Flame's Shadow

by Anna Eluvae

  "The two of you will fight," said Nemm. "You'll get in a position where you have him at your mercy, and then spare his life. Lexari can't ever know of this, which means that Wenaru can't either."

  Dravus frowned.

  "Don't tell me you've grown some sense of morality all of the sudden?" asked Nemm.

  "I could have won," said Dravus. "Not easily, but it was a test that had been put before me, and … you want me to just breeze past it with this deception?"

  "This kingdom is on the brink of a civil war, in case you hadn't been paying attention," said Nemm. "There will be other, truer tests of your ability. Dravus, I need to know that you'll go along with this."

  "You should have asked before you went to talk to him," said Dravus. "I would have said yes, but …" He trailed off. "I don't want to betray Lexari."

  "You don't know Lexari," said Nemm. "In certain matters, he prefers to play the role of the hero. If that means that there's someone working behind the scenes to set him up for his moments of dramatic climax, that's perfectly acceptable. Why do you think we travel together? I can act in ways that he can't."

  "Is this an arrangement that's been expressed explicitly, or …"

  "No," said Nemm. "No, of course not. Lexari believes in his own legend. That doesn't mean that we don't have an understanding though. There are certain things that he couldn't possibly ask for, but which he would want done all the same. This is one of them."

  "You're guessing," said Dravus.

  "You don't understand what I've done for Lexari," said Nemm. "When I came aboard the Zenith, it took me a month to get a look at the ledgers. It was Lexari, Chrysos, and Pescond in those days, with Lexari as their leader, but they treated him like his rule was unquestionable. It was Lexari who negotiated the contracts and decided where the ship would go, and Lexari who paid the bards. He couldn't ask for help, and when people offered help, his persona obligated him to turn them down, but after stopping in three different ports I started to get a feel for how the conversations would go. The bards loved him, because he was a hero, but they weren't getting paid on a regular basis. Lexari was always ready with an apology and an excuse, but it wasn't until I looked inside the ledger that I saw what a mess he'd made of things. I don't blame him for it; the work of moving money is tedious, and he had no natural talent in that area. I took the ledgers from within his cabin, spent several days looking them over, and from then on I was the one who dealt with payments and receipts. We never once talked about it, no matter how grateful I could tell he was."

  "And this is one of those things," said Dravus. What she'd said had made him feel better. There was little question that he was going to take the deal, given how frightening the thought of the Blood Bard was, but he felt the knot of stress untwisting itself. "What about the greater game though?"

  "I don't know," said Nemm. "It's an open question, and one that Kendrick wasn't willing to provide answers to. Getting through the duel is the important part though. You'll go along with it?"

  "Yes," said Dravus. "It feels like I'm walking a tightrope without knowing where it's going, but … yes."

  "Good," said Nemm. She looked out over the city, like she was contemplating something of her own. "Come on, I'll race you back to the palace."

  * * *

  Two days passed quickly. Dravus was given more instruction in single combat from both Lexari and Nemm, but it could only happen in the off hours, when the Flower Queen's court didn't demand their attention. There were performances to see, tales to recount, and seemingly endless dinners to sit through as course after course of food was served. Lexari didn't speak to Dravus about the Harbinger artifact, but it underscored their conversations; the same went for Nemm and the deal that had been struck with Kendrick. Dravus tried to prepare himself as best he could, but when he wasn't speaking with the aristocracy of Grayhull Palace, time seemed to fly by. He took solace in the fact that it wasn't a real duel, and he wasn't at risk of dying; he might otherwise have resented the time spent pretending at enjoying the company of glittering, empty-headed women and arrogant, foppish men. He was offered the narcotic flower three times in total, and turned it down each time.

  They didn't have Amare's Theater for the full day. The duel was only scheduled for an hour in total, and there were plays being performed both before and after it. Now that he knew there wasn't much risk to him, Dravus could look on all of it with a sense of humor; there was a fair amount of business involved in a production like this, a flow of people into their seats that was accomplished with a swift efficiency by the attendants who spent their entire day moving people around the theater. The upper tiers of seating would have an exceedingly poor view of the duel, but they were filling up all the same.

  Dravus had given himself as much armor as possible, but Nemm had been right; he still wasn't able to get anything close to airtight. He had a breastplate, and a helm that left the majority of his face exposed, and a number of plates of armor on his arms and legs for protection. Everything else was covered with fabric, which meant heavy gloves and thick boots. It was a cool day, but he could feel himself sweating, even before the fight had begun. Dravus could cast shade on himself, but that was only of marginal help.

  The trick was to make the fight look real to everyone watching. Nemm had said that most people were used to the sorts of fights that they saw in plays, given that Torland hadn't seen a war in nearly a decade, but there was still a strong chance that someone knowledgeable would be watching them, and looking closely enough that they could make out some kind of deception. The hits would have to actually connect, which meant that the fight would have to be a real fight, at least in some sense. Dravus hadn't talked to Kendrick at all; Nemm had done the negotiation between their sides. There was a small part of him that expected betrayal, either from Kendrick or (less likely) from Nemm, but there was nothing much that he could do about that. He'd certainly had his own thoughts of betrayal, but both Nemm and Lexari had agreed that it was better not to make the Blood Bard into a martyr; Lexari thought it was likely that it couldn't be helped.

  Nemm fussed with his outfit. "His natural instinct will be to get close, and your instinct needs to be to get some distance between the two of you. The further you are from him, the better. Polearms are good, but don't hesitate to form a sword to push him away. He'll want to talk, but that's a way of baiting you in and getting you to make the first move, which will give you a disadvantage and waste your energy. Small cuts can win you the battle, if you can give him enough of them, because it'll take up his attention. Too many, and he's a dead man walking."

  They'd talked about all of this at length, and Nemm was simply repeating herself. She seemed as nervous as Dravus was, in her own way, though it was only obvious in the decisive way that she moved around the backstage area and checked everything over time and again.

  Lexari stood with the light bracing his broken limbs. He offered no words of encouragement, but the set of his shoulders and the radiant aura of his armor were enough that Dravus grew more confident just by looking at him. In Lexari's mind, the outcome of the duel was practically preordained, and had been ever since it was set in motion. He'd never doubted Dravus's abilities, not even in private, and that was far more reassuring than all the training and planning that Dravus had done with Nemm, and even more reassuring than the fact that the duel had a fixed outcome.

  "One final enhancement," said Wenaru. He laid hands on Dravus without asking, and began mild tweaks that could hardly be felt. It felt brazen to do this in the relatively open backstage, but Wenaru didn't seem to pay any mind to it, and no one seemed to be looking. "You'll do well, I know you will."

  "I hope so," said Dravus. He had no idea whether he'd said it convincingly; he'd always thought that he was an excellent liar, but he'd never had the stakes quite so high before, not even when he'd been lying to Korata.

  "Prepared to die?" called a rich, well-worn voice from some distance away. Kendrick Eversong strode towards Dravus with a grin on his
face. For all that the last three days had seemed to revolve around the Blood Bard, this was the first time that Dravus had seen him since they met at the docks. "I suppose no man is truly ready to die, save for those that bring an end to their own lives. Did you know I'm the favored? You should have bet on yourself, for if you die there's no cost to you. I've done the same, naturally."

  "I don't want to kill you," said Dravus. It was better to establish that now, with everyone watching, so that showing mercy later wouldn't be suspicious.

  "Well, this should be quite the easy duel to the death then," said Kendrick with a smile. He wasn't dressed for battle, and wore no armor, but Nemm had warned that he wouldn't; for how little protection he needed, it was better for him to have the maneuverability, at least in this sort of fight. He wasn't even wearing a helm, and Dravus couldn't help but wonder whether the Blood Bard would have made the same decision if the duel wasn't a sham. A single strike to the head was all that it would take.

  "Shall we?" asked Kendrick. "It seems the most important members of society have come to see a killing, and the crowds are growing restless."

  Dravus nodded, and they stepped out onto the stage together.

  Kendrick was right; everyone of importance had come to see them fight. Amare's had a central area of the seating reserved for the queen and her court, which amounted to forty people all told. They weren't watching the stage, even after Dravus and Kendrick stepped out together; instead, the illustrati and hangers-on were talking to each other, or sipping at heady wines.

  "Wenaru Mottram killed thousands!" Kendrick shouted. The murmuring masses began to grow quiet at this. Kendrick and Dravus were standing apart from each other, but this wasn't anything that they had agreed upon. Dravus wasn't sure whether to let Kendrick talk, or just to start the duel. He shifted from foot to foot, and tried not to cast a glance back towards where Nemm was waiting backstage.

  "Wenaru Mottram killed thousands!" Kendrick shouted again. "The Sunhawk will say that this was all under the orders of the Iron King, but the truth is that Wenaru was always a monster. He would give his would-be patients sweets in the morning and dissect them at night. Wenaru will tell you that he sought only to promote the useful sciences, yet there was no reason for him to be so cruel. He gave no soporifics to let his victims go quietly into sleep! He did nothing to dull their pain! He did not plead with the Iron King to stop these vile practices! I have read every piece of correspondence that I could get my hands upon, and Wenaru never once speaks of the burdens of his position. It is only a breathless excitement about what he has learned by his murders."

  "He's changed," said Dravus. He realized that his voice wasn't loud enough; it would never reach anyone in the back rows, but even those in the royal seats would have trouble hearing. Kendrick was projecting his voice, like bards were trained to do, and Dravus had to do his best to match it. "Wenaru has changed!"

  "The Flower Queen did not know!" called Kendrick in response. "She provided him with a pardon on nothing but faith alone, and it was not even that. She wanted his expertise and power to shape her! Even now a fool could see how much younger she looks than she did four days ago. Like her ancestor Laith, she was willing to set aside the will of the people in order to have a continuation of her youth. A thousand of our countrymen were ripped into, their flesh taken from the bones of their comrades in arms and fed to them, and that was forgiven because the Flower Queen wanted to be more beautiful. This is how little we mean to her!"

  "We're not fighting over what happened in the past," said Dravus. "This is about the present."

  Dravus was trying his best to gauge the reactions of their audience, but it was difficult given that the various tiers of seating divided people roughly by their class. Kendrick had their attention, and that was bad enough.

  "The past shapes the present!" crowed Kendrick. His smile didn't reach his eyes. He stood with his rapier held out like a baton. "Of the Flower Queen's crimes against the people of her city, the pardon of the monster Wenaru Mottram has not been the worst, but it's the only one that a lowly man like me can work to correct." He turned towards Dravus and held his sword out in front of him. "I'm only sorry that you were so foolish as to stand in his way."

  Dravus's shadow sword came up to block the rapier, and Kendrick kept coming, moving his left hand forward to try to find purchase. Dravus spun backwards and got into a defensive stance; the fight had begun without him being entirely ready, and it wasn't clear whether Kendrick had already broken their deal.

  They watched each other carefully. Dravus waited for the opportune time, when Kendrick's gaze shifted slightly, and transitioned his sword of shadow into a long spear with a sharp point on the end. The sun was out and the sky was fairly clear, which meant that his shadows were able to draw a little bit more strength.

  Dravus made a lazy forward attack with his spear, which was both a probe of Kendrick's stance and a signal that their deal was still in place. Kendrick responded by leaping past the point of the spear and again trying to grab at Dravus. A single touch wouldn't be a disaster until after Dravus's clothing had been ripped, he'd asked Nemm about that a dozen times, but it seemed that Kendrick was trying to do his best to rip the clothing as a precursor to that. At the last moment, Dravus moved away, releasing his spear and conjuring up another one. It left them both in nearly the same position that they'd been in before, but Dravus had used some of his previous reserves of energy and was beginning to heat up.

  It was a slow fight. Kendrick spent much of the time talking, which he could do without much cost to himself. The topic of conversation was invariably the Flower Queen, and how little she cared about the people of Torland. Every time Kendrick would attack, Dravus would give a little bit of ground, but Kendrick was making no efforts to press his advantage; he was perfectly willing to let Dravus tire himself out. It was impossible for Dravus to tell whether this was a legitimate effort or simply part of a play they were putting on. Nemm had said that she would intervene, but Dravus was worried that Kendrick would simply call the bluff.

  Kendrick was not a terribly good fighter; that made sense, as he was a bard by trade. He was also slower than Dravus. When Dravus realized this, he put himself on the offensive again, striking forward. Lexari had used two spears in tandem, but Dravus just used the one, trying to find a place to stick Kendrick. The proper use of a spear was to have one hand near the back, which provided forward thrusting, and one hand near the front, which provided a point for the spear to pivot around. Using his rear hand, he was able to thrust the spear forward quickly and then pull it back, and with a minimum amount of effort, Dravus was able to put Kendrick on the defensive. It would do little good without a hit though; Kendrick wasn't tiring. One of these thrusts found its mark in Kendrick's chest though, and even though the hit felt weak, Kendrick staggered back. The front of his outfit was white and ruffled, and soaked through with blood almost instantly until Kendrick stopped the bleeding.

  Kendrick stared hard at Dravus and began to attack in earnest. Dravus was forced to drop the spear again, and pulled a thick sword from the shadows even before he could watch the spear fade. Kendrick's rapier was pushed aside by the shadow sword at the last moment, and clanged off of Dravus's pauldron with a dull sound. Kendrick was a sloppy fighter, but he could afford to be, and he attacked a second time, following up on the first. Dravus was getting quite hot by now, even with shadow cast over him, and his sweating hands nearly caused him to lose his grip for the second parry.

  "You want to defend him?" asked Kendrick. "Those who defend monsters are no better than them! They're equally worthy of destruction!" His cries broke the silence of the theater.

  Dravus had no breath to respond with. He dodged a third attack, and parried a fourth, but it was becoming clear that if this fight was no longer a play, he was going to lose. The blood that had soaked Kendrick's white ruffles was worrying; if Dravus couldn't be sure that their deal hadn't been broken, then surely the same had be said for Kendrick. When a fifth
attack came through, Dravus lashed out with his sword and trusted in his armor to protect him. Kendrick's rapier bounced awkwardly off Dravus's armor, and Dravus's sword bit into the flesh of Kendrick's arm.

  Kendrick cried out in pain and stepped back. He watched Dravus closely and licked at his lips, then began to draw up a small globe of blood into his off hand. When this was a sufficient size, he formed it into a whip, and stalked forward, with a blood whip in one hand and a rapier in the other. Dravus dodged the first crack of the whip but not the second, which struck his armored wrist hard enough that the construct of shadow disappeared completely. The third crack of the whip was aimed at Dravus's head, and he ducked beneath it, only to find blood dripping down onto him from above; Kendrick had released the whip from his control.

  They fought on. Despite his best efforts, Dravus was beginning to tire, and the fight was feeling far too real. He needed to end it, either on his terms or on the terms that they'd agreed to. He found his chance when Kendrick made another sloppy attack. Dravus kicked out at him, and Kendrick fell to the ground. Before he could spring to his feet, Dravus planted a foot on Kendrick's chest. He brought his sword down quickly, until it was resting against Kendrick's neck. Just like that, he had won. A part of him wanted to end it right there, to simply press down with his sword until it had pierced Kendrick through the neck, but even that didn't seem guaranteed to kill quickly and cleanly. Besides that, it wouldn't have been what Lexari would have done. The crowd was cheering for him to do it, to end the duel with a severed head, but this was a moment to prove himself as a hero. All that aside, he and Nemm had agreed that it was better not to make a martyr.