I didn't answer Valerian.
I didn't reach for the hilt of the Qi-steel sword on my back. I didn't flare my Primordial Core. I didn't even take my hands out of my jacket pockets. I just turned my eyes away from his flushed, furious face, looked at Maya, and said, in the easiest voice I had, "It's getting crowded. Want to walk back toward the main plaza?"
Maya blinked, and a quiet wave of relief crossed her face. "Yes. Let's."
She turned her back on Valerian without a second glance and stepped up beside me, and together we started past the junk stall toward the mouth of Scavenger's Row.
Valerian stood frozen on the cobblestones.
In sixteen years as the high-born heir of House Corvo, I doubted anyone had ever looked at him, heard his name, and then turned away as if he were a stray dog barking behind a fence. To someone who measured his worth in the bows of commoners and the flattery of guild merchants, calm indifference cut deeper than any slap.
"You... you dirty, arrogant trash!"
He came after us in three heavy strides and planted himself in our path. His right hand snapped onto the hilt of his Water Qi rapier. Behind him, his two bodyguards shifted their feet and rested their palms on their broadsword hilts, filling the narrow aisle.
"Did you think you could just walk away from a noble of House Corvo?" His chest was heaving. His Level 6 Spirit Qi began to flare unevenly around his shoulders. "You think a halfway decent set of clothes makes you untouchable?"
"Valerian!" Maya stepped forward, eyes blazing. "Get out of our way! You're making a scene in a public market!"
"Shut up, Maya!" He didn't even look at her. His eyes were burning holes in me. "You're blinded by a pretty face! He's an F-Rank freelancer living off luck! If he's a real Rifter who thinks he belongs in District 3, let him prove it!" He leveled the silver scabbard of his rapier at my chest. "There's a vacant stone courtyard behind the stalls. An unofficial spar. You and me. No drawn weapons, if you're too afraid to bleed. Raw Spirit Qi and martial forms." His voice rose enough to draw a small crowd of merchants and scavengers. "Unless you're too much of a coward to stand in front of a real noble!"
Maya stared at him in total disbelief, then turned to me and whispered, fast and worried, "Andaras, ignore him! House Corvo owns three of the biggest alchemy labs in the sector. He's trying to humiliate you because I wouldn't have tea with him!"
I looked at Valerian. Then I looked past his shoulder, at the dark gap between two stalls that led toward a courtyard I couldn't see.
I wasn't angry. I didn't care about his fragile noble pride, or what a crowd of onlookers thought, or what anyone in this market believed about the boy with the iron badge. But the cold, clear part of my mind ran the math anyway.
If I refused and pushed past him, he'd follow us through the whole Grand Bazaar. He'd make noise. He'd attract a sector guard. A guard would want my name and my token. A token would raise questions I couldn't afford to have asked.
You've been stared at enough this month, the voice said. Julian. The quarry. The inn. The Association. People have started to notice you.
A quick, quiet spar behind the stalls was the cheapest way to shut his mouth and leave.
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And there was a second thought, smaller and less welcome. He isn't going to stop. Not for her, not for you. Not until he's been shown, in front of witnesses, where the edge of the floor is.
"No weapons?" I asked evenly.
Valerian let out a loud, victorious bark of laughter, taking the question for hesitation. "Sheathed or unarmed! First one forced to his knees or knocked out of the ring loses! Unless you'd rather beg for mercy right here in the mud!"
"Fine," I said, and stepped past him toward the alley. "Lead the way."
Maya caught my sleeve. "Andaras! You don't have to do this!"
"It'll take two minutes." I gave her a quiet, steady look. "Let's get it over with so we can finish shopping."
She stared at me. Then she let go of my sleeve. Her face was tight with worry and something else, an uncertain trust that hadn't been there at the quarry gate. I didn't know what to do with that, either.
The courtyard behind Scavenger's Row was a circular paved ring enclosed by tall, ancient granite walls, built long ago for the market guards to run their weapon drills. The stone underfoot was worn smooth and pale in a wide circle where generations of boots had scuffed it.
Word had spread through the stalls faster than spilled oil across a floor. By the time we got there, thirty people had crowded along the outer edge of the ring: scavengers, junk dealers, curious academy students. Someone had brought a stool. Someone else was taking bets in a low voice.
At the very back of the crowd, half in the shadow of the wall, stood a man in a plain grey Association coat with a paper cup of tea in his hand. He wasn't cheering and he wasn't betting. He just watched, with the patient, pleasant face of someone waiting for a kettle to boil.
I noticed him, and then I noticed that I'd noticed him, and I filed it away and let it go.
Valerian stepped onto the stone and swept his mink-trimmed coat off his shoulders, handing it to one of his bodyguards with a dramatic, practiced flourish. His Grade-2 Spirit Rapier stayed sheathed at his hip, his left palm resting arrogantly on its pommel.
Soul Sight rolled over him.
His Level 6 Spirit Qi swirled in his lower abdomen, a loose, gassy orange cloud built on expensive low-grade pills. His muscles were soft. His footwork was stiff. His center of gravity sat much too high. He'd spent years practicing formal academy sword routines against padded dummies, and he had clearly never taken a real blow to the ribs in a dark cavern.
He wasn't a monster. He wasn't even a threat. He was a boy in a very expensive coat who'd been told all his life that he was the best thing in the room.
I walked to the opposite side of the ring, my boots clicking softly on the stone. I left the sword slung across my back and my hands in my pockets.
Don't use Phantom Steps, I told myself. No afterimages. No Essence flares. No gold and black. Julian saw one blink, and a whole hall laughed about it for a week.
Win like a boy who's had good teachers. Not like what you are.
It was almost funny. I'd spent weeks learning how to fight. Now I had to learn how not to.
I thought of Dugan at that black slate in District 9, granite-voiced and tired-eyed, a man who'd never once raised his hand to a boy who couldn't fight back, and who'd told me to stop trying and hated every word of it. I thought of Chen, telling me, Don't you carry them home with you.
Hold back, I thought. The way they did.
Valerian dropped into a textbook academy opening stance: knees bent, right palm extended, Level 6 Water Qi coursing down into his skin. A faint, shimmering blue mist rose around his forearms and condensed into a swirling vortex of pressurized force. The air near him turned noticeably damp. The crowd murmured appreciatively.
"One last chance to bow, freelancer!" His blue eyes flashed with confidence. "When my Water-Ripple Palm hits your chest, you'll be coughing blood for a week!"
I stood in the center of the ring, posture loose and easy, and met his gaze with quiet, level eyes. "Whenever you're ready, Valerian."
His jaw locked.
He pushed off his rear heel with a sharp TAK, Water Qi blazing bright blue, and shot across the stone ring with his right palm driving forward like a breaking wave.
I watched it come. He was fast. For someone who'd never been hit in his life, he was surprisingly fast, and I saw the whole of it laid out in front of me as if painted on slow, lazy glass: the planted heel, the dropped shoulder, the blue vortex on his palm, the small, open gap beneath his raised elbow.
It wasn't fast enough.
Behind him, at the back of the crowd, the man in the grey coat lowered his paper cup.
Alright, I thought, and took my hands out of my pockets at last. Let's be boring.