2.33. The Harlequin

A roosting buglebird let out its gossamer hoot above the duelists' heads. A breeze murmured across the tassels on Tiago’s belt, his unkempt hair, the ribbon in Leonane’s braid, the tails on the coats of the watchers, the rustling oak that oversaw them.

Tiago’s hand slid behind his back like the beginning of a bow or a mummer’s impression of a butler.

Leonane’s drifted out to his side, as if he was about to mount a tightrope.

Tiago’s lead foot slid forward.

Leonane took one slow step left.

Tiago matched him.

Leonane’s elbow tucked in, then extended his sword tip into a lecturer’s point.

Tiago rotated his wrist a half-turn.

Leonane pounced low and the blade sprung out like a scorpion’s lash and Tiago’s foot slid a neat handspan to one side (just like his mother, that same detached economy) and his blade spun down like a descending comet and Leonane met him with a cymbal-crash clang that battered both sabers out of line and he threw a cut straight to Tiago’s gut which Tiago caught in a whirling parry into a quickstepping thrust to Leonane’s wrist which Leonane twisted his guard to catch, but the saber’s bite skipped upward, a flicking feint that sent its spur toward Leonane’s gritted jaw and he jolted away, arms scarecrow-wide with the exertion, an ungraceful step backward that Tiago matched and dealt another flashing halfmoon swipe—a moulinet, damn him, he’d told Seth that was just for showing off, and there it was—and Leonane carried it through and counterthrusted with a zealous “HA,” but the blades bound, a hellacious carving clatter as span locked across span, then Tiago was away again, and his sword spiraled back to its cantilever straightness.

Leonane’s gravity rolled from heel to toe to center.

And they were still again, as statues.

Seth exhaled the breath he’d drawn before either man had moved. The whole exchange had been as quick as the space between heartbeats.

A smattering of applause from the ravenclad observers. Lisa’s broad hands boomed unmistakably; whistling was seemingly disallowed, or Seth was sure he’d be hearing that, too.

Tiago’s arm canted upward, the saber smoothly pivoting along its tip like a shadow around a fixed sundial. His chest rose slowly and fell again.

Riccana leaned forward, tongue trapped between her teeth, fists screwed shut.

Seth tried to read the fight, to remember Tiago’s instruction. That was a hanging guard, right?

Leonane’s knee bent. His breath was loud enough to hear.

Tiago grinned. A twitch on his face and a brief, breathy heh. He circled his saber in a slow crescent, bringing his elbow below its point, and began to laugh.

Murmurs and movement in the ravenclad crescent around them. “What in hell is he doing?” Seth whispered.

“His hexentat. His second-ringer.” Ofelia’s eyes were glued to her brother. She held his hat before her lips as if speaking into a conch. “Tiago doesn’t use hexentats the way Mother and I do. The Harlequin is his only second-ringer, and he has no third.”

“What’s it do?”

“A stutter-step,” Ofelia said. “It decouples the motion of the wielder’s body and the appearance of that motion. Just for a second, but a second’s all you need in a duel.”

Tiago was laughing louder. Lisa watched in a placid pose, her forefinger laid against the left corner of her lip, but her eyes were dancing.

“But there’s a tell,” Ofelia said. “A laugh, the moment you strike. A trained duelist knows to seek it and react off it.”

Seth stared at the cackling swordsman. “Unless you’re laughing the whole time.”

“Exactly.”

“So he’s getting ready to use it?” Seth asked.

“Not on a popmite like Leonane. He relies too hard on its passive. But the threat. It’s keeping Leonane penned in.”

Leonane pounced with unnerving ferocity. A counterclockwise feint surged forth into a lunge that sent him stumbling past his mark. Tiago yanked his arm back and away.

“Touch,” Leonane cried, saber aloft. “Touch!”

Riccana gasped in distress.

Tiago shook with uncontrolled mirth as he held his arm out for the judge. The saintspeaker craned her neck to look over his balding crown. The crowd did the same.

“No blood is drawn,” the judge announced, and scurried backward. “The matter resumes.”

Tiago barked a shrill laugh. “Can’t make me bleed, Leo, you showpony.”

“Shut up,” Leonane growled, dropping his stance back into dueling form.

“You nobody.”

“Shut up.”

“What’s the passive he relies on so much?” Seth asked, as the duelists circled again. Leonane was breathing heavy now, through his mouth, blinking sweat from his eyes. “What does the Harlequin do?”

“It makes you happy,” Ofelia said.

Seth’s brow rose. “What? Like it cheers you up?”

“Yes,” Ofelia said. “Makes you laugh longer and louder, find the joy in things. It puts more color in the world. That’s how Tiago described it once.”

“And he has that?”

“There is something I should tell you about my brother,” Ofelia said. “Something I have told him you’ve earned, and he didn’t disagree. Just sighed. So oh well, I think.”

She paused to watch Tiago snap outward with a picture-perfect lunge, saber punching through the air and tearing past Leonane’s retreating shoulder by inches.

“Come on,” Riccana hissed, loud enough to draw disapproving looks at this inappropriate swordfight behavior.

“Our father’s death wasn’t when it started,” Ofelia said. “But it’s when it became impossible to ignore.”

“What?”

“Whatever was wrong with Tiago,” Ofelia said.

The swords sang again. Clang, rattle, hiss, and they were apart once more. Seth couldn’t track what he was seeing at this point—not with his mind bifurcated.

“Growing up the way he did,” she said. “The way we did. I think it started the first time our…”

She returned her attention to the duel, though nothing was happening but a few probing exchanges and cryptic shifts of stance.

“The first time Kevan hit him,” Ofelia said, “a part of him went away inside. The parts that… felt. He told me once it was like he was reading a story about himself. And he knew what was supposed to be good and what was supposed to be bad. But when he smiled, it was only because that’s what you do in stories. There was only one way to bring any emotion off that inert page. The only time he really felt anything—”

Another vicious, explosive exchange. Leonane’s shirt stuck to him, saturated with sweat. His fingers twitched with the resonant blows the sword shook into them. Tiago cackled like a hyena, darting and dancing, black hair flicking perspiration like crystal through the air. An overhead chop, and another, and another, sprawling Leonane back further and further, and Leonane’s leg shot out in a harried kick across the dirt and Tiago’s flew up and back like a dancer’s, and his sword snapped straight vertical to foil the horizon-sweeping followup Leonane cast in a desperate bid at carving space away from his pursuer, and it didn’t work, it only brought him more out of balance, and Tiago’s laughter shut off like a thrown switch.

He kicked Leonane in the face. Riccana whooped and punched the air.

“—was when he hurt people,” Ofelia said.

“Feel that, Lanzcap?” Tiago danced away from his sprawled-out enemy. “Plainland dirt on your face. Your own fucking patch.”

“Will you declare, sir?” The judge daubed at Leonane’s bleeding mouth with a kerchief. “The blood is not drawn by swordpoint, but it flows.”

“No,” Leonane gasped. A tooth was newly chipped in his wide mouth. “No, I will not declare.”

“Teniyant?”

“Come here, Leo.” Tiago swished his sword like he was hunting butterflies. “Come show the Verdugo’s brat your Legionnaire fury.”

The judge stood and wiped the earth from his cassock’s knee. “It goes on,” he called.

“Never me,” Ofelia said. “He never tried to hurt me. And never Mother. That’s how he knew he loved us, even when the piece of him that loves was locked away. But after Mother left, the season she was gone was a hard one to live through. It had been getting worse, and it was worst of all after… after our father was gone. The other children were so eager to ostracize at first, you see, so pleased to pick on the orphans. Pleased until they realized how pleased Tiago was, in turn, to have an excuse. The first time he'd fight you, he would act fearful. So you'd do it again, you see. And every time he'd let more and more of his violence out. Until he broke you, your bones or your will. And you'd see his real smile, then. The only time he ever smiled it. He'd catch us food--we couldn't afford the market--and I'd find the little leftover pieces of the animals arranged. Like offerings or experiments. The rest of the village, they were terrified of him. I was terrified of him. I don’t doubt that if Mother hadn’t come back, he’d have killed again. I truly believe that. Killed someone and ended up on the scaffold.”

Tiago and Leonane were locked up again. A low slash, slicing upward. A catch and riposte. Something connected between their gazes that sprang Tiago back, in the split second before a carnelian red flame bloomed from between Leonane’s busted lips and caught his billowing sleeve. Tiago ignored it entirely, let it creep up his arm, kept fighting, and laughing, and laughing.

“And then we took him to the Necropolis,” Ofelia said. “And we found out from the people there this wasn’t some new condition. They’d seen it in veterans of the wars with the seraphs. And Mother met someone who’d had it done herself. And that person paid to give it to Tiago. And he came back.”

A shower of sparks and a calamitous ringing noise. Leonane had thrown it all into a terminal lunge, had left his damn feet in the throwing of it, and where it collided with Tiago it might have fucking run him through but the saber had crashed straight into a stomach turned hard as diamond by the Tortoise’s active.

“HA,” Tiago barked.

“I had my brother back for the first time in years,” Ofelia said. “Thanks to her.”

Tiago whirled. His burning sleeve blazed.

“Who?” Seth asked.

Leonane staggered backward.

“Mother’s first friend in the Necropolis,” Ofelia said. “Her mentor. Desdemona al Vhesse.”

“A touch!” The judge cried. “A touch! Blood drawn by blade!”

Leonane was sitting on the ground, shivering, his hand pinned to his midsection. Wet blackness bloomed beneath his fingers.

Tiago’s laughter ended again with that same abruptness, like a waxograph’s needle pulled away. He ripped his burning shirt from his body and threw it into the dewy grass. His whipcord muscles gleamed beneath the row of hexentatuae on his bicep.

“He never used it.” Seth had to yell it over the upswell of applause and outpouring of emotion. “The Harlequin.”

“He never does,” Ofelia said. “Because then, for an hour, he is what he might have become.” She watched Lisa elbow through the crowd to lift her boy into the air.

Riccana stood frozen at the edge of the crowd, staring at the shirtless defender of her honor.

“I’ve told you his secret,” Ofelia said, as she and Seth delved into the knot of people and the judge’s barking baritone attempted to restore their formality. “So I suppose in recompense I should tell you mine.”

She caught him in the crush and pulled his ear to her lips.

“I’m glad,” she whispered. “That’s my secret. I’m glad Tiago is better, but I’m glad he got sick, too.”

“Why?”

“Because he killed my father,” Ofelia said, and shoved her way through the well-wishers and admirers, to her brother’s side.

The boot-flattened center of the hill upon which Tiago and Leonane had dueled was now filled with people—monochrome soldiers crouching to examine or comfort their wounded friend, lit citoyens in work boots avoiding their return to the daytime drudgery, officers displaying somewhat-forced frowns and shakes of their head as if they hadn’t been riveted to the sporting swordplay a minute ago.

The judge clambered to the knoll’s highest point and craned his neck to call out across the mobilization. “What says the challenger?”

“I am satisfied, sir.” Tiago had grumbled his way out of his mother’s enthused hug and now straightened his jacket. “You well acquitted yourself and took your wound with martial grace. Our disagreement ends.”

“What says the challenged?”

“I…” Leonane shifted and hissed with pain. The saintspeaker sister tending him clucked her tongue and gently pushed him supine again. “I withdraw my denigrations. Our disagreement ends.” He winced at the tutting application of a compress across his stomach. “But Tiago, she—never mind.”

Tiago’s scowl returned. “She what?”

“It isn’t for me to say any longer.” Leonane shrugged. “I am chastened.”

“You began it, whatever it was,” Tiago said. “Kindly conclude.”

“She does not belong here, Teniyant. Even she sees that. It was kind to bring her to the reception if that was what she desired. But a farmer has no place in a room of officers and Exarks.” Leonane shrank from Tiago’s glare. “Ask her, and I’m sure she’d tell you as much.”

“If I valued your counsel, Leonane, I wouldn’t have stabbed you,” Tiago said.

“I suppose your honor is now assuaged, young goodwoman?” Teniyant Chondra was circling Riccana, looking like Tiago had when he’d sized Leonane up for the striking. “And the honor of your hamlet?”

Riccana’s arms were tight across her midsection. She looked stubbornly into the middle distance. “If you say it is, madam, I suppose it is.”

“How many more duels will be fought for the ingratitude of these bored women? Will you not cheer the bravo who bared his blade for you?” Chondra turned her oilslick grin on Tiago. The crowd jostled out from its path. Suddenly another duelist’s strait was opening. “Here’s a pretty reward indeed, al Ydris. Perhaps your thief will favor you with a kiss if your fieldmouse won’t.”

“You think I’m all used up, Teniyant?” Tiago’s saber dripped black blood into the tall grass. “Come and test me, like your friend did. I’ll give you a scar to match.”

“Don’t let her goad you, Tiago,” Ofelia murmured. “She wants the challenge.” Tiago flapped a hand at her, goadedly.

Chondra’s handsome face twisted into a sneer. “Is that a challenge, al Ydris? Shall we make it a formal one?”

“Tiago, please,” Riccana said. “She’s not worth it.”

“Yes, Tiago, please.” The legionnaire did a piss-poor, breathy imitation. “How ridiculous you look, waggling your sword around for such rustic fare. If you think—”

Riccana slapped Chondra in the face. A hauled-off, heavy slap, thrown to sting.

“Ah, shit,” Seth muttered.

Ofelia dashed from his side toward the incandescently furious legionnaire who now seized Riccana’s arm.

“You ungrateful little trollop,” Chondra snarled. A darkened handprint was showing on her cheek. “I could have you flogged for that. For a start.”

“Ungrateful? What do I have to be grateful to the Legion for? You wind-up soldiers.” Angry tears sprang from Riccana’s unlit eyes. “Where were you?”

“It’s a felony, what you’ve just done,” Chondra said. “Did your heartthrob there tell you that?”

“Let me go.” Riccana tugged on her arm.

“Striking an officer in front of all these witnesses? You really are out of your depth, aren’t—”

“Let me go,” Riccana shrieked, and she vanished. For a split second her clothes held the form she’d had. Then they fell to the ground.

Chondra’s eyes widened. “What in—” The sentence ended in a bellow of pain. She clutched her hand to her chest. Blood had been drawn there, in a tiny crescent. Like an animal’s bite.

From the black pool of discarded clothing, a white rabbit bounded and took off across the hill toward the forest.

“Oh, fuck,” Ofelia said, mildly. “I suppose we know Riccy’s Darkness.”