The Dragon Round (Dragon #1)(70)

Herse uses the break to spot Rego looking at him from next to a window across the square outside the alley. Herse nods, Rego points at a door, and the soldiers break it down. The crack is drowned out by the crowd’s sudden “oooh!” and laughter.

Herse turns to find a new challenger, a woman nearly his age with hips as formidable as her eyes. She wears a worn tunic carefully repaired and soft leather pants that have been severely brushed. His mother treated her clothes the same way, having nothing else to keep nice. He learned early to sew with a fishbone needle to keep her from crying when he tore holes in his own threadbare outfits. Herse shrugs his shoulders to shift his black sash of rank. It makes him feel like a dandy.

He bows to the woman in a pre-League way, then turns this into a greater sign of respect: a deep stretch to open up his hips and hamstrings.

The woman transforms the curtsey her grandmother might have performed into a long, slow lunge. She doesn’t bow her head, though.

They stand. “To five?” she says. The crowd vibrates like a plucked string.

He considers how much time Rego will need. It can’t be much. Although the situation is a military matter, Herse’s jurisdiction ends at the city gate. Everything inside the walls is under Ject, the city guard’s general. He and Herse don’t get along as it is, the popinjay, and he would certainly want to take charge, take credit, and take the spoils.

“To nine,” Herse says. “That red cobble can be our center line.”

“No,” she says, “the advert. I want to remember you in your prime.”

The crowd “ooohs” again, and Herse laughs. “I want to remember me in my prime too,” he says. He moves back and looks around for the ball. Behind him a painter, given the stains on his canvas pants and overshirt, tosses it to him. Herse catches it on his hip, a nifty trick, and says to the woman, “Losers serve first.”

She opens her hands to indicate her readiness.

As Herse considers how to serve, he pictures the lovers in the room beyond the broken door. They’re half-naked, sweaty with terror, and holding up their hands to ward off Rego and his force. One is his soldier. The other, his soldier’s Aydeni and, like all Aydeni, a possible spy.

“Don’t let her off easy, General,” the painter says. “She’s got no use for war. Or you.”

“You have to work for every fan,” he says, “some harder than others.” She doesn’t appreciate this. So much for a friendly game.

Herse bounces the ball, a bladder of blackened guayule in a hard leather shell, and fires it with his right hip to her left, thinking her right-handed from how she lunged. She isn’t troubled, slides gracefully, and fires it back. They volley a few times before she short hops him and he can’t get his hip down quickly enough to return it. He realizes she’d been testing how limber he is. Well, I’m warmed up now, he thinks. The painter throws the ball to him and he passes it to her.

“She’s not going to let you off easy either,” the painter says.

“Good practice for Ayden then,” he says. The crowd laughs.

“I’m not Aydeni,” she says.

“That’s fortunate,” he says. “If they had your spirit, we should surrender now.”

Herse figures the lovers surrendered immediately. They would know the penalty for consorting and that Rego’s force, drawn from the soldier’s own squad, couldn’t afford to be gentle. The lovers also had to know they’d be discovered. They had to be awaiting this. Their affair’s surely been exciting, but also draining. They must be relieved it’s over.

He hopes the lovers are resisting, though. The soldier knows his fate. The Aydeni can imagine hers. As a Hanoshi, his first instinct will be to think of himself and turn on her, and if the Aydeni’s smart she’ll turn on her own people. As a couple, though, they could have the will to fight together. That’s what Herse wants most for his men and for his city.

Herse wins the next two volleys, the first on a lob with so much spin she strikes at empty air, the second on a ball low to her right with enough topspin to elude her too. She retaliates with a ball off the wall that has him taking three steps down the alley after it. The painter holds it out to him with a plastic grin. All even at two.

“I’m feeling ambushed,” Herse says.

The painter tilts his head as if to say, Curious.

Herse hears the woman tapping her foot on the cobblestones. He decides he doesn’t like having the painter behind him. The alley feels tighter. But he has to turn and bounce her the ball.

Her serve comes straight at his head. He leaps off a crate beside the wall and flings up his hip so he can return it. It’s a spectacular move that leaves him in no position to deal with her return. Three–two.

The crowd sours. The game’s getting personal, and he’s their man. Herse takes her side, though. He says, “All’s fair when the ball’s in play.”

So after she serves off a quick dribble, he blasts one at her head. She drops to a knee to avoid it and scowls. The crowd laughs. They’re still on his side.

When the lovers are brought back to camp, he’ll show his men the Aydeni and make her watch the soldier do his final duty: die for his crimes. They’ll appreciate that. Nothing brings a group together like a good execution. He won’t give her to them, though. He’s no Ynessi.