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Roy offered the dueling mark to Marius. “Do you want to toss it or should I?”

“Down south we have the challenged person toss the coin,” Marius replied, lowering the point of his sword as he shook his arms out. “The challenger is also heads, though if the Columbian traditions are different I’m happy to do things your way. I suppose if I win I get to take the cornerstone back to Tetzlan with me but I’m curious what you expect to get if you win.”

“You go home and leave me in peace.” He gestured back towards the smoking ruin of the house’s east wall with his off hand. “And pay for the lumber to fix my house.”

“You burned that on your own, senor.” Marius smiled, though, and patted at the pocket where he kept his coin purse. “Yet I think arrangements can be made. I would like to add one thing to my prize, if you don’t mind.”

Roy’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

“The iron plate you kept the cornerstone on.” Marius shifted the box clamped under his left arm until it made its way down to his off hand, then rotated it so Roy could see the strange marks on it. Then he set it on the ground off to one side. “That mirror frame in your basement damaged the wards on the box I brought to contain it and I’ll need something to reinforce them.”

Odd that Marius would want an iron plate to repair wards damaged by steel. Roy had always been under the impression that the two metals were very similar in function but perhaps there was some hint at a difference there. He filed the thought away for later, as it wasn’t the thing to focus on now. “Fine. You can have the plate if you tell me what you did with Miss Fairchild if I win.”

“I swear to do so regardless.” Marius leaned back, stretching out his torso and chest, then snapped back upright and raised his blade to a guard. “If there is nothing else, let us begin. I have a schedule to keep.”

“Will you use magic?” Roy asked.

“No.”

The man’s answer was flat and immediate, giving no hint as to whether he still could use magic. Roy kept his annoyance away from his face. He’d been hoping to bring his own talent for manipulating flames to the third bout but, after he’d already played his strongest cards, he was pretty much out of options himself. 

He’d already revealed the secret to the Manor walls and exhausted all the heat he brought with him from them. Marius probably wouldn’t wait for him to go back for more. And conjuring ice from the necklace too frequently was a risky move, as well. It got hungry. In fact, at this point Roy probably had just as little magic at his disposal as the duelist did. Maybe less.

So it would have to be a straight fight.

Roy assumed his own stance, weight even, messer between himself and Marius. The other man had a reach advantage and, by all accounts, a much longer history as a duelist. It was going to be a difficult bout. Other than a brief encounter with a Tetzlani gold drinker a few months ago he hadn’t traded blows with an Iberian swordsman in years and he tried to remember their habits. Conventional wisdom was that they were quite technical, but a little effete. Close quarters might be the way to go.

He brought the dueling mark in his offhand up and displayed it for Marius to see then balanced it on his finger tips. A deft curl of his hand and it wound up in the crook of one finger, perched on this thumb. “The Lord in Raging Skies judges the rightness of all disputes,” Roy said, drawing on half remembered phrases from the circuit judges he’d met. “May he judge between you and I.”

“The earth is the foundation of life,” Marius replied. “If your path is level it will favor you. If not, may you sink beneath.”

That seemed like all there was to say so Roy threw the coin. It flew into the air with a sharp metallic ringing noise, glimmers of starlight reflecting on its surface.

Marius was moving before Roy’s thumb was fully extended. However instead of rushing in headfirst, exploiting the incredibly sharp movements Roy had come to expect from the other to close the distance, Marius reached high. With a blinding sweep of his blade he slapped the tip of Roy’s sword, then looped back to try and prick Roy’s hand as his wrist was wrenched out of line. It was a shockingly fast move and Roy only kept his hand unbloodied because he jerked his own guard up reflexively.

It saved his hand but left him with his own blade too high to block and Marius pressed forward, forcing his point up to try and prick Roy’s sword arm a second time. Roy was already moving forward as well, which saved him as the point wound up under his arm before it could find its new line of attack. For the moment he was spared due to the dullness of the rapier’s edge, which slid along his sleeve without biting in.

His own attempt to slash Marius’ sword arm was stopped when the duelist shoved his left forearm up under Roy’s right wrist. Just like that, the two of them came to grips. Roy made a grab for Marius’ off hand, thinking he could throw the other, but instead he offered his left arm to the darting point of the rapier.

It had been a long time since he’d been run through. It was only an arm this time but it hurt just as badly as he remembered. The worst part was the fact that Roy was running out of time before the coin hit ground, rendering a verdict, and so far Marius was clearly the better duelist at the moment. Teeth gritted, Roy pressed even further forward.

For a brief moment he saw a shocked expression on Marius’ face before his headbutt connected, only slightly deflected by the brims of their hats. Headgear and combatants scattered in all directions. Roy kept his feet in spite of the searing pain of the rapier point pulling out of his arm and his sword windmilled about, aimed at the space Marius’ neck would normally occupy. Unfortunately the Tetzlani duelist wasn’t as hard headed as Roy was and he had ducked away from the impact. The edge of the messer scraped along the top of his skull, scattering a mix of hair and blood, but did little lasting harm. Roaring in pain, Marius snapped up in his guard once more and Roy matched him.

Blood was already running down the side of the other man’s face and Roy could feel his own trickling down his left arm. As his weight shifted forward for the next exchange a single note chimed across the bluff. It rang with supernatural clarity and brought both men to a halt, breathing hard.

They stared at each other for a moment, the unspoken question of who would go and look at the coin hanging between them.

“Heads.”

Cassie’s voice cut between them like a physical thing.

“It’s over here, if you want to look at it yourself.”

With a deliberate effort Roy broke away from Marius’ death glare and glanced around to find Cassie standing a few dozen feet away, the dueling mark softly gleaming on the ground beside her. He walked over and looked at it.

“Dust and ashes.”

Marius sheathed his rapier but remained where he was. “Then I’ll take my prize.”

Roy also stowed his weapon and pressed his hand over his wound, trying to staunch both sides of the wound by pressing the other side into his shirt. “I’m sorry to impose on you right away, Miss Fairchild, but could you ask your brother to bring the iron plate for the cornerstone up from the Armory?”

From the look she gave him he could tell she wasn’t happy to be sent away immediately but she headed into the house without protest. He did notice she went though the front door, rather than use the more convenient entrance he’d just added. Roy himself had no such computations. “Come on,” he said, tilting his head towards the Manor. “Let’s get a bandage on your head before you go.”

“Very generous of you,” Marius said, cautiously following along behind. “You could have hoped I would bleed out on the way home and spare your reputation that way.”

“I’d rather not risk you dying and leaving that rock in the middle of the desert.” Roy walked through the scorched remains of his house towards the kitchen where he kept a small surgical kit. “My reputation, such as it is, isn’t worth that.”

Roy pulled the kit down from a cupboard and set it on the table. He took a roll of bandages and bottle of alcohol for himself while Marius took the scissors and quickly snipped his hair back from the edge of his wound. “You know, nothing about this job went the way I expected.”

“Burning my own house wasn’t something I ever wanted to do, either.” Roy hissed as the alcohol stung his wound. “Do you mind if I ask you something?”

“He’s dead.”

Roy turned to the other man in surprise. “Who?”

“Whatever man you knew who died touching the cornerstone. There’s no way to revive them once they’re like that. We tried it for decades and all we managed to do was turn a stone corpse into a flesh one. They’re probably not actually alive in there.” Marius dabbed alcohol on his scalp with a bandage then grimaced. “The cults say a lot of things about their gods that probably aren’t true.”

“So he hasn’t been aware and suffering as a living block of stone for the last six years?”

Marius lowered his hands and looked Roy straight in the eye. “I don’t truly know.” The uncertainty in his eyes matched his words. “And there’s no way to ask anyone who would. If it makes you feel any better, once we’re done with the stone and it’s destroyed we believe anyone who’s touched it will return to flesh. They’ll be dead, but at least you’ll know for sure.”

“How long will that take?”

“I don’t know. A year. Maybe three.”

The kitchen door swung open and Brandon walked in, carrying the warding box in one hand. He had reverted to his normal form except for the hand that cradled the plate, which seemed like it was covered in more layers of wood than normal for his free form. Roy frowned. He’d never seen Brandon touch iron directly before. Most people didn’t. Wordlessly, the knight put the box down on the table and gave Roy a curious look.

Ray ignored it and gestured to Marius. “Take it and get out of here before I change my mind.”

The Tetzlani man nodded and rearranged things so the box’s damaged side was sitting on the plate, then he picked it all up and said, “Thank you, Mr. Harper. I’m sorry for all that this has cost you. Ultimately, that happened because my people couldn’t protect the cornerstone properly. We won’t let that happen again.”

Then he took the box and was gone.

Roy found himself staring blankly at the table top for several moments. Then Brandon asked, “What now? Are we going to run him down later and steal it back?”

“No. I’m not sure it’s worth it at this point. Let’s call it a night. Tomorrow we have to find Georg and start fixing my house.”