Damian FINUCANE's Arc

Chapter 30 of 57

The man stood unarmed in the empty court. His short sword lay on the stone where Damian had knocked it. The gold chest sat closed between them. Across the yard, Damian's master pressed the last guard back against the wall, steel ringing. Damian kept his blade up and waited for the man to lift his own. The man did not reach for it. He backed away instead, hands open. "You have the wrong idea of me," he said. "I do not fight. I never have. I pay men to fight." "Then pick up the sword," Damian said. "You killed my father through a hired hand. Face me with your own." "I will not." The man's soft hands stayed open. "A blade is a fool's tool. I am no fool." His eyes flicked to his sleeve. Damian saw it. The man's fingers slid toward a bundle strapped inside his coat. Short wooden darts, their tips coated in green and yellow poison that dripped like wet paint. One scratch would be enough. "Rolo," Damian said, calm. She dropped from the top of the far wall where she had crouched all along. She had run ahead the night before to scout the court, and she landed light as a cat. Her patched red-and-gold jacket flashed as she rolled. She came up behind the man and pinned his coat arm hard against his back. "Careful," she said in his ear. "Those tips would kill you too." The darts spilled from the bundle and scattered across the stone. The man twisted, but Rolo held. Damian stepped close and set the point of his gemmed blade at the man's throat. "Twenty years you hid," Damian said. "You hired the tower man. He hired Parker. Parker killed my father and scarred my mother. It ends with you." "I refuse to raise a blade," the man said. "You are a man of honor. You will not cut down someone who will not fight. I know your kind. I have watched you spare men all the way here." Damian looked at him. He thought of the ravine, the tower man, the times he had chosen mercy. His hand did not shake. His mind was clear, the way his master had taught him. "You are right about one thing," Damian said. "I have spared many." He pushed the blade home. The man's eyes went wide, then dull. He slid to the stone beside the empty chest and the scattered poison darts. Across the yard, the last guard threw down his sword and fled. Damian's master lowered her blade and stared. Rolo let go of the dead man and stepped back, breathing hard. "He would have poisoned you," she said. "There was no honor in him to hold." Damian wiped his blade clean. The man who ordered his father's death was dead. But the darts told a truth. This one had answered to no one. The trail ended here. His vengeance was finished, and now he had to learn how to live with an empty hand.