“I won’t cut you.”
“Oh, I know that-I’m counting on it.” She lashed out with her sword, this time with the unmistakable intention of cutting him.
He quickly stepped back out of the reach of her blade. He put on the mask and raised his sword to en garde position. She followed him with a burst of short, unnerving jumps and lunges, her sword arm extended and the point within an inch of his chest, driving him back, slicing the air with her blade. He retreated with long steps to keep the distance between them. Where the line of the strip was marked on the floor, he held his ground and met her sword with parries, neatly killing the action of her swings in a long phrase of sharp reports, steel clashing on steel.
“You’re very selective about sportsmanship, Quinn.” She lowered her sword and stepped back to the line at the edge of the narrow playing field. “Koozeman didn’t have a sporting chance, did he?”
“Neither did Aubry.”
It was eerie to meet an opponent who lacked the cover of a mask. Within the cage of steel mesh, his own mask of a face was an accident of birth, an illusion, a counterfeit. Her naked automaton face was the genuine article.
She advanced on him in long steps. “And what about Sabra?‘’ Her sword was aiming a slice to his head. ”Now that’s what I call real damage.“
He parried, raising his sword to block the swing of hers. Oh, bloody hell. Without the offensive strike he was only treading water. She had all the reckless energy of youth, not even heeding his own sharp point.
“I’ve seen your sister, Quinn. I’ve talked to her. You’re a real piece of work, you bastard.”
Anywhere he touched her with the sword, he would draw blood. He could not come to grips with the idea of maiming her. It was ludicrous. This could not be happening. It was a fight to restrain the reflex instinct of the strike. “I tried to help my sister.”
“Yeah, right.” She made a thrust to his mask, and she did it with enough power to foil his parry, and to spread the metal mesh and send the point an inch inside the mask.
Her blade pulled free of the mesh and left him stunned. By this time, he should have been long accustomed to attack and well beyond shock. It was late to be learning the difference between games and life.
She walked away from him. His old lessons of humility deepened. She thought nothing of turning her back on him.
She spun around to face him, hovering on the strip, and hovering in time-waiting.
“I put Sabra in the best hospitals money could buy. She kept running away from them.”
Mallory rushed him, and he warded off her blade with a defensive fly of steel. She came at him again, and he parried this attack too, metal crashing again and again. “You put your sister in the same asylum with Oren Watt.” She was backing him to the wall. “You think that was a good idea?”
“No, Orwelhouse was her own idea.” He glided to the right.
She followed, advancing on him, relentless, thrusting toward his center. “So the institutional route didn’t work.” She made a slice to his head, and he blocked her swing. “And then you decided to help your sister in another way.”
He stepped back to parry another slice to his head.
She followed him with her eyes, her body and her sword, all parts of the same relentless machine. “You’ve been feeding Sabra information you got from me.” Her sword rose to the level of her hips. It hung in the air. He froze, waiting to see which way the blade would fall.
“You used me to feed her obsession.” Mallory’s sword angled in a half circle to strike his side. He met her blade with his, and parried ten times before one of her strikes broke through his guard. She cut the thick material at the throat of his mask. The padding spilled out in clumps. He warded off her next attack with a beat of his blade, and she stepped back.
“Poor crazy Sabra. Revenge is all she’s living for, isn’t it?”
“You don’t know what it was like, Mallory. You had to be there, to see what I saw.”
“I’ve been there.” She lunged and cut to his head, bringing her steel down on his blade again and again, as he held his sword high to fend off the rain of blows.
“Oh, God, the places I’ve been.” Her next slice was lower, and he parried to the right. She lowered her own saber and threw it from one hand to the other. It was an unnerving play he’d never seen before. And now the sword flew back to her right hand to cut his undefended side. He heard the material rip along the midsection of his jacket.
Sweat ran into his eyes, but she was dry, cool, so single-minded in her cutting and stabbing. Her reaction time was twenty-five years younger, and her speed was astonishing. She was a slicing machine-she never tired. He listened to his own ragged breath inside the mask.
She left the marked outline of the strip, going outside the parameters of the combat field. That fit so well, he should have seen it coming. Of course she wouldn’t recognize boundaries. Now all the wheels and works of his brain were stripping gears in their speed to devise a strategy to match hers.
Too late. She rushed him from the side, slashing at the padded bib beneath his mask. This time he felt the point close to flesh. Only the jacket’s high collar, one thin layer of material, protected his throat.
“How many times do you suppose I have to do that before I get down to the real thing?” Her sword was lowered to her side. It rose swiftly, faster than his eye could follow. She stabbed his mask at the level of his eyes, and he jumped back, hitting the wall, the last possible step of retreat.
“Can’t you guess?” She turned her back on him and walked to the far end of the strip. He moved away from the wall and resumed his own place within the marked outlines of the field. They stared at one another across this space.
“You watched me work over Koozeman at the gallery. Then you passed your guesswork along to your sister.”
There was no warning before the rush. Long-stepping, she came after him, jabbing holes in the air, coming closer, now lunging to thrust, recovering her move and lunging again. “You damn amateur!” Every attack maneuver was hers, leaving him only the defensive moves and the escaping backward steps.
“You’ve made so many stupid mistakes, Quinn. Aubry wasn’t the primary target. You were wrong about that.” Steel clanged with rapid strikes and counterstrikes, and in her swings he discerned the rhythm of a hammer on a nail.
“How can you possibly know-”
She broke off the attack and stepped back. “It was always a money motive.” She lowered her sword. “The killer stood to make money on the death of the artist, Peter Ariel. Aubry came in while they were cutting up his body.”
“No, it didn’t happen that way. I was called there to discover the bodies because Aubry was one of the victims. The setup was planned before she even died!”
“No, Quinn. The killers needed a critic to kick off the hype. Koozeman probably figured the police were too stupid to recognize a dead body as a work of art. So he used Aubry’s name as bait for you. But she was never meant to show up at the gallery. That was an accident. Something went wrong.”
She was dangling the sword carelessly in her hand. Now it rose suddenly to attack position. Forgetting forty years of training which told him to wait on her advance, he stepped back too soon, his sword rising to parry. But she never left her place on the strip. Now she let her saber dangle again. And his own sword came down. She smiled, and in that smile, she told him that she owned him now.
“Let’s go over the lies you told to Markowitz. You were late getting to the gallery that night.”
“Yes, but I explained that.”
“You lied to Markowitz. You’ll have to do better with me.”
“As I explained to your father, the cab was caught in a traffic jam on a street where a film was being made. So I had to get out and take a subway. I’m no good at navigating subways. I’d never used-”