Drums shook the air, thundering with deep, rounded tones.
Drew stood among the gathered mass outside Black Keel Hall. All of Deadwake was there.
The crowd assembled for the duels did not stand. They danced.
Women gathered the hems of their dresses and spun, fabric lifting in wide, laughing swirls. Feet stamped in time. Bodies moved without waiting for permission.
Above the drums, a light wooden clatter skipped and teased the rhythm. Musicians stood on opposite ends of the dueling ground, answering one another slightly out of sync, the higher notes hovering just long enough to invite a voice to cut through.
Rafael emerged into crowd to cheers, garbed in his trademark bright crimson, raising a cup of wine to the crowd. A short bright red jacket adorned with golden tassels. A golden cape attached to the back of the shoulders.
Rafael clapped once, slow and deliberate.
“?BOMBA!”
The drums softened. The crowd leaned in.
“Deadwake drinks,” he shouted, “TO THOSE WHO STAND!”
“STAND!” the crowd answered.
“And what of those who hide behind ledgers and hired knives?”
“THEY FALL!”
Rafael laughed.
“LOUDER. I WANT THEM TO HEAR IT FROM UNDER THE DOCKS.”
“?BOMBA!”
The crowd exploded, the cacophony of cheers, screams, and bells overwhelming the drums. Drew winced as the noise tore through his ear drums into his soul. He leaned over the short table before him hands planted on two trunks, one with swords one with pistols.
Rafael drained his cup of wine, flicking his golden cape over his shoulder swaggering over to the center of the chalked circle.
A women dressed in all black strode out to meet Rafael and his challenger and older, heavy muscled man.
The crowd died down.
A voice rang out from the hall, formal and unhurried.
“Rafael Montoya,” the caller declared.
“Second Blade of the Red Wake Compact.”
Cheers crashed against the stone.
“Versus Captain Iago Velás, Flag-Captain of the Green Banner Corsairs,
Second Blade of the Banner, and commander of its fleet.”
Whistles rang out over the dueling ground.
“Captain Iago Velás as challenged, declare your weapon of choice” the officiant declared.
“Swords” Captain Velás barked.
Drew opened the long trunk on the table retrieving a thin rapier, handing it pommel first to the approaching Rafael.
Taking it Rafael playfully spun the blade through a series of arcs. Walking back towards the center he faced his towering opponent. The stout Captain Velás wore a simple fringed brown vest much in contrast to Rafael’s ostentatious costume.
The man grinned maliciously.
The gong rang.
Captain Velás surged forward at once, a wall of muscle and steel. His sword came down in a brutal diagonal chop that would have split a lesser man.
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Rafael barely moved.
His blade turned edge-on, steel whispering as it guided the blow past his ribs. He gave ground, light on his feet, never still, never hurried.
Velás pressed harder. Hacks, shoves, wide cuts meant to break bone through force alone. The crowd roared at the display.
Drew’s eyes narrowed.
The larger man’s arms moved fast, frighteningly so, but his feet lagged behind the violence. Each step landed heavy. Each recovery took just a fraction too long.
Rafael noticed it too.
He met the next slash with the forte of his blade, close to the guard, absorbing just enough force to redirect it. The rapier’s point never left Velás’s chest.
Captain Velás snarled and lunged, overreaching.
Rafael sprang back, opening space.
Then he was forward again, faster than Drew could track, the stored motion released in a single line. The rapier slipped past the guard and drove straight through the man’s heart.
Velás froze.
Then he fell.
The crowd roared.
“Grab him, I want his blood!” Rafael roared triumphantly.
Two men in crimson grabbed the limp body. Drew frowned that was macabre.
The officiant rang the gong, its reverberations failing to fully silence the crowd.
The music faltered.
A thin man entered the dueling ground in a dark coat, unadorned and plain, nothing to catch the light.
“Santos Calder,” the caller announced.
“Fleet Warden of the East Winter Privateers.”
“Second Blade, acting authority of the Winter Fleet.”
The crowd booed. The officiant’s mouth tightened as the man’s introduction ended.
“Fleet Warden Santos Calder,” he said coolly, “as challenged, declare your weapon of choice.”
“Kill him, Rafael!” someone shouted.
Calder tilted his head, listening to the jeers like distant weather.
“Steel,” he said.
“Try to keep them quiet. I work better when Deadwake remembers who keeps its ships afloat.”
The crowd erupted.
Calder didn’t blink.
At last, he glanced toward Rafael, eyes flat.
“Proceed.”
The gong rang.
Rafael stood still.
The crowd muttered, unsettled by the lack of ceremony. Calder circled, blade low, testing distance.
Rafael did not follow.
When the wiry man lunged, Rafael stepped back once. Not far. Just enough.
Something in his posture shifted.
The air seemed to tighten.
Then Rafael was there.
No wind. No flash. One moment the space between them existed, the next it didn’t. Stored force released in a single, brutal line as his body crossed the gap faster than the eye could reconcile.
Steel rang once.
Calder’s blade skittered across the stone. His momentum betrayed him, and Rafael’s shoulder drove into his chest with the weight of a falling cart.
The man hit the ground hard. Blood pooled beneath him.
Rafael stepped back, breathing steady, the charge spent.
The duel was over.
Only then did Drew realize Rafael had never actually advanced. He had waited.
The speed of it settled cold in Drew’s chest. That wasn’t training. That was a graft.
The roar of the crowd swallowed whatever command Rafael gave, but the same two men came forward and dragged the body from the circle.
Bravado, Drew thought, counted for very little.
Watching the distance Rafael had crossed in a blink, Drew knew one thing for certain.
If he ever fought like that, distance would be the only thing keeping him alive.
The roar of the crowd rose to such a crescendo that the officiant did not bother to ring the gong. Instead, she beckoned the final challenger forward.
A woman stepped into the circle, head held high, though her eyes flicked across the crowd. Her strides were too long, her posture overextended. She was trying to project confidence, and the effort showed.
Drew recognized her at once from the portraits that hung across Deadwake’s islands.
Catalina Morado.
Chair of Maritime Operations for the Venture Exchange.
Second in command. Deadwake did not accept proxies tonight.
She raised a finger gun gesture toward the table.
Drew brought the smaller case to Rafael, opening it to reveal a pair of dueling pistols, finely engraved with gold. Rafael accepted one with a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. For a heartbeat, Drew thought he saw worry there.
Then the look hardened into resolve.
The noise of the crowd blurred. A faint, high-pitched ringing crept into Drew’s ears, the sound flattening as if the world had lost its edge.
The duelists faced one another, pistols held low.
Catalina shifted her weight, once, then again.
At the edge of the circle, the officiant raised a white handkerchief. The crowd quieted at last.
The cloth dropped.
Catalina snapped her pistol up and fired.
Golden light bloomed outward in front of her, swelling into a curved dome as the Lacrimos Vine released its charge.
Rafael drop stepped, angling his body away from the shot. He stumbled as the round tore through his left side, gold tassels darkening to red. He did not fire.
Across from him, Catalina stared, horrified. The faint yellow barrier still shimmered between her and the crowd.
Rafael waited.
Catalina’s face twisted in concentration as she strained to hold the shield. The light flickered, thinning at the edges. Her eyes widened.
The dome collapsed.
Rafael smiled not wide, not triumphant. Predatory.
He raised his pistol and fired once.
Catalina fell where she stood, a hole no larger than a grape punched clean through her head.
The roar of the crowd surged again, but it reached Drew as something distant and dull. Figures flooded the circle, lifting Rafael onto their shoulders as he hissed in pain, blood soaking the crimson of his coat.
Rafael threw his head back and shouted in victory.
Drew never heard it.
The cheering washed over him as Drew thought past the circle, toward the consequences, and the quiet certainty that he would have to become harder to survive them.
Rafael was not a duelist. That implied his opponents had a chance.
He was not a butcher, either.
He was a matador.
