Chapter 35: The Duel
The courtyard had been arranged while I was with Tessira. Viewing positions along the walls— academy students at the front, household staff behind, soldiers at the edges.
Valeria had taken the center of the front row, the two students from earlier on either side of her.
I found Tessira before I’d finished crossing the floor. Side wall, slightly back, clean sightline to the space. The position that kept my hands in view.
Iris was already at her mark across the stone. She’d fixed the flowers before the staff woke, stood in the garden with a cold cup, said thank you at the archway and meant it.
Her face held the question this house had been avoiding for years. She wanted an answer more than she wanted to win.
From the soldiers near the rear wall:
"Someone should have told him to stay in his room."
"This is going to be uncomfortable to watch."
Further back, quieter:
"Has anyone actually looked at him recently?"
No response.
"Because I have been paying attention. The person on that floor is not what this house produced a year ago. Look properly before you finish that sentence."
The first voice went quiet.
A different position: "Is that not the one who fought Reinhardt to a draw yesterday?"
"Yes."
Silence.
***
I stepped onto the floor.
"Are we starting," I said, "or is there a specific moment we’re waiting for."
Iris looked at me across the stone.
"You are not going to arm yourself."
"No."
She studied me.
"You have already decided how this ends."
"I find it helpful to know in advance."
She drew her sword.
"Then let us end it."
Ether Authority.
The aspect came up and the mana in the air responded. Moving along the lines of my arms, registering against my skin as a kind of weight. The guests nearest the floor stepped back one pace.
Iris tracked it. She had expected something. The duel with Reinhardt had told the household its previous model required revision. She was already working from a revised version.
She had no idea how far the revision went.
Vector Authority.
Stone cracked in a ring across the floor. Seven times natural gravity, pressing down across the entire surface.
Iris widened her base. Shoulders dropped one degree.
She walked forward.
Through the Ether, her mana gathered at her chest before every burst of movement. A half-second of pooling before each step, consistent and unvaried.
A tell.
I waited for it.
She closed to fifteen meters. Stopped. Eyes read the space between us. Then the mana pooled at her chest.
I didn’t run.
The space between us folded. One blink she was fifteen meters away. The next I was behind her, the distance between those two points simply not present for anyone watching. She turned.
"You could not follow that."
"No," she said. "I could not."
She moved again immediately. Mana gathered at the chest, she committed, I read the direction and stepped into the line. She was off her axis for one second before she recovered, weight shifting mid-motion into a stance I hadn’t seen before. Lower. Wider. Overhead grip from the left. It cut off three of my available responses.
I switched to the fourth.
She had accounted for that too.
Back to neutral. The gravitational field still pressing on her. She had been working through seven times her own weight across every exchange and it had not slowed her down enough to matter.
Third exchange. Her mana gathered at her chest in the familiar pooling and I read the direction and started to move.
The pooling was wrong.
Not different. Wrong on purpose, positioned to signal a commitment to the left that she did not intend. I had committed before I understood what I’d read.
My Aether Step landed off-vector.
She was already where I’d been.
The flat of her blade found my shoulder at full extension. Impact clean and complete. I took four steps sideways before my legs absorbed it. My hand came up to my shoulder by reflex and came away with something dark on the fingers.
It was not a large cut.
The crowd had gone completely silent.
I looked at my hand.
Then I laughed.
Iris had her sword still extended, reading my face. Reading the laugh.
She had been cataloguing and adapting and looking for the ceiling for the entire fight. She had found something in the cut.
Her mana stopped distributing across the field resistance. Stopped holding any reserve. Pulled inward toward one direction.
"If you have something else," she said, "now is the time."
The cold arrived.
Not gradually. As if a door had opened onto a different season, and in her eyes something had stopped watching and started.
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