mystery solved, at least. If you wanted to get an expression out of the Ke-Han, all you had to do was put swords in their hands.
“You fight very well,” he said, and there was something different in his voice this time, none of that underwater calm that all the diplomats radiated, like they were half-asleep.
I didn’t answer. It wasn’t Volstovic custom to talk during a battle, and I’d been trained to focus all my energies on one thing: looking for an opening.
It seemed as though Lord Temur had been trained to focus all his energies on one thing, too, except that thing was: Don’t show an opening because your very life depends on it. His sword crossed mine at every turn, like we formed the warp and weft of some violent tapestry. He drove at my skull and I knocked him away, feeling the strain in my arms like an old friend, long absent and well missed.
I might have shouted with the sheer joy of it, but I was too busy with each thrust and parry.
Lord Temur’s fine warrior braids had fallen in front of one of his eyes, and I was starting to feel like there was nothing I’d rather do but wipe my forehead since the sweat dripping down was starting to impair my vision.
I shook my head once, quick like an animal drying off, and out of the corner of my eye saw the sword arcing toward me.
I caught it hard on my forearm, stronger than the other one because it was used to bracing such blows with a shield, but I felt it all the way up to my shoulder, numb and strange all at once.
I heard Josette gasp—I knew it was Josette because it sounded concerned, rather than excited, the way it would have sounded if it’d been Caius—but Lord Temur only drew back as if to attack again, and I swung my sword hard back against him, searching for the opening I knew I’d find. It was only a matter of time.
I’d noticed one thing, at least, and that was the Ke-Han style of fighting focused on three parts of the anatomy—the head, the belly, and the hand. Lord Temur’s attacks were varied, but they had all the same targets. It wasn’t single-minded so much as it was damn stubborn, but almost beautiful in that. It was like he just assumed, sooner or later, he’d hit his mark, so there was no need to shift the target. Stubborn and determined and fierce.
I could live with that.
My arm was numb but my blood was hot, and I wasn’t so out of shape that I didn’t think I could take him. It was just a matter of figuring out his style. He wasn’t just some common Ke-Han soldier, and it wasn’t the kind of desperate free-for-all that a real battle inspires in a man. We weren’t fighting tooth and nail; it was kind of like a dance, only we were both hearing different music with different rhythms. It must’ve been something pretty to look at from the sidelines, each of us acting out his own steps while all the while trying to figure the other one out.
For example, we were even crouching different. Lord Temur was lower, and he held his shoulders back; that changed everything, from his lunge to his swing. He put more from his legs into it, while I swung a sword mostly from my back.
I got revenge for my numb arm and tingling fingers soon enough when Lord Temur went for the head and I went for the stomach. All the air left him in one satisfying whoof of surprise, and he stumbled back, the gravel scattering every which way around his sandals.
“One-one,” I said, figuring that we were even.
Lord Temur’s eyes narrowed—and I knew that we were about to really start fighting. I tightened my hold on the unfamiliar hilt of the wooden practice sword, bracing myself, the blood pounding between my ears.
“Gentlemen.” I didn’t recognize the voice, but I was pretty annoyed that anyone would try to distract us when I was clearly so close to getting the upper hand.
“Oh!” Josette said, sounding shocked in an entirely different way than she had a moment ago.
Lord Temur didn’t seem all that inclined toward listening to the voice either, for all he stepped back swiftly to get out of range of my sword before darting in again, close and hard like he was through with being polite. I could understand why he’d