Thirty-Two
You ready for this?
[Admission: I am not.]
I blink. What?
[Further admission: last night while you were gone, I snuck out to a party with the other runics.]
I heave a sigh. Star.
[Even further admission: we imbibed mildly poisonous substances and made poor decisions, as is customary.]
All right, thanks very much for that.
[Query: did you and Ky engage in human mating behavior?]
A flush creeps into my cheeks. No. I mean, maybe. It’s hard to tell.
[Affirmation: I am thankful every day not to have glands.]
Star.
[Elaboration: or orifices that require rubbing against other orifices—]
I roll my eyes. You’re nervous, aren’t you?
[Denial: why would you say that? My confidence is complete.]
Me too.
I finish threading the last connector and close up the panel.
Star is in the best shape he’s ever been, even the minor scrapes from the first round buffed out and his entire carapace gleaming.
He doesn’t have the fancy colored plates of some of the other runics, but I think there’s a beauty in the raw metallic surface of his body, too, the way every limb and joint is as spare and efficient as I could make it.
Ky appears in the doorway. “Time to go.”
There’s no sign of the Ky of yesterday, either the ethereal presence from before the ball or the messy, sticky, beautiful girl in my arms from afterward.
She’s got her hair in a tight tail, wearing a slim jacket, sturdy pants, and her sword at her hip.
There may be a faint blush in her cheeks as she looks at me, but possibly I’m imagining it.
“All ready here.” I slap Star’s carapace, and he gives a celebratory wiggle. “Let’s do this.”
Once again, we take the carriage to the central square.
The maze from the first round is gone, replaced with a more open space with a lower fence to make for easy viewing.
The stands have been expanded, and they’re already thick with people.
Hisham is back on the judge’s platform, talking with a couple of women, while Alzimyth lounges in his chair.
He seems to sit up a little straighter at the sight of Star following behind our carriage.
My opponents have already arrived, and I take a good look at them as we disembark.
The master is a middle-aged man with glasses and neatly trimmed hair, dressed like he’s going to spend the day doing figures rather than fight a duel.
The runic beside him is low and wide, with a broad shell painted and patterned to look like a turtle’s but no apparent head.
It has four squat legs underneath and at least a dozen limbs sprouting from a slit in the small of its back.
Each of these is skinny but multi-jointed and folded in on itself, and I guess they can extend to many times their current length.
I’m honestly not sure what to make of it; the shell looks tough, but the long arms seem fragile and with too little leverage to do any damage.
Still, this pair made it through the first round, which means they knocked out several runics. I can’t underestimate anybody.
“I don’t know the master, but he’s sponsored by the du Freis,” Ky says. “Mid-rank Council family. Another bunch that came sniffing around after Father’s death, though I doubt they had any hand in it. Just opportunists.”
“All I have to do is beat him, right? No special rules?”
“That’s right.” She smiles, as though she’s just thought of something. “Three more fights and it’s all over. It doesn’t seem such a big climb when you think about it that way.”
I snort. Three fights. But one of them will be against Quech, unless the moon takes pity on me and somebody else murders the bastard. Somehow that seems unlikely.
“Once again, um, welcome!” Hisham says. “Now that the free-for-all has given us our contenders, the true duels can, um, begin. Our honored guest will— Oh, yes, go ahead.”
Alzimyth stands up, clearly tired of this already. His amplified voice snaps out with a faint crackle.
“Matches from the second round onward will be simple duels until one runic is disabled or their master surrenders. There will be one day between rounds to allow for repairs.”
I frown. That tight a timeline means you could take so much damage in one round that you might not be able to repair your runic for the next. You might win a duel and still lose.
“The first match of the day will be Taj and Star against Couvere and Clatter. Proceed to your assigned gates.”
Couvere looks at me, pushes his glasses up his nose, and gives a tight grin. He starts marching around the arena in one direction, with Clatter moving ponderously behind him. Star and I head the other way.
What do you think?
[Assessment: tough, but slow. Probably uses high-grade RESISTs to absorb damage. Offense seems lacking.]
About the same as my own impression. So what’s the plan?
[Simplicity: keep hitting it.]
Don’t overcomplicate things now. But Star’s straightforward approach is probably the right one.
Any RESIST that absorbs too much force in too short a time will break; good armor is made with multiple redundant layers of sigils, but continuous attacks—especially focused in a narrow area—will always eventually break through.
We reach the gate, which is blocked by a broad wooden door. A couple of minutes pass in silence, presumably as Clatter lumbers its slow way around to the opposite side. Finally Alzimyth’s voice, with a hint of annoyance, snaps, “Begin!” The door swings outward.
As I’d glimpsed from the carriage, the dense, mazelike arena of the first round has been replaced with something much more open.
For the most part the ground is flat and empty.
A few piles of wooden boxes a few meters high provide a little cover.
One of these occupies the center, blocking my view of the opposite entrance.
I point to a nearby pile, and Star scurries over, clambering up the crates easily. I jog after him.
Clatter is moving toward us, shell rocking back and forth as it trundles forward.
As I expected, several of its long, skinny arms have unfolded to stretch four or five meters high.
Each is tipped with a thick, heavy head, spiked on one end like a warhammer.
The weapons are nasty-looking, but I still can’t see how that fragile armature is going to put any strength behind them.
Star jumps down from the crates, skittering toward his opponent, testing the range.
He’s trying to draw out a strike to see what those arms can do, but Clatter doesn’t take the bait.
It keeps coming toward us, and I keep a wary eye on the length of the arms myself.
Couvere doesn’t look like he’s about to go for me himself the way Quech might, but that doesn’t mean he’s above having his runic try something.
Though if he does, Star will tear him to shreds—he’s standing well back from Clatter, watching the fight from afar.
Okay. If he’s not going to start things off, we have to. Let’s see if that armor is as tough as it looks.
[Affirmative.]
Star runs, then leaps, covering the distance between him and Clatter in an instant.
He uses his considerable momentum to stab two fighting limbs like lances into Clatter’s shell.
The scream of metal on metal makes me wince, but I keep my eyes on the target, watching for sparks.
A few hiss out beneath the turtle’s shell, bright yellow.
Yellow RESISTS. I try to imagine the cost of layering yellow sigils all across that vast shell.
Even with the bounty from Rotwurm, only a few of Star’s key sigils are yellow, while the rest are orange or even red.
And RESISTs are a particularly painful place to use high-grade sigils, because you’ll always lose a few in a serious fight, and they’ll need to be replaced—
But I imagine the du Freis can afford it.
In any case, Star’s attack doesn’t penetrate; it leaves a short tear in the decorative coating but no real damage.
Star, expecting this, rebounds into the air and soars away.
One of Clatter’s limbs comes down after him, more collapsing toward Star, then swinging in anger; it looks like the hammer-shaped head will glance off his back leg, no harm done—
Wham, and a screech of tearing metal. Sparks fountain into the air.
What the fuck was that?
[Analysis: ow. Assessing damage.]
Something punched Star hard, sending him flipping end over end.
He hits the ground and skids backward on all eight legs.
No, not on all eight legs; one is nothing but a sparking stump.
The spike at the bottom of Clatter’s hammer-headed limb shot out at incredible speed, tearing through Star’s leg and pinning it to the ground with such force it’s cracked the flagstones.
As I watch, the spike retracts. Something in the hammer part goes clonk. A metal canister the size of my forearm ejects, still spitting sparks, and I hear clicks as a new one locks into place.
[Assessment: leg #5 nonfunctional. Other damage minor.]
Purge #5. Stay out of range for now.
There’s a pop as Star’s damaged stump falls away from its socket; I hope we can collect the pieces later.
Adapting smoothly to his seven-legged status, Star scrabbles backward, keeping plenty of distance between Clatter and himself.
There’s only so much room in the arena, though, and the slow-moving runic is closing the gap between Star and the wall.
The thing it ejected, the little canister, is left behind.
I glance at Couvere—still hanging back—and sprint over to it.
The sparks have died down, leaving only some strange metal pieces and the broken clay of a few dead sigils.
Orange sigils, I note, a MOVE and several STRONGs and, cracked right in half—
Holy shit.
[Clarify: please?] Star jumps backward, nearly to the wall.