City in the Sky (11 page)

Of course
, he reflected, the inner fortifications of the city were regarded as an unnecessary paranoia in this day and age. While the massive stone walls were undiminished by time, the stone forts, though still surrounding the Palace with Dwarven cannon and Aeradi crystal-bows with full magazines and charged crystals, were unmanned. The gates stood open, and even from this distance, his cursory examination suggested that they were rusted in that position.

Nonetheless, the gates and walls made an impressive backdrop to the Square. The stone-paved boulevard opened out onto an expanse of stone and marble pavement, marked with lines of trees, sweeping terraces of grass and flowers, kept clear of snow even in winter, and dozens of marble statues of the four Gods in assorted poses.

“Erik,” Hiri said into the silence.

“It's beautiful, isn't it?” Erik replied quietly. “All of it.”

“We have to go,” the older
septon
reminded him.

Erik nodded silently and turned to the far eastern side of the Square, where a cleared expanse of pure white sand, surrounded by carefully groomed evergreen trees, marked the dueling grounds.

Erik and his party walked through the trees that hid it from normal view, to find that the dueling ground itself was fenced off. A clear area between the trees and the fence was provided for combatants to prepare themselves, and for the dueling ground’s judge to speak to them.

Kels was already standing next to the judge, and Hiri gestured for Erik to join the pair.

“Gentlemen,” the judge said to the two duelists as Erik took his place before the man. “You meet here this morning under the Duelling Code of the City of Newport and the Realm of the Sky. I am required by law to request that you seek a peaceful solution to the quarrel between you.”

Kels looked at Erik and shrugged. “Withdraw your sponsorship, and this becomes unnecessary.”

“You have no right to dictate their lives,” Erik said softly. “Walk away, Kels. I do not wish to hurt you.”

Kels sneered and turned to the judge. “No, there can be no resolution.”

“Very well,” the judge said flatly. “You each have ten minutes to prepare, and may the Gods judge fairly in this quarrel between you.”

Erik returned to his side of the sands, where Hiri and the young couple waited for him. Letir was carrying his sword, the sky steel smallsword he'd forged for Rade, half a year, half a world, and entire lifetime away.

With a shrug, he removed the jacket he wore over the simple white tunic he would fight in. He met Hiri's gaze and shook his head helplessly. “He won't back down.”

“I didn't expect him to,” the
septon
replied.

“I don't want to kill him,” Erik told him.

“Do what you have to,” Hiri replied coldly. “I lost my son a long time ago. Today is simply the formality.” He offered his hand in the clasp of friends.

Erik returned the handclasp, and then watched helplessly as the
septon
walked to the side of the field. He turned to Deria and Letir. He made a gesture with his hand and Letir drew the rapier and extended it, hilt first to him.

He took the sword and looked at the sister of the man he was about to fight. “I'll try not to kill him if I can,” he said softly.

“Thank you,” Deria replied quietly. “He's been a stranger to us for forever it seems, and no matter what happens today my father will disown him. He'll be dead to us in law, but it would pain us – even my father, who refuses to show it – if he was dead in truth.”

Erik turned to the sands, but stopped as Deria's hand settled onto his shoulder. “All that said,” she continued softly, “you're worth more to us now than him. Try all you want, but come back to us alive.”

He nodded choppily, and then stepped through the fence onto the sands of the dueling ground.

The Aeradi dueling code allowed neither armor nor shields, limiting the combatants to light clothing and their swords. The nature of the sword was left to the combatants' discretion, but it was the only thing a combatant could carry onto the dueling grounds.

Of course, the code also enshrined the concept of duel to first blood, but Erik doubted that Kels would accept defeat after a single cut. He was probably going to have to seriously injure the Aeraid to force him to admit defeat.

He shook his head, ridding his head of thought and raised his sword. Kels met him at the center of the grounds, wielding the traditional ancient Aeradi weapon: the tachi; a long, slightly curved sword only sharpened on the outer edge. Like Erik, his blade was forged of sky steel.

At a signal from the judge, Erik and Kels crossed blades in the formal gesture of readiness. The judge eyed them both and raised a red cloth.

“Begin,” he ordered, dropping the cloth and stepping back.

Kels attacked even before the cloth hit the ground, yanking his sword away from the crossed blades and launching a spinning slash at Erik's neck. Erik ducked the strike and stepped back out of the smaller man's reach.

A second slash came in almost before Erik adjusted, but a flick of his rapier sent it careening off into the air. The defensive flick easily turned into a riposte as Erik lunged toward Kels.

The Aeraid blocked the blow with the back of his free forearm, smacking it against the edgeless length of the smallsword and knocking it aside. Jarred, perhaps, by the opening he'd left, his next attack was a perfectly controlled lunge at Erik.

Erik hit it with the base of his smallsword, knocking the heavier sword aside. Before he could make a move of his own, Kels demonstrated just why he was feared as a swordsman. Using a strength of wrist that Erik knew
he
just barely possessed, but that few
humans
, let alone Aeradi, could even dream of, Kels turned the deflected lunge into a deadly slash at Erik's midsection.

Erik barely managed to interpose the smallsword against the slash, hammering the blades together in a hilt on hilt crash of metal. For a moment, the hilts of the two weapons locked, but Kels' weapon's heavier blade-weight told. The smallsword’s blade slowly bent away from the contact point.

The heavier tachi slid down the smallsword’s flexible blade, and Erik had to dodge back to avoid its deadly sharp edge. The tachi kept going and slid off the smallsword onto the ground, unbalancing its wielder. For a moment, Kels was unguarded and Erik slipped in.

The smallsword had no edge, but that didn't mean it couldn't cut. The deadly sharp tip sliced a line across Kels' cheek, leaving blood to leak out onto the other man's face.

“First blood,” Erik told Kels. “Yield. I don't want to have to hurt you.”

“Go fuck a dragon,” Kels told him flatly, and attacked. He sent a flurry of blows at Erik's chest and head, forcing Erik back as he couldn't meet those blows with the flimsy blade of the smallsword.

“I need a heavier sword,” he muttered, as Kels brought his tachi whistling around in an unstoppable blow at would have been head-height on any other Aeraid – chest height on Erik. He threw himself sideways, onto the ground, barely avoiding the glitter of sun on steel.

He heard the spectators gasp as he hit the ground, and gritted his teeth. He rolled across the sand and came back up, his free hand spinning around to throw a handful of the sand into Kels' eyes.

The Aeraid tried to prevent Erik from taking advantage of his sudden distraction by slashing heavily at the taller man, but it was too late. Even as the sand hit Kels' eyes, the tip of Erik's sword drove deep into Kels' sword-shoulder.

Kels then demonstrated the
other
reason he was feared. Even as his sword began to slip from his swordhand's fingers, his off-hand grabbed the blade. He spun the sword in his fingers, aligning the blade so he could use it in that hand. The man was ambidextrous!

Erik leaped backwards with an oath, evading the blow he hadn't expected to come. For the first time, he failed, and fire burned along
his
off-arm as sky steel gashed the flesh open.

Another cut opened Erik's forehead, then another slashed across his chest as he stepped back again and brought his sword up, parrying a thrust that would have run him through.

For a moment, the two combatants paused, both panting and bleeding, swords held in hands now slippery with sweat. Then Kels snarled and charged, his tachi lancing out in front of him.

Erik sidestepped the lunge and stabbed downwards. The point of the rapier laid Kels' entire upper thigh open with a horrific tearing sound, and the Aeradi swordsman went down with a thud.

The sand shifted underfoot as Erik stepped to his fallen opponent and laid the tip of his smallsword against Kels' neck. “One blow,” he said softly. “One blow, and you're finished. It's over.”

“Finish it,” Kels snarled. “Finish it you coward!”

Erik let the point slip downwards, pressing into the other man's skin with piercing it, then released the pressure. “No. This was your will, not mine. I have no desire to kill you.” He looked up at the judge, standing three full paces away. “This duel is over,” he said flatly.

The judge nodded. “Agreed,” he said, looking down at Kels. “Kels
septi
Rakeus, it is my judgment that you have been defeated. This judgment is not to be appealed.” The judge's eyes were cold. “Go home lad, and be grateful for your life.”

Erik turned away, leaving it to the judge to see that Kels' wounds were cared for and that the man was properly dealt with. As far as he was concerned, he was done with the man.

Kels, however, had other ideas. Erik never heard the shifting of the sands as the Aeraid managed, somehow, to stand despite the gaping wound in his leg. All he ever heard was Hiri's shout of warning.

“Erik! Behind you!”

Erik spun; extending his sword so he could parry whatever blow was coming. He caught a glimpse of Kels lunging towards him, his tachi held high to deliver a blow no rapier could have stopped.

The blow never landed. Erik's smallsword lunged out, an unthinking continuation of the extension that came with the turn, and punched into the Aeraid's chest. It grated between the man's ribs and out his back, sliding neatly through his heart on the way.

Kels froze as the steel slid through him. For an instant of eternity, the Aeraid simply stood there, Erik's sword through his chest, his own sword held above his head like a vengeful bolt of lightning. Then he fell, the heavy s
word sliding from his hands to thump onto the sand as he fell forwards, landing at Erik's feet.

Erik hit his knees almost as Kels hit the ground, but he was too late to even catch the man's last breath. Kels had been dead before he'd reached the sands.

Dairn's entrance into Brane's office interrupted the spy practicing one of the more the ancient and venerable arts of the Draconans. He was quietly folding a single sheet of paper into the shape of a small dragon. Since the paper the agent was distractedly destroying was actually a report on the Hellitian government's ministry of trade's internal politics, his immediate release of the paper and baleful glare at the other Red Dragon were perhaps understandable.

“We have news from Newport, captain,” Dairn reported. “They've located Tarverro.”

“That was quick,” Brane replied. From what he knew, his own message asking his agents to look for the man should only have arrived a day or two before. He certainly shouldn't have received any reply.

“It was sent before they got our message,” Dairn replied, his mouth twisting. “They won't have to look too hard when they get ours.”

“What?” Brane demanded, suddenly straightening.

“It seems one Erik Tarverro, the half-blood son of Karn Tarverro, was presented to the King of Newport five days ago… as the new
septon
Tarverro,” Dairn reported.

Brane whistled. “I hadn't realized he was one of
those
Tarverros.”

“If he was
sept
, he'd have had to be,” Dairn replied. “It didn't occur to me either.”

Brane waved that away. Dairn operated among humans; he couldn't be expected to really follow the internal affairs of the Aeradi. Brane, on the other hand, was one of the senior operatives in the whole of northwestern Cevran. He was fully up-to-date on the internal affairs of the Aeradi, and of the Draconan operations among them.

“It should have occurred to me,” he admitted. “No matter, however.” He grimaced. “Unfortunately, this makes him even more untouchable. A
septon
, in Newport, may as well be among the stars for all that we can touch him. Yet.”

“What about…?” Dairn trailed off, apparently suddenly remembering he wasn't supposed to know about the Draconan plans in Newport.

Brane simply smiled. He
expected
his agents to be inquisitive bastards. It was what made them useful. It was occasionally annoying, as they discovered things they weren't supposed to know, but Red Dragons were too well-trained to speak of things outside the order.

“You know nothing about that,” he said dryly. “Nonetheless, when 'that' comes to pass, many things will change. Many things will change,” he repeated, his hand caressing the hilt of the dagger at his waist.