Chapter 27: Ring-Out

There are three ways to lose a match at the Duel Festival.

You yield, you go down and stay down for a five count, or you leave the ring. That’s all of them. No points, no rounds, no judges except for the pose. I wrote it that way because I wanted my fights short and my Chapters exciting.

Emmett Bask opened with a straight overhand, which is the correct move against a first-year, and Lily blocked it and got shoved back two steps.

The crowd collectively made a surprised noise. I sat back and enjoyed myself.

[He’s actually decent. Look at that, he’s not even planting his feet wrong.]

He pressed forward, and she gave ground. He caught her blade twice, and on the second catch he rolled his wrist and nearly took the sword out of her hands, and his friends in the stands went insane with that cute little banner.

And Lily was messing around.

It wasn’t obvious. Nobody in that arena could see it except me. But I’d spent five mornings watching this girl route mana down her arm, and she wasn’t doing it. Every block she made was pure arm strength, every step she took was slower than her feet could actually move, and she’d used exactly zero of the six Forms I’d stuffed into her head that week.

She was fighting this dude at roughly the same pace he was going, which was what gave it away for me:

She was taking it easy on him, trying very, VERY hard not to hurt him.

[Sweetheart, you’re supposed to be winning a Divine Gift here. Hit the man.]

She’d win anyway, though. That was the thing. She could take the whole exchange back whenever she felt like it, so I sat there with my arms crossed and let her have her fun.

Then somebody sat down next to me.

"Sakana."

I turned my head, and it was Marisol Vantecca, uniform tailored two sizes too flattering.

[... What the fuck? Am I high again? I don’t think I did any drugs. I haven’t had a potion in ten days. I ate a bread roll this morning.]

"Um... Marisol," I said carefully.

"I’m very glad to see you," she said. "I haven’t been able to make contact all week, and given the circumstances, that was becoming difficult to sit with."

"...Right. The... circumstances?"

"Obviously." She smoothed her skirt. "Before anything else, I want to say the entry was handled correctly. Frostfall was the right call. My family’s seal would’ve drawn eyes, and I understand why you went the other way, though, if you wanted the Everdawn girl in, you should have just told me."

"... My bad?"

[What is happening?]

"Though, I must admit, I don’t know what you see in the Everdawn girl," Marisol went on, lower now, leaning in close. "On paper she’s nothing. So either you’re wrong about her, which you never are, or she’s an asset you haven’t briefed me on, which brings me back to the accord."

"The... accord?"

"Mhm. Remember? Full disclosure of the objective. That was a term. I’ve held up my end, I’ve moved when you moved, and I’ve stayed quiet when you went dark, and I still don’t know what we’re actually building here."

"So." She turned and looked at me directly, smiling. "So, spill it. What’s Everdawn’s role? Is she the objective?"

"Marisol," I said slowly. "You’re not... Weren’t you a hallucination?"

She blinked.

"...I beg your pardon?"

"Nothing." I put a hand to my forehead. "Nothing. Keep going. The, uh. The role. Everdawn’s role."

She studied me for a moment, and her expression softened.

"Hm. You’ve been odd with me since the infirmary," she said, quieter now. "I’ve decided not to take it personally. You’d been struck by a Warden, and I imagine the composure took time to come back."

"That’s, yeah. The composure. It’s coming back."

"Good." She glanced at the arena. Lily was still just slightly dodging the guy’s attacks. "Well, alright. You’ll let me in when you’re ready. But, what I won’t postpone... is this."

And then, she kissed me.

It was quick, but it was firm. And public.

Then she sat back, adjusted her collar, and said:

"One of these days, brief me properly. Don’t do anything drastic without telling me first."

And then she got up and walked off along the front row with her chin up, past about forty people who had all definitely seen that.

I didn’t move. Finally, I realized:

[That was real. The scroll was real and the assets were real and there’s a written accord that I agreed to, out loud, in an infirmary, in front of witnesses, and I said sure, I said sure to ALL TERMS, there was a clause about advance warning and a clause about DISCLOSING THE TRUE OBJECTIVE. And the slip. The hooded person in the corridor. The reverse-pickpocket, the sponsorship with the sigil I’ve been showing to half the faculty. That was HER.]

I put my face in my hands.

[There’s no hood. There’s no mystery. There’s just Marisol, running the whole operation by herself, waiting for me to explain a plan that doesn’t exist.]

I lifted my head and looked out at the ring to think about literally anything else.

Lily was looking straight at me.

She wasn’t looking at Emmett, and she wasn’t looking at her feet. She was standing mid-exchange with her sword up and her head turned toward the front row. Her mouth was open, her eyes had gone huge and shiny, and she wasn’t looking at her opponent.

I didn’t get to finish the thought.

Emmett Bask, D-rank, nice guy with a banner, did the correct thing again. He saw his opponent’s head turn, so he put his shoulder into her chest and shoved with everything he had.

Lily’s heels came off the stone. She caught herself once at the edge, one boot on the line, arms windmilling, and I stood up out of my seat with my heart in my throat.

Then she went over backward and landed flat on her back in the sand outside the ring.

The whistle blew.

The whole arena inhaled at once and then turned into a hundred people asking their neighbors what just happened. Emmett Bask stood in the middle of the ring, blinking at the boundary line like somebody had handed him a baby.

"RING-OUT!" Ollivant Prue bellowed from his platform. "RING-OUT, EVERDAWN IS OUT, BASK ADVANCES, AND FRIENDS, THAT’S WHAT I CALL A DUEL!"

[... What just happened?]