Every Time, He Spared Him

The woman lowered her eyes and smiled, bitter at the corners.

"Listen to even half of what they're whispering in this hall, and you'd know how things stand between Fillion and me. Is this pity for what just happened?"

"And if it is pity — would you rather not have it?"

"No. Not in the least. I like being pitied. It means someone is thinking of me, doesn't it? And besides, you're the second-handsomest person I've ever danced with. Refusing you over something as luxurious as pride would be a waste."

"Now I'm extremely curious. Who was the first?"

"My lady, of course. Her Highness Elin. The handsomest person in the world."

"That, I'll grant."

The handsomest of them all, Princess Elin, was watching with open satisfaction. Ilesin conceded the face. Handsome she was — remarkably so.

"Were you meant to take the floor with your liege?"

"After you. Which means I shall have danced with the two handsomest people in this hall."

She lifted her gaze to his and spoke as if the sight had struck her.

"Your eyes are the color of grapes."

Everyone believed them black. She alone had seen that they were, in truth, a deep purple. In fairness, hardly anyone spared Ilesin's eyes a glance. They looked at his nose, or his mouth, and the bolder, ruder ones let their gaze travel a good deal lower.

"It's a color I love."

He wanted to tell her that hers were the color of red petals dissolved in water — and that, as of today, he had decided to love that color.

"And thank you."

"For saving you?"

"No. For dancing with me, when you look like this."

"Do you treat everyone this way?"

"This way?"

"As though you're seducing them."

"Only very handsome men. Of course a man like that is seduced by every woman whose eyes meet his. I'm simply one of them. One butterfly in a swarm that never stops arriving."

When the dance ended, she raised his hand and pressed her lips to his wrist.

Looking into her face, Ilesin smiled before he knew he was smiling — wide, and unguarded. He wished she had no fiancé. No. That could never be. So he found himself wanting, at the very least, for the engagement to be undone, as if it had never existed.

"Thank you, Elsgite of Arandia."

He bowed, took her hand, and kissed the back of it. She gathered her skirt, returned the courtesy, and turned. A wealth of golden hair spilled over her straight, slender shoulders and swayed past her waist. Beautiful hair. He thought that if he touched it, it would feel like closing his hand around a fistful of petals.

He watched until she had gone back to her place, and only then withdrew. At once every expectant gaze in the room swung toward him. The Emperor spoke.

"You dance well."

"I dance badly. And this was the first time, and the last. I'm already tired."

Disappointment rose in the women's eyes, and anger with it. Fillion, who had been watching, turned on his heel and made for the doors. An attendant hurried after him and tried to talk him back, but Fillion glared at Ilesin, snapped his head aside, and was gone. The attendant came to the Emperor.

"Forgive me, Your Majesty. Lord Fillion says he wishes to return and prepare for the match."

The Emperor's brow creased. Summoning knights on the eve of their fights had been a thoughtless notion from the start, and he chose to let it pass. Ilesin rose as well.

"Then permit me to rest, too."

"Yes. Off you go. Your rival has left. You can hardly stay here alone."

Only when he reached his lodgings did Ilesin realize he had abandoned his entire party. He was not worried about Nazares, or about Hisnil. He was worried about whoever had been left to manage the evening. Hisnil would drain more than half the imperial cellar, and Nazares would eat through the provisions laid in for the next banquet besides.

They would be thrown out when the hour came, he told himself, and he meant to sleep properly first. He would have, if not for a visitor of another kind.

The man appeared as suddenly as a demon's herald, a basket of fruit in his arms. He was dressed like a servant, but the line of the shoulders and the set of the back belonged to a nobleman wearing a servant's clothes.

"Good evening, Lord Ilesin."

The voice was just as smooth — soft, and unhurried.

"What is it you actually do?"

"What do I look like?"

"Thighs and arms say fighting man. The face says noble. A spine that straight says a high one."

"Close enough. Her Highness Nivella sent me."

"Her daughter has already wished me well, so I'll count Her Highness's wishes received and hear no more of them. You didn't come only to say that. State your business."

"You'll cross blades with Lord Fillion, won't you?"

"Unless Fillion forfeits. Why?"

"The Imperial Swordsmanship Tournament is as famous for its regrettable casualties as for anything else. Men die in the matches. Men come close."

Well. Look at this.

Ilesin smiled.

"Hardly something to say in front of a man who's about to fight."

"You will win, of course, Lord Ilesin. I was speaking of the regrettable thing that may befall Fillion."

"The match hasn't even begun. Whether I have the skill to decide if another man lives or dies — no one knows that yet."

"I do."

The man looked at him with black eyes.

"I know Fillion's skill, and I know yours. The moment that decides life and death will come to you."

"Have we fought on the same field? You're very certain."

"We have. Fortunately, on the same side. Even then you were already better than Fillion. You'll be better now. A boy mercenary then. A Maze Conqueror now."

He knew the war at once. At nineteen he had fought beside the Arandian host Grand Duchess Nivella sent.

"Then you would be Lord Durik of Arandia. Knight of the Blue Wings."

The man smiled.

"I am."

One of Nivella's most faithful, and among the ablest commanders the Grand Duchess kept. To send a knight of that standing was almost absurd.

"And the reason? Fillion is a bastard. He can never be the legitimate heir, so he is no rival to Princess Elin. This is the sort of work you give a cutthroat in an alley."

"By ordinary sense, yes. The trouble is that he himself is not a particularly sensible man. Nor is his father."

"What's the price?"

"Name whatever you wish. Recognition as heir to Pobern goes without saying, and there is a great deal the Grand Duchess can do for you. Her Highness Grand Duchess Nivella descends from the great hero Elfsride. She is hegemon of the western coasts, and soon she will be a queen."

"If she's that great, her husband's bastard ought to be settled with a single axe."

"Ah. But one must mind how it looks."

He shrugged.

"And minding how things look has a way of tangling a person in knots."

Ilesin remembered him from the banquet, standing at Princess Elin's side, and Elsgite's. A curious man, he thought — the sort whose very face seemed to change with the room.

"Then tell me what you're asking, and tell it plainly. No metaphors. No talking around it."

Ilesin studied him. He might have been asking someone to bring him a piece of fruit.

"Do only that, and we can be very good friends. Your enemies will be Her Highness Nivella's enemies, and we will always aid you. You need only kill Fillion. Quite simple."

"It looks simple to you?"

"Yes."

It was a standing rule of the tournament that no one was ever held to account for injury or death inside the arena. Even a child of the Emperor, killed on that sand in the course of a match, would leave no one to answer for it. A principle set down so plainly meant that such a thing had happened before.

Ilesin thought of the woman.

Of the woman who had looked at her fiancé with resentment burning in her eyes, and who had, in the end, turned away.

What she felt for Fillion might have been a love that would not let go, or a love already failing. It might have been nothing but a weary clinging, the sweetness long since gone out of it.

Even so, if the man died, she would grieve. A fiancé who had never been loved, and who then went and died besides — he would become the fiancé she could never forget. His name, and the name of the man who killed him, bound together for good.

That, he hated. More than anything.

On the day of the match, when the opening came, Ilesin let the strength go out of his hand and kicked Fillion flying. Fillion went out of bounds, and defeat was declared. It was over in a single pass. The crowd roared for a victory so clean, and those about to collect on their wagers roared hotter still. Every voice rose in praise of the man who had overwhelmed his opponent, and they shouted a name.

And yet—

There is no one who can decide every ending, and no one who can see how every story ends.

Fillion returned to Anhar, raised the demon, and laid Moravik in ruins.

The Grand Duchess of Arandia, the great Nivella, was murdered. Her heir, Princess Elin, vanished. Of the sage Marca, and of the daughter she had taken as her own, no one could say whether they lived or died.

Black smoke climbed into the sky. From the blood-soaked earth, everyone screamed.

If time could be turned back.

If only it could — then Ilesin, knowing what was to come, would have taken the man's head on that sand without a moment's pause. But the Ilesin who did not know the future would spare him every time. However often he was brought back to that instant, the one thing he could not bear was the thought of that woman grieving for Fillion.