Navaris did not answer. Pain mixed with the other emotions flooding from her.
"I grew up without a father, too," Tavi said.
Navaris stared. The miasma of her diseased spirit and mind thickened on the word father.
Tavi had been right.
He knew how much the slightest touch upon that old heartache could send him into a rage if he was not careful to contain it. Navaris bore a similar wound, but unlike Tavi, the cyclone of fury and hate that roared through her was barely under control on the best of days. True, her will was harder than diamonds- but Tavi was about to hit it at precisely the right angle.
The fight was over. She just didn't realize it yet.
"You aren't going to prove anything to your father, you know," Tavi said. "Even if you defeat Araris and me, you'll die here. The story of what happened will die here."
The tip of Navaris's long blade trembled.
"He didn't want you, Navaris. Do you think a mound of corpses will make him seek reconciliation? Do you think he'd run to wrap his loving arms around a bloodthirsty murderess?"
Navaris's eyes widened until Tavi could see the whites all the way around them, and she gnashed her teeth as an even greater wave of agony ran through her. The cutter's voice shook. "Stop it."
"He won't," Tavi said, pitiless and precise. "He never will. You've become a monster, and you'd bring nothing but shame to his House, just as you bring nothing but suffering to the world."
The cutter began to shake her head slowly, and her wide, mad eyes suddenly glistened.
The woman was in pain-old, old pain, the pain of a wounded child who couldn't understand why it was happening or how to recover from it. Tavi knew it. He'd known it all his life, and it suddenly became difficult to tell where Navaris's torment stopped and his own began.
The woman's pain fed upon itself, and Tavi felt his stomach turn with involuntary sympathy-but he forced himself to continue. "It doesn't matter how many you kill or whom you kill. You'll never be welcome."
She started taking heavy, labored breaths, though neither one of them had moved.
"Your entire life has been a lie. You are a lie, Navaris." He lowered his voice, and said, gently, "You're nothing to him. You are nothing, Navaris. Nothing but a mad, miserable animal who's got to be put down."
She let out a guttural moan through her open mouth, and the childlike grief suddenly fused with the berserk intensity of her hostility and rage, her self-control shattering into chips and shards.
Something strange happened.
Tavi, his crafting senses, both water and metal, focused simultaneously and more intently than ever before, felt the next stroke coming before the center of Navaris's body ever moved, as if her physical intentions had somehow been transmitted to him through her emotions.
Tavi could not say what had changed, precisely, but he knew, he absolutely knew that she was about to fling the dagger at his face and follow up with her sword in the instant of distraction it afforded her.
Tavi called upon the wind, and watched as Navaris's arm slowly rose and flicked forward. The dagger flickered end over end-but Tavi had already raised his gladius and cut the dagger from the air. Navaris's throat erupted in a howl of feral rage as she came forward, a lightning slash aimed for his throat.
It was the opening Tavi had been waiting for.
He'd practiced it so many times that he had no need to think about it, his body moving with automatic precision. As Navaris surged forward, Tavi let his weight drop, falling under her blade, his body angled on a diagonal to Navaris's line of attack. As his left hand hit the ground, he extended his right arm back, along his side, then snapped it forward in a single, deadly thrust.
His sword sank through her armor and body with effortless ease.
Navaris gasped, her tearing eyes widening. Tavi felt the motion of the exhalation travel up the blade to his hand.
She turned her eyes to him and swept her sword at him, but Tavi released the hilt of his long blade, leaving it buried in her body, and rolled away from the attack. He came to his feet at once, shifted the gladius to his right hand, and stood ready.
Phrygiar Navaris took one step toward him. Then another. She bared her teeth in a grimace of madness and hate, lifted her sword-
- and sank down like an emptied flagon. She lay on her side for a moment, eyes staring, and her arms and legs made fitful, twitching motions, as though she believed that she was still fighting.
Then she went still. Tavi felt the rage and pain and grief and terror continue to pour from her. In a few seconds, it died down to a trickle.
Then it stopped.
Tavi stared down at the cutter's corpse. Then he knelt and gently closed her empty, staring eyes. He couldn't remember ever feeling so weary-but his work wasn't done.
Tavi heaved himself to his feet and closed his eyes. He lifted his head to the stars and let the breeze blow the perspiration from his skin.
The wind blew, and silence ruled the night.
Chapter 56
Marcus did not find it difficult to reach his shooting position unseen.
There were grass and brush and trees enough to provide him with a frail woodcrafted veil, and shadows enough to cover what his crafting did not. Over the past two weeks, he'd managed to slip out of camp at night to practice with the Canim balest, and found the weapon accurate enough for his purposes.
Once he'd reached his position, he took a pair of clay jars from a belt pouch. He opened each one, careful to keep his nose and mouth well away from them, and took a single heavy steel bolt from the pouch. He dipped the tip of the bolt into each jar, then waved a hand, calling upon his earth fury, and the two jars and their lids sank gently down into the ground.
He set the bolt aside. Then he summoned up strength enough to haul the balest into its prepared position. It was an enormous strain, even with his fury-born strength, and he had to be cautious, move slowly, so that he wouldn't slip or lose his grip on the weapon, betraying his position as the bow staves snapped straight again.
Once that was done, he slid the poisoned bolt into its groove in the balest and hefted the weapon.
Silence reigned, the air thick with anticipation.
The duel was over.
Marcus lifted the weapon silently, his arms steady, and waited for the winner to appear.
Chapter 57
Isana told herself that she would not go to the duel, when there were still so many wounded to tend to. She threw herself into the work, sending her senses with Rill through each wounded body. A man named Foss, the officer in charge of the healer's corps, watched her with the first man he brought over, nodded his head, and promptly started barking orders.
Isana shortly found herself tending to men with the most dire and delicate of injuries. One poor soul's eyes had been viciously slashed by some weapon. Another young man had suffered what looked like a spear thrust through the genitals. A third had been treated for a cracked sternum, but hadn't regained consciousness-his first healer hadn't felt the bruising on his heart that made it labor unsteadily and insufficiently. Isana poured herself into her efforts and, at a steady pace, restored each man to health and exhausted sleep.