knees and breathing hard. He quickly adjusts the sheath at his hip. Great, he’s got his sword back.
“Tristan,” Layla says, “you guys are still just play-dueling, right?”
The Sunday morning sun is so hot that my chest is already dry. I pick up my sword off the deck.
“Best out of five,” I remind her.
“You’ve lost twice,” Gwen says, twirling a lock of white-blond hair around her finger until it coils on its own.
“He’s also won twice,” Layla counters.
“I don’t know if that last one counts,” Gwen says. “They went overboard, and the arena is supposed to be the ship. I say that last one didn’t count.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “It totally counts!”
“Uh—”
“Tristan?” Gwen points a finger behind me.
I hear the wet smack of Kurt’s feet racing. Without a word, it’s still game on. Kurt drags the tip of his sword along the floor. With his middle finger, he lightly taps the center of his forehead, something he does every time we fight. I never ask and he never explains what it means. It reminds me of going to church with Layla and her Catholic father. They do something similar—the father, the son, and the something spirit. I have no secret messages to tap like Morse code on my face like they do. I’m not exactly sure what I believe in anymore, now that I know monsters are real and good people die in the blink of an eye.
I raise my sword just in time to meet his and growl, “I wasn’t ready.”
“I’m a hungry merrow. I don’t care if you’re ready.” He spins and strikes the opposite way.
I block, block, block, moving two steps backward with every blow. Sure, merrows don’t care if you’re ready or not. They come out of the shadows and attack, the way they attacked us in the football field of my school and at Ryan’s house Friday night…
Too late, the thought of Ryan, my friend, dead on the ground, makes me miss a beat, and Kurt’s sword comes a hair away from my face. I wipe sweat and seawater from my cheek, and a long stripe of red comes away with it.
“You cut me!”
“It’s a duel, Tristan.” Kurt rolls his eyes, a habit he’s picked up from Layla. All of his movements, from the eye roll to the way he turns his dagger like the right angles of a clock, are uptight. “Of course I cut you.”
But he doesn’t let up. His face is ferocious, shoulders hunched like a predator. “When Adaro was your age, he slew white-bellied sharks for supper. Collected their teeth and dipped them in gold to decorate his armor.”
Block.
The sun is in my eye and the rail of the ship digs into my lower back.
“Yeah, well,” I say, “Adaro doesn’t have the quartz scepter, does he?”
“There are still two pieces out there.” Kurt turns, elbows me in the chest, and spins back around. “You only have the one.”
Our swords are a mess of clinks and screeches. I’m running on pure adrenaline. It’s a rush no swim meet has ever given me.
“One is better than nothing.” I push him back with the ball of my palm, but that only makes him smile. It’s got to be a record. When he was on land, he never smiled this much.
“Brendan might be young, but he can cut a man into ribbons with nothing but a spearhead.”
Block.
I can’t let him get to me. It’s like when Coach Bellini swims alongside us during practice, shouting, “You call that swimming? I met a turtle in Vietnam that was faster than you!”
Sure, Adaro, champion of the Southern Seas, and Brendan, champion of the Western Seas, have been fighting longer than me. But my grandfather chose me. That’s got to count for something.
Doesn’t it?
“Dylan’s so fast on his feet that you’d swear he was born sparring.”
Right, Dylan, the golden boy, champion of the Northern Seas.
And then there’s Kurt, King of the Show-Offs, who does some ballerina shit across the deck. I push hard, metal banging on metal. I hit his solar plexus and he braces, trying to regain his breath. He switches arms. Every five strikes, he switches arms to not tire one over the other. That creates the gap I need to strike.
I make my blow count, aiming where I know it will hurt Kurt the most. The swipe is painfully accurate, and a lock of his precious hair falls to the deck. His brow trembles, giving way to the first drip of sweat from his too-tight