“I matched Julian well enough.”
“Bastard.” His face contorts, and he lashes forward, bellowing wordlessly, knocking me back before the White can give the benediction. They shout for us to stop, but as the razors scream, the shouts fade away and all eyes widen as man-killing metal wails through slow-falling snow. He uses the tenets of kravat. Four seconds of precise, kinetic violence, retreat. Assess. Engage.
We are the only the only sound in this strange place. The odd, high-pitched keen of an arching whip. The thrum of the solid blade. The crack as aegises on left arms spark white when blades slash into them. The crunch of snow and the creaking of leather.
Despite his anger, Cassius is perfect in his form. His feet shuffle, never crossing; his hips swivel as he lunges in the compact salvos. His breath comes measured, paced. He lashes his whip forward in a sweep, then hardens the blade and swings it up, aiming for my groin. His movements flicker fast. Trained. Honed by masters and Swords of the Society. It’s easy to see why he has devastated his opponents since childhood, why he gutted me at the Institute. Because his enemies fight like him, but slower. I don’t fight like them. I learned that lesson.
Now he will learn his.
“You’ve been practicing. You can match six moves a set,” he says, drawing back. He darts forward, feinting high and sweeping low to claim my ankles. “But you’re still a novice.” He sends a flurry of seven blows at me, almost skewering me through the right shoulder. I recognize the engagement pattern, but am still a fraction off his speed. I barely escape, throwing myself out of the way of a thrust at the last moment. Two more sets of seven come in quick succession. I barely escape the last, falling to a knee, panting, looking around at the gathered guests.
“Do you hear that?” he asks. I hear nothing but the wind and the throbbing of my heart. “That is the sound of dying alone. No one to weep. No one to care.”
“Arcos will care,” I whisper.
He stiffens. “What did you say?”
“Lorn au Arcos will care if his last student dies,” I say, dropping the falsely ragged breath, straightening proudly. Cassius stares at me as if he’s seen a ghost. He hesitates. So too do those who hear what I say. “While you ate, I trained. While you drank, I trained. While you sought pleasure, I trained from the weeks after the Institute to the days before the Academy.”
“Lorn au Arcos doesn’t accept students,” Cassius hisses. “Not for thirty years.”
“He made an exception.”
“Liar.”
“Oh?” I laugh. “Did you think I came here to be killed? Did you think yourself entitled to my life? No, Cassius. I came here to cut you down before your parents.”
He steps backward, eyes dancing to his father, to Karnus. I cock my head at him. “Come now, brother. Don’t you want to see how well I can really fight?”
He pauses and I charge him like some night carnivore, shoulders hunched with primeval economy, quiet as the dark itself.
Lorn’s words come back to me. “A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.” And so I peel apart his legs, sending set after set into him. Not for the four seconds the Golds teach. But for seven. Then six, alternating, then breaking the pattern. Twelve moves a set.
His defense is precise. And if I fought as he taught me to fight, I would die to him. But I was taught to move by my uncle, and to kill by a legend. I rage and spin, leaving my feet and striking down, beating him as a great hurricane slapping and smashing and hammering him back. And when he attacks, I bow to the side until such time that I can break him, as Lorn au Arcos trained me to do. Move in a circle. Never retreat backward. No attack opens when a man allows himself to be pushed backward. Use their force to create new angles. Flow around him. The Willow Way. Pretty, fluid, like a spring song in defense, then lashing and horrible as the branches of a willow in deep winter as glacial winds scream down from the mountains.
Inside me, Red meets Gold.
My blade flashes between whip and curved slingBlade. It crashes into his sword, and the aegis on his left side crackles from the force of my blows. Cassius falters. He’s a prizefighter getting pummeled by a back-alley brawler.
I’m laughing. Laughing madly and the crowd around is cheering in shock, some screaming when I hit Cassius’s aegis so hard it overloads. Sparks hiss from the unit on his arm. I rip open a wound there, one on his elbow, his kneecap, his ankle. I flick the blade up and slash his face. I stop and move backward fluidly, posing with whip as it slithers into a curved slingBlade. Those who watch this will never forget.
Women are screaming for Cassius. Lovers he has had in his youth, who now watch the man they grew with, the man who bedded them, left them with false promises, and made them think they’d just lost the strongest of a generation. They watch as another man turns him into a throbbing mess of blood.
I embarrass him. But it’s all for a purpose. All to make that simmering hatred between Bellona and Augustus boil over into war.
I pace about the circle like a caged lion till I come in front of Imperator Bellona.
“Your son is going to die,” I say savagely, a foot away from his face.
He’s thick. Square-jawed, kindly, with a pointed beard. His eyes shimmer with the promise of tears. He says nothing. He is a noble man, and he will follow the honorable path, even if it means watching his favorite son die.
Even in the midst of my rage, I feel the shame. Feel the horror of being the man who comes from the dark to savage a family. “Will you just watch?” I shout at the Bellona. Imperator Bellona’s wife is not so noble. She seethes, glancing at the Sovereign accusatorily. I see what she wants.
I go back at Cassius. They will have to watch and do nothing, as I watched Eo.
“Lady Bellona, are you noble enough to watch your Cassius die? Watch as he disappears from the world?” Her lips curl. She whispers to Karnus, to Cagney. “Is that the strength of House Bellona? Do you watch like sheep as the wolf comes amongst the fold?”
I make a grand show of it for the hot-blooded ones in the Bellona fold. Cassius tries to fight. He stumbles as I cut his kneecap, falling into the snow before scrambling desperately to his feet. His blood makes a shadow about his feet. This is how slowly he killed Titus. He’s panicked, glancing at his family, knowing it will be the last time he sees them. They have no Vale. This life is their heaven. Despite everything, it is a sad sight and I pity him.