Page 48 of Play of Shadows
All for a lie.
My grandmother had forced me to read Errera Bottio’s seminal text on the subject of duelling,For You Are Sure to Die, from cover to cover at least a dozen times. The book’s lessons had never left me, and first among them was this:there is no such thing as the perfect fencer. Every swordsman or swordswoman dies eventually, and the greater their skill, the more vaunted their reputation, the more likely their end will come at the hands of an amateur.
These might be reassuring words when you’re the amateur in question, but Bottio’s sage counsel felt distinctly less convincing when face to face with the Vixen of Jereste.
Don’t show fear, I reminded myself.Never show fear to a predator or a duellist.
My grandmother had been full of such helpful advice during the many hours she’d wasted trying to turn her awkward, nervous grandson into a passable fencer. Only she’d never bothered to explain justhowI was supposed to disguise my fear.
My grandfather, thankfully, had had more practical counsel. ‘Your grannona is a wise woman, Damy,’ he’d whispered to me one night. ‘Never show the enemy fear. . .’ His face had split into a wide grin. ‘Show him your heels instead!’
Running away was precisely how I’d ended up at the Operato Belleza in the first place, so perhaps discretion wasn’t quite the panacea my grandfather had promised.
The Vixen walked a slow, graceful circle around me. The cracked cobblestones of the alley were, like so many in Jereste these days, littered with shattered clay jugs, foul-smelling refuse and other detritus– and yet every step Ferica di Traizo took was as steady as it was silent.
‘The d-duel is still adjourned,’ I stammered, ‘and m-my contract with the Belleza prohibits me fr—’
‘This is no duel, my rabbit,’ she said soothingly, still circling. She hadn’t drawn her rapier, but that didn’t feel all that helpful. Having watched her at the duelling courts, I’d seen the speed with which she could make her weapon appear whenever she desired. ‘I was most distressed when you fled our official assignation,’ she went on. ‘For one in my profession, a forfeit is no better than a draw. People like to talk, you know. They whisper behind your back, speculating: perhaps you secretly paid off your opponent? Clients wonder aloud whether the reach of your blade is a little too short these days to achieve their ends—’
‘My Lady, it would be my privilege to reassure every one of your putative employers regarding the depth and sincerity of my cowardice.’
She gave a sorrowful shake of her head. ‘Oh, my dashing rabbit, your self-effacing nature wounds me. When I learned you hadn’t fled the city, I assumed your intent must be to hide yourself away somewhere, where you would be training relentlessly, studying the arts of the duello, until you could come back to me with grand designs of retrieving your honour.’ She gave a playful, almost coquettish little shrug. ‘Imagine my disappointment when I realised you really had become. . . anactor.’
‘You thought. . . ?’ I couldn’t even bring myself to finish that sentence. The fact that this feral lunatic believed that a man running away from her as fast as his feet could carry him must be planning some intricate, heroic redemption for himself only proved that the two of us couldn’t be from the same species.
I’m a rabbit. She’s a vixen. This is the way of things, and my fate in this affair was dictated long before I dared challenge her.
So what was left? To die on my feet or on my knees?
Or maybe it’s long past time you stopped playing the rabbit and became a wolf instead?
I buried that unruly thought as fast as it was born and, instead, held up my hands in surrender, my mind spinning in search of a way to delay my death even a second longer. ‘My Lady, I hardly think your reputation will be enhanced by the cold-blooded murder of an unarmed man. Your enemies will say you feared to face me fairly in the duelling courts once my contract ended and thus took me in the dark with no more honour than the Pin, who sneaks into men’s homes to murder them in their sleep.’
She gazed at me with that otherworldly confusion, as if I’d spoken in a foreign language. ‘My rabbit, what on earth are yousquealing about?’ She gestured to the crumbling walls of the alley. ‘We are neither in a duelling court nor that tawdry little apartment of yours. . . theRoyal, is it?’
Perfect. The Vixen knows where I live.
‘This is an alley,’ she continued, ‘and alleys are places not for duels nor murders, but for simple muggings.’
Without a warning, without even a sound, her blade was out of its sheath and I was yelping from the tiny cut on my right cheek.
The quick-draw. The Vixen’s trademark.
I cursed myself for not having seen it coming. How many times had my grandmother told me to always watch my opponent’s shoulders, not their eyes or their hands, both of which could move too quickly to follow. Had Lady di Traizo desired, she could’ve slid her point right past my ribs and through my heart. Apparently, she had something else in mind.
‘Oh my, does that hurt, my rabbit? There’s been sucha rashof muggings lately– and though rarely fatal, I’m afraid a few cuts and bruises are the inevitable result.’
Her blade whipped out again; this time the flat struck the side of my head.
I stumbled back, vision blurring, balance all but gone. When my fingers went to the injury, I felt no blood, but a nasty bruise was certain.
Four bells rang out in the distance and the Vixen gave a theatrical sigh. ‘Alas, I must go. I am, at this very moment, engaged in a delightful evening of cards with several well-known friends halfway across the city. Tomorrow I’ll be on the south side– I have a late-night fitting for a new jacket. The day after, of course, I’ll be fast asleep after an exhilarating session with a new lover of mine. It’s too bad, really. If I were not otherwise so provably occupied, I might have been able to protect you from these scoundrels you’ll no doubt keep encountering.’
A simple, but effective, plan, since the outcome would be asinevitable as it was callous. As long as I held my contract at the Operato Belleza, Lady di Traizo couldn’t force me into a duel, and were I to be murdered outright, she would be a suspect; even if the crime couldn’t be pinned on her, people would talk. But this? Catching me alone and inflicting whatever little wounds and indignities she pleased, always ensuring she had an alibi to cover her tracks?
She’ll snare me like this over and over again until I can’t take it any more– until one day I’ll show up at the duelling court begging her to put an end to my misery.
But why now? If she was so damned determined to destroy me, why had she waited this long to enact her scheme? Duellists were hardly known for their patience.
