Page 100 of Play of Shadows
For some reason, a child’s taunt– the kind of thing Zina might do– infuriated the Vixen far more than Corbier’s elegant quip.
‘Shut your mouth, Rabbit. I won’t let you ruin this moment. Seventeen years ago, Virany Chademantaigne stole from me the only person I loved, and who loved me. Your grandmother didn’t just defame and convict the woman who gave birth to me, she put her down like a dog! Let Virany’s spirit roil in the seven Hells as I slip my blade first through the heart of her grandson and next through her husband’s!’
She whipped the flexible end of her slender rapier out like a snake in an attempt to slice my still-exposed tongue, but for all her speed, the target was obvious, allowing me to duck beneath the blade and extend my own rapier up in a diagonal line so the Margravina sliced the underside of her own arm on the tip.
A crude gambit, but effective, Corbier noted approvingly.
She tried to recover her composure with a more tentative riposte, but her mask contorted when she grunted in pain.
What fragile flowers the nobility have become in your time, Corbier observed.Easily goaded, full of arrogance for their skill with a blade, yet fearful of earning the scars they should be proud to wear. They think themselves masters of the sword while slaughtering untrained innocents, never testing themselves against an equal. Shall we remedy this deficiency in our Lady Fox’s education?
Despite my fatigue, the thought of finally ending this damnable vendetta brought a grim smile to my face.This once, your Grace, you and I are of one mind.
For the first time, two sets of contrary instincts found common ground as I weathered Ferica di Traizo’s onslaught with increasing confidence: thrust, parry, counter-attack, lunge. . . The noblewoman’s precision and skill were daunting, but I found within Corbier’s experiences and my grandmother’s training a style to match her. Where the Vixen’s sword sought out targets with exquisite form and lethal accuracy, I met her with a combination of Corbier’s calm, Virany Chademantaigne’s daring and my own outlandish theatrical training. I darted high and low, exposing my chest to her lunge only to then beat her blade aside, following up with a shout of ‘Huzzah!’ as I leaped high off the ground, dropping my point low in a devastating thrust that forced the margravina to retreat.
The fight went on for an eternity, blade-to-blade, with no awareness of the mayhem surrounding us. From the corner of my eye, I caught the dream-like shadows that my opponent and I cast upon the alley wall, lit by the flames devouring the Operato Belleza. It was like being an audience member, watching two players, equal in skill but contrasting in style, performing a larger-than-life fight scene. Elongated as it was,my own silhouette was almost a stranger to me: I looked taller, longer-limbed, broader of shoulder– almost as if I were witnessing the legendary Corbier himself, duelling in the streets of Jereste for the first time in a hundred years.
How poetic, the archduke noted sarcastically.But since it’s your hide that’ll be skewered by this fool and not mine, perhaps you could spend less time admiring your shadow and more on actually winning the fight?
Fair point, I thought, retreating under a flurry of strokes. But I had the advantage now. Weary as I was, the Vixen was faring even worse, forced to focus as much on trying to make sense of my fencing style as delivering her own attacks. Trepidation was creeping in, her thrusts and lunges becoming ever more cautious. If thiswerea scene in a play, now was the time when the margravina would either die or drop to her knees and beg for surrender– unless, that is, the playwright has decided to throw in a last-minute and entirely contrived rescue.
‘Orchids, to me!’ the Margravina di Traizo shouted.
Oh, fuck all the saints!I swore as the Vixen was instantly surrounded by half a dozen of her armoured bully-boys. I glanced around for help, but those on my side were barely holding their own against the arsonists, and we’d have lost that fight long before if the alley-rats had not taken up rocks and broken bottles in defence of our home and theirs.
Suddenly two of the Orchids encircling Margravina di Traizo parted and her blade swooped out in a magnificent lunge that cost me a bleeding cut just above my left eye. Immediately afterwards, the Orchids swept back in front of her, shielding her from counter-attack.
Even through the mask, I could see the margravina’s manic grin. She beckoned to me from within her armoured ring of protectors. ‘You see, Rabbit, you’re not the only one with tricks up your sleeve.’
Corbier took offence and I gave voice to his outrage. ‘Have you no honour at all, Margravina di Traizo? Do I truly find you cowering behind your subjects as they fight your battles for you?’
She laughed at that. ‘Should the carpenter apologise for using a hammer to drive a nail rather than her fists? Does the warrior shuffle in embarrassment over skilfully wielding a shield?’
Despite the bloodlust I could feel coming from Corbier– and from me too, now– the archduke made me retreat from the line of Iron Orchids now stalking towards us.
We won’t win like this, Corbier warned. You must make them chase you.
Chase me where? There’s no space to manoeuvre.
Ah, yes. That does seem to be a problem.
The Orchids who’d come to the margravina’s aid began laughing as they advanced. ‘Rabbit, Rabbit,’ some of them began to chant, and only then did I realise these might be the very same bravos who’d harried me through the city a year ago.
With what looked suspiciously like practised efficiency, they slid out of the Vixen’s way whenever she attacked, reforming silently around her as she retreated.
There was no way for me to win this fight.
Why bother with this sham?I wondered as I was forced to back up further into the alley.Why not just have them rush me at once and kill me?
You really don’t understand how the nobility see the world, do you?Corbier asked.It is a play in which they must always be the stars, and they will do whatever is required to ensure the story told will suit their own high opinions of themselves.
‘Rabbit, Rabbit!’the Orchids surrounding the Vixen called out merrily.
‘Careful, my doves,’ she warned. ‘Don’t kill him– I want his sword hand severed from his wrist and his tongue removed. I want him with a collar around his neck, kneeling by my sidewhen I kill his grandfather and end this at last.’
My gaze flashed around the alley, searching for a more advantageous position, but both ends were now blocked by the Orchids, who had regained control and were pressing the cast and crew backwards towards the flames raging within the Operato Belleza, offering them a choice of death by steel or by fire.
I could use a little help here, I told Corbier.
