Heirs of the Blade_ Shadows of the Apt_ Book Seven - Adiran Tchaikovsky [258]
But he was calm, weathering the storm until she overreached, and was then ready to take the initiative from her as easily as if she had held it out for him to grasp. That last strike went too far, he had taken only a half step, and her sword’s point went past his head. The claw was ready, its metal darkness driving for her throat as he snapped his arm out. She kicked back, trying to regain her distance, too slowly, but from somewhere she got her off-hand up, slapping for the side of the blade.
She felt the keen, cold razor of it slide across her fingers, stumbled back on to one knee and then forced her legs to lift her up again. Her left hand was awash with blood, the wound so sharp and clean that she barely felt the actual pain, though it was waiting for her just a little way distant.
He let her back off, yet again, and she now felt that she knew him better than she had known any opponent save her own father. This fight was an intimacy she had shared with nobody else. She had learned respect for Isendter Whitehand the hard way. She could not hate him, or even dislike him. Her Mantis nature, however much she might wish to deny it, recognized the rightness of this moment. There was no shame in a duellist’s death at the hands of a master.
He was coming again. From his expression, he judged her an encouraging student, whose education he would rather complete than cut short, but such was life. Learn, his look seemed to say to her. Improve. She backed off, intently watching his face, his eyes.
The justice of your cause? he had asked her. Simply by being here she had vouched for the thieves and thugs behind her, and his regard for her had not suffered. When she had turned the question back on him, however, as he must have known she would, she had seen the pain in his eyes. He was a man worth more than his service here, and she could only think how even the seneschal Lisan Dea had seemed to turn on her mistress, there at the end. How much more, then, would a creature of honour like Isendter wish to walk away? Understanding that, she deciphered his expression at last.
So help me, he wants me to win, she realized with a shock. He had no faith in the noblewoman he was championing. He would far rather lose the duel and see justice done. But he could never fight to lose. To do so would slur his honour far more than would fighting for a bad cause. He was willing Tynisa to improve, to match him blow for blow and let him lose with dignity.
She was not equal to it, however. She risked repeated assaults on his perfect defence, and came back wounded and bleeding each time, like someone trying to reach into a thorn bush, suffering a thousand cuts. She had not let him land a fatal stroke on her, not yet, but even her best defence could not keep him from whittling her away.
She put some additional distance between them, because that thought had led to another, darker one. She remembered old Kymon drilling her and the other College students in the Prowess Forum. What is the most important aim of the duellist? And always some fool would pipe up, To hit the enemy, Master Kymon. And the old Ant would snap back, By no means! It is to avoid being hit!
But she had failed at that. Her best skill had already gone into minimizing the damage that Isendter had caused her. She had no more resources to bolster her defences with. His siege of her swordcraft breached the walls further with every foray.
She wondered if she had read it in his eyes, but it was a terrible bleak thought, more fearful almost than his claw as it hunted her, twisting the hundred paths in the air between them, closer and closer with every motion.
A quick exchange of steel,