* * *
I’m always reluctant to take off my mist cloak. Invisibility is such a safe feeling and it’s so tempting to stay there rather than make yourself vulnerable again. But it doesn’t make your problems go away-all it does is delay them. I hid the cloak and sat down.
There was something I’d been putting off and I couldn’t ignore it much longer. My formal reply to Onyx’s challenge was due in a few hours; I’d been avoiding thinking about it in the hope that it’d go away. It hadn’t, and I needed to figure out what to do.
My odds of winning a duel against someone like Onyx were basically zero. Duels are designed to be fair fights, and I’m very bad at fair fights. With no cover it would come down to strength against strength, and even the weakest elemental mage outclasses me several times over in terms of raw power. I might give Onyx a surprise or two but there was only one way it could end.
What if I went in expecting to lose? I couldn’t beat Onyx, but losing a duel wouldn’t kill me. It’d be humiliating and I wouldn’t enjoy it, but I’ve had worse.
But while losing a duel wouldn’t kill me, losing a duel to Onyx might. Traditional duels aren’t supposed to be fatal but more than a few mages have died from “accidents” in the ring. Onyx would never get away with it, not in front of so many witnesses, but that wouldn’t be much consolation to me. And I really didn’t feel like trusting my life to Onyx’s self-control.
I leant back with a sigh, staring at the ceiling. I hate dealing with this stuff. So much of mage politics involves these no-win situations. I’m much happier hanging out with Luna and Arachne or minding my shop.
How would I deal with this if I were in my shop? If some random guy walked in off the street and challenged me to a duel, what would I do?
I’d tell him to get lost. Then if he tried to start a fight anyway, I’d make sure it wasn’t a fair one.
Was there anything stopping me from just saying no? Now that I thought about it I didn’t think there was. By custom a mage is supposed to answer a challenge, but there aren’t any actual penalties for refusing. Traditional Light mages would see it as dishonourable, but the traditional Light mages don’t like me anyway.
The real danger was that I’d appear weak. But elemental mages already think diviners are weak, and it works to my advantage as often as not. Besides, I couldn’t see how declining the duel could do any more harm to my image than having Onyx publicly kick my ass.
I noticed that I was about to get a call. I took out my phone and hit the green button midway through the first ring. “Hey, Talisid.”
“Glad I caught you,” Talisid said. “There’s been a development.”
“What’s up?”
“Two Keepers have been sent to Fountain Reach. Avenor and Travis.”
I frowned. “What are they doing here?”
“They’re assigned to the apprentice investigation, so if they’re coming to you it’s a safe bet they’re following some lead.” Talisid paused. “It seems you’re starting to convince people that Fountain Reach may be the right place.”
“Well, I don’t know who convinced them but it wasn’t me.”
“You haven’t spoken to them?”
“No. When did they leave?”
“An hour or two ago. I’d expect them to be at Fountain Reach by now.”
“Um.” It bothered me for some reason. It sounded as though someone had tipped them off. But who?
“Have you made any progress?”
“Yes, but not over the phone. Talk to Sonder; he’s working on something from his end.”
“I will. Oh, and next time you go for a drive, make a little less mess, will you?”
“Yes, Talisid, the next time I have a bunch of unkillable construct assassins after me I’ll make it my number one priority to make sure you don’t have too much mess to clean up afterwards.”
“Glad to hear it.” Talisid sounded amused. “I’ll be in touch.”
I hung up and went to the duelling hall.
chapter 12
Heads turned as I walked into the hall. Onyx was there and I didn’t see any point in waiting for him to find me first. I walked towards the end of the hall, past the groups of apprentices and the mages turning to look at me.
Onyx watched me as I approached, arms folded. “You challenged me,” I told him once I was close enough. I didn’t keep my voice down and I could feel the mages around me listening. “Here’s my answer. No.”
Onyx’s lip curled. “Not fighting?”
“I’m not fighting.”
“The charges?”
“There are no charges,” I said. “You have a problem, take it to the Council.”
I’d been expecting Onyx to rage or threaten. He didn’t do either. Instead he stared at me for a long moment before giving a very slight smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Then he walked out.
Luna was waiting on the other side of the crowd. “You’re okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine.”
“Was that it? You just had to say no?”
It wasn’t it. That smile worried me. If Onyx had been counting on my accepting the duel he should have reacted more. But that was my problem, not Luna’s, and I didn’t want to put anything else on her mind just now. “Pretty much,” I said. “When’s your match?”
“They’re going to announce it,” Luna said. She’d dressed in a black form-fitting outfit I’d never seen her wear before and she was spinning the whip handle between her fingers. To my mage’s sight her curse spun about her, agitated.
I looked around. “Where’s Variam?”
“What do you mean?”
“Isn’t he a bit late?”
Luna looked at me in surprise. “He’s not in the tournament.”
“He got knocked out?”
“He forfeited. He didn’t show up to last night’s match; I guess he was with you and Anne. I thought you knew?”
I remembered how Variam had appeared suddenly last night. As soon as he’d seen that Anne was missing he must have come after us, abandoning his match without hesitation. I was getting the feeling that I was starting to understand what Variam really cared about. “Did you tell Variam we were working for Talisid?” I asked Luna.
“What? No.”
“What about Anne?”
“No. Why?”
“I was wondering how he found out.”
“Well, it wasn’t from me. You said not to tell anyone.”
I nodded. I could only think of four people who knew that it was Talisid who’d come to talk to me that day at the duelling class: me, Luna, Sonder, and Talisid himself. And I was pretty sure none of them had told Variam.
But there was someone at that duelling class who could have found out that Talisid was there without being told. And now that I thought about it, that might explain the message too. .
A chime sounded from the podium and conversation across the hall fell silent. More than half of the apprentices competing in the White Stone had been knocked out by now, but the number of spectators had gone up if anything. There’s a lot of prestige to these tournaments.
Crystal was standing on the podium. She’d tied up her gold hair in a professional-looking style and was dressed in yet another cream-coloured suit of a slightly different cut. I wondered if she had a rack of them somewhere. She was looking confident and as everyone turned to watch she gave them all a smile. “Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the second day of the White Stone. The third round will now begin. The first match is between”-Crystal’s eyes travelled up-“Gunther Elkins and Michael Antigua.”
Gunther was a tall, serious-looking boy with Germanic features and a blond ponytail, and he strode onto the piste to face Michael, who was a head shorter than him with light brown skin and dark hair and eyes. Two mages were standing at opposite ends of the hall behind the tuning-fork focuses, and as I watched they activated them. Thin walls of energy sprang to life along the edges of the piste and shield bubbles appeared around Gunther and Michael. Both were invisible to normal eyes and even to my mage’s sight they were faint and translucent. These were the conversion fields of an azimuth duel; they radiated no energy, but under the monitoring of a skilled operator they could react instantly to any attack that struck them. There was no ceremony; the formalities had been done yesterday. The arbitrator, a white-haired mage in ceremonial robes, glanced at Gunther. “Ready?”