, he sliced through a fold of shadowcloak. If there was any flesh beneath it, Tylar did not find it.
Darjon knocked the blade down with a slamming blow from his hilt, then spun on a heel to slip inside Tylar’s guard. An elbow struck Tylar in the center of the chest, knocking air from his lungs.
Another misstep in this dance.
With Darjon atop him, Tylar swung out with the only weapon available: the dart impaled through his wrist. He felt the tip graze more than cloth.
Darjon hissed, confirming the strike, and fell back.
With space now, Tylar brought his sword to bear.
An arm’s length away, Darjon hunched. The wild lash of the sharp arrow had cut through the masklin hiding his features. For the first time, Tylar saw the face of his adversary.
The knight’s paleness struck him first-not a snowy white, but more an absence of any color, bloodless. Had it ever been touched by sunlight? Even the glimpse of hair was too starkly white, brittle in the moonlight. His other features were as sharp as his eyes: thin lips curled in fury, a narrow nose pinched in distaste. A ghost cloaked in shadow.
But it was not his paleness that gave Tylar pause. A more disturbing revelation was exposed. It was not the presence of something, but the absence. The fish-belly whiteness of Darjon’s features was unmarred by mark or blemish.
He bore no triple stripe of knighthood.
Darjon read the realization in his opponent’s eyes.
Angered and shocked, Tylar missed the flash of silver until it was too late. A dagger, thrown from the hip.
“I believe you left this behind,” the false knight spat.
Tylar twisted. The blade shot beneath his raised arm, carving a path along the underside of his limb, slicing tunic, skin, and muscle as it passed. It impaled into the tall fin behind him. Tylar recognized its quivering hilt. It was the same dagger he had used to pinion Darjon outside the gates to Meeryn’s keep.
Darjon followed the attack with a savage thrust of his sword. Tylar, off balance, parried the blade poorly. He managed only to deflect. He had no footing to counter.
Panic slowed everything, like a nightmare. Darjon expertly trapped Tylar’s sword with his own. Tylar, weak from the dagger’s cut, could not stop the blade from being ripped from his grip.
His sword flew and struck the curved back of the Fin.
It slid toward the waiting sea.
Tylar lunged for it, desperate-only to see its black diamond pommel slip beyond his fingertips and plunge away. Weaponless, wounded, he rolled around to his back.
Darjon stood a step away, death promised in his eyes as he raised his sword.
Tylar felt the hot trickle of blood down the inside of his arm, pooling around his hand. He tried to scramble backward, but the footing was slick from the slosh of waves. His back struck the end of the Fin.
If he could snatch the dagger…
But a fast glance showed it was beyond his reach.
Darjon closed, his sword point scribing a sigil of finality in the air.
Tylar, wiping cold sweat and blood from his eyes, flashed back to Delia, pressing her palm against the glass. He realized it had not been a good-bye, but a warning.
He looked at his fingers. Sweat and blood. As his yellow bile had charmed the miiodon, his perspiration could do the same to the nonliving.
Such as a wooden craft in the middle of the Deep.
Tylar brought his hand down upon the Fin’s surface. As before, he willed the world to ice, touching his memories of frozen tundras, snowstorms, and frost fogs.
From his fingertips, runnels of ice shot outward. In a heartbeat, the damp surface of the Fin froze over, sheeted with planes of ice, crystalline and scintillating in the starlight.
Tylar felt the frigid bite through the damp seat of his breeches, freezing him to the deck.
