Chapter 25 #2
In the nick of time, my wrists cross, my nūr-engulfed blade clanging against his knife in a splay of sparks. I barrel forward in a low feint before my arm arcs upwards to his head in a crooked slash.
‘Pathetic,’ Cemil sneers, his head sweeping the ground, planting both feet against my chest. Like a leaf tumbling in the wind, I fly to the other side of the circle, smacking on to the hard clay, my lip bursting with blood.
‘This is your strength? This is the one who stole from me,’ he says in disbelief. With no chance to rest, I roll right, his khanjar stabbing by my ear, shaving skin, and I gasp at the anger behind it. What have I done?
‘Stole what?’ I snap.
‘My Duxzam,’ he grits out. ‘It was mine.’ I’d sensed the hunger from him on my first day – his ambitions in classes, our trifecta, the Marka.
Warriors collect on the sand dunes around us like swarming bees. Cemil’s eyes dance in mirth as he lunges.
My mind fleets to Yabghu, reminding me of positions, slashes and combinations. In a split moment, I drink in his stance positioning. I will not be backed into a corner.
Spitting blood into his eyes, I curve my elbow around his ribs and jam into his back, collapsing his spine, my legs twining around him in a mount until I am above. His back arches, his ankles locking around my calves to squeeze my lower body. My injured shin strains.
I have this. I must only—
His hand darts out, snatching my jaw in a clamp. With a curse, I try to move, but the iron-bone behind it presses harder until I fear my jaw will shatter.
‘A lovely face to carve into my personal relief. See how your arrogance costs you,’ he hisses before his hand twists, using his grip of my neck to flip us with a resounding smack. My vision streaks white and my neck muscles tear.
He could kill me. He almost snapped my neck. This is not a spar.
I assumed we had an alliance of sorts, our animosity trickling away. But this hate is matched to the rage boiling inside of me. Had it been there the entire time?
Swiftly my foot’s bonds tighten into the sand, and I scramble up. Barely in time for my knife to parry and slash his.
‘You’ve gone mad,’ I spit out, ducking from a strike. ‘You almost killed me!’
‘How rich. But that is Azadnians, they invade and steal our lands, heretics of no honour. I warned our overseer that he brought a poison to this city,’ he says roughly, swiping forward. My arm raises. It’s no use, less than a deadlock when every block of mine is a second too late.
My back hits a fortress of flesh from the circle of bloodthirsty warriors, my khanjar grinding against his blade’s edge.
I hear the First-Slashes yelling at Cemil to halt this, but the others’ roars drown out their cries.
Of course he fights. Cemil is only content when I fall below, but the moment I am on top, he cannot bear it.
‘Concede,’ Cemil barks.
I push forward. ‘I would rather fight than fall as a coward.’
Smoothly, his wrists twist down before spinning and driving to my right. The changes in direction are unpredictable, no longer linear. His elbow crunches into my nose.
‘What else would I expect from an Azadnian?’ His knife cuts across my cheeks.
At every offence, he rebuffs my blade. He is strong in every respect – size, speed, even range.
But the most maddening thing of all is that his sheer will, without his affinity, outmatches my own as if this is a vendetta, not a mere battle.
And this is a fraction of his strength. He could toss his weapon and fight with fists against my blades and still win.
He could move slower, yet still outstrip me in strength.
His movements are a tricky calculus; he never wastes a breath so he can outlast me.
He is better. In every possible way. I cannot win, not against his conviction.
We circle each other like crazed beasts and when he advances again, he proves his masterful approach in the art of knife fighting. I receive a blow to the side, a kick to my bad leg, another slash at my neck. His blade kisses flesh like a sickeningly obsessed lover.
‘I understand now,’ I sputter with a bitter laugh, twisting away from a slash. ‘You want me so injured that I can no longer duel our captain. You want me to forfeit the Duxzam.’
He does not deny it. No matter my attempts to endure his pace – my high arches, my low swoops – nothing works. Nothing. At last, he throws me to the ground.
‘You are sickening, Qabil’s spawn,’ I hiss, cursing him.
‘As sick as you.’ He digs his foot into my abdomen, and I cry out. ‘Concede.’
‘Is this the point you wish to make? Never against your kind.’ I am seething through bloodied teeth. This is a different kind of cruelty, where emotions are as painful as fists. ‘You stomp upon my limbs, spit in my face. Tell me,’ I try to breathe, ‘are we both not monsters?’
‘Monster?’ He stoops down. ‘I break my body every day to destroy your kind. I will never forget what your people did.’ He yanks on my arm, the gold-threading an omen between us.
‘I cannot understand how our superiors let you into this city. Your empire burned our homes in the borderlands. My clan, wishing to return, still holds the bone-shards from the bricks of our hovels. Azadnians pillage us. Let the warriors witnessing this duel remember that her kind does not care; they peel babes’ skin, hanging them on walls in triumph. ’
‘And what of you!’ I burst out. ‘What of my tribe?’ My surroundings dim, black splotching. I taste blood, I smell smoke, I see a spear piercing the khan’s head.
‘If you ache for a monster, I will show you a monster,’ Cemil promises.
He wraps his hand around my throat, ripping me away from the past, and I dig my heels into the sand.
But he does not squeeze. He stares at me struggling beneath him and I wonder, is this it?
Is this the ceiling to his anger? Or will he snap and do it?
‘Master!’ a familiar voice shrieks.
Cemil looks back and, to my horror, Arezu flings herself at his back. But the Third-Slash simply catches her by the wrist. She flails, trying to punch him, but in little more than a twist, he tosses her aside like a bug.
‘Do not touch her!’ I struggle to rise against him. ‘Do not dare touch her!’
But I am weak. I am nothing. He is stronger than you, I can imagine No-Name telling me. She watches, stricken in fear while the crowd leans in to my demise. My senses slosh languidly and I feel myself gazing at the world from afar.
Justice does not exist; justice will never exist.
I am skin and bones. Weak and pathetic. A girl who drifts between borders like a swirl of dirt in the breeze. A girl with a piece of everything but nothing whole to belong to. One who will never amount to anything but repeated failure.
‘Do you yield?’ Cemil demands again, fingers slackening at my throat. He is trembling.
‘No,’ I wheeze, thinking about my massacred tribe, and then my Zahr clansmen. A Sajamistani will not see me break, will not see me scream. Never again. I need this Duxzam.
He speaks calmly, but a slow horror quivers beneath. ‘You are not normal.’
I attempt to imagine what normal means. I did not cry as an infant. Uma said the devil did not prick me. I know that is not normal as well. Normal means having a name, a clan; being kind; not time-blanking. I only know how to be the blade of a fallen emperor.
Normal. I am unsure of its meaning, but I know I do not ache for it, either.
If I am not normal, I will be ugly. So in pure animalistic panic, I drive forward, smashing my head against his.
I know it will not win me the fight, but I am angry, I want him to hurt, I want his pain so raw, he yells.
I want to feel his skin rip beneath me, blood pouring like water for a thirsty monk in a sun-ravaged desert.
And yell he does before he slams my arm against the ground. ‘You are not fit for this city. You are unbelonged.’
Humiliation sears like a hot wick. But these are my uma’s warnings coming to fruition.
Hers were not spun fables of lore, nor an attempt to scare me into submission.
Her sensationalism was grounded in truth.
One of us acts out of line and we all pay.
One of us utters something despicable, we are all blamed.
I am not the city’s scapegoat; I am an empire’s scapegoat.
And you are doing the same, No-Name reminds me.
Suddenly, Cemil is wrenched off me.
‘Disgusting,’ Overseer Yabghu sneers at him, Katayoun and Aina at his back.
They must have alerted him. ‘Thrashing your own trifecta is beneath a warrior’s dignity, Cemil.
Sparring in a high with Heavenly Energy alone without a convenor will result in this, a high of bloodlust.’ Then Yabghu pulls me up.
‘And you should have conceded, foolish girl.’ He surveys my injuries.
‘Who cursed me into having this trifecta?’
A wave of guilt crashes into me. The rage in Cemil’s gaze dims as he glances around us, realising what he has done. Yabghu helps me limp away but as we pass Cemil, I pause.
‘You should have done it, coward,’ my words tremble quietly, ‘for my anger is greater. You will regret that you did not end me.’
In the Qabl infirmary, Yabghu does not speak to me. His foot shoves me into a chamber before he departs without a word, leaving me to fester in a pool of my blood.
Later, as a Qabl medic tends to me, my anger muffles the pain.
They will regret this. Cemil, Fayez, Sajamistan – all of them. My hands fist, the rage another bandage binding my wounds tightly.
No-Name crawls from the corner to my side, laughing. ‘I warned you. I warned you not to battle him. Clay-beings always seek an excuse for violence. He claims victim, you claim victim, and then you fight, drawing blood until it ends with no victor.’
My skin fissures from the blood caking it. I curl into myself. ‘You cannot erase human brutality. Not when it exists inside of us, as innate to the body as air.’