“If you think a sword lives in the three feet of iron ahead of the crossguard, Judge,” Daro Kesh said evenly as he stepped half a boot-length forward onto the outer chalk line, holding the bare iron handle at the height of his solar nerve web, “you have never had to teach a boy who couldn’t afford a smith’s bill.”
Reth Mal didn’t waste breath on another reply. Seeing that Nara Soth was at the very end of her third beat on the ash walking staff—her single arm shaking visibly, dark blood dripping steadily from her chin onto the brass feeder groove—and that Mina’s hands were poised over the final coupled restraint needles in Halin’s collar and wrist, Reth lunged straight in.
He didn’t swing wide this time. Reth knew that Daro had no blade length left to sweep the outer arc. He drove his twin-pronged channel weapon in a series of viper-fast, straight-line thrusts aimed past Daro’s right hip toward Mina’s elbow and Halin’s exposed ribs.
What followed across the next four heartbeats on the western edge of the chalk circle was a masterclass in close-quarter cost and Early Jade structure.
Daro’s dark Jade projection now extended only three inches beyond the four-inch iron crossguard in his fist. Because of that, he could no longer intercept Reth’s weapon out in the safe middle distance between them. He had to wait until the blazing white tips of Reth’s twin prongs had already crossed the outer boundary of his own reach—until…
