“No,” I said. “I don’t need armor. I don’t need a knife.”
Twisting around my knuckles were the shadows, dense and dark as paint.
I had taken great pains to ensure that no one else discovered what had happened to my mother—what I had done to her. But it was better that Akos knew, before he suffered for knowing me, more than he already had. Better that he never look at me with sympathy again than that he believe a lie.
“How do you think my mother died?” I laughed. “I touched her, and I pushed all the light and all the pain into her, all because I was angry about having to go to some other doctor for some other ineffective treatment for my currentgift. All she wanted to do was help me, but I threw a tantrum, and it killed her.” I tugged my forearm guard down just enough to reveal a crooked scar carved just below my elbow, on the outside of my arm. My first kill mark. “My father carved the mark. He hated me for it, but he was also . . . proud.”
I choked on the word.
“You want to know what Ryzek is holding over me?” I laughed again, this time through tears. I tugged the last strap of my chest armor loose, yanked it over my head, and hurled it at the wall with both hands. When it collided with the metal, the sound was deafening in the small anteroom.
The armor dropped to the floor, unharmed. It hadn’t even lost its shape.
“My mother. My beloved, revered mother was taken from him, from Shotet,” I spat at him. Loud, my voice was loud. “I took her. I took her from myself.”
It would have been easier if he had looked at me with loathing or disgust. He didn’t. He reached for me, his hands carrying relief, and I walked out of the anteroom and into the arena. I didn’t want relief. I had earned this pain.
The crowd roared when I walked out. The black floor of the arena shone like glass; it had likely just been polished for the occasion. I saw my boots reflected in it, the buckles undone. Rising up all around me were rows of metal benches, packed with observers, their faces too dark to see clearly. Lety was already there, dressed in her Shotet armor, wearing heavy shoes with metal toes, shaking out her hands.
I assessed her right away, according to the teachings of elmetahak: she was a head shorter than I was, but muscular. Her blond hair was tied in a tight knot at the back of her head to keep it out of the way. She was a student of zivatahak, so she would be fast, nimble, in the seconds before she lost.
“Didn’t even bother to put on your armor?” Lety sneered at me. “This will be easy.”
Yes, it would.
She drew her currentblade, her hand wrapped in dark current—like my currentshadows in color, but not in form. For her, though they wrapped around her wrist, they never touched her skin. But my current was buried inside me. She paused, waiting for me to draw.
“Go on,” I said, and I beckoned to her.
The crowd roared again, and then I couldn’t hear them anymore. I was focused on Lety, the way she was inching toward me, trying to read strategy into my actions. But I was just standing there, my arms limp at my sides, letting my currentgift’s strength build along with my fear.
Finally she decided to make her first move. I saw it in her arms and legs before she budged, and stepped aside when she lunged, arching away from her like an Ogra dancer. The move startled her; she stumbled forward, catching herself on the arena wall.
My currentshadows were so dense now, so painful, that I could hardly see straight. Pain roared through me, and I welcomed it. I remembered Uzul Zetsyvis’s contorted face between my stained hands, and I saw him in his daughter, her brow furrowed with concentration.
She lunged again, this time driving her blade toward my ribs, and I batted her aside with my forearm, then reached over her to grab her wrist. I twisted, hard, and forced her head down. I kneed her in the face. Blood spilled over her lips, and she screamed. But not from the wound. From my touch.
The currentblade fell between us. Keeping my hand on one of her arms, I pushed her to her knees with the other, and moved to stand behind her. I found Ryzek in the crowd, sitting on the raised platform with his legs crossed, like he was watching a lecture or a speech instead of a murder.
I waited until his eyes found mine, and then I pushed. I pushed all the shadow, all the pain, into Lety Zetsyvis’s body, keeping none of it for myself. It was easy, so easy, and quick. I closed my eyes as she screamed and shuddered, and then she was gone.
For a moment, everything was dim. I released her limp body, then turned to walk into the anteroom again. The entire crowd was silent. As I passed through the doorway to the anteroom, I was, for once, clear of shadows. It was only temporary. They would return soon.
Just out of sight, Akos reached for me, pulling me against him. He pressed me to his chest in something like an embrace, and said something to me in the language of my enemies.
“It’s over,” he said, in whispered Thuvhesit. “It’s over now.”
Later that night, I barred the door to my quarters so no one could come in. Akos sterilized a knife over the burners in his room, and cooled it with water from the faucet. I rested my arm on the table, then undid the fasteners on my forearm guard, one by one, beginning at the wrist and ending at the elbow. The guard was stiff and hard, and despite its lining, made my skin moist with sweat by the end of the day.
Akos sat across from me, sterilized knife in hand, and watched me peel the edges of the wrist guard back to reveal the bare skin beneath. I didn’t ask him what he imagined. He had probably assumed, like most people, that the guard covered row after row of kill marks. That I had chosen to cover them because, somehow, fostering the mystery around them made me more menacing. I had never discouraged that rumor. The truth was so much worse.