“Fear not, Mi Dona,” he said. “I’ll be gentle with you.”
Mia spared him a withering glance. Marco grinned. One of the Hands held out a silver priest on an open palm, showed both sides of the coin to ensure no larceny was afoot. On one face, the trinity of three suns, intertwined. On the other, an embossed image of the Senate House in Godsgrave, the Ribs rising into the sky behind it.
“Acolyte Mia, call the toss.”
“Trinity.”
The acolyte flipped the coin. Quicker than flies, Solis’s hand snaked out, snatched it from the air. The Shahiid’s worm-blind stare bored into Mia’s own.
“I’m certain you’ve not forgotten your first lesson at my hands, Acolyte,” he said. “But I will remind you once more that this is the Hall of Songs, not shadows. If I suspect you of fighting with anything other than blades during these bouts, it will not just be your swordarm I remove from your body. Is that understood?”
Mia looked up into those empty eyes. Her voice a whisper.
“Understood, Shahiid.”
The big man let the coin drop from his hand. It sparkled in the stained-glass light as it fell, chimed as it struck the stone.
“Senate side up,” reported the Hand.
“Choose your weapons, Acolyte Mia,” Solis said.
Mia stepped to the weapon racks, walked along rows and rows of sharpened steel. Glancing at Jessamine, she drew a rapier and stiletto. The redhead scoffed. Tric looked decidedly concerned as a curious murmur ran around the circle. Mia had never proved much worth with the traditional dual-handed styles of Caravaggio or Delphini. In Solis’s lessons, she’d been constantly berated that her arm was too weak, and she’d not fared much better when Tric tried to teach her the finer points. She could practically see the question in the boy’s eyes.
What are you playing at?
Still, for all his doubts, Tric made a fist, gave her a confidence-boosting nod. But beyond him, lurking in the shadows at the Hall’s edge among the other Hands, Mia saw Naev. The Hand was shrouded in her cloak, strawberry-blond curls framing her veiled face. And it was to the woman, not the boy, that she nodded back.
Marcellus chose a heavy longsword and buckler to counter Mia’s choices, relying on his superior strength to win the bout quickly. Mia watched the boy through her fringe as they took up their stances. All trace of a smile on Marco’s pretty face was gone. Everyone knew what was at stake here. Top of hall. One step closer to becoming a full-fledged Blade. Marcellus nodded to Mia, cool and confident. Like everyone else in the room, he knew this would be a thrashing.
A gong rang in the dark. Marco stepped forward, hewing at the air in brutal, broad strokes, expecting Mia to fall back and dodge. He’d no idea the girl had other plans. Plans formulated with Naev in the hours before every mornmeal. Their blades whistling in the dark as they sparred, back and forth. The aches and pains. The weeks and months of feigning weakness in Solis’s classes, letting herself get cut, stabbed, constantly thrashed by Jessamine, Diamo, Pip, Petrus, all of them. All to build up the illusion of weakness. A viper playing possum. A scabdog, bleeding in the dust.
It was just as Mercurio had said.
Sometimes weakness is a weapon.
If you’re smart enough to use it.
Mia met Marco’s third thrust with her stiletto, twisting it aside and throwing the bigger boy off-balance. Marcellus raised his buckler to guard, ready to fend off Mia’s weak riposte as he’d done a hundred times in previous bouts. But with a speed built up in those countless hours with Naev, with a strength she’d kept hidden during those countless beatings under Solis’s pitiless eyes, she whipped her rapier through the air, scoring a deep gash on Marco’s shoulder.
The boy staggered, confused and off-balance. Mia backed away, bouncing on her toes and cutting the air with her bloodied blade.
“Still going to be gentle with me, Marco?” she smiled.
The boy scowled and launched a second attack, blows scything past Mia’s head as she skipped beneath them. The girl faded, twisted, moving like a dancer, and the clash ended with another deep cut, this time on Marco’s swordarm. Blood spattered on the stone. And as Marcellus finally began to realize the depth of the water in which he swam, Mia lunged forward, strike, strike, feint, strike, dashing his longsword from his grip, and laying her blade to rest above Marco’s thundering heart.
“Yield,” she demanded.
The boy looked at her face. Down to her blade. Chest heaving. Skin drenched.
“… Yield,” he finally spat.
“Point!” cried Solis, as someone cracked the gong.
Mia dropped into a skirtless curtsey, and returned to her place at circle.
The other acolytes murmured among themselves, astonished.
Naev’s veil hid her smile.
Jessamine smiled not at all.
The bouts ran all morning, sweat and blood glistening on the stone. Though Pip found himself near-gutted by Osrik, and Jessamine cut Marco’s throat ear to ear with a lightning-swift strike, Speaker Adonai and Weaver Marielle stepped in quickly to mend any serious injury. No acolyte lost more than a few droplets of their best in the circle.
In defiance of expectations, and beneath Solis’s undisguised scowl, Mia won three of her four remaining bouts. Truth was, thanks to Mercurio, she’d never been a slouch with a blade, but Naev’s secret tutelage had honed her to a finer edge, and the idea that everyone in the room expected her to fail simply drove her harder to rub their collective faces in the dirt. She thrashed Ashlinn in their matchup (with her lead in Mouser’s contest, Ash didn’t seem overly worried, though she did flip the knuckles afterward) and soundly beat Petrus, disarming him with a perfect riposte and burying her stiletto in the bigger boy’s chest.
With preliminary bouts done, the top four acolytes remained on the circle’s edge, while all others retired to the benches around. Both Jessamine and Osrik stood undefeated, placed first and second, respectively. Tric had placed third, losing only to Jess. And in fourth place, despite the stormclouds almost visibly gathering over the Shahiid of Songs’ head, sat our own Mia Corvere.
“Final eliminations will now be fought,” Solis announced. “Choose the matches.”
The Hands at Solis’s side bowed. One proffered the human skull, the second reaching inside to pluck one of the four naming stones therein. Mia watched carefully, eyes narrowed. She felt the shadows nestled inside that hollowed crown. The smooth black rock carved with each contender’s name. Her fingers twitching behind her back.
“Acolyte Osrik …”—a second stone—“… faces Acolyte Tric.”
Mia looked across the circle, met by Jessamine’s cold smile.
“Acolyte Mia faces Acolyte Jessamine.”
Solis nodded, turned to the two boys.
“Acolytes, take your places.”
Mia glanced at Tric, flashed him a smile. The undefeated Osrik prowled into the ring, muscular arms gleaming with sweat. The boys faced each other across the circle, Tric re-tying his saltlocks as Oz called the toss and won.
Tric chose his favored scimitar and buckler, Osrik twin shortswords. The gong rang in the dark, and their steel joined, the pair crashing together like waves and rocks on a storm-washed beach. Mia watched on in silence, chewing her lip. Praying.
The goddess, it seemed, was listening.
After a long and bloody struggle, Mia and the other acolytes looking on in awe, Tric managed the impossible. Osrik put up a valiant fight, his form close to perfect, but perhaps at the heart of it, Tric simply had more to win, and much more to lose. The match ended with Osrik’s belly opened from groin to ribs, and the stench of bowel and blood hanging thick in the air amid Adonai’s song. Solis cried “Point!” to the applause of the other Shahiid and acolytes, Mia clapping loudest of all.
Adonai and Marielle set to work mending Osrik’s wounds. Tric retired to the benches, drenched and panting. But as he met Mia’s eyes, he smiled.