a few girls all about turning into their teens who’d not yet taken their journeyman’s test – were rooting for her, not him. They crowded onto a green area in a quiet part of the little strip of land over the river that separated the guild from the rest of Reyes. Technically none of them should be there, but it was an old tradition, this unofficial sparring in sight of the Shrive.
He was getting close, he could feel it. They were of a height now, at last, and that helped. He tried another attack, tried sneaking round on her off side, where she’d be part blinded by the setting sun, but she caught it at the last second and turned his blade.
He recovered well, but that wasn’t enough. He wanted to beat her, just once. Just so he could say he had. OK, once probably wouldn’t be enough, but it would do to be going on with. Besides, he’d bet a fair sum that he’d win today, money he couldn’t afford to lose.
Screw it – screw all the proprieties. Screw all the etiquette of formal sparring and Ruffelo’s rules for gentlefolk. The clockwork duellist, unofficial goddess to the Clockwork God, who watched over the guild, wasn’t overseeing this fight so the rules could get stuffed. He changed his stance slightly, subtly, to the more free-form Icthian style, where rules were what other people kept to and impulse, speed and brute force were the order of the day. They’d only just started learning it – Eneko insisted that this style wasn’t for duelling or sparring but for working – but Vocho had known it was more his sort of style from the off.
She noticed his move – no matter how subtle he thought he’d been – and made to counter it, but not quickly enough. He went for her, three quick thrusts to the face that would have had him kicked out of the arena in a heartbeat. She skipped back. The little crowd cheered and Vocho ground his teeth as they called her name, exhorted her to just beat him and get it over with.
Kacha allowed herself a small grin at his expense, and that’s when he lost it. Always she won. Always she was the favourite. Always she was one step ahead, leaving him second best. Kacha the golden, Kacha who’d never known the end of Da’s belt, who’d had all his attention and praise. Perfect bloody Kacha. Afterwards he was never sure, not really. He always told her it was an accident, and maybe it was. Or maybe it was his first really big lie.
He thrust and thrust again followed by a flurry of brutal overhand blows that forced her back. His first bit of luck – he caught her blade with his and they struggled, faces an inch apart before he managed to shove her back. And was his foot in the way on purpose? Did he yank it back against her leg, too quick to see, making her overbalance? If he did, well, that was the Icthian style for you. Never use only your sword; use anything and everything you’ve got.
He told himself afterwards that he’d not realised how close to the edge she was. He told himself that he’d not meant it, but he was lying, and inside the darkest part of him he knew it. His greatest lies were always those he told his inner self.
That part of him crowed when she fell and didn’t stop when her stumbling recovery pitched her over the edge and into the darkly rushing waters of the Reyes river. He stared at the spot where she’d gone over for long seconds by the ticking of the nearby Clockwork God before he scrambled after the rest down the steep bank to where thick green reeds clogged the water. Panic rose like a tide when he realised she wasn’t sitting up, spluttering in the shallows, wasn’t cursing his name as she clambered ashore. When he realised that the waters had closed over her like she’d never been.
Yet still he hadn’t been the first in the water. That had been Petri Egimont, naturally. He’d left the guild – no one would say why – so he wasn’t allowed within the walls, but he liked to come and see the sparring on the bridge sometimes, sitting silent and watchful and somehow reproachful, as though his leaving was their fault. Petri dived in as soon as he reached the shore, searching among the