Isana released the crafting with a sob and began to struggle to her feet, calling for Tavi. Just as she did, someone smashed the furylamp, which rose up into a brief column of fire and vanished, leaving the ruined house in utter darkness.
Sparks leapt up across the room for a moment as blade met blade, showing Isana a flash image-Araris, his lower legs pinned beneath the rubble of the fallen wall, and another large, muscular man, also one of the Senator's bodyguards, standing over him with a great war hammer raised over his head.
Isana cried out. In the renewed darkness, she could not see her target, so she did the only thing she could think of. With Rill's help, she seized the entire contents of the stagnant pool and flung them in a single, coherent mass toward the man about to kill Araris.
There was an enormous slap-splashing sound and a cry of surprise. Another flash of sparks showed her the man lying dazed on the ground several feet away, and a drenched Araris choking and coughing.
Then someone with an iron grip seized her by the hair. They jerked back on her head, snapping it back to a painful angle, and then a line of fine, deadly cold settled across her throat. Isana froze in place.
Her captor and she sat motionless in the dark for a time, until finally a cold, female voice said, "Get the light back on and report."
Someone produced a pair of small furylamps and set them on the floor nearby, and Isana could see what was left.
Araris lay on the floor, still trapped from the knees down. His hands were empty and spread, and a man stood over him with the tip of a long blade resting in the hollow of Araris's throat.
The man with the huge hammer looked up from lighting the furylamps. "Aresius is dead," he said, his tone neutral. "So are both locals. We've taken two prisoners."
The woman holding Isana said, "Scipio? The Cane?"
The man with the war hammer swallowed. "Gone."
Her captor suddenly pulled hard on Isana's hair, flinging her onto her back on the ground. The tip of a sword came to rest upon her cheekbone, and Isana found herself facing Phrygiar Navaris.
Navaris looked the worse for wear. The skin of her face was peeling, badly, and looked as if it had been blistered. Her short hair was burned to a lighter color, similarly, and her hands and arms told the same tale of too much sun and the exquisitely painful consequences.
"Steadholder," Navaris murmured. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill both of you. Right here. Right now."
Chapter 43
Tavi had been unable to sense anything of Ibrus's emotions as the man spoke with Ehren. That was hardly unusual. His own watercrafting senses were still somewhat clumsy, certainly in comparison to those of a real watercrafter, like his mother. But all the same, something about their situation had made him uneasy, and when his mother had confronted Ibrus, he was more than willing to back her.
Then Araris had moved, his sword screaming from its sheath and drawing blood from a man who had kept a windcrafted veil wrapped around himself even as he slipped up closer to their group-specifically, toward Tavi.
Tavi drew his sword, but even as he did, he felt a surge of power shiver through the ground beneath him, and then the head of an all-metal war maul smashed through the nearest wall as if it had been made of beeswax. The whole wall came down, all at once under a wave of earthcrafted power, spreading out from the opening created by the blow of the hammer.
Tavi hardly registered what was happening before Araris slammed into his chest, sending him reeling back from the falling stone. The singulare cried out as hundreds of pounds of rock fell on him.
Tavi got to his feet just as Ehren sprinted by him. He felt a thrum of tension in the air behind him, and turned just in time to meet a descending blade with his own. Steel rang on steel, and Tavi found himself facing Phrygiar Navaris.
The woman's face was peeling, the skin red, and healing from what must have been blisters-but her eyes were still just as cold, and her sword moved in a shining blur as she instantly recovered from the parried blow and sent another attack snaking toward him.
Tavi had no time to think about defenses or lessons. Pure instinct guided his arm as he blocked a deadly combination, barely sliding out of the last attack, a cut that turned into a thrust that came slithering toward his belly. Seemingly of its own accord, his hand lashed out as Navaris leaned into the thrust, and his fist struck her in the mouth. She whipped her head aside at the last second, and the blow landed with little force-but her eyes burned with a sudden cold fury.
Tavi found himself forced back on his heels as blow after blow rained down on him. What counterattacks he could manage were weak, and Navaris slapped them aside almost contemptuously. Tavi's heart pounded in terror. He barely caught blow after blow, turning them aside by the barest of margins. Twice, Navariss sword actually struck his mail shirt, severing rings and sending them bouncing to the ground with sharp, tinkling sounds, and if he escaped with his flesh unbroken, it seemed little more than a stroke of inordinate fortune.
Navaris howled, and her blade blurred even faster. Tavi suddenly became aware that he had fallen out of the smooth rhythm that he had instinctively grasped and used to defend himself, that Navariss sword had begun to move more evasively, that he was losing track of its motion.
At last, he was slow to recover from a particularly strong parry, and Navariss eyes blazed as she struck his blade aside, leaving him wide open as her sword descended for a killing stroke.
"Aleran!" Kitai cried. He saw her sword tumble by, spinning, thrown with the inordinate strength of an earthcrafter. It missed Navaris by three feet-
- and smashed into the room's sole furylamp.
The room plunged into darkness.
Tavi dropped straight down, and felt Navariss sword pass through the air where he'd just been standing.
Navaris cursed, and he felt her slow down, trying to locate him, to feel where his sword was. Struggling went on in the darkness. Someone was thrashing around. A man shouted, and he heard the heavy thud of exchanged blows, flesh on flesh. Then Navaris hissed, and Tavi felt her sword coming at him, a disc of cold, deadly steel inscribed on his mind by the course of her blade.
The force behind the blow was terrible, both physically and in the weight of furycraft behind it, infusing the steel with all the strength of her mad will. Tavi would have to meet that strength with his own, or Navariss sword would shatter Tavi's-and Tavi would find himself shattered shortly after.
He spun, putting his strength and weight behind his blade, swinging in a stroke that would meet Navaris's squarely, furiously focused on his own sword.
The blades met. Steel chimed on steel, a note that was high and pure and piercing. A blinding shower of sparks erupted from the meeting blades, and Tavi saw a frozen image of the room: Navaris, her teeth clenched in hate. Kitai, bleeding from a split lip, struggling with an armored man for possession of a sword. Isana, kneeling, her expression colder and more terrible than he would have believed possible, a hand extended toward a man who thrashed on the ground, his face completely covered by a blob of dirty water.