Tau fought with the fervor of a zealot. He would prove he was more than Jayyed believed his birth allowed, and to do it he would maintain the pace until he won or his heart burst. It was what made him the fighter he was.
His edge didn’t come from his body or blood. It didn’t come from gifts. It was that he desired mastery more than he desired breath. It was that he wanted revenge more than he wanted to live. It was that his father’s life had mattered every bit as much as the lives of Nobles, and though they didn’t believe that yet, they would.
Already Jayyed was flagging and had taken to pushing off and away from Tau, using the gaps in battle to catch his breath. Then he began using the gaps to waste it.
“We are a people besieged,” he told Tau, his voice thin with the strain of speaking and defending. “We have all lost something, someone.”
Jayyed threw a feint at Tau’s face. Tau slapped it away and sent his umqondisi stumbling back.
“My mother lost her parents to a raid and I lost my wife to one,” Jayyed said.
Tau was not interested in Jayyed’s losses and fired his blades at the man’s shield and sword.
“My daughter lost her mother and never forgave me for not being there. I was in the Wrist, fighting. She hated me for that. For protecting others and not being there to protect them.”
Soft stories, Tau thought, clenching his jaw and switching from sword form to form, mutating and enhancing each as he went. He darted in, Jayyed reached up to block, and Tau’s weak-side blade cracked him in the ribs.
“Ack!” Jayyed wheezed, pain evident on his face as he backed away and continued to prattle. “My daughter is Gifted. I found out from my neighbor. Jamilah was already gone when I returned. Our hut empty. No goodbye.”
Tau hit him again, forcing out another cry of pain.
“She excelled at the Gifted Citadel.” Jayyed was retreating, unable to string together a consistent defense. “She fights now. Calls down dragons on hedeni. Relishes—Ah! Cek!” Tau had taken him in the thigh with the edge of a blade. “She… she relishes her role in their deaths.”
Tau saw a killing blow and took it. Jayyed blocked and Tau sent in another kill strike, this time with his strong side. Jayyed darted left, moving away from Tau’s swing, swaying with weariness. Tau, tasting blood from his overworked lungs, dashed forward, reengaging.
“Horrible,” Jayyed said. “To think her… like that. Anger, hate… burning her alive.”
Tau stabbed out, hitting Jayyed in the shield arm.
Jayyed yelped, grimaced, but kept talking. “This war… it’s made monsters of us. I don’t want to die a monster. I don’t want it for Jamilah… I don’t want our people exterminated and remembered that way.”
Tau growled, swords whirling for Jayyed’s head.
Jayyed blocked one sword, ducked the other, and ran backward in an unsteady lurch.
“Can’t keep going this way,” Jayyed said. “Guardian Council is too blind to see that. I tried to show them.… I analyzed attacks, numbers, tribes… each raid. Know what I found?” Jayyed punctuated the question with a thrust of his shield, meant to smash Tau in the face.
Tau jumped back, braced himself, and slammed the points of both swords into the shield’s center. Jayyed grunted. He’d have a bruise from that.
“More hedeni than we thought,” he said, “beyond peninsula. Far more.”
Tau attacked, working in a pattern that would require his opponent to raise his shield. When he did, Tau would deliver a killing blow. Jayyed would not last another three crosses. He was already dead.
“We can’t beat them!” Jayyed raised his shield and Tau smashed its underside, sending it higher, exposing the umqondisi’s core.
Jayyed didn’t even try to block, and Tau stabbed the point of his weapon into his chest. If they had been fighting with sharpened blades Jayyed would have been skewered. Tau’s sword would have pierced his chest, his heart, and come out his back like… like Aren.
It was over, but all Tau felt was pain. He looked down. The point of Jayyed’s sword was dug deep into his side, drawing blood. Had they fought with sharpened blades, Jayyed would have gutted him.
“Can’t win.” Jayyed coughed. “Not as we are. Cross-caste fighters, if we can even find and train enough of them, only prolong the inevitable.… There’s only one way we survive… just one.… Peace.”
Tau dropped his blades and batted Jayyed’s sword away from his side. “This is your answer? After all your talk of great Lessers, cross-castes warriors, and Nobles, you stand in front of me begging for peace?”
Jayyed went to his knees, holding himself up on shaking arms. “Our real war is with the Cull.” Jayyed retched, nothing coming up. “But the Royal Nobles and old queens have forgotten that. We have a new queen now and it’s time for new leaders who remember what actually matters.”
Tau was furious. Jayyed had turned his victory into a draw and it burned. “You think the child queen, the same one who did nothing when you were thrown off the Guardian Council, will get rid of the current crop of Royal Nobles? You think she’ll do this so she can surrender us to the hedeni, because our real fight is with fairy-tale monsters?”
Tau turned his back on Jayyed and spat in the dirt. “I am one man, mourning one man, and will never have peace as long as the Nobles who murdered my father are alive. How can the Omehi or hedeni do what I cannot, when our history holds almost two hundred cycles of killing? You ask too much and I see why the Royals got rid of you!”
“The Royal Nobles of the Guardian Council can’t see anything but war and the lives they’ve built for themselves from it. The queen is different and strong in her faith. The Goddess did not send us here to die on the bone spears and axes of people who are not our true enemy.”
Tau scoffed.
“The queen couldn’t stop my dismissal. She was too new to her power and throne, but I’m loyal to her, as loyal as she is to the Goddess. I’m telling you this because you can be part of the new world. Tau, the old Royals have lost their way and the Omehi too, but their time is coming.”
“Old Royals? New world?” Tau asked. “You’re not even talking about a revolution. You just want to replace one master for another.” The whole thing made him sick. He gathered his swords and walked off, clutching his injured side, leaving his kneeling umqondisi in the dirt.
“Tau,” Jayyed called after him. “Watch for sacrifice counters. Your enemy doesn’t have to win for you to lose.”
Tau ignored him. He was thinking about the Jayyed he’d known on the first day of training. The Jayyed who had told a scale of Lessers that, though men had their differences, they were nothing compared to their similarities.
Two hands, two legs, one heart, one mind. Nobles shared more with Lessers than they didn’t. They were more akin to Tau than they weren’t, and to say different was to speak lies.
Tau’s limits were not decided by his birth or nature but by the bounds of his determination and the extent of his efforts. That was what Tau believed, and he was going to prove it. He was going to show them all.
CHAPTER NINE