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parrying, making the fighting-circle her world, backing around it so the
darts and sweeps of his sword clove empty air. She thought he might get angry,
since she had seen him provoked before, but he retained his icy calm and his
moves became tighter and tighter, and she was going to have to do something
soon . . .
    In a sudden flurry she
had taken his sword aside and in that instant she was on the offensive. She did
not keep it long, but after that it was anybody’s. She and Piraeus circled,
stopped, circled back. The air between them rattled with the clash of their
blades. The audience were on the edge of their seats but the two combatants had
forgotten them. Their world had contracted to that duelling ring. The Prowess
Forum with its clock and book had ceased altogether to exist for them.
    He never gave up
pressing his attack, for he knew the natural order of things was for him to
advance, his foe to give way before him. He tried and he tried to turn the
fight back to that familiar territory. He had done it before when, not so very
long ago, he had beaten her two strikes to none. Now she was holding him off,
constantly turning his attacks into her own. Her guard was iron. He could not
breach it, no more than she could break his.
    And the thought came to
Tynisa, If these were live blades, I’d have killed him by
now. Her own Mantis blood was rising in her and she saw Piraeus then as
his own kind would. Look at this coward playing with
children. He was all skill and poise, but the pride of his heritage had
died within him.
    So
let’s call it real. And she gave her blood full rein. The orderly,
calculated exchange of the Prowess Forum fell in pieces around them. She cut
straight through, his blade passing inches from her face, and the point of hers
rammed into his stomach.
    He doubled over, hit the
ground shoulder-first, and it took all of her will’s work to hold back a second
strike that would have broken his neck in lieu of opening his throat. She
stepped back carefully with the slight, sad thought that she could not return
to this place. Her skills, once made here, had been reforged in blood, in the
outside world. The reflexes and instincts honed between life and death were not
tame beasts for her to teach tricks to.
    Piraeus was slowly
getting up, trying to catch his breath. She waited for him, motionless, and
amongst the crowd not a word, not a fidget.
    He lunged at her, as
swift a move as they had yet seen, and it would have caught her if she had been
a mere duellist. She had moved before her eyes had registered his strike, the
point of his sword missing by inches. She struck him a numbing rap to the elbow
that sent the blade tumbling from his hand.
    After she had left, with
the crowd baying her name, standing on the seats and cheering, few had eyes to
watch Piraeus stand up again. His face was thunderous as he rubbed his injured
arm. He made to leave by another door but a voice stopped him. The doors to the
Prowess Forum were left open always, and there was another Mantis-kinden
lounging there, a man older than he in an arming jacket of green.
    ‘An interesting fight.’
    Piraeus narrowed his
eyes. ‘The fight isn’t over.’
    ‘Yes it is.’ The older
man pushed himself off the wall, and Piraeus noticed that he had a claw over
his right hand, a glove of metal and leather with a blade that jutted a foot and
a half from the fingers. It was the weapon of choice for Mantids from the old
days, and Piraeus recognized the stranger’s sword-and-circle brooch a moment
later.
    ‘Weaponsmaster,’ he
stated, and it was obvious he had never met one before.
    ‘We live yet,’ the man
acknowledged. ‘You’re not going after her, Piraeus.’
    ‘She’s a Spider.’
Piraeus’s face twisted. ‘I’ll have her in the next pass, don’t you worry, and
I’ll have her with steel.’
    ‘No, you won’t.’
    The young duellist shook
his head, missing something, he knew. ‘Are you protecting her? She’s Spider-blood.