Jade War

Shae scrambled to regain her focus. She wondered for an instant if Hilo was bluffing—if this was his twisted way of motivating her to survive the duel—but she had no time to dwell on the idea. An anticipatory hush had fallen over the crowd; she heard the clicking of camera shutters around her. Innumerable heartbeats were rising in her Perception, loud and seemingly in time with her own, all of them eager and waiting. Standing out from the general multitude were the jade auras of Green Bones from both clans who’d gathered to witness this event, one that was supposedly a matter of personal honor between two people, but that everyone knew was far more than that. Janlooners wanted the clans to hold to the truce, to respect territorial lines and cooperate to combat crime and smuggling and current international pressures, but they had nevertheless come out enthusiastically at a moment’s notice to see blood spilled between the Mountain and No Peak.

Shae faced her opponent and touched the flat of her blade to her forehead in salute. Ayt did the same. Gone was Ayt’s casual demeanor. There was a frightening quality to her stillness now, an almost reptilian poise in the way she stood erect and regarded the younger woman, waiting for her to attack first. In Shae’s acutely sharp Perception, Ayt was a column of red energy, the inside of a coal furnace, its painful heat blotting out everything else. The longer she stared at it in her mind, the more unassailable it would seem; she would lose her nerve. Shae gathered her Strength and rushed in with a burst of speed, moon blade flashing downward in an opening diagonal cross slash aimed at opening Ayt Mada’s torso from left shoulder to opposing hip.

Ayt slid left at the edge of the weapon’s reach, deftly deflected Shae’s next cut, and spun low to the ground, hair whipping around her neck, her extended blade a blur of steel. Shae launched herself Light, barely evading being taken apart at the knees, and came down with a hard chop from above. Ayt braced the blunt backside of her weapon against her left palm as she blocked Shae’s attack head-on. For an instant, white metal rang against white metal, Strength clashed against Strength, the jade auras of the two women vibrated with impact; then Ayt’s blade disengaged, changed direction like the darting tail of a fish, and shot a deadly path to Shae’s throat.

Shae jerked her head out of the way and threw her Steeled arm up in instinctive defense; Ayt’s moon blade sheared against her raised forearm, the razor edge parting skin but stopping short of muscle and bone. With her attention on Ayt’s weapon as it passed inches from her face, Shae nearly failed to Perceive the Channeling blow that Ayt thrust with her left hand. It drove toward Shae’s center like a sharpened metal rod, aiming to punch through heart and lungs.

Shae twisted her torso out of the way, battening herself with Steel, her rib cage shuddering with concentrated jade energy as she sucked in the deadly momentum of Ayt’s energy and countered in blind desperation: a quick, jabbing Channeling strike to the sternum, followed by an unaimed Deflection that nevertheless blasted her opponent in the midsection. Ayt stumbled backward several feet, lips parted in a grimace. Shae saw the Pillar’s eyes widen and her normally perfect composure fissure as the realization struck them both at the same time: Shae stood a chance of winning. In the opening seconds of the duel, anyone could see that Ayt Mada was a superlative jade fighter, a powerful, deliberate combatant, well deserving of her reputation, but Shae was fast and talented and perhaps most importantly, a dozen years younger, a Green Bone in her physical prime.

A moment of emotional stalemate seemed to pass between them. Then Ayt’s jade aura lit with the violence of an exploding star, just as a surge of adrenaline and odd elation caught feverish hold of Shae’s brain. Ayt came at her with weapon upraised and lips curled back, and with a wild cry of effort, Shae flew Light at her, blade slicing across in a deadly horizontal blur.