The Pawley's Lawn, Uptown, Vienda
To duel outside was, she thought, an interesting choice. Despite herself, she had watched Ekain walk across the grass, had watched him walk as slowly as he needed to in order to do it steadily. If she understood, somehow, somewhere deep inside, Niccolette let it stay buried there; she had no need for compassion, not here and now.
Niccolette’s eyes dropped to Ekain’s leg. In a true fight, she thought, that would be how she would begin. It would be a quick and easy cast to weaken the already weak limb further. She could not tell quite what was wrong with it, but it was clear his balance was poor; she could damage a muscle in the thigh or hip and send him crashing to the ground. From the stiffness of his walk, she imagined she could cut a tendon as easily as she could breathe; they looked desperately strained. In a true fight, no holds barred, she would take his leg in a way that would not heal easy; she would let him know what he had done without hesitation.
But this was a duel.
It was a coward’s move to take his balance. There were ways of it even without grievous injury – but then the effect was cheap embarrassment, nothing more. It was always risky to rely on the pain of something like a weakened muscle, or the embarrassment of falling, to be sufficient to keep someone from casting. No, Niccolette thought, bringing him down would be as bad as starting with a pain or nausea spell, a cheap and childish move. Gia deserved better; the mona deserved better; the honor of the duel, such as it was, deserved better.
Niccolette lifted her eyes back to Ekain’s face. She wondered if he had seen her look down; she hoped he had. She hoped he expected her to target his leg; she hoped it made him afraid. She inclined her head, ever so slightly, as he spoke, and watched the glistening arc of the coin through the rain. The dark side flashed up, and Niccolette took a deep, steady breath.
The Bastian returned Ekain’s bow, low and deep. Her wet hair trickled over her shoulders, dripping towards the ground, and when Niccolette straightened up it was half over her shoulders, curling against her front. She lifted one hand, and ran her fingers through it, pushing it back up off her face, water splashing off it against her hand.
If she had ever been aware of the crowded masses huddled on the porch, Niccolette did not see them now. Never had she cared about the audience while dueling; her attention was focused on Ekain. She did not look at the murmurs from the crowd off to the side – she did not look even at a gasping shout of her name, for all that she knew it for Francoise’s voice. Everything she had was here, in this moment, dripping wet around her, pumping through her veins, moving in and out of her lungs; there was no focus left for anything else.
Distant lightning flashed through the sky, and Niccolette counted the seconds – one, two, three, four – until the thunder boomed and echoed, chasing it to them.
Then she began to cast.
Niccolette did not know what Ekain’s background was. She had caprised the faintest sense of living mona in his field; she doubted he could counter her spells, with so little power, but he might try. It was always wise, in a duel, to use more obscure spells, although that assumed, of course, one was capable of pulling them off. If your opponent had never before heard the spell, they had almost no chance of countering it. Even if, she thought, Ekain had heard this spell before – it would never have been like this.
This spell was deceptively simple; it was a spell to heighten feeling against the skin, rooted in a long tradition of nervous spells. Niccolette knew variants of it that were used for highly different purposes, and had used them herself; but as she cast this one, as she wove it into the air around her, she cast it so that the slightest pressure on the skin would be excruciatingly painful, would stimulate all the pain centers of the brain. She cast it, knowing full well the falling rain would soak them both; that each droplet, pressing against Ekain’s face, would feel like agony, that even the gentle press of his heavy clothing against his skin would hurt, as would the grip of his hand on his cane. If the spell was successful, she knew, the pain would be too much for him to gather himself and cast – not to mention that even the movement of his tongue in his mouth, every brush of it against his teeth, would hurt too.
Niccolette adjusted her homing, and the heavy energy of the spell streamed in the air around her, washing forward and soaking into Ekain as thoroughly as the rain had. It was a technical and challenging cast, but there was no sign of the difficulty of it in her smooth, even voice, the confident, harsh monite that burst forth from her – not in her etheric field, which bloomed bright and powerful in the rainy air.
He had chosen this site for reasons of his own, Niccolette thought as she curled her spell and ended her first turn; she hoped he would soon regret it.