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Nicci kept her hands loose at her sides, her fingers curled.
Maxim shifted in his chair, sliding toward the edge of his seat. “What say you, Thora? We don’t have all night.”
Thora stared at Nicci with her face drawn. “I, too, know the laws of our city, and I shall invoke my own rule. Anyone may challenge the ruler of Ildakar to combat.” Her lips twisted like a withered rosebud. “But as the challenged party, I also have the right to choose my champion.” She lifted her head, and the complex loops and whorls of her braids danced about. “This outsider is not worthy of my time or effort. Adessa, you are my champion.” She made a dismissive gesture as she backed toward the dais. “Kill Nicci for me.”
The other wizards gasped. Andre chuckled. “This will be interesting, hmmm?”
Nicci turned to look at the seemingly relaxed warrior woman, her skin covered with brand marks. Adessa held up her gauntleted left hand and touched the hilt of her short sword with her right. She came forward with a languid rolling gait, building up her wariness, her combat readiness. Adessa looked as dangerous as a deathrise flower.
As the sovrena lowered herself back into her ruling chair, Nicci called, “You won’t fight your own battles? Not even to hold on to your personal rule?”
Thora sat back, brushing a hand across the blue silk of her gown to smooth the fabric on her thighs. “I find it more satisfying to observe.” She nodded to Adessa. “Don’t disappoint me.”
The morazeth came closer to Nicci, raising her short sword to fight. “I will not, Sovrena. I have corrected many arrogant pups in the training pits. They all have an exaggerated sense of their worth and their own abilities—until they are broken. This sorceress is no different.”
Nicci turned her full attention to Adessa, locking her eyes with the fighter’s ageless stare. Adessa’s scars bore testament to how many vicious fights she had survived, but Nicci knew she would not survive this one.
Adessa sprang forward without a flicker of warning, sweeping with her short sword while letting out a bloodcurdling yell.
Nicci’s black dress flowed around her as she held up her curled hand and released the gift that was so impatient in her fingertips. Incandescent fire boiled up in her palm, a sphere of wizard’s fire the size of a ripe orange. She had no interest in a prolonged combat, did not wish to give Adessa the honor of a drawn-out fight. She just wanted to finish this and bring down Sovrena Thora.
Nicci hurled the blazing ball, which struck Adessa in the center of the chest, spreading across her bare skin and the black leather wrap. It should have incinerated her. Wizard’s fire was one of the most horrific weapons Nicci possessed, a persistent unquenchable blaze that would burn an opponent and keep burning until it ate through the charred bones. But her fire merely rippled across the marks on the morazeth’s naked skin and flowed around to dissipate in the air behind her. Adessa didn’t even pause in her attack.
Nicci ducked as the short sword whistled through where her neck had been. She felt the steel skim across her loose blond hair, snipping a few strands. Adessa landed on her studded sandals, spun, and attacked again. Nicci lunged out with her magic, releasing a hammerblow of condensed air that should have flattened her opponent, but again the wind simply flowed across her spell-branded skin, without touching her.
She heard Elsa gasp in her seat, while Andre chuckled. From the corner of her eye, she saw Thora on her throne. The sovrena wore an expression of seething anger, while beside her Maxim grinned, one leg crossed over the other, as if he had not enjoyed himself so much in a long time.
Nicci’s fierce wind skirled and ricocheted around the walls of the high tower, rattling the windows, but Adessa was immune. The morazeth closed in, swinging her gauntleted fist. The blow crashed into the side of Nicci’s face, making her reel away, her cheek gashed by the brass studs.
Nicci folded herself backward, bending as far as possible so that the backsweep of Adessa’s short sword barely missed gutting her.
“Your magic doesn’t work on a morazeth,” Adessa said. “You should have been warned.”
Still stinging from the blow to her head, Nicci recovered, braced herself. “Then I’ll fight you without my magic.” She never took her eyes from her opponent as she drew her two daggers, one at each hip. “It’s all the same to me.”
Thora leaned to the side and spoke to her husband. “I told you this would not take long.” Her voice hardened into an accusation. “I know you put her up to this, Maxim. She will pay for it, and I’ll make you pay as well.”
“You are too quick to judge, my dear wife. Watch.”
Nicci held the two daggers in a loose grip as she kept moving, circling, watching Adessa. The morazeth’s sword was longer than the daggers, but Nicci would be nimble. Her dress constricted her, the fabric gathered around her legs, the bodice hugged her waist and chest, while Adessa had nothing to confine her.
And nothing to protect her.
Nicci jabbed with the dagger in her left hand, provoking, feinting, then slashed with the knife in her right hand. Adessa easily dodged and drove in. Nicci lured her close enough so that when the morazeth jabbed with the short sword, Nicci released her right-hand dagger, letting it clatter to the floor. With her hand free, she snatched the warrior woman’s wrist in an iron grip to keep the sword away, then swept her left leg and stomped down on Adessa’s foot. She heard bones crunch beneath the sandal ties.
Adessa snarled, but did not cry out. She swung her gauntleted fist and punched Nicci in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her. Nicci staggered backward, struggling to suck in air, dodging the tip of the blade. Now she had only one knife.
Pursuing her, Adessa splashed into the spilled puddle of water on the floor, somehow ignoring the pain of her broken foot. She limped only slightly. Nicci scrambled out of the pool, backing away, and just as Adessa charged, Nicci released more magic … but not against the morazeth this time.
With her gift, she sucked heat out of the floor tiles, turned the spilled water into a sudden mirror-smooth covering of bitter-cold ice. Already running headlong, the warrior woman lost her footing and sprawled across the ice. Nicci took advantage and leaped upon the morazeth as Adessa scrambled to her feet.
Nicci knocked her back down onto the ice, raised her dagger to deal a deathblow, but Adessa’s gauntleted hand flashed up, catching her arm. Though Nicci grunted and strained, trying to drive the dagger down, her muscles were no match for the morazeth’s.
To concentrate on her strength, Adessa let go of her short sword, but Nicci focused only on pushing the dagger point closer and closer to the hollow of her opponent’s throat. Adessa used only one hand. Nicci didn’t see her fumble with something at her waist, pulling out a short black cylinder. She heard a faint snick, saw the glint of a silvery needle. Adessa jabbed her agile knife into Nicci’s side.
Pain exploded like chain lightning surging through her network of nerves, making her drop her dagger. Her joints turned to jelly. Nicci writhed away, gasping. Apparently, this woman was more like the Mord-Sith than she had guessed.
Adessa, back on her feet again, kicked Nicci in the rib cage with her inta
ct foot, then again in the kidneys. Nicci grunted and rolled, trying to recover. The crippling pain had ended the moment she broke free of the tiny needle, but Adessa kept her down with brutal blows.
Nicci tried to get to her hands and knees, to squirm away. Jagang had beaten her far worse than this, and she had survived.
Adessa swung a hammerblow with her gauntleted fist, striking the other side of Nicci’s head directly in the temple. Her vision filled with black spiderwebs. Each breath was like inhaling fire mixed with broken glass. She swayed, refusing to collapse. Blood poured out of her nose and mouth.
The blows paused for a moment, and Nicci saw that Adessa had snatched up her short sword from where it lay on the patch of ice. Nicci staggered back toward the wall, trying to find a place where she could defend herself.
With a flash of her gift, she turned one of the tiles in front of the morazeth into a red-hot square, which shimmered, turned molten, but the other woman lurched over it.
Adessa prowled forward with only the slightest smile on her lips, a predator ready to take down its prey. She glanced back at Thora. “How many pieces would you like her in, Sovrena?”
Thora descended the dais, swelling larger as she pulled the gift around her, building her magic to a crackling storm that cowed the other wizards in the room, even Maxim. “You’ve done enough, Adessa. I will finish this.”
Nicci gathered her strength to fight back. Shock waves of pain sprang from numerous points throughout her body. The obedient morazeth just stood there watching, looming, threatening. Nicci raised her defiant gaze toward the sovrena. “My battle was never with Adessa.” Nicci summoned her gift, building the magic within her.
“You dared to challenge me,” Thora said. “It is time to discard you. Dump you like a chamber pot, so that no one—”
