Taken

“They’re going to announce it,” Luna said. She’d dressed in a black form-fitting outfit I’d never seen her wear before and she was spinning the whip handle between her fingers. To my mage’s sight her curse spun about her, agitated.

I looked around. “Where’s Variam?”

“What do you mean?”

“Isn’t he a bit late?”

Luna looked at me in surprise. “He’s not in the tournament.”

“He got knocked out?”

“He forfeited. He didn’t show up to last night’s match; I guess he was with you and Anne. I thought you knew?”

I remembered how Variam had appeared suddenly last night. As soon as he’d seen that Anne was missing he must have come after us, abandoning his match without hesitation. I was getting the feeling that I was starting to understand what Variam really cared about. “Did you tell Variam we were working for Talisid?” I asked Luna.

“What? No.”

“What about Anne?”

“No. Why?”

“I was wondering how he found out.”

“Well, it wasn’t from me. You said not to tell anyone.”

I nodded. I could only think of four people who knew that it was Talisid who’d come to talk to me that day at the duelling class: me, Luna, Sonder, and Talisid himself. And I was pretty sure none of them had told Variam.

But there was someone at that duelling class who could have found out that Talisid was there without being told. And now that I thought about it, that might explain the message too . . .

A chime sounded from the podium and conversation across the hall fell silent. More than half of the apprentices competing in the White Stone had been knocked out by now, but the number of spectators had gone up if anything. There’s a lot of prestige to these tournaments.

Crystal was standing on the podium. She’d tied up her gold hair in a professional-looking style and was dressed in yet another cream-coloured suit of a slightly different cut. I wondered if she had a rack of them somewhere. She was looking confident and as everyone turned to watch she gave them all a smile. “Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the second day of the White Stone. The third round will now begin. The first match is between”—Crystal’s eyes travelled up—“Gunther Elkins and Michael Antigua.”

Gunther was a tall, serious-looking boy with Germanic features and a blond ponytail, and he strode onto the piste to face Michael, who was a head shorter than him with light brown skin and dark hair and eyes. Two mages were standing at opposite ends of the hall behind the tuning-fork focuses, and as I watched they activated them. Thin walls of energy sprang to life along the edges of the piste and shield bubbles appeared around Gunther and Michael. Both were invisible to normal eyes and even to my mage’s sight they were faint and translucent. These were the conversion fields of an azimuth duel; they radiated no energy, but under the monitoring of a skilled operator they could react instantly to any attack that struck them. There was no ceremony; the formalities had been done yesterday. The arbitrator, a white-haired mage in ceremonial robes, glanced at Gunther. “Ready?”

Gunther nodded.

“Ready?” he said to Michael.

Michael nodded.

“Fight.”

Michael attacked, strikes of water magic hammering at Gunther’s shield. Gunther parried the first strike, and the second. As Michael began another attack, Gunther slammed a blade of air through Michael’s defences, so fast that Michael had no time to raise a shield of his own. I had just a glimpse of the razor-edged shard before it vanished in a flash of light, the conversion field disintegrating it an instant before it cut into Michael’s flesh. It wouldn’t have been fatal, but it would have hurt.

“Point, right,” the arbitrator announced. “One-zero. Places.”

Gunther and Michael returned to the starting lines. The first round had taken less than three seconds.

“Fight.”

The duel continued and it quickly became obvious that Gunther was both swifter and more skilled than his opponent. By the end the score was 3–0 and Gunther shook hands with a surly-looking Michael. I glanced down to see that Luna looked nervous.

“Victor Kraft and Oscar Poulson,” Crystal announced.

Both apprentices were using focus weapons this time. Victor wielded a longsword, which was sharp and dangerous-looking even without the trail of frost it left in his wake. Oscar held something more like a fencing épée. The épée was fast and so was Oscar, but not fast enough.

“Fay Wilder and Barbara Cartwright.”

Barbara was a plain-faced stocky girl. She carried no weapon but relied instead on touch spells. Fay had curly hair and a ready smile, and she was an illusionist. Barbara’s touch spells hit only phantoms of light and shadow, while Fay’s small dagger found its mark reliably.

“Anne and Variam are here,” I commented as Fay walked off the piste to be congratulated by a smiling man in expensive-looking clothes.

“How am I supposed to beat these guys?” Luna asked. She was biting her lip. “Did you see what she just did?”

“Relax.”

“I couldn’t even see where she was. How can—?”