Talasyn rose as well, scrambling to keep up with his long-legged strides. “You don’t have to do this,” she said sharply, blocking his path. A Nenavarene duel without bounds didn’t end until one of the participants surrendered or died. Alaric was not the type to surrender. She didn’t want him to get hurt. She—
She would have happily pushed him off the nearest cliff months ago. But that was before . . . everything else.
Before they wove the black-gold barriers that saved each other from void bolts and falling debris. Before he said, You could come with me, looking so young and slightly lost beneath the blood-red eclipse. Before he took her side when her family didn’t tell her about the Night of the World-Eater. Before he told her about his mother and had been so patient in teaching her how to make a shield. Before he ate the pudding and teased her about the roast pig.
Something had changed.
She didn’t want him to get hurt.
Talasyn let out an undignified sort of squeak as Alaric picked her up by the waist and deposited her to the side, clearing his way forward. “Stand down, Lachis’ka,” was all he said, not looking directly at her.
Duel without bounds was the sole arena of Dominion jurisprudence where physical prowess mattered more than political skill. As such, it was considered a last resort. Barbaric to the point of taboo. But the rules were clear: whatever conditions were agreed upon by the participants had to be honored. It was therefore on tenterhooks that Talasyn and the rest of the diners watched from the sidelines as Surakwel and Alaric faced each other, about two meters apart.
“Terms?” Urduja demanded brusquely. She looked rather as if she was having a migraine, but not even the Zahiya-lachis herself could stop a duel without bounds once it had been declared.
“Should I win, Ossinast will forfeit Her Grace Alunsina Ivralis’s hand in marriage,” said Surakwel, “and he and his lackeys will leave the Nenavar Dominion posthaste.”
“Should I win,” said Alaric, “his young lordship will accord the Night Empire the respect that is our due and shut his mouth on matters that he knows very little of.”
“What does he think he’s doing?” Talasyn heard Mathire grumble to Sevraim. “He should ask for some strategic concession.”
No, Talasyn thought. He’s being smart.
Her mind raced, drawing on old lessons, on old conversations that Urduja had liberally sprinkled with advice. She saw the bigger picture. She considered every angle.
If Alaric pressed for a Nenavarene aristocrat’s execution or banishment, or anything that would give the Night Empire a clear advantage, that would hardly endear him to the Dominion. It might even turn Surakwel into a martyr in the people’s eyes. By being lenient in his stipulations and treating this duel as a minor nuisance, Alaric was positioning himself as a level-headed and tolerant ruler, and Surakwel as the hot-blooded troublemaker who was causing a scene at an important event.
She couldn’t take her gaze off Alaric. From across the gilded space between them, he gave every appearance of being utterly composed—perhaps even slightly bored, his gray eyes hooded in disdain. And yet there was a quality about him that was so alone, somehow, standing tall, dressed in black, encircled by the avid stares of the Dominion court and the sariman cages that lined the walls.
Talasyn wondered if her assessment of his motives was correct. And, if it was, she wondered where he had learned all of this, if it had come to him easily or if he had struggled at first, the way that she was struggling these days.
She wondered why, even after all this time, she still couldn’t figure him out.
Nearly everyone was standing up to get a better view, the feast forgotten. Queen Urduja dispatched a couple of attendants to fetch the customary weapons and, by the time they returned, the atmosphere in the banquet hall was crackling with tension.
The swords were of traditional Nenavarene make, with tapered steel blades that were narrowest at the base and had a spike protruding from the flat side of the tip. The hardwood hilts sported quillons carved with wavelike patterns and pommels that depicted crocodiles’ heads, jaws split apart in soundless and eternal bellows.
Alaric initially held his sword as though testing the heft of it in his palm, an expression akin to distaste shading his pale features. It was far heavier than a shadow-sword, less maneuverable, completely immutable. He sank into the same opening stance that Surakwel had adopted, feet apart at a perpendicular angle, knees slightly bent.
There was no ceremonial beginning to the fight. All chatter ground to a halt when Surakwel lunged and Alaric met him in the middle, a metallic clash of interlocking blades. The Nenavarene lord spun away and struck again, a blow that Alaric parried by sweeping to the side.
The two men regarded each other for a while, circling like apex predators whose paths had crossed in the wilderness. It looked as though they were catching their breath, but Talasyn knew better. They had finished sizing each other up, had each gotten a feel for their opponent’s reach and reaction time, and now the duel was about to begin in earnest.
It was odd to watch from the sidelines, her whole body thrumming with nervous energy but unable to do anything. It was odd to just stand there and compare the two men as they went at it in a frenetic series of attacks and ripostes. They were evenly matched, slashing and stabbing and crossing blades up and down the length of the gilded hall. Surakwel wielded his sword with the fluid proficiency of one who had been using this specific make since he was a child, but Alaric had more muscle, as well as a precision that broke through his opponent’s guard time and time again. He was the one who drew first blood, the spiked tip gliding across Surakwel’s bicep in one smooth slice.
Talasyn heard Lueve cry out, while, at the periphery of her vision, Niamha shuddered as though she herself had been struck. Blood dripped from Surakwel’s wound onto the marble floor, but he ignored it in favor of launching a new offensive, this one speedier and more reckless than the last.
Fall back, Talasyn urged Alaric silently without knowing why she did, without knowing why her innermost self was taking his side.
Alaric gave up ground, retreating, retreating, all the way to the far wall. Surakwel’s blade swept forward in the light of the torches and more blood spattered the tiles, this time from a cut on Alaric’s thigh. Talasyn’s heart all but leapt out of her chest. His eyes flashed with menace and she remembered the ice floes on the lake outside Frostplum. Remembered that lost winter night, the fires burning in the distance, the moonlight and the gold and the black of it all.
Alaric surged forward, driving Surakwel back until they were once more level with the banquet table. His next blow vibrated with so much raw power that Surakwel’s weapon was torn from his grasp. It skidded away, far from reach, and time seemed to slow as Alaric advanced, pulling his elbow back for another strike—