Loss.

It was the blue-tinged taste of a regret so deep you could never plumb its depths. It was the victory at Rajal that never came, it was his brother walking away down the long dark wood corridor, it was a life he might have had in Yhelteth if disgust and fury had not sent him away in disgrace instead. It was the slaves he could not free, the screaming women and children of Ennishmin he could not save, the piled-up, silent dead and the smashed-in, ruined homes. It was every wrong decision he’d ever made, every path he’d failed to walk, fanned out and held up for him to understand, and it hurt. It ate into him like dragon spit as he stared it down. There was a flickering heart to the dwenda, he now saw, shadows rippling through it, curves that might have been dancing limbs, a lithe, broad torso maybe, the long, leaping straight edge of—

The Ravensfriend swung to guard.

Impact stung down his arms, snagged in his joints. It felt eerily as if the sword had done the work without him. Sparks showered, flung off something he couldn’t fully make out in the glow. A long, echoing chime rang across the courtyard. The dwenda stopped singing.

Oho. The thought pulsed through him, savagely exultant. That shut you the fuck up, didn’t it?

As if in answer, the barely seen straight edge came rippling back. He twisted and blocked it again, easier now the ringing in his ears had stopped. This time he saw the meeting of blades for what it was. The dwenda was armed with an unfeasibly slender long-sword whose edges gave up light like the jamb of a door cracked open onto a room filled with blue fire. Behind the sweep of the blade, he made out a tall, long-limbed figure, flowing hair, maybe the glint of eyes. The glow still flickered everywhere, but Ringil thought it might be fading.

And the ache was ebbing with it, the whole fan of failed options he’d seen now folding away, reduced to abstract, fleeting acknowledgment, and then to nothing at all. Regret vanished, shriveled up like paper in flames. The fight came on inside him like a stoked furnace. He put on the snarl he’d used to kill Terip Hale’s men. He readied the Ravens-friend.

“Come on, then, you pixie-faced piece of shit. You think you can take me?”

The dwenda bellowed—its voice was like a tolling silver bell—and came in swinging from the left. Ringil parried, locked the blades up, stepped through and kicked out savagely at knee height. Thuggish, tavern-brawl technique—amid the soaking blue radiance, he felt the edge of his boot connect. The dwenda shrilled and staggered. Ringil whipped his blade clear of the clinch and slashed in at midriff height. His opponent leapt back to avoid the cut. Ringil came on, reversing the swing for a higher-angled assault. The dwenda blocked, whiplash-swift. It stopped the Ravensfriend cold. The riposte came slashing down, faster than Ringil could get his own sword in place. He jerked his head back, felt the dwenda’s blade whicker down the side of his face, leave cold air and a faint crackling sensation in its wake. The ghost laughter bubbled—but Ringil thought there was a harder edge on it now, the fading amusement of someone driven to unexpected effort.

Better get used to that, motherfucker.

Long lunge, all the speed that he had, right for the eyes or where he assumed they had to be. His opponent caught the Ravensfriend, hooked it aside, and sliced back down the blade, scraping up sparks—Ringil had to disengage to save his hand. He fell back. The dwenda came at him again, long-sword all flickering, flirting half cuts and feints. With human steel, Ringil would have been outclassed, reduced to full retreat and broad defensive swings. But the Ravensfriend seemed to rise to the occasion like a trained hound. It rang chimed warnings off the more extended of the dwenda’s attacks, chipped the glow-edged long-sword back, gave Ringil a speeded, feverish battle fervor to match the unearthly poise of his attacker. He was panting with the effort it took, but there was a lifting, grinning passion behind it as well.

He had, he recalled in the midst of the fight, been good at this.

And the glow was dying, no question now. The shadow at the heart of the light was thickening, becoming less a blur of hinted form and more the bulk of a solid opponent he could kill. Now he saw eyes, oddly shaped, still faintly radiant, but recognizable for the organs they were. The blue flickering uncertainties were giving way, the spill of light from the edge of the dwenda’s blade damping down to little more than a gleam. More and more, it was the cold fall of bandlight that lit the duel. More and more, he saw his opponent’s face behind the clash of steel edges—stark-boned and pale, eyes narrowed, teeth bared, the combat rictus to mirror his own. The fight emerged from dream and became what it was—the man-dance, the steel measure, the promise of blood and death on cold courtyard stone.

Let’s get it done, then.

The dwenda might almost have heard him. Shadowy black and silver by bandlight now, it leapt in at him with redoubled speed. Ringil turned the blows, got in weak ripostes, could not break the attack momentum. He staggered back. The dwenda blade got past at the tip, touched his face, dropped and licked across his shoulder and breast. He felt sudden heat, knew he’d been tagged. He yelled and struck back, but the dwenda was ahead of him, had seen the move, and the Ravensfriend skidded off a neat upper block. Ringil twisted, tried for the eyes again, failed, had to fall back.

The dwenda came on.

How do I take him down, Shal?

And the myth vendor in his junk shop, brooding, doubtful. You’d have to be very fast indeed.

Ringil launched the counterattack without warning, out of a parry posture that looked like retreat. It was the last thing you’d expect, and it had every sprung inch of reflexive speed he could muster behind it. Blade up and inward, lean forward instead of back, savage chop for one thigh. The dwenda wallowed, caught out, wrong-footed for an attack it now had no way to deliver. The block came late, would not turn the force of the Ravensfriend . . .

It almost worked.

Almost.

Instead, the dwenda yowled and leapt, went nearly chest-high straight into the air, crouched like a cat. The Ravensfriend whooped through empty space beneath, Ringil staggered, splay-legged behind the blow, and the dwenda whirled and shrilled and kicked him in the head coming down.

The courtyard swooped and spun around him, dimmed out, swam with tiny purplish points of light. The band looped overhead, across one corner of his vision, trailing blurry white fire. The stone floor tilted and came up, grabbed him by the shoulder, cuffed him across the side of the head, tore the Ravensfriend from his grasp.

FOR LONG, GROGGY MOMENTS, HE CLUNG TO CONSCIOUSNESS.

The courtyard seemed to have upended itself, was trying to dump him off its surface and into a warm waiting darkness below. He fought it, smeared vision and ebbing strength, groped across cold cobbles for his lost sword, twisted and curled about like some half-crushed insect on a tavern tabletop.

A shadow fell across him.

He managed to turn his head; he struggled for focus.

A towering black figure stood over him, etched in bandlight and the soft blue gleam from the edges of the long-sword in its hands.

The blade came up.

Someone blew out the candles.