Linn sprang back to her feet. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Ana rush over to the Bregonian scholar. He was leaning against the bookshelves, his mouth opening and closing like a fish as he gripped his chest, trying impossibly to stem the flow of blood down his front.
Linn pivoted, putting them behind her as she faced Kaïs.
She attacked first this time, taking off at a sprint and lashing out. He dodged, but she had feinted; she whipped out her other arm and aimed at his chest. He leapt back just in time; the tip of her dagger grazed the collar of his shirt. A thin gash exposed his skin.
Kaïs looked up. “I’m sorry, Linn. I never meant to hurt you.”
Linn raised her hands. “Tell it to my blades.”
She charged again, but he moved, surprisingly fast, and then his sword was arcing down at her. Linn sprang out of the way, but his other blade came swinging low, aiming at her feet. She caught herself just in time, twisting and delaying her fall for a moment longer. Her foot hit the flat part of his sword and she launched herself into the air, landing several feet away.
He turned to face her again.
“Do not hold back,” Linn said, pointing her dagger at him. “I can always tell when one’s heart is not in the fight.”
He raised his weapon. “I wish you didn’t have to be involved in this.”
“This is my fight, as much as it is Ana’s.” Her tone softened. “And, until now, I thought it was yours.”
Torchlight and shadows flickered on his face. “I do it to survive.”
Linn allowed herself to taste a small sliver of frustration at last. “Survive?” she repeated. “That is all I have been trying to do these past years, Kaïs. Yet I would never hesitate to give my life to do the right thing.”
His expression turned stony. Linn was running out of time. There was something in him worth saving, something worth redeeming. She could almost see it, reach it.
“You are a good person, Linn,” he said quietly. “I am a selfish one.”
“Then choose tobea good person!” The words exploded from her in a shout. Linn charged. In her moment of fury, she forgot her winds; she became fire, surging forward in a storm of blades.
He countered; their weapons clashed. Linn twisted, slashed.
Blood sprayed the air.
Kaïs stumbled back. A line of red trailed across his chest, glistening bright as rubies. He looked up and wiped sweat from his brow. “I would gladly give my life for yours,” he said, “but it is not mine I am trying to save.”
Linn blinked away the hot tears in her eyes. “Then whose?” she demanded. “Whose life is so important that you would choose the side of a murderer, that you would watch her burn down the world?”
There it was, a glimpse of sadness so profound, it was like trying to look into the depths of the Silent Sea. “My mother’s.”
Everything seemed to stop then. Linn drew a sharp breath. They’d spoken of his mother, back in the cold, ice-tipped forests of the Syvern Taiga. He’d mentioned it to her, and she’dfeltthe emotion in his words, a gripping ache that mirrored her own feelings toward Kemeira, toward her family.
Kaïs was panting, his double swords lowered. “Morganya and Kerlan have my mother. If I do not do as they say…if I do not succeed in this mission…they will kill her.”
She wanted to drop her weapons right there, for in that moment she saw that they were reflections of each other. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to save her family. She’d boarded a strange ship, journeyed to a foreign empire, and spent years of her life in search of her brother.
I cannot do this,Linn thought.I have lost.
Beneath an alcove a little way from where they fought, the scholar lay very still on the searock floor of the Livren Skolaren, his blood pooled around him. Ana had straightened and was gazing directly at them.
“Shamaïra,” she said quietly.
Kaïs froze. Linn could see the tension in his broad shoulders.
Slowly, he turned to Ana. “What did you just say?”
“Your mother.” Ana spoke as though she were gazing at a ghost. “Your mother is Shamaïra of Nandji, is she not?”
Kaïs stared at her. Emotions shifted in his eyes, as though they bore a storm. He gave a single nod.
