“Right! How are we doing this? Three touches, or will only blood shake an apology loose?”
Aske’s only reply was a shriek of rage. Sword naked in her hand, she charged, boots thudding through refuse and horse-dung.
Malachi glanced at Rosa. She shrugged, eyes dark and thoughtful.
Kasamor stood arms outspread and sword scabbarded, seemingly frozen in place. At the last moment, he sidestepped. Aske’s sword flashed past. A heartbeat later so did Aske herself, further hastened by the heel of Kasamor’s boot against her rump.
“So you’ve no manners at all?” Kasamor asked. “Care to try again?”
Aske snarled and hurled herself into another headlong charge. It ended much the same as the first.
Kasamor drew his sword and cut at the air in sweeping circles. “Is this how your family fought at Zanya? No wonder they’re not here to speak for themselves.”
“Don’t humiliate her, Kasamor,” muttered Malachi. “It’ll only make matters worse.”
Aske spat. “You dare insult my family?”
Swords clashed, the blades locking. Aske twisted away. She struck again, trading high blows for a flurry of shallow cuts at Kasamor’s waist. He parried them all, then thrust at Aske’s belly. She stumbled back, breathing hard.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” mocked Kasamor. “Why, I crossed blades with Kai Saran himself less than a month ago.”
Aske feinted left, then thrust right. Kasamor ignored the former and sidestepped the latter.
“All that strength,” he continued, “and he couldn’t land a blow. Sent him back to the border with his tail between his legs.”
“Is that true?” Malachi asked Rosa, his attention still on the duel.
She snorted. “Doubt it. The Hadari are too busy worrying over their dying emperor to make trouble. I’ll bet Kasamor never left his tent the whole time he was out there, much less crossed swords with the emperor’s son.”
The blades clashed again. Kasamor, no longer content to defend, forced Aske into a series of unsteady parries. Even to Malachi’s inexperienced eye, there was a jarring difference to the two techniques. Kasamor’s arcs wove beautiful flashes of moonlight in the gloomy alley. Aske’s responses were jerky and uneven.
“This isn’t right,” Rosa muttered.
“He’s better than her, that’s all.” Malachi shrugged. “He’s better than most people.”
“No,” she said. “This is different. Mind and body are fighting one another.”
That was the trouble with Rosa. Sometimes she needed decoding. “She’s not trying to win?”
“Or maybe she’s stalling.” The corner of Rosa’s lip twitched. “Or maybe it’s something else.”
Malachi looked again, but if there was something deeper, he lacked the eye for it. But the expectation radiating from Aske’s companions struck him as misplaced. Aske had no hope of winning. The only question was how far she’d push before capitulation. Unless . . .
“The others,” he murmured. “They’re waiting for something. This is a distraction.”
Rosa frowned. “Find a patrol. I’ll keep an eye on things.”
Malachi opened his mouth to protest, but closed it again as he realised the sense of her suggestion. He’d be no use in a fight anyway.
Four shadows crowded the end of the alleyway, blotting out the weir behind and blocking hope of retreat.
“Too late,” Malachi breathed.
Rosa pushed off the wall. Her fingers drummed on the hilt of her sword. “Get behind me.” She raised her voice. “This is a private matter.”
The shadows ignored her. Strides lengthened, bringing crimson and black surcoats closer, the leader outpacing his companions.
“Stand down,” he bellowed, drawing his sword. “No need for you to die as well.”
Rosa shook her head sadly. “Oh my lad, you’ve no idea how much trouble you’re in.”
“Suit yourself.”
The leader’s sword flashed out. Rosa swept it aside. Her free hand closed around his throat. Her left heel hooked behind his ankle. His back struck the dunged cobbles, a strangled cry ending in a huff of expelled air.
Rosa slammed down her boot and gazed sedately at a trio of hearth-guards who were a touch paler than they’d been before. “Who’s next?”
Malachi tore his attention back to the duel and cupped his hands to his mouth. “Kasamor! You’ve been set up!”
“What?”
Kasamor glanced back over his shoulder, good humour vanished. Aske seized on his distraction. With a cry of triumph, she thrust at his spine.
Kasamor spun around. He teased Aske’s blade aside and struck it from her hand. A heartbeat later he had her pinned against the warehouse wall. He had a generous handful of her expensive blouse bunched in his fingers, and his sword at her throat.
He spared a glance for her companions from the Silverway, now advancing along the alley with blades drawn. “Stay back!”
The foremost, a sallow-faced man with a stubble beard and simple black garb, shrugged. “If Lady Tarev dies, so do your friends.”
Rosa reached Malachi’s side. Her blade dared the remaining newcomers to push their fortune. They hung back, content to wait, or ordered to do so.
For the first time in many years, Malachi wished he’d not abandoned the art of the sword. If nothing else, he should have been carrying a weapon . . . Sure, he’d only have gotten in the way, but perhaps that was better than being entirely useless.
“You can’t kill a councillor and two knights of the Republic,” he said. “Not without consequence.”
“If there were witnesses, maybe,” croaked Aske.
“And it’s not all of you who have to die,” said the sallow man. “You can walk away.”
Malachi snorted. “You’d let us leave? Witnesses?”
“It’s your word against Lady Aske’s. How much is your word worth, Lord Reveque? Valuable enough to make a case for murder before the Council?”
Malachi scowled. Aske’s father had too much influence for any such accusation to succeed. Aske would deny involvement. The violence would be dismissed as the work of opportunistic ne’er-do-wells.
The sallow man was right. Malachi hated it, but he was right. One life or three, and no justice for anyone. He felt sick; sick, and angrier than he had in years.
Kasamor growled in frustration. Letting his sword-point dip to the cobbles, he released Aske. “Never known someone go to so much trouble to win a duel. You want to tell me why?”
Aske massaged her throat and reclaimed her sword. “You already know why. My mother was three days dying from her wounds. My sister’s body was never found. We’d nothing to bury. Her voice echoes through the family vault, but I can’t give her peace.”
“Calenne was a child when that happened. She wasn’t even at Zanya.”
“Sins of the kith. Let her filthy bloodline rot in the south. It will never hold a seat on the Council.”
“Sounds like my reason for dying’s far nobler than yours for killing me.” Kasamor chuckled, but despite his apparent mirth, a rare note of fatalism crept into his tone, betraying a decision made. For a man like Kasamor, preserving his own skin came a distant second to saving those of his friends. “You might want to think on that before you go bragging to your sister’s ghost.”