Turn 4 of 7

Look to Rendel in the gallery and wait for his signal

You turn your head. It is a small motion, barely a tilt, but in the stillness of the strip it might as well be a shout. The gallery is watching you and Sarkady and the confused referee, and you are looking past all of them, past Tomas, past the chalk lines and the packed earth, up to the bench where Advocate Rendel is standing. He is fifty years old and built like a man who stopped caring about his body twenty years ago and started caring about everything else. His coat is dark wool, unbuttoned despite the heat, and his hands are at his sides. He is not signalling. He is simply watching, the way a man watches a document being signed — not with tension but with the patience of someone who already knows what the words say.

Rendel's face gives you nothing. It never has. Six years of duels, forty-two losses, and not once has he asked. Not once has he said *why* or *explain* or *are you doing this on purpose*. His silence on the matter is the loudest thing in your professional life, louder than the referee's calls, louder than the gallery's contempt, louder than Sarkady standing on the strip refusing a win she has earned. Rendel's silence is an answer, and the answer is that he knows. He has always known. And whatever arrangement exists between the two of you, whatever unspoken contract keeps you losing and keeps him paying, it has never required words.

Tomas follows your gaze. "Vaszary? What is it? What's Rendel —" His hand tightens on your shoulder. "Should we go up? Should I speak to him?"

Sarkady has not moved. Her blade is still raised, her chest still heaving, her eyes still locked on you with the fierce, almost joyful fury of a woman who has cornered something and knows it. She sees you looking at the gallery. She sees where your attention has gone. And something in her expression shifts — not surprise, not understanding, but the sharp narrowing of someone who has just found the thread she was pulling on. She lowers her blade one inch. Just enough to speak.

"Your advocate looks nervous," she says, still pitched for you alone. "Is he nervous about you winning, or about you losing? Because those are very different problems, and I think even your second doesn't know which one it is."

The referee is looking between you, Sarkady, and the gallery with the expression of a man who has officiated three hundred bouts and has never had one refuse to end. The record-keepers have stopped writing. In the gallery, Rendel's right hand moves — not a signal, not a gesture, just a slow settling into his coat pocket, the kind of motion that could mean anything and therefore means nothing. He is leaving it to you. He has always left it to you, and you have always chosen the same thing, and the fact that he is standing now instead of sitting tells you only that he did not expect Sarkady to refuse. Tomas is still waiting for an answer. His hand is warm on your shoulder and he smells like the oil he uses on the blades and he is looking at you with the faith of someone who has not yet learned that faith is a thing that can be misplaced. Behind you, the rear chalk line is a white smear beneath your boot. Ahead of you, Sarkady's blade is still raised and her question hangs in the air between you like a blade of its own — winning or losing, which is Rendel afraid of, and which are you?