Free Masques by Patricia Briggs Page B

staying alive.
    Finally, one of his swings caught her hard behind the back of her knees and she fell backward, letting his staff carry her legs up with it. She turned the fall into a roll, going over onto her shoulders and coming up on her feet. As soon as she was upright, she raised her staff to guard position, trying to protect her face and torso.
    The roll had forced her to take her eyes from her opponent, and she barely saw the flicker of movement as his staff came under her defenses. Rather than the standard sweep-strike, Talor had chosen to thrust. The end of the staff caught her low in the chest and drove the breath out of her body. Without the protective padding she wore, it would have broken ribs. Had his staff struck just a few finger-widths higher, it would have been fatal, padding or not.
    She twisted frantically to the side, trying to dive out of striking range. It was a desperate maneuver, exposing her vulnerable back to her opponent, and after the blow she’d just received, she knew she was moving far too slowly. Even as she moved, she waited for his strike—knowing that there was no way for her to evade the impact of the metal-shod staff.
    The blow didn’t come. She completed the diving roll and snapped to her feet, staff poised and lungs working desperately for air.
    Talor stood in the middle of the ring, leaning against his staff. He shook his head like a wet dog, then looked up at her in dazed bewilderment. “I don’t know what came over . . . Are you all right, Aralorn?”
    “Fine.” She gasped the word out, her diaphragm not operating quite correctly yet. “Don’t . . . worry about it. No harm done, and I . . . needed a workout. Your stick work has improved, but you’re still a little slow on your returns . . . Watch your hands. You hold on too tightly when you’re mad, and it makes it easier for your opponent to force you to drop your staff.”
    As she got her breath back, she made her tone more baiting, trying to get him to forget what had happened. If she was correct about the cause, then it would do him more harm than good to worry about it. It scared her that the ae’Magi’s magic was able to do what it was doing. It was just possible that he would have chosen to turn Ren into one of his puppets—but Talor had no political power. If he was affected, then she had to believe that most people in Sianim would be touched by the ae’Magi’s magic: They all belonged to him. The thought of how much power that would take terrified her.
    Talor took the refuge she offered. “You need to pay more attention to your opponent’s eyes. You watch the body too much, and that doesn’t give you much advance warning. If you’d been watching more closely, you could have avoided that last hit.”
    She dropped her staff and waved her hands out in the traditional surrender, and said, “Okay, you beat me. My reputation is in tatters. Just do me one favor and don’t tell your brother about it. Last time you beat me, he challenged me, then I had to put up with his sulks for a week.” It was important to act naturally.
    “You only got it for a week because we had to go out on maneuvers. He sulked for almost a month. Okay, I won’t tell him. Besides”—here he struck up an obviously false pose and looked down his nose at her—“it ill becomes a man to brag about beating a woman.”
    For all of his humor, Aralorn could tell that he was feeling uncomfortable. She wished she was only uncomfortable. She wasn’t surprised when Talor excused himself though they generally would have drunk a couple of rounds before they left. When she turned to watch him leave, she noticed the wolf lying just inside the doorway, his head on his front paws. Talor stooped and patted him on the back, which Wolf answered with a small movement of his tail, but his clear yellow eyes never wavered from Aralorn’s face.
    Aralorn waited until Talor was gone before dropping exhausted to the floor, her back against the barrier. She