Chapter 192: Practice Loops

Marlo slapped his motion onto the committee table while Moderator Keld was still lighting the lamps. Behind him a row of gold sashes nodded in unison, each one paid to look certain.

"A fallen hero cannot stand beside a duelist in the Founders' final," Marlo declared, "the Company must name someone more suitable."

Cassen leaned against the back wall with his arms crossed, listening to his own funeral being read aloud. Riven sat beside him with his feet propped on a chair, looking more amused than a victim should.

"Is that the whole argument?"

"It is a matter of decency," Marlo said, flushing to the roots of his sash.

"Decency is a strong word from a man in a bought sash," Riven drawled.

Dorian himself was absent, which the whole room understood as a decision rather than an accident. His empty chair at the head of the table wore a gold ribbon like a wreath.

"Point of order," Isolde said, rising with the bound Founders' Rule held open against her chest.

Her motions died in Council every week, a habit the committee fully expected to see continue. Isolde ignored the sighs, running one finger down the page until she found the right line.

"Article Nine," she read, "the challenged party names his second and no committee may refuse the name."

"Dorian invoked this very rule at dawn in front of the whole Festival."

"That clause was written for honest heroes—" Marlo sputtered, jabbing a finger at the page.

"It was written for the challenged," Isolde replied, turning the book toward the table, "you may follow along with your finger."

Moderator Keld looked at the clause, then at the ten sashes, then at the clause again. His gavel fell with the apologetic sound of a man choosing the law over his supper.

"The motion fails," Keld said, "nine votes to one."

"Congratulations... you just won your first vote of the entire season."

"I would like to lie down somewhere dark," Isolde whispered, gripping the book with both hands.

The sashes filed out, Marlo's hem catching on a chair leg and dragging the chair behind him. Isolde stood very straight until the door closed, then pressed both palms flat against her burning cheeks.

"She just cancelled my funeral," Cassen murmured, staring after her with open admiration.

"It was a clerical correction," Isolde said, still pressing her cheeks, "please do not make a ceremony of it."

"Too late, I am already writing the speech."

'Dorian wrote his own trap in his own handwriting... and it just handed me the best corner man alive.'

---

That afternoon the Zero Wing courtyard became a rehearsal hall for a duel nobody could rehearse. Cassen carried two practice blades across the flagstones while Lucas chalked a grid along the wall.

"Dorian rewinds, you replay, I tell you where it feels wrong."

"You owned Second Answer once... what does a replay feel like?"

"Like a stair that is one step too tall," he answered, "you feel it in your knee."

Riven spent a Second Answer on an exchange he lost, the cut landing a beat before it should. Cassen flinched before the blade came, his body still remembering exactly how a replay was meant to feel.

"There," he called, pointing with his blade, "the third beat came before the second."

"I witness: the third beat arrived early," Lucas read from his slate, chalking a tick beneath the grid.

'A rewind doesn't erase the beat... it just sets one down in the wrong place.'

"Then I count the order," he said, "not the blows."

Lucas chalked a tick for every beat Cassen named, covering the wall in marks like a prisoner's calendar. Riven watched the ticks pile up, learning how a rewind lied by the exact size of its mistakes.

"Again, but this time stop trusting your eyes."

"Why help me this much, Goldilocks?" Riven asked, settling into his stance with a crooked grin.

"I owe you one honest fight that nobody scripted," Cassen said, slashing at his ribs.

Chalk dust rose around Riven's heels as he replayed the same exchange twice more, the blade turning each time. By the fourth try he felt it too, a tiny stumble in his own pulse like a missed stair.

'There you are, a rewind is just the world tripping over its own feet.'

"That is the stumble right there... you caught it this time."

Dusk reddened the courtyard before they stopped, Cassen's practice blade splintered at the tip and Riven's shirt soaked through. Neither of them mentioned the thirty thousand strangers waiting tomorrow, though the arena's distant roar carried over the rooftops.

"He will give you a perfect fight," Lucas added, tapping the slate, "so wait for the one thing in it that is wrong."

[ Counter-tell logged: a rewind arrives one beat out of order ]

---

Voices stopped when Riven opened the common room door, six sheets of paper vanishing under six cushions. Cael sat at the card table looking like a man who knew who was paying for dinner.

"Planning something?"

"Absolutely nothing," Mara said, studying the floor with great interest.

Ysabel dealt the cards with the grim precision of a general ordering a retreat from a battlefield. Cael fanned his own hand, wincing at it with the theatrical sympathy of a man holding aces.

"Another hand," Ysabel demanded, slapping the table.

"Another loss, you mean," Cael said, laying down a pair of threes that beat her pair of twos.

"The deck is biased against presidents."

"The deck is biased against people who announce their bluffs," Mara said, nudging the discard pile with one claw.

Riven pulled the first sheet from under a cushion, reading the heading aloud to the silent room. It said Gala in Yukine's neat hand, followed by a long guest list of four hundred names.

"Modest," Yukine said, not looking up from her tea.

"Four hundred guests," he said, "for a party I never agreed to."

"You will agree," she replied, turning a page, "it is already printed on the invitations."

"A heist," Nix read from the second sheet, "target undecided, victim undecided, snacks fully budgeted."

"A sword ritual, forty-one verses, all of them mine," Veska reported.

"A short list of rules," Isolde said, still holding the Founders' Rule, "mostly regarding hugging."

"Regulated how exactly?" Mara asked, one ear twitching toward the cushion pile.

"Duration, consent and a witness," Isolde said, "I have already drafted the form."

"A coronation," Ysabel announced, lifting her chin, "with a throne somebody can comfortably sit on."

"What's yours?" he asked, tugging the last cushion out from under her.

"Mine is short," she said, "everyone leaves."

Nobody laughed, because Mara's ears were angled toward the window with the stiff precision of someone pretending not to care. Riven folded the sheet back under its cushion with the careful hands of a man disarming a very live trap.

'Everyone leaves... and then it is only the two of us, if I am reading that right.'

Sleep found him almost at once, which never happened on the night before a fight that mattered. The dream arrived without any stairs, just a dark hall strung with threads from floor to ceiling.

At the hall's far end stood a loom as tall as a house, its shuttle still swinging.

Someone sat behind it with folded hands, waiting for him like a person with endless time.