CHAPTER 24: MIRRORS

He tried to sprint into an exchange to break the rhythm. I placed one anchor exactly on contact, stole the tempo for a breath, then refused to hold it longer than earned. He feinted high, knowing I’d punish the feint. I didn’t. I punished the greed under it—a short cut to the top of his guard that reminded his fingers they were mortal.

He laughed aloud then, delighted despite himself. The crowd laughed with him, delighted despite themselves. It’s hard to root against men who are doing their work well.

"Shade," I said.

Hollow dropped off the beam and sliced once through the light, throwing a run of moving shadow along the floor that made illusions feel crowded and real men feel seen. Three heartbeats of borrowed sight. Enough. Marcus’s web fuzzed a fraction, and I stepped into the moment without trying to be a poet about it.

The point came on the next exchange. He built a gorgeous lie—double after-image, sound delay, a flicker at my periphery meant to sell a thrust I had no business surviving. ’Don’t chase ghosts,’ I told myself. I didn’t. I parried the blade that breathed and set my tip to his sternum with a softness that would have made the priest from the ward nod. The ward sang the note it uses for clean work. Silence cracked, then shattered into noise.

"How—" someone blurted in the front row, cut off by a shriek of applause.

I took a single step back and saluted. Marcus returned it, mouth tilted in a private smile. "Very good," he said.

"Again," I said, and meant it.

We traded three more honest exchanges for the joy of it before the referee cut the air. I left with the sense of a ledger written neat. Marcus left with respect in his eyes, not resentment. A man like that is a rival you can build a world with instead of around.

On the catwalk, Saint Dorian Kest’s head dipped exactly once—observer’s acknowledgment. On the floor, Liora’s hands stayed folded, but her eyes had a small light in them. She turned to speak to an assistant. I didn’t need to know the words to know they weren’t a reprimand.

I took water that tasted like iron coins and let my breath find me. The Compass let itself be smug. "Timing crisp. External restraint exemplary. You may call it Adept plus if labels soothe you."

’They don’t,’ I thought. ’Results do.’

I didn’t get to enjoy the quiet. The arena demanded spectacle and got it in the shape of Cael Veyron. He walked out like gravity had sent an invitation. His opponent was good enough to be a problem for most men. Cael made him a lesson. Three exchanges that looked like two, a guard he never had to hurry, footwork like a story the floor loved hearing. The ward rang brighter, the crowd stood without telling itself to. Ceiling. Clean and obvious. I felt no jealousy. The map needs mountains.

Back under the arch, the social gravity reversed. Nobles who laughed yesterday found excuses to scratch their wrists. Commoners found new reasons to speak. Lyra tucked her notebook under her arm and edged near an aisle. When our eyes met, she didn’t drop hers. Her cheeks colored—soft, quick—then steadied.

"Lord Val—" she started, then stopped because the old habit tasted wrong. "Armand."

"Lyra," I said.

"You fought..." She groped for a word that wouldn’t sound like adoration and found one with pride in it. "Well."

"You run half this building," I said. "How’s that going."

Color deepened. ’Gap moe,’ a younger soldier on my old team would have called it, laughing on the way to a bad decision. Lyra looked down at her notebook, then up again with a courage that had nothing to do with volume. "If—if you have a moment later," she said, "I sketched a stabilizer variant. For... crisis din. The glyph threads through interference. It might help someone." She pressed a folded slip toward me and our fingers touched, quick, electric in its own quiet way.

"Thank you," I said. The slip went into my cuff like a promise.

Aldric chose that moment like men of his sort always do—when a gift is in the air they didn’t give. "Valcrey," he drawled, fringe still bearing the ward’s kiss despite his best efforts. "Enjoy the sympathy."

"Enjoy the committee," I said, without looking at him. "You can tell them the door disobeyed you."

Snorts escaped throats before their owners could catch them. Seraphine’s smile remained perfect; her eyes cut. "Careful, Armand," she murmured. "Doors can close."

"They can," I agreed. "On hands that don’t belong there."

She stepped closer by a fraction. Amethyst narrowed. "We’ll see how clever you feel when the rules bend the way they’re meant to."

"They already did," I said, and tipped my head toward the red mark still faint on the arch. The laugh that rose belonged to the room, not to me. It stung more because it wasn’t mine.

The afternoon ran a second bout for me against Lucern, a bicep with feet. He tried to make the ring small with shouting. I made it smaller with geometry. One step, one hip, one borrowed Gareth-angle of wall in my head, and Lucern found himself out of bounds with the confusion of a man who has never met a line that said no. The ward sang the cheeky bell it saves for ring-outs. The gallery howled. I kept my face plain. Inside, the old part of me that had taken too many medals out of too many shoeboxes let itself have one small grin.

By the time the Individual block closed, whispers had gone to talk and talk to noise. ’Valcrey’ did not arrive with the old curl. The bookmaker’s slate had scratched out a foolish number and replaced it with a serious one. Marcus shook my hand in the service corridor, grip honest.

"Next time," he said. "We’ll trade a point the other direction."

"Or not," I said, and he laughed.

Cael found me at the water barrel out of nowhere like mountains sometimes step where you didn’t plan a step. He didn’t smile; he never wasted smiles. "You’ve stopped wasting your steps," he said. It was the kindest thing he could have offered.

"Trying to make a habit of it," I said.

"Keep it," he said, and left the way he had come, like a door in a wall that is where it is because the house needs it.

On the way out, the corridor tried to replay the earlier cruelty with a meaner script. Aldric cornered Lyra near the stairs again, voice sugar-coated and slick. "Head of the commoners," he said. "So brave. Ink doesn’t make a lady. Try water; it comes off."

Lyra didn’t flinch. "You’re blocking the stairs," she said. Not angry. Tired of the shape of him.

I let my voice carry the way rules like. "Voss," I said. "Statute Four’s friend is Statute Six. Harassment during movement."

He opened his mouth with lightning in it. I lifted a finger and pointed at the ward post. It hummed. The red glyph blinked awake again like a hungry eye. A ripple went through the crowd. Aldric stepped back fast enough to step into the bucket a janitor had left under a drip. Dirty water climbed his perfect cuff as if it had been waiting all morning for exactly this man.

The gasp broke into laughter so clean even Ariadne’s mouth twitched. Aldric yanked his foot out and nearly lost the shoe. Seraphine’s eyes flashed—anger at fate, not at me. She took his elbow like a woman managing a toddler in silk and swept him away with the dignity only practice buys.

Lyra exhaled like she’d been holding up a ceiling by herself for an hour. She looked at me. "Thank you," she said.

"You’re doing the work," I said. "The stairs belong to you."

A flush rose again, soft and real. She nodded once, squared her shoulders, and moved on. The commoners flowed after her like a river that had remembered its channel. I watched her go and let the weight behind my ribs name itself and then sit down. Not a plan. Not a vow. A direction.

Night came on like an orderly putting out lamps. I ate, because bodies demand their tithe. I slept, because power without sleep is a liar. I woke to the group lists and a map that would rotate like a mood.

’Group Tactics next,’ I told myself as dawn frost sketched the arena stones. ’Make the plan. Let other people walk it. Give them a win so big even the boys in Voss blue cannot pretend not to see it.’

The ward hummed. The day opened its mouth. I stepped inside.