Hands of Flame

by C. E. Murphy

  Eldred and Chelsea exchanged glances, the latter’s feather-fine eyebrows rising as she indicated the decision was Eldred’s. He nodded, attention coming back to Biali, and the scarred gargoyle curled his lip in pleasure. “Then for the trial of strength I choose a second. I choose her.”

  He pointed a taloned finger at Grace O’Malley.

  Grace actually looked over her shoulder before her incredulous laughter broke over an outcry of surprise from the tribunal and audience. “Me, love? Is it your mind you’ve lost?”

  “You’re human,” Biali growled.

  “Sure and I am, but that doesn’t mean—”

  “Nobody else represents a fair fight.” Margrit spoke so quietly she doubted she’d be heard. Her own laughter fluttered at the back of her throat, a thing of disbelief and relief. “You’re the only one I’m anything like equal to in a battle of strength. If you don’t accept—”

  “What if I don’t?” Grace spun on a booted heel, facing the tribunal. “What if I say no? Does Scarface there win by default, or do you go through the ranks until you find someone willing to fight?”

  “It’s unprecedented,” Eldred said after a moment. “We would have to debate.”

  “There’s no one else, Grace.” Margrit’s own voice sounded far away to her. “Any of the rest of them would pulverize me. I’d kind of like to come out of this alive.”

  Grace turned around, mouth drawn down. “And what makes you think I wouldn’t clean the floor with you myself?”

  Margrit’s eyebrows rose and the fluting laughter at the back of her throat escaped, as if lifting her eyebrows released a valve. “Grace, I can probably outrun you. I seriously doubt I can outfight you. You’re bigger than me, you’ve got better reach and you probably know more about self-defense than I do. But even your best shot’s not going to take my head off, which his would.” She nodded toward Biali, who gave back an ugly smile. “Do me a favor here and say yes, okay?”

  “And what does Grace get out of it, love?”

  “Some bruises and a sense of righteousness?” Margrit asked hopefully, then winced at the flat look Grace gave her. “Not having to explain to my ex-boyfriend the police detective why my dead body’s in your tunnels? No,” she said before Grace could object, “I don’t really think you’re dumb enough to leave me here if I got killed. Look, I’m trying, okay? I’d owe you one,” she finished more quietly. “I’d owe you a lot.”

  Grace’s gaze slid toward Janx, then back to Margrit. “You’re piling up the debts fast, Knight.”

  Margrit held her breath a long moment, then let it go explosively. “Keeps life exciting. Was that a yes?”

  Grace pressed her lips into a thin line, turning her attention to the tribunal. “Just what kind of fight is this? Can’t be to the death, not with the way your laws work. You just put us in the ring and we go until the bell?”

  “To defeat,” Eldred agreed. “It is…” He looked between the women, explanation lingering on the air as he seemed to search for words. “It is unusual,” he finally said. “Unusual to have two combatants whose hearts may not be in the matter.”

  Margrit muttered, “Mine is,” and glanced toward Alban, who rolled his jaw but kept silent. Grace shot both of them a sharp look before eyeing the tribunal again.

  “The lawyer’s got something to fight for, which means I do, for I don’t like to take a beating when I can avoid it. But you,” she said to Margrit, “you need to think about reforming these laws, if you’re going to be taking on fights that aren’t your own.”

  “I’ll pencil it in.” Margrit wet her lips and squared her shoulders again, then folded her hands behind her back to keep them from wandering through the air. “How do we, uh, start?” She’d envisioned battling a gargoyle, somehow; someone, at least, who had sufficient physical strength as to genuinely frighten her, and had counted on adrenaline pushing her past thought into a struggle for survival. Instead she felt a blooming sense of the absurd, as if she was about to take part in an extravagant pantomime.

  Eldred gestured toward Grace with such solemnity Margrit suspected he was trying not to laugh at them. “Meet in good faith, clasp hands, and then begin as you will. We will determine the victor and end the match when it is appropriate.”

  Grace stalked over to her, tall and leggy and alarming as she offered a hand. Margrit hesitated, still feeling foolish. “What about that gun you used to carry?”

  “Do you really think I’ll be shooting you?” Grace reached for the small of her back, though, and tossed the weapon away. It clattered against the floor, spinning to a stop at the tribunal’s feet. Margrit watched it go, then swallowed hard and reached for Grace’s hand, surprised when the other woman caught her in a hard warrior’s grip, forearm to forearm. “Well met,” she said, more formality in her tone than Margrit had ever heard before. She didn’t reply, and Grace’s eyebrows shot up in expectation, making Margrit jolt with realization.

  “Oh. Right. Right. Um, well met. Uh—”

  Grace hit her in the face.

  FIFTEEN

  MARGRIT’S HEARTFELT BELLOW of pain and outrage was cut short by another blow, this one to her midriff. Grace released her arm and Margrit doubled, choking. It was only toppling to the side that saved her from a knee in the face. She hit the floor with as breath-taking a thud as the fist to her diaphragm had been. For a bleary instant she could only think how lucky she was that Biali hadn’t set a gargoyle on her, and then Grace’s foot caught her in the ribs and lifted her a few inches up and back. Margrit heard a thin wheeze and realized it was from her own throat. She hadn’t realized a kick could actually move someone that way; she’d thought that was a dramatization of movies, if she’d thought about it at all.

  Oxygen flooded into her starved cells before Grace landed another kick. Margrit rolled across the floor, trying to escape the long-legged, heavily booted vigilante. Everything tasted of copper, and when she wiped a hand below her aching nose, it came away smeared with blood. It seemed incongruous to the point of impossibility: she had never been in a fistfight, even as a child. To encounter her first one now was absurd.

  Grace moved vampire-fast to Margrit’s bewildered senses. Instinct curled her in a ball, protecting her head and torso. The fight was over. Tony had always denigrated on-screen fracases, pointing out to Margrit the moment at which the fight would really have ended, usually only one or two blows into the sequence. She’d always elbowed him in return, telling him it was fiction and to be quiet and enjoy the choreography. Nothing about an extended battle seemed enjoyable now. A kick smashed into her forearm, pain a blinding reminder that that arm had been recently broken.

  She felt it like a switch flipping. Determination colder than anger or fear rose up in a ruthless refusal to be as helpless now as she’d been against Ausra. Margrit coiled tighter, rolling onto her knees with her hands still knotted protectively over her head. She was suddenly aware of how that opened her ribs up for attack, and Grace obliged, kicking her again. Margrit twisted away, skittering far enough to the side that the kick had less impact than its predecessors had, and putting Grace’s booted feet almost directly in front of Margrit.

  She shot out of her ball headfirst, regretting that she didn’t have time or leverage to get her legs fully under her and use their strength to drive herself upward.

  The top of her head crunched into Grace’s groin. For the first time since the fight had begun Margrit heard something outside her own labored breathing: a gasp of horror and surprise and approval rushing around the audience. Grace herself, always peaches and cream, whitened further and staggered back a few steps as Margrit scrambled to her feet.

  She knew nothing about fighting. Rather than dwell on that, she let momentum carry her forward, all her energy redirected as she charged Grace and caught the taller woman in the rib cage with her shoulder. The tribunal scattered as Margrit crashed toward them, slamming Grace into the wall that had seconds before been at the tribunal’s back. Grace made a small pathetic sound,
then shoved her hands between bodies and forced Margrit away, using the wall to brace herself against.

  Some quick instinct warned Margrit of what Grace intended. She ducked her head, and when Grace’s forehead smashed down, it wasn’t against Margrit’s fragile nose, but the solid bone of her cranium. White light exploded through her vision, sparked with red and blue, tiny bits of dancing color.

  When she could see again, streams of brightness still shooting through her sight in time with heartbeat-paced throbs of pain, she’d released Grace and had staggered back a few feet. Grace still sagged against the wall, no more functional in the aftermath of a failed head butt than Margrit was. For a moment rationality took over and Margrit wondered what in hell she was doing, but then Grace’s expression cleared, turning feral with primitive delight, and she charged Margrit again.

  They hit the floor together, rolling and kicking, elbows and fists flying everywhere. Margrit threw a punch she was sure would land and it skittered by Grace’s cheek, so close it seemed to have gone through the vigilante without touching her. Outrage at her miscalculation shot the fight beyond any clarity of thought and into a mindless search for vengeance: a chance to get back at someone, anyone, for the chaos Margrit’s life had become. Yes, she had welcomed it in many aspects, but Cole’s fear and anger rose up, reminding her of what was unwelcome. The attack on her mother drove her onward, taking what comfort she could in something as useless and ill directed as a physical battle. Russell’s death gave her reasons of her own to hit, and hit, and hit again. There were no answers to be found in bloodying Grace’s nose or taking a fist so hard she felt her jaw slide dangerously out of socket, but it was something, action permitted where she had been useless before.

  Until she felt tears that had nothing to do with her own pain sliding down her face. Hot tracks cut through grime and blood, Grace’s features swimming into view for the first time in whole minutes. The beautiful blonde’s face was beginning to swell, bruises and muck ruining its lines. Margrit could see in Grace’s eyes the battle madness that had overtaken Margrit, the need to dominate that had nothing to do with why they were fighting or what ends they sought. It was simpler than that, one animal trying to survive an encounter with another.

  But Margrit’s pain was fading, blood no longer flowing from scratches or her bruised nose; her ribs no longer hurting from the blows Grace had landed. Even the headache from smashing skulls together had faded, and a simple clear thought finally broke through.

  Grace couldn’t win.

  Grace couldn’t win, not with Daisani’s blood flowing through Margrit’s veins. Margrit would heal too quickly, and Grace would never stop fighting. That thought seemed suddenly, briefly, to define the blond vigilante, and Margrit liked her for it. Admired her for it, even though the mindless rage in Grace’s eyes was currently for her. They could kill each other on the match floor, but Grace would never yield shy of that, and she could not, in the end, defeat Margrit.

  Margrit took a deep breath, and when the next hit came, let it spin her away into oblivion.

  Darkness didn’t last nearly as long as she pretended it did.

  At first it was for Grace’s sake. If Margrit’s eyes popped open again a few seconds after she’d gone down, the fight wouldn’t be over. Then it was for her own as she lay in a boneless heap, listening to voices both worried and angry rising around her as her body knit itself back together. That felt distinctly horrible: bones that were slightly out of place, though not broken, seemed to jerk back to where they belonged, making twisted pops. Nausea rose in Margrit’s belly and she worked not to swallow against it, afraid that would look too awake. A spurt of coughing took her so hard she had nothing left but to collapse again when it was over, and that was as much a relief to her as it concerned those around her. Exhaustion sat on her like a living creature, weighing her down and slowing her thoughts.

  She’d been exposed to more violence in the months since she’d met the Old Races than in her entire previous life, at least on a personal level. What she’d encountered before them had been violence done to or by others, and she had abhorred it without entirely understanding it. Human nature took ugly turns; that she could comprehend. She recognized the impulse in herself often enough, reaching for the least palatable, most extreme solution in moments of exasperation or frustration. It was recognizing them and choosing not to act on them that made the difference between a man and a thug. Very few people managed to stay on the side of the angels all the time. Margrit could pick out too-clear moments in the past months when she’d failed to, some of them sending squirms of embarrassment and apology through her. She’d never imagined her veneer of civility could break down as far as it had in the last few minutes. If she could convince herself she’d fought for Alban’s freedom, she might believe she’d at least had the moral high ground, but that comforting lie was beyond her. She’d fought and hit and beaten Grace mostly out of fear and anger and a desperate wish to come out on top just this once.

  Margrit opened her eyes, looking up at the cut-stone ceiling above. Biali’s scarred face intruded on her vision almost immediately. “You threw that fight, lawyer.”

  “Yeah.” Margrit croaked the word, then wet her lips and nodded before she tried again. “Yeah, I did.” She flexed muscle, testing for pain or discomfort and finding none. Daisani’s gift was fine-tuning her healing abilities further every chance it got. She still wouldn’t want to face a gargoyle, but neither would she want to pit herself against anyone without her advantage. Not, at least, if she learned to fight.

  “Why?” Biali sounded justifiably bewildered. Margrit pushed up on her elbows, looking for Grace. The blonde was on the other side of the room, recounting her victory with great sweeps of her arms as one of the selkies tried, without success, to treat Grace’s injuries. Margrit chuckled, low dry sound, then looked for Alban, who still stood apart. He watched her with knowledgeable sorrow, and Margrit’s mirth faded.

  “Because she couldn’t win, and I didn’t deserve to.” She got up, stiffness announcing itself after all. Biali backed off, scowling at her more deeply than she thought warranted, given that he’d just taken the first of the trials as his own.

  With her awakening, the room came to more attention, even Grace falling silent and submitting to the selkie’s treatment. Margrit put her hands in the small of her back and forced herself straight, wincing as she did so. Daisani arched an eyebrow and she caught herself before making a face, though there was apparently enough play in her expression to give her away, because amusement darted after his raised eyebrow. No one spoke, though the tribunal arranged itself before her, Chelsea Huo the odd man out amongst the gargoyles. Margrit stared at her a moment, trying again to determine her place in the Old Races, then passed a hand over her eyes. “Okay. What’s next, brains or benevolence?”

  Janx’s staccato applause broke the air, his laughter following it on a swirl of blue smoke. “Strength, sense and sentiment, now brains and benevolence. Whatever would strength be in your alliterative little world?”

  “Brawn, obviously. Just don’t ask me to come up with another trifecta. I don’t think I’m that smart right now.”

  “A shame,” Eldred murmured, “as ‘brains’ is the next challenge.”

  “Of course it is.” Margrit folded her hands behind her back rather than let them wander any further; she had already given a court case’s worth of tells to the tribunal and its audience, and seemed unable to stop herself from offering more. “What’s the format?”

  It shouldn’t, she thought a moment later, have surprised her that they brought forth a chess set.

  It wasn’t one of the selkie-and-djinn sets that she’d become familiar with. Margrit crouched at the table they set up, studying the figures. Not tiny figures: the tallest were the height of her palm, and the smaller ones more of a size she was accustomed to seeing king pieces in chess sets carved as. There was an enormous array of fanciful creatures, the entire line of pawns individualized on each side. Coile
d sea serpents, delicate mermaids, thickset hairy men, clawed and scowling bare-breasted women, all done in varying shades of marble, so the pawns made a near rainbow of color across the board.

  Behind them stood the denizens of the surviving Old Races, stolid gargoyles holding the rooks’ positions, slithery dragons in the diagonal-moving bishops’ places. Unfettered djinn stood as queens, able to move any direction they chose, and the most populous of all, the selkies, were given the king slots.

  The knights, on both sides of the board, were slim, beautifully carved representations of Margrit herself.

  “There are no vampires.” Margrit’s voice came out hoarse as she tried not to look too hard at the chess pieces of herself. The last time she’d seen such a thing it had nearly spelled her death, and a childish voodoo fear caught her by the throat and held on. Worse than a soul being stolen by a photograph, this was the whole of her captured in tiny relief.

  “No one sees a vampire’s natural form and lives to tell of it,” Daisani said very softly. “There is no one to carve my people, and we would not stand amongst our brother chessmen forced into a human form.”

  “But the windows…” Margrit looked toward Daisani, glad to be able to take her eyes off the chess set. Daisani smiled, such a gentle expression Margrit jerked her gaze back to the safety of the game pieces.

  “A conundrum, is it not? Perhaps an artist’s fancy.”

  “Or maybe a vampire’s creation,” Margrit ventured. Daisani smiled again, and beside him, Janx chuckled.

  “You might be better off considering your strategy rather than the mysteries we keep from you, Margrit Knight.”

  “My strategy. Should it be something beyond ‘win the game’?”