“Wait and see. I’ve still got three more laps,” Ashlinn grinned. “See you in there.”
Mia turned back to the hall, hands on hips. She returned in time to see Jessamine’s sidekick—the tall Itreyan acolyte with fists like sledgehammers—step into the circle with Shahiid Solis. She saw six other novices, including Jessamine, the pale boy who’d named himself Hush, and the slavemark girl, all slumped in their places at circle, sweating and breathless. All bleeding from tiny scratches on their cheeks.
Solis stood in the ring’s center. Mia saw he’d removed his dark robe, an outfit of supple golden-brown leather underneath. She saw a series of small scars on one massive forearm, thirty-six in total. He still wore the empty scabbard at his side, but he was now armed with a double-edged gladius—a blade ideal for close-quarter fighting.
Dozens of racks had been wheeled out from the darkness, stocked with every kind of weapon Mia could imagine. Swords and knives, hammers and maces, Maw’s teeth—even a rack of bloody poleaxes. All plain and unadorned and perfectly, beautifully lethal.
Solis’s blind gaze was fixed on the floor. “What is your name, boy?”
The thuggish Itreyan boy replied with a bow. “Diamo, Shahiid.”
“And you are versed in the blade’s song, little Diamo?”
“I know a tune or two.”
“Sing to me, then.”
As Mia took her place back in the circle, Diamo perused the weapon racks. He took up a longsword, a good five feet in length, the steel slicing the air audibly as he took an experimental swing. Mia nodded to herself. The boy had chosen a good counter for Solis’s shortblade, so he knew the basics at least. The extra reach would give him some room to play.
Diamo took up guard position in front of Solis and offered another bow. The Shahiid stood with blade downturned, head tilted, seemingly off-guard.
“I do not hear singing, boy.”
Diamo raised his sword and lunged. It was a fine strike, a broad arc that would have taken out the Shahiid’s throat if left unchecked. But before Mia’s astonished eyes, Solis stepped forward and smashed the blow aside. He struck out at Diamo, the boy drew back into guard position, barely fending off a flurry, head, throat, chest, nethers. Steel sang on steel, the hall ringing with the tune, tiny sparks flying as the blades kissed. Solis’s face was serene as a dreaming child’s, sightless eyes fixed on the floor. But his ferocity was terrifying, his speed awe-inspiring. The bout lasted a few moments more, Solis allowing the boy a few more laudable strikes and countering every one. And finally as Mia watched spellbound, Diamo’s sword was struck from his grip, and Solis’s blade placed gently on the boy’s sweat-slick cheek.
It happened so quickly, Mia barely saw the man move.
Diamo flinched as the blade drew blood—just a tiny scratch to remember the beating by. And Solis turned his back and lowered his sword to the floor once more.
“A poor showing.”
“Apologies, Shahiid.”
Solis sighed as Diamo took his place back at the edge of the circle. “Is there none in this room who knows the song?”
“I can hold a tune.”
Mia smiled as she heard Tric speak. His eye was blackened from his brawl with Floodcaller, but he seemed in fighting spirit despite the fact that Solis had almost thrown him off the Sky Altar at evemeal. He pulled off his robe, dark leathers and a short-sleeved jerkin underneath. Mia found herself admiring the line of muscles along his arms, the tanned tautness of his skin. She thought back to their fight outside the Mountain, the imagery of lust and violence intertwined. Licking at dry lips.
“Ah. Our young half-breed,” Solis nodded. “I learned all I needed to about your form yestereve. But come, pup”—he beckoned with one hand—“let me hear you growl.”
Mia was pleased to see Tric had apparently learned from the drubbing he’d received, as he shrugged off the insult without flinching. The boy chose a scimitar from the racks and stepped into the golden light. Solis once again remained motionless, blade downturned as Tric approached. But though the Dweymeri’s form was deadly, his strikes swift and true, the match proved itself a repeat of Diamo’s bout. Tric found himself disarmed, breathless, and bleeding from a fresh scratch along his cheek.
Solis turned away, shaking his head.
“Pathetic. A worse flock I’ve never had. What did your masters have you studying before you came here? Knitting and cookery?” He turned that blind stare around the circle. “The finest Blades have no need of steel at all. But each and every one of you is still expected to be able to slice the light in six before you leave these walls.” He sighed. “And I’ll wager not a one of you could slice a loaf of fucking rye.”
He pointed to the weapon racks.
“Each of you take a knife and form up in front of me. We begin at the beginning.”
“Shahiid,” said Mia.
“Ah. The talkative one returns. I wondered what that aroma was.”
“… mia, don’t …”
“Shahiid, you’ve yet to hear me sing.”
“Save yourself for Shahiid Aalea’s tutelage, girl. I know all I need of you.”
Mia stepped into the circle. “Just the same, I’d like to try.”
Solis tilted his head until his neck popped audibly. Sniffed.
“Be swift then.”
Mia stepped to the weapon racks and chose a pair of long knives, curved in the Liisian style. Plain though they looked, their weight was perfect, their edge, perfection. They were the fastest weapon on the racks—lightweight and sleek. But they were shorter than Solis’s sword, useful only at extreme close quarters. As Mia stepped back into the circle, the Shahiid chuckled.
“You face an opponent with a gladius, and choose daggers to sing with. Are you sure you know the words, girl?”
Mia said nothing, taking up a front-foot, left-handed stance and drumming her fingers along her knife hilts. The stained-glass window above cast a dark pool at her feet. She felt Mister Kindly coiled inside it, drinking in her fear by the mouthful. And without waiting for another insult, she reached out to Solis’s shadow and pulled.
Though she’d worked the Dark a thousand times, she could never remember it feeling quite like this. Perhaps it was because this place had no suns at all, but her strength seemed greater here, the gloom easier to bend. Instead of wrapping the Shahiid’s feet in her shadow, she simply used his own, digging it into the soles of his boots. Not a person in the room could have known what she was doing. Not a ripple marred the black around the Shahiid’s feet. And yet as he tried to shift footing, the blind man found his boots glued fast to the floor.
Solis’s eyes widened as Mia struck; a whistling blow aimed right at his throat. He parried, knocking her right hand aside and sending her knife spinning across the room. But with speed a dragonmoth would envy, the girl pirouetted, hair flying, striking out with her left hand and taking a tiny nick out of the Shahiid’s cheek.
The assembled acolytes gasped. A droplet of blood spilled down Solis’s face. Tric cried out in triumph. For a second, Mia found herself grinning to the eyeteeth, filled with smug satisfaction that she’d drawn blood on this condescending bastard.
But only for a second.
Solis seized her left wrist, bending it back in a grip like iron. He swung his shortsword at his boots, two buckles sent singing off into the darkness. And with the soles still stuck fast to the floor, he stepped out and flipped clean over Mia’s head. Landing on the stone behind her, he locked the girl’s wrist up tight.
Mia cried out as he twisted, bending her double, her swordarm hyperextended. Her elbow screamed, shoulder threatening to pop clean from its socket.
“Clever girl,” Solis said, giving her arm a painful twist. “But this is the Hall of Songs, little one, not the Hall of Shadows.”
He looked down at her with those blind, pitiless eyes.
“And I did not ask to hear my shadow sing.”
Solis raised his blade in a white-knuckle grip. And bringing it down like thunder from the heavens, Mia screaming all the while, he struck once
twice