Gareth was waiting at the East Gate when the carriage arrived.
He was standing beside the guards with his arms folded, still in travelling clothes, and he looked like someone who had ridden through the night. When Owen climbed down, Gareth looked him over once, from his face to the careful way he was standing.
"William sent word last night," he said.
"I thought he might."
Gareth didn’t say anything else about it. He nodded to Hugh, waited while Owen helped Agnes down and the sisters followed, and then fell into step beside his brother as the guards waved the Ferrers party through.
The East Martial Court was larger than Owen had expected. A broad expanse of pale stone stretched across the middle of it, marked out with lines of darker stone to show the boundaries of the fighting ground. Along one side, raised seating had been arranged beneath an awning, and the best of it was clearly reserved for Princess Adelaide and the more prominent guests.
It was still a little before ten, and the morning air was cool, but the court was already noisy. Attendants moved back and forth, directing nobles to their seats, and more were still coming in through the gate behind them.
Owen heard his name before they had gone twenty steps.
"That’s him. The younger Ferrers."
"Gareth’s brother? If he’s half as good as Gareth, de Clare is in trouble."
"And if he isn’t? Nobody’s ever seen him fight. Not once."
A little further on, an older man was speaking to the woman beside him. "The de Clares don’t raise soft sons. I’d put my money on the axe."
"Neither of them has announced a rank," the woman said. "You’re guessing."
"Everyone here is guessing."
Owen let the voices pass him by. They could argue about it as long as they liked. In a few minutes, none of it would matter.
He thought about the way Lucien had looked at him the night before, as though he had already won. He thought about the year of service, and about Lucien saying his family had built their name on cowardice in front of half the capital.
He had no intention of losing to him.
Gareth saw the others to their seats. Clara gave Owen a small, determined nod as she sat down. Elise said nothing, but she didn’t take her eyes off him. Agnes lowered herself carefully onto the bench, and Hugh stood behind her, where he could see the whole court.
Owen walked on alone to the edge of the fighting ground.
Lucien was already there, standing with his arms crossed, and Alaric was speaking to him in a low voice. Lucien didn’t appear to be listening. When he noticed Owen, he smiled.
A few minutes later, Princess Adelaide took her seat beneath the awning, and the noise in the court began to settle.
Captain Halden Voss stepped onto the stone.
"Lord Owen Ferrers. Lord Lucien de Clare. Come forward."
They did. Voss confirmed each of their names, then went through the conditions again, clearly enough for the nearest benches to hear. He pointed out the boundary lines and told them that stepping outside them would end the match. Then he reminded them that he would stop the fight on a surrender, on incapacity, or if either of them was in danger of being killed.
"Do you both understand?"
"I do," Owen said.
"Yes," Lucien said.
Neither of them had summoned his armament yet.
While Voss stepped back to speak to one of the physicians, Lucien turned to Owen.
"There’s still time, you know," he said. "You could surrender now. Before you embarrass yourself in front of the Princess and everyone else."
He said it lightly, as though he were doing Owen a kindness. He was watching Owen’s face closely, waiting to see what it did.
Owen scoffed.
"I’ll let you have the first move," he said.
Lucien’s smile faltered. "What?"
"The first move. You can have it." Owen shrugged. "I think you’ll need all the help you can get."
Lucien’s face darkened at once. A few of the spectators nearest the fighting ground had heard, and one of them laughed before he could stop himself.
"You’ll regret saying that," Lucien said. His voice had gone tight. "Once this starts, you’ll regret every word."
"Then let’s start."
Owen said it without any heat at all, and he could see that it made things worse. Lucien had come to make him nervous. Instead, he was the one standing in front of the whole court with colour climbing up his neck.
"Take your positions," Voss said.
They walked to opposite ends of the marked ground. Owen turned and settled his feet. Across the stone, Lucien rolled his shoulders and stared at him.
Voss raised his hand.
Then he brought it down.
Lucien thrust out his hand, and a heavy battle-axe formed in his grip, its broad head dark and gleaming. In the same instant, Owen’s sword appeared in his.
Crimson light spread up Lucien’s arms and across his chest and shoulders. Owen saw the muscles beneath his sleeves swell, pulling the fabric tight.
"Blood Surge," someone in the stands said. "Straight away."
Lucien charged.
He covered the ground quickly, and he brought the axe down in a long diagonal stroke from his right shoulder, putting his whole body behind it.
Owen watched it come.
It was a strong swing, and it was meant to end things before they began. If he took it squarely on the blade, the force of it would go straight through his arms and into his ribs. But Lucien had committed everything to it. Once the axe started down, it wasn’t going anywhere else.
Owen angled his sword and met the axe on the slant.
Clang!
The impact jarred his wrists, but the axe slid along his blade and off to the side. Owen stepped to the left at the same moment, letting the rest of its weight carry harmlessly past him.
Before Lucien could drag the axe back up, Owen stepped inside his reach and cut.
Lucien was fast enough to get the haft across his body.
Clack!
The blow drove him back a step. Owen followed and struck again, and this time fire ran down the length of his sword.
Whoosh!
The burning blade crashed against the axe. Lucien flinched away from the heat, and the pressure behind it forced him back three, then four steps across the stone.
He stared at Owen.
It was only a moment, but Owen saw it. Lucien had expected to be the one pushing. He had expected Owen to struggle under the weight of his axe. Instead, he was the one giving ground, and Owen hadn’t even had to strain.
Owen didn’t give him the chance to think about it.
Lucien was standing wide and heavy, his weight sunk low, built for swinging hard. But every big swing took him a moment to recover from, and Owen had seen him lean on the strength in his arms instead of his footwork. If he couldn’t set himself to swing, he couldn’t use that strength.
So Owen went after him.
He struck high, then low, then high again, short and controlled, never committing far enough for Lucien to punish him for it.
Clang! Clang!
Sparks scattered every time the burning blade met the axe. Lucien blocked the first strike and the second. He blocked the third, but only just, and his feet slid back across the stone.
The fourth forced him back another step.
Lucien snarled.
The crimson light pulsed and shifted. It drained down out of his chest and gathered in his hips and legs, until his thighs glowed faintly beneath his clothing.
"Crimson Rush," another voice said from the benches.
Lucien vanished from where he stood.
Whoosh!
He was suddenly at Owen’s left side, the axe already swinging for his ribs. Owen twisted away. Lucien’s feet flashed red again, and he was moving before Owen had finished turning, changing his angle in a burst of speed and bringing the axe back around in a second, faster strike.
It was a good combination. It had obviously been drilled a hundred times.
But Owen had been watching Lucien’s shoulders, and Lucien’s hips. Every burst started there first, a fraction of a second before his feet moved.
He slipped outside the first swing. When the second came, he caught it on his sword and pushed it wide.
Clang!
Then he cut back across.
Shhk!
The blade tore through Lucien’s sleeve and opened a line across his upper arm.
"Agh!"
Lucien staggered away. Blood ran down his arm and dripped onto the stone.
Owen went after him without pausing. He kept the fire on the blade, and kept every exchange close, so that each time Lucien caught the sword on his axe he had to hold it there with the heat rolling over his hands and face. Lucien gritted his teeth and kept blocking, but he couldn’t find a way to strike back.
Owen stepped in and drove his sword against the axe with his whole weight behind it.
Clang!
Lucien stumbled backward. His heel caught, and he went down hard on the stone.
Thud!
The court erupted.
"Did you see that?"
"He hasn’t even been touched—"
"He fights like Gareth," someone said. "The way he uses his feet."
"Gareth was never that patient at his age."
"What rank is he? Does anyone know?"
Nobody answered that.
Owen glanced once toward the Ferrers benches. Gareth was leaning forward with his forearms on his knees. He wasn’t cheering or smiling. He was watching Owen’s feet, and the angle of his blade.
Lucien pushed himself up off the stone. His face was red, and his arm was still bleeding.
"What are you?" he demanded. "What rank are you?"
"Does it matter?" Owen said. "Keep going."
Lucien’s jaw clenched. His eyes flicked toward the stands, toward the Princess, toward everyone who had just watched him fall.
The crimson light flared.
This time, it didn’t gather anywhere. It spread through all of him at once, flooding his arms and legs and chest, until his skin seemed to burn with it. His breathing grew loud and harsh. Owen could see the muscles in his neck and forearms standing out like cords.
The benches had gone quiet.
"Scarlet Frenzy," Owen heard someone say. "He’ll pay for that afterward."
Lucien came at him.
Clang!
The first blow hit Owen’s sword so hard that his arms went numb to the elbow. The second came almost immediately, a wide sweep at his waist, and Owen had to throw himself back to avoid it.
Whoosh!
Lucien kept coming. There were no pauses now, no careful recovery between strikes. He swung and swung again, each blow heavier than the last, trying to bury Owen under them.
"Hraah!"
Owen gave ground. He parried what he had to and slipped what he could, and he felt each impact in his bruised ribs. The strength behind Lucien’s strikes was far greater than before.
But the swings were wilder, too.
Lucien was throwing everything into every stroke, trusting the power in his body to cover whatever he left open. Each time he swung, the axe travelled further and further from his centre, and each time, there was a moment before he dragged it back.
Owen started using those moments.
The axe went wide, and Owen cut across Lucien’s forearm.
Shhk!
It went wide again, and Owen caught him across the thigh.
Lucien barely seemed to notice. He kept attacking through the pain, but his feet weren’t landing where they should anymore. His balance had started to slip.
The next time the axe went too far, Owen gathered the fire along his sword until it roared.
Then he slashed.