The Element of Fire (56 page)

"No. I have to do this."

"But I could--"

He put a finger over her lips. "No. It has to be this way. You said you'd do it for me, remember?"

She shook her head, anger temporarily winning out. "Fine. If I'd known you were going to do something like this, I'd have let you stand there and take on all the Unseelie Court and be killed."

"Fine. But if he wins, I want you to hurt him very badly before you kill him."

"I will. Very badly."

He turned and walked back to the center of the open area. Denzil was waiting for him with an unguarded expression of grim rage.
Good,
Thomas thought.
He's angry; that'll help.
Thomas was only exhausted and bleeding. Denzil had probably never faced an opponent in a serious duel who was as good or better than he was, and the young Duke was responding to it with anger. Falaise had come out onto the steps of the bastion and was watching with her ladies, her guards around her. She lifted a hand to him, and Thomas saluted her with his sword, then turned back to Denzil.

Denzil came at him furiously, but was not foolish enough to leave himself open. For a time Thomas was aware of nothing but his screaming muscles, of the flickering danger of the blades, of the blood pounding in his ears. He could see that Denzil's face was white and strained, that he was tiring too. The rain was coming down harder now and they were both slipping on the wet stones; Thomas knew another fall would finish him.

Then they both lunged at the same moment. Thomas disengaged and circled his rapier around Denzil's blade, twisting his wrist as he sent the point home with his remaining strength. He felt the point of the other rapier graze his arm even as he moved, felt it open a line of fire across his biceps as it went toward his chest; then it dropped away. It wasn't until he stumbled back and felt the resistance on his own blade before it came free that he realized what had happened.

Denzil was on his knees, one hand pressed to his chest with blood spreading between his fingers. Thomas stepped back, waiting.

It had been a clean blow, right to the heart. Denzil tried once to take a breath, his cold eyes fixed on nothing and already going blank, then he slumped forward onto the wet pavement.

Thomas dropped his sword and walked back to where Kade and the others waited. He stopped in front of her, trembling with exhaustion and feeling cold and empty. She shook her head, ran a hand through her tangled hair, and looked up at him. Meeting her eyes, the feeling of emptiness fled.

Impatient, her voice weak with relief, Kade said, "Now can we go?"

"Yes, now we can go."

end

Martha Wells is the author of fourteen SF/F novels, including
The Element of Fire
,
City of Bones
,
Wheel of the Infinite
,
The Wizard Hunters
, and the Nebula-nominated
The Death of the Necromancer
.  Her most recent novels are
The Cloud Roads
(March, 2011),
The Serpent Sea
(January, 2012), and
The Siren Depths
(December, 2012) published by Night Shade Books.  She has had short stories in
Realms of Fantasy
,
Black Gate
,
Lone Star Stories
, and the anthology
Elemental
, and essays in the nonfiction anthologies
Farscape Forever
,
Mapping the World of Harry Potter,
and
Chicks Unravel Time
. She also has two
Stargate Atlantis
media-tie-in novels
Reliquary
and
Entanglement
.  Her books have been published in seven languages, including French, Spanish, German, Russian, and Dutch.