Killing Critics

by Carol O'Connell

  And now he realized he was no longer alone.

  Mallory was standing just behind him. When he turned to face her, she was looking up at him. In the next moment, he had the disorienting impression that their eyes met on a level plane.

  “How long have you been there?”

  “Awhile.” Her body was a lean dark silhouette against the light walls, attired in blue jeans and a long-sleeved black jersey of silk.

  “May I?” She held out her hand to take his sword, and he gave it to her. Her black running shoes made no sound as she moved across the room to the long brown leather bag by the door.

  The door—how disconcerting. It was closed, and a chair was wedged under the knob. He gathered she didn’t want the match to be disturbed. Or perhaps she didn’t want any witnesses. If she had only done that to unnerve him, he would have approved.

  She knelt down to unzip her fencing bag and free a pair of sabers. Now she slid his own sword into the bag and zipped it up. She came back to him again, carrying one cavalry saber and swinging the other, slicing the air in front of her as though she were cutting a path to get at him. She handed one sword to him, and he recognized the family heirloom.

  “Charles loaned you these sabers?”

  “No, I stole them.”

  He touched the cutting edge of the blade and then the point. “You’ve been busy with a whetstone, haven’t you?”

  “Yes. Razor edges and needle-sharp points.”

  “It’s an interesting choice of weapons, Mallory, but too dangerous for sport. We’ll use my fencing sabers. My pair is rigged to score electronically.” Now he noted the round bulge in her fencing bag. So she had at least brought a mask and perhaps a glove, but apparently no jacket. “I have a body wire, all the electronic gear. You’ll find a spare jacket and everything else you need in the locker room.” He pointed to a door at the back of the gymnasium. “You can change clothes—”

  “Thanks,” she said, hefting the antique saber, testing the weight of it. “But I’m already dressed.”

  “Mallory, that silk jersey is too flimsy. Even with the blunted swords, you need the proper costume for protection. I won’t fence with you until you’re suited up.”

  “I won’t need any protection. And we will use the cavalry sabers.” She pointed her sword to the mask on the floor. “Pick that up and put it on. I want to get this over with.”

  He shook his head, incredulous. What was she playing at?

  She dipped her sword into the helmet that lay by his feet, and raised it up to the level of his hand. He took it off her sword, but only cradled it in his free arm. “I won’t fight you with these sabers. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Yes you will.” She backed up two paces and assumed the en garde position.

  He smiled. This promised to be a marvelous evening. “No, Mallory. Even with the cutting edge and the point, you’re still at a great disadvantage.”

  “You also have a cutting edge and a point. I wouldn’t like anyone to say I didn’t give you a sporting chance. Put on the mask, Quinn. You’ll need it.”

  “You can’t be serious. I don’t think you really understand the damage—”

  “Oh, I know all about damage.” She jabbed the sword close to his face and pulled back.

  He never flinched, and he wondered if that didn’t disappoint her. “I won’t fight you while you’re defenseless.”

  “I may be the least defenseless person you ever met.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I don’t?” She slashed the air in front of his face. “This is a free kill for me, if that’s the way I want to play it. You’re the one with protective gear—not me. The bet is well known. I can get away with this. Put on the damn mask and put up your sword, or I’ll do you right now.”

  “I won’t cut you.”

  “Oh, I know that—I’m counting on it.” She lashed out with her sword, this time with the unmistakable intention of cutting him.

  He quickly stepped back out of the reach of her blade. He put on the mask and raised his sword to en garde position. She followed him with a burst of short, unnerving jumps and lunges, her sword arm extended and the point within an inch of his chest, driving him back, slicing the air with her blade. He retreated with long steps to keep the distance between them. Where the line of the strip was marked on the floor, he held his ground and met her sword with parries, neatly killing the action of her swings in a long phrase of sharp reports, steel clashing on steel.

  “You’re very selective about sportsmanship, Quinn.” She lowered her sword and stepped back to the line at the edge of the narrow playing field. “Koozeman didn’t have a sporting chance, did he?”

  “Neither did Aubry.”

  It was eerie to meet an opponent who lacked the cover of a mask. Within the cage of steel mesh, his own mask of a face was an accident of birth, an illusion, a counterfeit. Her naked automaton face was the genuine article.

  She advanced on him in long steps. “And what about Sabra?” Her sword was aiming a slice to his head. “Now that’s what I call real damage.”

  He parried, raising his sword to block the swing of hers. Oh, bloody hell. Without the offensive strike he was only treading water. She had all the reckless energy of youth, not even heeding his own sharp point.

  “I’ve seen your sister, Quinn. I’ve talked to her. You’re a real piece of work, you bastard.”

  Anywhere he touched her with the sword, he would draw blood. He could not come to grips with the idea of maiming her. It was ludicrous. This could not be happening. It was a fight to restrain the reflex instinct of the strike. “I tried to help my sister.”

  “Yeah, right.” She made a thrust to his mask, and she did it with enough power to foil his parry, and to spread the metal mesh and send the point an inch inside the mask.

  Her blade pulled free of the mesh and left him stunned. By this time, he should have been long accustomed to attack and well beyond shock. It was late to be learning the difference between games and life.

  She walked away from him. His old lessons of humility deepened. She thought nothing of turning her back on him.

  She spun around to face him, hovering on the strip, and hovering in time—waiting.

  “I put Sabra in the best hospitals money could buy. She kept running away from them.”

  Mallory rushed him, and he warded off her blade with a defensive fly of steel. She came at him again, and he parried this attack too, metal crashing again and again. “You put your sister in the same asylum with Oren Watt.” She was backing him to the wall. “You think that was a good idea?”

  “No, Orwelhouse was her own idea.” He glided to the right.

  She followed, advancing on him, relentless, thrusting toward his center. “So the institutional route didn’t work.” She made a slice to his head, and he blocked her swing. “And then you decided to help your sister in another way.”

  He stepped back to parry another slice to his head.

  She followed him with her eyes, her body and her sword, all parts of the same relentless machine. “You’ve been feeding Sabra information you got from me.” Her sword rose to the level of her hips. It hung in the air. He froze, waiting to see which way the blade would fall.

  “You used me to feed her obsession.” Mallory’s sword angled in a half circle to strike his side. He met her blade with his, and parried ten times before one of her strikes broke through his guard. She cut the thick material at the throat of his mask. The padding spilled out in clumps. He warded off her next attack with a beat of his blade, and she stepped back.

  “Poor crazy Sabra. Revenge is all she’s living for, isn’t it?”

  “You don’t know what it was like, Mallory. You had to be there, to see what I saw.”

  “I’ve been there.” She lunged and cut to his head, bringing her steel down on his blade again and again, as he held his sword high to fend off the rain of blows.

  “Oh, God, the places I’ve been.” Her next slice was lower,
and he parried to the right. She lowered her own saber and threw it from one hand to the other. It was an unnerving play he’d never seen before. And now the sword flew back to her right hand to cut his undefended side. He heard the material rip along the midsection of his jacket.

  Sweat ran into his eyes, but she was dry, cool, so single-minded in her cutting and stabbing. Her reaction time was twenty-five years younger, and her speed was astonishing. She was a slicing machine—she never tired. He listened to his own ragged breath inside the mask.

  She left the marked outline of the strip, going outside the parameters of the combat field. That fit so well, he should have seen it coming. Of course she wouldn’t recognize boundaries. Now all the wheels and works of his brain were stripping gears in their speed to devise a strategy to match hers.

  Too late. She rushed him from the side, slashing at the padded bib beneath his mask. This time he felt the point close to flesh. Only the jacket’s high collar, one thin layer of material, protected his throat.

  “How many times do you suppose I have to do that before I get down to the real thing?” Her sword was lowered to her side. It rose swiftly, faster than his eye could follow. She stabbed his mask at the level of his eyes, and he jumped back, hitting the wall, the last possible step of retreat.

  “Can’t you guess?” She turned her back on him and walked to the far end of the strip. He moved away from the wall and resumed his own place within the marked outlines of the field. They stared at one another across this space.

  “You watched me work over Koozeman at the gallery. Then you passed your guesswork along to your sister.”

  There was no warning before the rush. Long-stepping, she came after him, jabbing holes in the air, coming closer, now lunging to thrust, recovering her move and lunging again. “You damn amateur!” Every attack maneuver was hers, leaving him only the defensive moves and the escaping backward steps.

  “You’ve made so many stupid mistakes, Quinn. Aubry wasn’t the primary target. You were wrong about that.” Steel clanged with rapid strikes and counterstrikes, and in her swings he discerned the rhythm of a hammer on a nail.

  “How can you possibly know—”

  She broke off the attack and stepped back. “It was always a money motive.” She lowered her sword. “The killer stood to make money on the death of the artist, Peter Ariel. Aubry came in while they were cutting up his body.”

  “No, it didn’t happen that way. I was called there to discover the bodies because Aubry was one of the victims. The setup was planned before she even died!”

  “No, Quinn. The killers needed a critic to kick off the hype. Koozeman probably figured the police were too stupid to recognize a dead body as a work of art. So he used Aubry’s name as bait for you. But she was never meant to show up at the gallery. That was an accident. Something went wrong.”

  She was dangling the sword carelessly in her hand. Now it rose suddenly to attack position. Forgetting forty years of training which told him to wait on her advance, he stepped back too soon, his sword rising to parry. But she never left her place on the strip. Now she let her saber dangle again. And his own sword came down. She smiled, and in that smile, she told him that she owned him now.

  “Let’s go over the lies you told to Markowitz. You were late getting to the gallery that night.”

  “Yes, but I explained that.”

  “You lied to Markowitz. You’ll have to do better with me.”

  “As I explained to your father, the cab was caught in a traffic jam on a street where a film was being made. So I had to get out and take a subway. I’m no good at navigating subways. I’d never used—”

  “Markowitz knew you lied to him. I found his copy of the shooting schedule for that old movie and all the city location permits. It took me a while to work it out. The film location wasn’t between your apartment and the gallery. And that’s all the old man knew—that you lied. He never got to interview the family. He didn’t know Sabra was meeting your mother that night. But I did—after I talked to Aubry’s father. Then I noticed the shooting location was midway between your house and your mother’s. So you and your sister saw the movie crew on the way to your mother’s house. I even know you drove there in her car.”

  “Sabra was never—”

  She rushed him with long steps, a swing and a cut to the arm. His parry was too late. He looked down to the blood drops staining his sleeve. She had bloodied him, and yet he remained true to the brotherhood which refused to believe that the female could be the deadlier sex. The wound was hard evidence against her gender, and still he would only defend and retreat. His mind was coming apart; his code remained intact. He could finish her with one thrust, and yet he would not.

  And she knew it.

  “What’s the point of lying anymore?” She lowered her sword and stalked off to the far end of the strip. “You got the message at your mother’s house—you called the paper or they tracked you down. Then you and Sabra drove her car to the gallery. You were late, but not late enough to account for the delay in calling the police.”

  “You couldn’t possibly know that.”

  “Oh, no? Tell me what doesn’t fit. Sabra saw what they’d done to Aubry, and she went right over the screaming edge. You needed time to calm her down and get her safely away—time to plan. You had to keep the police and the media away from Sabra. You decided she couldn’t stand up to an interrogation—what a gentleman. You made up the subway story to explain why you were late calling the police, why there would be no record of a cab log. So they couldn’t follow the trail back to your mother’s house and Sabra. That was the first lie.”

  She left the strip to walk around him, making side circles, slow and quiet. This was no maneuver learned at school—she was playing with him. His life had been lived within parameters of form, where all the moves were familiar, almost a ballet. Nothing in his experience had prepared him for what lay beyond the boundary lines. The sight of Aubry had ruptured his mind and not taught him a thing.

  He turned to watch Mallory, moving as she moved, revolving to keep pace with her circles. All the aggression was hers, she picked the shots, began the dance and stopped it when she wished. She controlled the court, the game, himself.

  She was so sure she was going to beat him—that much, but no more, was in her face. And worse, it was in his own mind as Mallory danced up to the mark to play, ignoring his blade, she thought so little of his chances.

  His concentration was broken. He missed the parry and let her through to bloody his side. She backed away again to the center of the court. And now she broke with any pretense of form, running across the floor, her saber describing circles in the air. When she had closed the distance, she dropped to one knee and sliced low toward his unprotected thigh, a forbidden zone which no opponent ever aimed for.

  He cursed himself for not anticipating her. He had heard the rip of material, but he would not look down. If she had cut him again, it would do him no good to see the blood. He parried the next rush, doing twice the brainwork to cover his body and his legs.

  She broke off, stepping back, light as a cat, to the end of the strip. When she moved forward again, it was still on cat’s feet, an unhurried, stalking advance.

  She began this bout in slow-action time, the cadence of casual conversation, as her blade met his in easy strikes and counters. The swordplay accelerated with more rapid strikes, but still no force, light touches only—You kiss my sword, and I kiss yours. Faster now, and faster—quick reports of steel sounded on steel. The tempo was more the breathless pace of something carnal, heart pounding—

  Suddenly, Mallory broke with him and retreated to the edge of the strip.

  Sweat blurred his eyes as she came dancing back to him with short steps and a rather ordinary gambit. He parried easily, and this should have made him suspicious. Instead of answering his parry with a riposte, she let her steel slide down his sword until she closed with him, hilt to hilt, swords pointing up, only a few inches between their bod
ies. She pressed closer until they stood corps-àcorps, in the forbidden contact of opponents.

  Softly, she said, “I’m going to take you now.”

  And he believed her. He was staring into the long slants of her green eyes. Her sword was disengaging, lowering. And this was the moment where he lost the match, even before he felt her metal slipping into the handle of his saber. With one elegant move, she backed away and ripped the steel from his hand with the pry bar of her own sword and sent his saber flying across the court, clanging to the floor.

  He glimpsed the bright triumph of a child in her stance and in her eyes—and then the child was gone. Deadly serious now. “I won.”

  Stone silence. She stepped forward, sword rising.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “It was my job to keep score, wasn’t it? Well, would you like me to tally up the bloodings?” He looked down at the cuts, thin lines of blood on his side, his arms and one leg. “There are a few tears in the material that didn’t get through to the skin, but of course they count too.”

  “I want to collect my bet now.”

  “Suppose I sign a confession to the murders of Dean Starr and Avril Koozeman. Would that be satisfactory payment?”

  “No. You’re not the type. You won’t even make a strike to save yourself. And leaving your sister out in the rain—well, that doesn’t count as violence.”

  “What was I supposed to do? Lock her up in a maximum-security ward for the rest of her life? She’d rather be dead.”

  She moved in close to him. “I think you meant to say that she’d be better off dead.” Too late, he felt her leg hook around his own, unbalancing him as she pushed him to the floor. She stood over him with the sword to his throat. “Pay up! I want Sabra.”

  “I don’t know where she is.”

  “Liar!” She pulled the sword back only a little, slowly angling the point to his face. She thrust it into his mask again and again. “How many drives before I get your eyes? I won! Deliver what you promised.”