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Kadou’s blood ran cold, and things . . . blurred.
The man with the knife lunged at him again, and Kadou abruptly decided that he’d had enough of this. He swiveled, but instead of following through with the retreat-and-recover-to-first, he stepped into fourth with a strange dreamlike clarity, then shifted toin quartata,and slammed his foot into the side of the man’s knee. He went down with a cry, and Kadou punched him in the neck, planted his foot on the man’s chest, andshoved.
Somewhere in there, the man had dropped his knife. Kadou left him wheezing on the ground and picked it up.
Now it was a fair fight.
He turned toward the darker part of the alley. His eyes had adjusted now, and Evemer had managed not to get his throat slit yet, thank the gods.
Master Kazar had been a former soldier—a real fighter, not one of the fashionable instructors favored by the upper classes—and he had his own ideas about the kinds of situations in which Kadou would find his training most useful. Formal duels were disgraceful and beneath a prince’s dignity; in battle, he would be surrounded by kahyalar—if he went to battle at all, for Arast had not been at war in generations.
But there was always the possibility of danger, and Mastar Kazar had quite agreed with the philosophy of that deliberate gift that House Mahisti took care to teach its scions.You’rehelpingyour kahyalar,he had said when Kadou had uncertainly and hesitantly expressed his terror of hurting someone.You’re buying them time to get to you; you’re making it easier for them to keep their oaths to protect you.So Kadou had learned—not formal dueling, not battlefield combat, but brutally efficient knife-fighting that was best suited for . . . this, as it happened. Surprise attacks in narrow, dark spaces.
Kadou took three river-steps forward, ended in Meyhan’s second, put the dagger through one of the thieves’ throats, swiveled, recovered to Octem’s first. He knocked Evemer’s dagger out of the other thief’s grip and nicked high on their inner arm, roughly in the region of their brachial artery. The third one cursed and released Evemer with one last kick to the back of his knee, felling him before vanishing at speed into the darkness.
As Evemer struggled back to his feet—alive, mostly unharmed, good—Kadou turned his attention back to the last thief, the one he’d only knocked aside.
He’d just killed two people, he realized absently. Or rather, he’d have killed them in about a minute when they both finished bleeding out.
The last man had staggered to his feet again. He had another knife, a quite long, rough thing that looked like it had been beaten out of scrap steel by an overly ambitious apprentice blacksmith who thought they knew anything about making swords. But even if it didn’t have an edge on it, it would hurt if it hit him.
Kadou fell into the floating balance of Octem’s first, his knife at the ready, and watched the man’s elbow. Not his wrist, and certainly not his eyes—not that he could have seen them anyway, stuck in the dark as they were.
“Should have gone for you first,” the man rasped. He had a strange accent that Kadou in his blur of adrenaline couldn’t place—a foreigner? “You’re the dangerous one, eh? Should have known.”
The man came at him, swinging wildly and amateurishly. Before he had even completed his first stride, Kadou moved: Shift to second, balestra forward like surging waters, knock aside the knife, slide steel into his throat.
He choked. He fell.
All was still.
Kadou felt and heard his heartbeat roaring in his ears, noticed that the haze of alcohol had faded off. Everything was very clear. Too clear. His hands were shaking. He tasted blood in his mouth, smelled blood. The touch-taste of the steel dagger sang in his fingertips—the thump of a heavy door pushed closed, a lump of incense burning under a clear night sky, the gritty feel of dusty leather.
Kadou dropped the dagger, dropped Octem’s second, stumbled back against the wall. He felt like he wasn’t quite of himself, like he was an observer in his own flesh, the world pressing in on him from every direction with a terrible, terrible clarity.
Evemer felt as though he’d been struck by lightning.
It had all happened so quickly—he’d been grabbed from behind, and he’d seen Kadou grabbed a heartbeat later, and then—that. Heartbeats, that’s how long it had taken. Not moments or instants, but heartbeats.
And now there were three corpses at their feet, killed byHis Highness’shand.
Killed.
By Kadou.
Kadou had killed them.
Lightning. Evemer was full of lightning, his skin prickled with it. It loosened all his joints and raised all the hairs on his arms, sent chills up and down his spine.
Kadou had been . . . resplendent. He’d moved like nothing Evemer had ever seen, like a rip current, like a tidal wave. Kadou. His liege. Evemer realized he was gawking and shook himself. The lightning running through him did not abate.
Kadou was leaning against the opposite wall, very still, hidden in a shadow. Evemer’s mouth was dry. He swallowed hard. “Highness, are you all right?” he asked.
He didn’t answer.
The lightning in him twisted into fear—had he taken a blow? Was he so still because he was holding a wound closed? Was he even now bleeding out? Evemer lunged forward, his aches and bruises disappearing in this new surge of alarm. “You’re hurt. You’re hurt? Are you?”
It was only when he was up close that he could see how Kadou was shaking. The shadows had hidden that too. His clothes were disarrayed, he’d lost several buttons—but Evemer couldn’t see the wet black of blood in darkness, nor feel it as his hands patted frantically across Kadou’s torso—and he saw then that Kadou’s hands were hanging limp at his sides, not clasped against any injured part of him.
