28 | One Surprise

Corrin Bly was waiting for him on the fifth Friday.

He sat on the low wall where the towpath met the reeds, boots crossed at the ankle, a curved knife flat across his lap, and he had been there for some hours.

Soren stopped forty feet away.

<<Loraine: 8th Stage Apprentice Warrior. He is not drunk, he is not surprised, and he picked that wall because the reeds are at his back and the water is on your right. He has thought about this.>>

How long have I got if he gets hold of me?

<<Loraine: Two seconds. Possibly three.>>

"You're smaller than they said," Bly called down the path.

"Everyone says that."

"Mm." He stood up without hurrying. "Come on then. I've been sat here since noon and my back's gone."

Soren came down the path.

He had Marrek's cleaver in his right hand, which was too heavy and badly balanced and which he had carried for three weeks in front of witnesses precisely so that anybody who asked would be told the ghost on the river road used a stolen cleaver.

Bly's eyes went to it, and stayed there half a second, and Soren watched him make a decision about reach.

He's planning around the cleaver.

<<Loraine: He is planning around the cleaver.>>

Good.

"Four of ours in five weeks," Bly said, "and every one from behind or out of a bush. That's not a warrior. That's a rat with a good arm."

"Yeah," Soren agreed.

Bly paused. "You're not going to argue?"

"Why would I? You're completely right." Soren rolled his shoulder, and the nine-day-old cut across his ribs pulled, and he let it show.

"I've got no weapon art and no body path and one technique I've used eleven times. And you're 8th Stage, and you waited here since noon, and you came alone."

"So?"

"So you should have brought two men. That's the entire plan. I was going to stand here being annoying until you got close enough."

Corrin Bly laughed.

"You're going to be a problem," he said, and came down the path fast.

...

Soren had thought about a lot of things over three weeks of Fridays, and the one he had thought about most was that a warrior does not fight the way a mage expects.

Bly came in low with the knife tucked and his shoulder leading, and the first thing that happened was that Soren's cleaver came up and Bly went through it.

Not around. Through.

He took the flat of a heavy blade across the forearm the way you take a branch when you are running, and it opened him up and he did not care, and then he was inside and his shoulder was in Soren's chest.

Soren left the ground.

He hit the path on his back with all the air out of him and about a second and a half of consciousness left before the knife arrived.

Palm.

He got it up. Piercing Palm Arts into a knee at bad range and no weight behind it, and it landed, and Bly's leg buckled just enough that the knife went into the path beside Soren's ear instead of through it.

Soren rolled.

The cleaver was gone. He did not know where. He got to his feet with his ribs screaming and eight feet of road between them.

Corrin Bly stood up on a knee that was not working properly and looked at him with genuine, undisguised interest.

"That's a school art," he said.

"Is it?"

"That's a Profound grade art at minimum, boy." Bly shifted his weight off the bad leg. "Where does a Callowmere house slave get a Profound grade art."

"Maybe she gave it to me. Maybe I found it."

"Found it?" Bly started forward again, slower now, working the leg with a chuckle.

"That's the funniest thing I've heard in nine years and I'm still going to open you up."

<<Loraine: He has the knife, the reach, the rank, and the training. You have a broken finger, two cracked ribs, and no weapon.>>

<<Loraine: Soren, you should go now.>>

Not yet.

<<Loraine: There is no yet. He closes in three paces.>>

Not. Yet.

Because it would work exactly once.

Because a man who saw a blade appear out of nothing and survived it would tell forty people, and because the entire value of the thing was that Corrin Bly had spent three weeks being told the ghost on the river road carried a stolen cleaver.

Soren let him come.

He backed up onto his heels, which was wrong, and he let his guard drop to his waist, which was worse, and he let the fear show on his face, which was not acting.

Bly saw a boy out of weapons and out of ideas.

He committed.

He came in at full speed with the knife low and his weight forward and every part of him certain, and it was the single cleanest, most correct thing he had done all night.

Now.

<<Storage. Retrieve.>>

The Refined knife with the grip made for a much larger hand appeared in Soren's right hand out of empty air.

Corrin Bly's eyes went to it.

It cost him about a third of a second, which was nothing, which was less than nothing, except that he was mid-commitment at full speed on a leg that did not work, and a third of a second was the difference between a man arriving and a man arriving late.

Soren stepped inside and put the knife under his arm.

...

He sat down in the reeds afterward and stayed there for a long time.

It had not been clean. Nothing he did was ever clean.

Bly had taken a very long time about it and had said something near the end that Soren was going to be hearing at four in the morning for the rest of his life, and he did not write it down and did not repeat it and did not tell either of the two things living in his skull what it was.

<<Loraine: ...>>

<<Lilith: Leave him.>>

<<Loraine: I was not going to say anything.>>

<<Lilith: I know. I'm saying it so he knows.>>

After a while Soren cleaned the knife on the grass and put it back where it had come from.

<<Award: 1 Legendary Ticket, 3 Epic, 4 Rare, 1,100 Fp.>>

<<Qualifying: Killed an opponent three Stages above your own who was prepared, positioned, armed, and expecting you. Loraine calculated the odds at one in fourteen and wishes it recorded that she was delighted to be wrong.>>

<<Lilith: +138 LP.>>

A hundred and thirty eight.

<<Lilith: 8th Stage, waiting for you, and it nearly killed you. It's the cost that scales it, sweetheart. That's the part I hate. The more it takes out of you, the more it's worth.>>

Totals.

<<Loraine: 457 one LP. 4, 250 FP. One Legendary, ten Epic, twelve Rare, seven Uncommon.>>

<<Loraine: And Soren.>>

Yeah.

<<Loraine: You won that because a man had never seen an object appear in a hand. That will work exactly once, in your entire life, and you have now spent it.>>

I know.

<<Loraine: The next one will be ready for it.>>

I know, Loraine. He put his head back against the reeds and looked up at a sky that was going grey at one edge. That's why we're doing the draw.