by Cari Z.
“Did you feed him?” Grenn asked her nephew.
“Yes, Matriarch.”
“Good. Jason,” she said, looking over at him, “the duel is scheduled for one hour from now. The room in which official duels take place is beneath this House, so you won’t have to go far. Officially, you are fighting as a representative of the House of Howards. The Council accepted your claim over Corran’s acceptance with the caveat that you took responsibility not only as a member of the House of Grenn, but also as the duelist of your human House, which has been officially recognized as an entity for several years. This does not confer any extra prestige or power on Howards, but it does make certain things more acceptable, such as your need for an artificial weapon.
“There are no absolute rules in a duel. It may be finished quickly. It may go on for a very long time. I suggest, for your sake, that you strive to end it fast. As soon as the cage closes behind both of you, the duel has begun. Do you have any questions for me?”
“Neyarr told me I was supposed to see Dori.” Jason was abstractly pleased to note that his voice barely shook.
“That’s another concession Grenn got you,” Giselle put in. “Dori wants to dilate your pupils and give you an injection that will help with pain and give you energy.”
Jason frowned. “I don’t want drugs.”
“Jason, Seronn has a physical advantage. Let us do what we can to mitigate that.”
“I need to meditate before I go in there, and if I’m dosed with uppers my heart will be beating so fast I won’t be able to focus. No drugs.”
Ferran whined very faintly, and Jason reached out a hand to him before he could stop himself. Ferran just stared at it blankly.
“You two should take a moment,” Grenn said. “The rest of us need to get to our seats. Your doctor is through that door.” She pointed at the adjoining room. “He will leave you there when he’s finished with you, and you’ll have what time remains to use as you like before one of the guards comes for you.” She stepped forward and laid her thick hand on his shoulder for a moment. “Be strong.” Then she left. Each of the twins gave him a hug before following her, leaving only Giselle.
“Jason.” She sighed, and he felt a little guilty at the deep lines of fatigue that creased her face. He had never seen her look so old before. “I wish to God that this had never happened. I would rather have left you lonely on Jacksonville than brought you here for this.”
“I’m going to be fine.”
“You’d better be.” She kissed his cheek, a dry brush of lips against his skin and then left.
Finally, there was only Ferran, and when he looked up, Jason could barely make out the amber of his eyes, they were so swollen and red.
“Sweetheart….” The endearment was out of his mouth before he knew it was coming, and this time, when he held out his hand, Ferran took it. He pressed feverish kisses to the scabbed-over cuts he’d made the night before and then threw himself into Jason’s arms.
“I am so sorry,” Ferran said over and over again. “So sorry, so, so sorry.”
Jason turned his head so that their temples were touching, and he moved one hand to cup his husband’s face. “It’s not your fault.”
“You could…. You could….” Ferran gulped past his tears. “You could run. You could go—I could get you a shuttle, and you could leave with the ambassador.”
Oh, Ferran. “I can’t do that.”
“I don’t understand you,” Ferran confessed in a small voice. “I don’t understand you at all. What is this emotion?” He laid the palms of his hands on Jason’s chest. “Why won’t you go? Why won’t you save yourself? I have felt human pride before, and this is not it.”
Well, it was partially pride. But only partially. “I have to go through with this. I can’t back out now—it would be a disaster for your House and for the human delegation here. Ferran….” He kissed his husband’s cheek and pulled back to look him in the eye. “I’m going to survive, okay? I know it’s hard to believe, but I swear to you, I’m not leaving you.”
Ferran’s face looked on the verge of crumpling, his eyes blinking rapidly and his lips trembling. He nodded once, jerkily, and then hugged Jason hard. “I love you.” He let go abruptly and was out of the room before Jason could say it back to him.
Jason watched the door shut once more and took a second to wipe his eyes and straighten out his breathing before he walked over to the adjoining room.
He slipped inside and was immediately confronted with a relentlessly upbeat Dori, as if acting like it was a normal day had the power to make it so. “Jason! Sit, sit.” He pointed to a chair. Jason sat. “How are you feeling today?” Yeah, just like it was a regular physical.
“Fine.”
Dori held out a diagnostic glove for Jason to put his hand into. He read the findings and pursed his lips. “Blood pressure and heart rate are a little high, for you. But I guess that stands to reason. Everything else looks pretty normal.” He handed Jason a glass of liquid. “Drink this, son.”
Jason looked at it dubiously. “What’s in it?”
“Water. Which you need right now—you’re a little dehydrated.” Dori watched Jason swirl the cup a few times and then gave a loud, exasperated sigh. “Look, I heard what you said. No drugs. I’m not going to go against your wishes, much as I’d like to. Drink it.”
Jason drank.
“Good. Now tilt your head back and open your eyes wide.”
Jason complied. “This is for enhancing my night vision?”
“Yep. You’ll be prancing around with big dewy eyes, just like some ancient Earth heroine dripping tincture of belladonna in for the same effect.” Dori added a few drops to each eye. “Don’t look directly at the light fixtures now. This will last for four hours, which should be plenty of time. I’ll be standing by close to the edge of the cage to patch you up once you finish with this little fucker.”
They smiled at each other, Jason with more appreciation than he’d felt for almost anyone else today. “Forty minutes left,” Dori said softly. “Make the most of them.” He picked up his bag, and finally, there was just Jason, all alone.
Forty minutes. Not as much time as he liked to prepare before a fight, but he could do it.
He sat cross-legged on the floor and began to focus on his breathing, letting air circulate through his head and chest. Anxious thoughts pricked at him, but he let them pass, choosing not to fixate. Once his breathing was controlled, Jason used its regular rhythm to help him tap into the part of him that had been screaming silently for months now. The hard, hot, nugget of anger inside of him grew with every breath, fanning out to become a tingling energy that flowed like lightning down his limbs.
Every sense became attuned to the sounds around him, whispers of noise in the empty space. He could hear the rhythmic resonance of the water clock on the wall; he could count off every near-silent drip.
When he’d been in the military, Jason’s nervous system had been modified for combat. The mods had been high-grade—much better than what you could get commercially. Even now, years after he got out, his body remembered that ease of movement, the sharpness and speed.
With focus, Jason could bring his body back to that state naturally, fed not by surgical modifications but by the fire inside of him. It didn’t last for long, but, then, he didn’t expect this fight to take long. Four hours? Not likely.
Don’t be overconfident. He heard his father’s voice in his head, the memory of it as strong as ever. Be clever. Be patient. Good advice.
When the guard knocked and entered, Jason rose to his feet. The male seemed a little taken aback, as if not seeing what he had expected. Jason felt calm, energized, and ready. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Fourteen
IT WAS cool this deep underground. Very cool. Jason’s muscles tried to tense as he followed the guard, but he willed more heat into them, and they stayed loose and flexible, obedient to his mental orders.
Good. Perfect.
The gua
rd opened the door at the end of the long hall and stood aside. The space beyond it looked almost completely dark, but after a moment, he could make out the mesh of the cage, faintly limned with phosphorescence. It looked about twice the size of a boxing ring and half again as tall as Jason. “Is Seronn already here?” he asked.
“I do not know,” the guard replied, his voice very heavily accented. He lightly shoved the small of Jason’s back, pushing him forward.
So he could be here, clinging like a spider to the ceiling, waiting for me to enter. Jason stepped just inside the cage, and he pressed his back to the door as soon as it closed, letting his senses have free rein, feeling through the darkness for his opponent.
The subdued sounds of breathing and shifting came from the invisible crowd. He could practically feel the intensity of their stares, but none of that was relevant. He was seeking out—
Jason barely realized he was under attack before Seronn was on him, his hands preceded by six-inch quills. They were so thin and whippy, Jason couldn’t tell where they ended, and as he dove into a forward roll, he felt one rake the length of one arm, just hard enough to scratch him through the fabric. As he came out of the roll, he drew his sword.
It felt so good to have the naked blade in his hand again.
There was a long moment of near-silence, but Jason could hear Seronn breathing now—a little harder than he should have been, considering. He was probably annoyed at having done so little damage. He wants to kill you, Jason reminded himself, annoyed that he’d neglected to draw his weapon the moment he entered the cage. He’s trying to kill you. Get your head right.
Slowly, Jason slid his feet backward, seeking out the cage wall behind him and the protection it would give him. Just before he got there, he heard pattering footfalls, followed by a harder thud. For a moment, there was no sound at all, and then Seronn’s heels drove into Jason’s shoulders. It was like getting hit with two steel rods, frighteningly fast and strong. The momentum of his leap knocked Jason first into the wall and then to the ground.
Jason hit the floor and rolled almost instantly, tucking the flat of the sword against his body. His breath left him in a harsh gasp as his ribs contracted painfully.
Seronn, now distinguishable as a pale shadow against the darker blur of the room, let go of the ceiling of the cage and followed him. Just as Jason began to get his feet under him, Seronn lunged forward and stabbed a quill into Jason’s thigh, making the muscle clench with pain. Jason went to one knee but swung his blade horizontally through the darkness in front of him, striking at his opponent. The tip of the blade sliced through fabric and flesh, and Seronn growled in response but kept coming until he ran full-on into Jason.
Jason hit the floor on his back. Seronn straddled his shoulders, and for a moment, it seemed impossible for Jason to move under the heavy weight. He got his feet under him and bucked his hips up, sending his opponent into an awkward forward sprawl. Jason used his legs to pull himself out from under Seronn, ignoring the opening for a groin shot in favor of slicing his opponent across the back of his left thigh.
This time, Seronn snarled more with anger than pain, but he couldn’t turn fast enough to pin Jason down again, and Jason had time to get his back to the nearest wall. He pulled on the quill in his leg. It wouldn’t budge, not even a little. Gritting his teeth, Jason snapped the excess length off and tried to ignore the way his thigh throbbed. He could handle that for a while, but he couldn’t handle many more of them.
Jason heard Seronn find his feet and launch himself again—less agilely than before, but still fast. Jason ducked to the side, lashing out in a diagonal cut from shoulder to hip as Seronn’s feet hit the side of the cage and scoring a light cut across his opponent’s back before he got out of range.
Seronn tried jumping twice more, but Jason knew that approach now, and each attempt ended futilely for the Perel. He moved in sideways, but the walls were flexible, and Jason could feel the vibrations of Seronn’s approach and hear the pad of his footsteps. When Seronn got close, Jason would dart across the cage, his sword whirling in a complex defensive pattern around his body that kept his opponent’s hands out of touching range. Then he would lean against the opposite wall again and wait. It was a dangerous stalemate.
Finally, Seronn changed his strategy, abandoning his more complex attacks for a straightforward blitz. Jason heard him coming and slowed him with a slash across the chest, but the Perel was tight against him a moment later. Blood warmed the thin fabric that separated their skin, and the wall of the cage bowed beneath his back with the force of Seronn’s drive.
Jason’s right hand, his dominant sword hand, was trapped against the wall. A soft, desperate cry whispered from behind him in the audience.
Harsh breaths bathed Jason’s face as Seronn growled. Jason fought to control his opponent’s hands by crossing his free arm in front of the trapped one, but Seronn managed to pull two more long, thick quills free. He jammed them up into Jason’s abdomen.
Fuck, it hurt. Jason could feel every inch of them scraping through his guts as they went in, but the quills were thin, and they didn’t hit anything immediately vital.
“Soft-bellied pup,” Seronn hissed. “I will gouge out your eyes and gift them to your widower.”
Jason pushed the agony away. He released his hold on Seronn’s arm, letting the Perel’s momentum bring him farther forward. His crushing body jarred the quills and Jason gasped in reaction to the pain, but his left hand was now free to grab up some ammunition of his own. The sharp edges cut his fingers, but he freed a few quills and stuck them into each side of Seronn’s neck and through the soft skin of his throat in rapid succession.
They were smaller quills, but they did the job. The Perel began coughing violently, and Jason was able to knock him back with an elbow to the side of his head. Seronn vanished into the darkness, clutching his throat.
Jason took a moment to assess his own injuries. The quills protruding from his belly quivered with every breath, and Jason could feel his lungs becoming heavy and thick, the pain swelling too quickly to ignore. Jason was very good at ignoring pain, but he was reaching his limit.
He had to finish this fast. Even if he didn’t manage to bring it off the way he wanted.
Jason cut the ends off the new quills with his sword and then raised his blade to a guard position. On the other side of the cage, Seronn’s breath rasped through his damaged throat. He was wary now, cautious. He could probably smell the blood from Jason’s gut and knew he could play for time. Jason would have to tempt him, and unlike Seronn, he didn’t have words that could coerce and fracture and wound.
He did, however, have other means of subterfuge. Jason let his breath quicken in his lungs. He stepped forward, a little awkwardly, and swung his sword in a tremendous overhead cut. It hit nothing but air, of course. He stepped and swung again, panting, and hit nothing. He stepped again, his blade raised overhead—
Seronn was there, sidestepping and moving in beneath the sword’s predicted arc. He snarled with victory as he stabbed another quill into Jason’s side. This one got lucky, and the sharp, shooting pain was almost enough to make Jason pass out. Gritting his teeth, he flipped the sword around in his hands so the blade pointed down and back instead of toward the ceiling. He turned to be sure of making contact and drove the weapon into Seronn’s belly hard enough that it went all the way through thick muscle and viscera and out the other side.
The fire inside of Jason flared with savage satisfaction as the will to fight abruptly fell away from Seronn and his bloody hands dropped to his sides. The breath went out of him, not with a gasp or a cry, but with a small, choked sound, as if he were simply empty. Jason’s sword was incredibly sharp. It would have been so easy to pull the blade out sideways, severing everything in its path. Instead, Jason drew the blade straight out. He pulled back and watched his opponent slump to the ground. The entire room held its breath, waiting for him to finish it.
“I’m not going to kill you,” Jason t
old Seronn, wincing with the pain that speaking caused. His mouth tasted like copper from the blood welling in his throat, and his lungs…. He was dripping with liquid—how much sweat and how much blood, he couldn’t tell, but the ratio was fast turning in favor of blood. “I don’t have to. Dueling to the death might be your tradition, but it isn’t mine. Now you owe me your life.”
He looked out at the blackness beyond the cage. “The House of Tlann will pay for the rashness of its son by abandoning its spurious claim on my consort and committing itself to following the ideals espoused by the Houses of Grenn and Howards: ideals of integration and exploration, not close-minded xenophobia.” Was his vision going dark? It was impossible to tell. “Seronn’s debt to me will be paid with a week in a penitent’s cage.” He heard some gasps at that, but it was better than either Seronn or his House had any right to expect.
The satisfaction of winning things his way was enough to bank the fire that had driven Jason through this confrontation, but it also diminished his energy even further. He had to get out of here now. He turned and reached out. His hand found the nearest wall, and he trailed it around the cage to the door, concealing his pained limp as best he could. A moment later, it opened, and then Dori was there, pulling him out of the arena.
Once the door closed, Jason’s knees buckled, and he swayed forward into Dori’s arms.
“Easy there, son, easy there,” Dori murmured, his lips set in a thin, unhappy line as he inserted himself under Jason’s shoulder. He pressed an autosyringe to Jason’s neck, and almost instantly, Jason felt the pain melt away. “Yes, the happy drugs are lovely, aren’t they? But these damn things are still doing damage to your body, and we have to get them out as soon as possible. You have to walk a little farther, son.”
