The Duelist

by Eric Vall

  We both exploded into a fury of motion, and I dodged and parried the throwing stars as I sank into a drumbeat rhythm. After the eighth shuriken glanced off my blade with a vibrating ring, I didn’t even have time to pause before Zoie started on a handful of daggers that jarred my wrist every time I swatted one away.

  “Faster!” Zoie said and threw two blades at me like firing two bullets from a gun, and I deflected one with a right shoulder guard, but the second one grazed my exposed left shoulder.

  The burning pain cracked open that inner sanctum where the time-trance power was stored under the shell of my focus.

  Tick.

  I slipped into the time stream and felt it rush around me as if I was standing still in the middle of a river with strong currents tugging at me from all sides. I’d entered the trance stream several times now, but this time was different because I felt clearer on how to actually call it forth. It was still hard to try and modulate the sheer power and keep it from just taking over, but it was clear the combination of Zoie’s visualization techniques and focus exercises helped me understand the time-trance a little better.

  Tick.

  Zoie was stuck in the stream, and I saw each finger let go of the dagger one at a time as she released the weapon at half-speed. I stepped to the side, and the dagger passed harmlessly by me, but Zoie was preparing to throw another one.

  Tick.

  The cracks opened wider, and the time current tried to pull me back harder, but I forced through and focused on what I wanted to accomplish.

  Tick.

  Just as Zoie let fly her second dagger, I took a flying leap, rolled under the weapon aimed at my heart, and popped up into a sprint right as time snapped back and the current released me.

  Before Zoie could reset and reach for another dagger, I was already positioned with the point of my blade aimed right at her swan-like neck.

  “Gotcha,” I said with a wink, and she held up her hands so the dagger fell to the ground.

  “You did indeed,” she purred around a sassy smirk and then nodded in the direction we left Shay. “You should see your audience.”

  I turned and saw how Shay was still perched on top of the fence with both delicate hands up to her mouth as she stared with her emerald orbs opened wide with astonishment.

  When I approached her, she was still gazing at me like I was a complex math equation that just told her two and two is five, and she was trying to rationalize how. It was cute, and I continued to grin as I offered my hand for her to get down.

  “What…” she trailed off, and she peered up at me when her feet were back on the ground. “How did you move so fast?”

  “Alex calls it a time-trance, and when he brings this power to the surface, he is able to react quicker than a seasoned warrior,” Zoie said as she walked up to us after she finished collecting all of the weapons she threw at me.

  “What is a time-trance?” Shay asked, and I imagined I could hear the processors whirring inside her calculating brain.

  “It’s…well…” I rubbed the back of my neck as I recalled the recent exercise with Zoie, and I started again. “I always thought it was a supernatural power I suddenly got when I came to Aventoll, but I’m beginning to think that’s not really the case.”

  “In what way?” Zoie asked, and she tilted her head and flicked one ear.

  “This time, it didn’t feel like an alien power, it actually felt like it was always there inside sleeping, but now that I’m in Aventoll, it’s finally awake,” I described to the best of my ability.

  There was still so much about this mysterious ability I didn’t understand, especially because every time I tried to master it, more and more seemed to be uncovered.

  “That is truly amazing,” Shay breathed.

  “Our Alex has truly been blessed by the Goddess, Shay,” Zoie said and reached for Shay’s hand so she could give it a squeeze.

  Then the two women exchanged a weighty and knowing glance as if sharing some deep understanding I couldn’t hope to grasp.

  I was still pretty new to the way this world operated, and I couldn’t imagine the kinds of things these strong women had to do in order to survive.

  Hopefully, their lives of merely surviving were at an end, and the three of us could begin to truly live.

  But I had a few things to do first before that could happen.

  “Come on,” I said with a smile at these two beautiful creatures, and despite the Herculean task I had to face in less than a day, I felt like the luckiest person alive. “Let’s race again.”

  Shay and I spent the next few hours racing each other for the flag until the sun dipped too low behind the mountains and we were forced to land. I tried to take Zoie up a few times, but she expressed very clearly she preferred the ground.

  “You are afraid of heights, brave warrior?” Shay asked with a little teasing edge to her voice as she poked at the cat-woman with a thin finger.

  Zoie hissed, but I could see she was trying to keep a smile off her own stoic face.

  “Fear can be a valuable tool when honed with the whetstone of logic,” Zoie said primly and even raised her nose up into the air.

  Shay laughed a full blooming sunflower laugh and then practically jumped into Zoie’s arms as if she’d never before heard something so amusing.

  I could relate.

  “You are delightful, sister of my heart!” she sang out, and Zoie blushed and pushed her away when Shay’s questing fingers tried to poke her sides again.

  I watched the two of them play with each other, and I had to bite my lip from bursting out into ecstatic laughter. The feeling was almost like winning the lotto on Christmas, which also happened to be my birthday thankyouverymuch, and then finding out someone nominated you for the Nobel Peace Prize.

  And all I had to do was kill Shay’s husband to make her mine.

  The idea was feeling less… weird and deviant every minute I spent in her presence.

  “And tell me, dear heart, is our Alex honed with logic?” Shay asked through her bubbly champagne giggles.

  “Sometimes. Therefore, he has us to help him thus.” Zoie looped her arm through Shay’s and gave me a taunting smirk.

  “Hey!” I exclaimed as if I was offended, and then I jumped into the fray so I could tickle and tease the pair of them wherever I could.

  Then the three of us took turns rough-housing and chasing each other for a while until Shay and I conceded to Zoie’s pouncing prowess, and when we were all good and worn out with laughter, we called it a day.

  Just as we were tidying up the tack from the two canterflies, Shay’s badger-like housekeeper rushed into the stables with her yellow dinner plate eyes.

  “Milady! The Master is home early, and he is on the warpath something fierce.” Vera wrung her hands together.

  “Bala is home?” Shay gasped, and it was like all the color drained out of her to puddle on the floor.

  “What do we do?” Zoie asked, and I could tell by her clenching and unclenching fists that she wished she had a weapon at her disposal.

  “I’m sorry! He wasn’t supposed to be home until tomorrow, I don’t--” Shay’s voice cut out when Ren’s booming yell sounded from somewhere outside as he called for his wife.

  “Shay, look at me. Calm down and take a breath.” I grasped her shoulders so she would feel anchored down in the midst of her swirling panic.

  The phoenix-woman inhaled deeply before letting it out in a large gust.

  “Okay, follow me,” she said once she composed herself, and she led Zoie and I to the farthest stall where Prosper was housed right next to Victory. “Stay here. I will get him to go away, and then we can sneak you out the back. Just promise me you will not move or make a sound no matter what you see or hear, do I have your word?’

  “But--” I said.

  “Do I have your word?” she insisted as her green eyes burned into me.

  “Yes,” I promised and reached out to squeeze her hand.

  “Shale-Lea!” R
en barked as the door to the stable banged open, and the cause of the commotion came storming into the space with sharp angry strides.

  “Shh,” Shay said to us one last time and then climbed up the wall separating the stalls so she could slip into Victory’s.

  “Shale-Lea!” Ren screamed again, and he sounded like he was getting closer.

  “You don’t have to be a beast, Bala, I’m right here,” Shay said as cool as a cucumber as she walked out of Victory’s stall, and from the angle Zoie and I were pressed into the far shadowy corner, we could see the line of Shay’s back.

  “Where have you been?” Ren growled, and I could see the shadow his pointy face cast on the wall next to Shay.

  “Tending to my creatures and estate, where else?” Shay said. “I could ask the same of you, husband. You’ve been gone many days, and the races are the day after tomorrow.”

  “I am well aware,” the man snapped and took another step closer into her space. “I am also aware there is a lot of talk I’ve heard about you recently.”

  “What kind of gossip are they spreading about me this time?” she sighed and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “That my little wife has been seen in Gatetown keeping strange company,” Ren hissed.

  For a second, my heart plummeted to the floor at the implication Ren knew what was going on and would spring on us any minute, but before I could truly panic, the eagle-man continued.

  “You know what will happen if I tell your father dearest about your meetups with Horus. He will disown you, and then you effectively become a blemish on my status.” He stepped in again, and his hand struck out and clamped around Shay’s throat. “Then you’ll be useless to me…”

  My vision flashed red at the sight of him bearing down on her much smaller and petite frame until she was gasping.

  “No, you do not have a witness,” Zoie hissed as she stopped me from blowing our cover. “If you kill him without the Duelist Rite, she could be sent back to her father.”

  “You can be my witness,” I gritted out.

  “I cannot,” she said as she cupped my face so she could whisper into my ear. “I am your first wife, and therefore my testimony is automatically biased.”

  I clenched my fist and pounded my thigh in frustration. She was right. If I killed him without legitimate witnesses, Shay could be returned to the Asher who owned her previously, just like Zoie could be returned to the Traders.

  Timing was everything, but mother-fucking-hell did it kill me to sit there and do nothing.

  “You… know you need me… I manage… your…” Shay spat out in strangled breaths and then dropped to her knees when Ren let her go.

  “I can find another who can keep my business investments running just as well, if not better,” Ren said as he loomed over her. “After all, Mec is bound to have plenty of wives to choose from, so I’d start behaving if I were you. You might be lucky enough to be kept around as a concubine, since you are useless where it really counts in giving me heirs.”

  Shay gasped in pain as if the verbal blow was ten times worse than anything he could have inflicted on her physically.

  “Tch,” Ren said, and I could see his cruel copper eyes as he sneered down at the beautiful creature at his feet. “Clean yourself up, you silly girl. You have a dress fitting tomorrow that you will go to this time because I refuse to be seen with anything less than the best at the races.”

  And with that, he stormed out of the stables as if he’d just got done taking out the garbage instead of addressing his wife.

  The moment the doors closed, Zoie and I were running to Shay, who was still weeping silently where she’d fallen.

  “Shay…” I gently touched her shoulder as I knelt on the ground next to her.

  She immediately turned her face into my chest, and I held her against me as she shook with sorrow.

  “I’m going to fucking kill him,” I vowed, and a high-pitched ringing sounded in my ears like a tea kettle as my blood boiled.

  This marked the second time that fucker has hurt someone I cared about, and the races could not come fast enough.

  Vengeance could not come fast enough.

  “You both need to leave,” Shay said after her trembling subsided, and she pulled away from my hold and looked up at me with her tear-streaked face. “If Bala discovers your presence, it will ruin everything.”

  “But surely we can’t leave you here,” Zoie said, and she tucked a wavy strand of Shay’s crimson hair back over her shoulder where it had come undone from when Ren had strangled her.

  “You must, dear heart,” Shay said and stood on shaky legs with my and Zoie’s help.

  “Mistress?” the mousy maidservant with the big brown ears asked as she slipped in through the back door. “Ms. Noona said to bring you these.”

  She raised our travel cloaks in her hands, and Zoie rushed over to get them from her.

  I held fast to Shay’s hand when she tried to pull away.

  “I hate leaving you,” I said through my clenched jaw.

  “Alex,” Shay said in a voice that sounded like a misty dawn, and she reached up and cupped my face in her soft hands. “The stage is set, and we all must play our parts, myself included.”

  “But--” I said as a sick feeling clenched down on my esophagus.

  The anger and adrenaline had built up with nowhere to go, and my body was left shaking as every fiber of my being was primed to rain down righteous destruction. I felt like I was about to go nuclear, but the target of my fury was out of my reach, and it was taking all of my willpower to stop myself from tearing out of the stables and finishing the fucker off once and for all.

  Magical sword or not.

  But then Zoie was there flowing up behind me like cool water as she pressed her body along the length of my back. Her chin hooked over my shoulder as one of her hands combed through the hair at the back of my neck, and just like that, the pounding tension drained out of me as I stood between these two women who were my future.

  “I still hate it,” I grumbled and leaned down to press a kiss against Shay’s temple.

  “I do, too,” Shay said as she gazed up at both Zoie and me with her shimmering forest eyes. “I have been surrounded by the finest things all my life, but I have never hoped for a treasure such as the two of you.”

  Zoie reached out and took Shay’s hand when she offered it, and the three of us embraced for as long as we could, but time was pressing onward, and we didn’t want Ren to be suspicious if Shay was absent for too long.

  She was already taking a risk by walking us to the edge of the property to the back road.

  “I will keep Prosper and Rylan out of Bala’s sight, and I will send them to you tomorrow,” Shay said as she unhooked the wooden gate through the pasture behind the stables. “Look for Roofus. He will be delivering your registration papers that will also include your stay at the Rider’s Inn located in the Palace Square. Wait until the last moment to check into the Inn in case Bala’s spies are watching.”

  “Will you really be okay?” I asked as I lightly touched the faint ring of dark smudges that were in the early stages of bruising her delicate throat.

  “I will,” Shay assured me, and even though she was disheveled, battered, and tear-stained, she smiled a glorious smile like the first rays melting the snow at the end of a long winter. “For once, I will be.”

  “Your soul has been forged with the strongest steel,” Zoie said, and then the two women hugged fiercely.

  “Take care of yourself, Shay,” I said, and then it was my turn to hold her petite frame against my much larger one. She felt as fragile as a bird, but I knew now what she seemed was not at all what she was.

  “I will,” she promised and stood on tip-toe so she could give me a series of butterfly kisses with silken lips that fluttered sweetly over mine and made me ache for more. “Now, go, the both of you, before I do something foolish.”

  The way she looked as she hugged herself when Zoie and I walked away was one
of the worst sights imaginable, and I kept a hold of Zoie’s hand like a lifeline because I knew if I let go, I would find a way to talk myself into running back.

  As it was, every step that carried us farther away from Shale-Lea felt like a hot poker to my gut.

  But once Ren was dead, she would be mine forever.

  Chapter 20

  “It is dark now,” Zoie said and tugged me to a stop.

  “What?” I asked as I snapped out of my stormy thoughts. “How long have we been walking?”

  I didn’t know how long we’d been walking, but the sun had truly set some time ago, and if it wasn’t for the light of the moon that never seemed to be anything but full, we would have been forced to stop a while ago.

  “Long enough,” she said and pulled me in so our foreheads touched, and I was forced to close my eyes and breathe in sync with her. “Let’s find a place to camp for the night.”

  “Okay,” I sighed and leaned into her stoic pragmatism that always kept me grounded and focused.

  “There is a Wandering Tree just over there,” my wife said and gestured across a small clearing where a large tree with upward arching branches swayed in the breeze. Each branch had a thick draping curtain of something that looked like Spanish moss, and they were long enough to brush the ground.

  “What is a Wandering Tree?” I asked as I followed her toward the squat tree that could have come out of a Dr. Seuss book.

  “These trees are said to appear when Wanderers have need of shelter,” she said, and as she moved aside a mossy branch with her arm and led me through the bowers with a wondrous smile on her face, I could tell she was getting ready to tell me another one of her favorite tales.

  “Do the trees actually move around?” I asked and ducked under another curtain as we tried to get closer to the trunk.

  “No one has seen one move, but many have sworn whenever they try to return to a particular tree, it is no longer there,” Zoie replied and faced me with her sapphire eyes wide and twinkling. “This is the first time I’ve seen one.”

  “It’s the perfect tree to pitch a tent in,” I mused when we finally made it through the thicket of hanging branches.