I dodge the swipe of a knife. This attacker is a giant. Scarred. His eyelids have an epicanthal fold, and his hair is a violent shade of blue. This man is not from Tao. He swipes again. I intercept the blow, and my hand strikes his neck. He drops to the ground, immobilized.
A bullet rips through my thigh, and I’m hurled against the wall with the sound of smacking meat. I drive all the energy to my other leg and spring forward before the second attacker can fire again. My fists unleash fury. Knuckles smash face. He skillfully rolls and reverses our positions, pulling a knife from his belt, jamming it down like an ice pick. I block. My forearm is sliced open, but I hold it against the pain as it is the only thing keeping the knife from plunging into me. The point of the blade quakes centimeters from my eye. The man leans his body weight against me. There’s no way I can resist. I’m losing blood fast.
“Time to sleep, little man.” His green hair looks like blades of grass. There’s an odor of ozone from his perspiration, a telltale sign that there is tag in his system. He presses down again. My forearm buckles. This is how it ends. No glorious finish. No fanfare. Small violent lives meeting small violent ends.
Then a siren sweetly sings. The point of a blade suddenly sprouts from the man’s throat, and he gurgles on blood just before he slumps forward onto me, his giant body smothering me. I desperately push him off.
Sirens again, two of them. The long blade impales the paralyzed blue-haired giant on the floor a few meters away.
“This one wasn’t dead,” the haughty voice says. “Really, Edmon, you’ll have to be more thorough tomorrow.” I scramble with my back to the steam room wall. Phaestion picks up the pistol from the blue-haired man’s lifeless hand. “You know this is still the most popular method of killing in the Nine Corridors?”
He holds the firearm like a dead fish between his thumb and forefinger. “No skill. Look what they can do to even the most invulnerable of men.” He tosses the gun aside. It skitters from sight. “They’ll be useless in my new world. Crusaders with spider-weave armor, riding screamers, and brandishing siren swords will cut through gunmen like oars through shallows.”
I feel woozy. My legs wobble. Why is he here?
“Don’t run, Edmon.”
Did he send these attackers? Why stop them if he did? I ready myself for a fight, but he sheathes his weapons. I relax for a hair’s breadth, and he leaps toward me. By the ancestors, he’s fast!
I’m slammed against the wall.
“I could kill you now. No one would ever know.” He smiles. I struggle against his inhumanly strong grip. “But there’s no glory there. Don’t you want that, Edmon? Your song to last through the ages?”
I clamp my teeth down against his forearm and bite. The metallic flavor of blood spurts in my mouth, but he holds on.
“My father would have let these men kill you. He learned not to trust odds after he lost in the arena. Then he lost his first son to your father, a mere plebeian. I knew The Companions would try something. Probably Hanschen. Or maybe it was your charming sister, Lavinia, who sent them? I saw it would happen, and I came to make sure they didn’t succeed. You’re a survivor, Edmon. You always endure. Even when I told your father about Nadia . . .”
What?
“The day I saw you together, I knew she had to die. You’re mine alone. You were promised to the empress. I knew your father wouldn’t abide disobedience, so I told him you had taken a wife against his wishes.”
I shove him. He counters and pins my arm behind my back. Tendons and ligaments tear. Control the anger. Don’t let it control you. Become the storm.
“But he sent you away. That wasn’t what I wanted. Still, you survived and returned more beautiful, stronger. You take your pain and become something more from it. That’s why I love you. Tomorrow, we’ll have our aristeia. Even after I conquer the Fracture, they’ll still sing of the moment when Phaestion slew the only man he ever loved in a single combat.”
Chilleus and Cuillan.
He presses his forehead to mine in the gesture of brothers. It’s my moment. I raise my knee full force and slam it between his legs. If Phaestion can see the future, I must be unpredictable. My hand strikes his neck, and Phaestion drops, gasping for air.
“Beasts of the seas! That’s a trick.” He struggles against the effects of the Dim Mak. He should not be moving at all!
I try to run, but immediately crash to the floor, my bloody leg throbbing violently. I crawl to my sword resting against the changing bench. I hear Phaestion behind me reaching for his own. My fingers graze the pommel. His rapier sings. Damn it! My hand grasps the handle. I whip the blade from its sheath.
Screaming blades collide. Parry, thrust, riposte. I can barely keep time with his rhythm and speed. It’s as if he knows where I am going to strike or block before I do. Then I realize—he does. He sees the events play out moments before they actually do. Therein lies salvation.
The AI of the Arms of Agony once told me that it could not simulate Phaestion truly because his level of improvisation was such that generating a creative algorithm to match was impossible. Yet, the Phaestion who attacks now is so reliant on his prescience that his moves are not chaotic. They are modeled on the pattern of what he thinks I will do. I discern their beat. He may see the future. I see the music of the universe, and then I break it. I move in a way so antithetical, so discordant, the harmony of his playing is suddenly fractured.
I swiftly grab his wrist with a claw technique. The bones snap, and his sword clatters to the floor. I twirl my blade, and it gently licks the smooth skin above his jugular. His eyes go wild as he realizes, maybe for the first time in his entire life, he’s not invincible. He’s never accepted this as an outcome. Me? I’ve died a thousand times.
“Do it or you’ll die tomorrow. Do it or I’ll kill many more after you. Millions. Billions.”
My sword song wavers. What kind of monster are you?
“Edmon,” he says with no malice, “it’s who I am. It’s who you are, too.”
All men are monsters. Why run, boy?
Edmon, Nadia whispers in my memory. You can be who you want to be. My soul for his life and the lives of all those across the stars. Here there are no camglobes, no aquagraphics, no scribes to capture my choice in verses of epic poetry.
My sword falls. I jam my fingers into Phaestion’s neck again. He slumps onto the tiles. I hobble to his sword and kick it down the hall. Then I grab a towel and wrap it around my leg to stanch the bleeding. I leave him alive on the steam room floor, perhaps making the greatest mistake of my life.
CHAPTER 30
ENCORE
My abilities help repair my body but do little to heal my mind. I walk into my room in a daze. There’s nothing left for me here.
“Welcome home, sir,” Mentor chimes, but I know there is no home for me.