Durzo lurched forward faster than he expected and cut only air as his knees collided with Kylar’s shoulder. He flipped over headfirst.

Durzo’s heavy curved sword was still lodged in the bureau next to the window, but Retribution was closer. Kylar grabbed it and turned.

“—want to—”

The wetboy lunged to grab the hook sword off the ground.

“—fight you!” Kylar jumped on the hook sword.

Durzo pulled up with all the strength of his Talent. For an instant, it seemed the iron core of the blade would hold. Then the sword snapped an inch from the hilt.

“You might not want to, son, but there’s something in you that refuses to die,” Durzo said. He threw the broken blade aside, but didn’t draw any other weapon.

“Master, don’t make me fight you,” Kylar said, pointing the blade at Durzo’s throat.

“You made your choice when you disobeyed me.”

“Why’d you do it?”

“I wouldn’t have apprenticed you, but I thought you were something you’re not. May the Night Angels forgive me.”

“I don’t mean me!” Kylar’s hands shook on the sword. “Why’d you make me betray my best friend?”

“Because you broke the rules. Because life’s empty. Because I broke the rules too.” Durzo shrugged. “It catches up.”

“That’s not good enough!”

Durzo tented his hands and pursed his lips. “Logan died screaming, you know. Pathetic.”

Kylar lashed out. The sword streaked for Durzo’s neck. But Durzo didn’t flinch. The blade slapped into his palm and stopped as if it didn’t even have an edge.

But Durzo’s hands were still tented in front of him. The hand holding Kylar’s sword was made of pure magic.

It flung Retribution out of Kylar’s grip. Other hands bloomed in the air, striking at him. Kylar blocked and stumbled back as Durzo walked forward calmly, surging with Talent.

There was nothing Kylar could do. He blocked faster and faster, but the hands came faster still. Dimly, a few hands of his own Talent bloomed in front of him and blocked some of the attacks, but it wasn’t enough. Durzo drove him back and back.

Finally, hands latched onto each of Kylar’s limbs and pinned him to the wall. He couldn’t move an inch.

“Ah, kid,” Durzo said. “If I could have taught you to use your Talent, you’d have been something really special.”

Durzo drew a throwing dagger. Spun it in his fingers. Brought it up. He paused as if to say something, then shook his head.

“I’m sorry, Kylar.”

“Don’t be. Life’s empty, right?”

Durzo sighed. He was staring at Retribution, gleaming blackly at Kylar’s feet, as close as the moonlight and as far away as the moon. The look on his scarred face was anguish, regret.

Following his gaze, Kylar stared at the black sword that Durzo had carried for so many years, and remembered—

Scowling, Durzo had snatched the pouch away from him and turned it over. The Globe of Edges fell into his hand. “Damn. Just what I thought,” he said, his voice harsh in the quiet of the Jadwin hallway.

“What?” Kylar asked.

It was a fake, another fake ka’kari.

But Durzo wasn’t in any mood to answer questions. “Did the girl see your face?”

Kylar’s silence was enough.

“Take care of it. Kylar, that’s not a request. It’s an order. Kill her.”

“No,” Kylar said.

“What did you say?” Durzo asked, incredulous. Black blood was dribbling down Retribution, pooling on the floor.

“I won’t kill her. And I won’t let you.”

“Who is this girl that she’s worth being hunted for the rest of your short—” he stopped. “She’s Doll Girl.”

“Yes, master. I’m sorry.”

“By the Night Angels! I don’t want apologies! I want obedien—” Durzo held up a finger for silence. The footfalls were close now. Durzo blurred into the hall, inhumanly fast, his sword flashing silver in the low light.

His sword flashed silver? Retribution’s blade is black.

There was the sound of something metallic rolling across marble toward Kylar. He raised a hand and felt the ka’kari slap into his outstretched palm.

“No! No, it’s mine!” Blint yelled.

The ka’kari pooled like black oil in an instant.

What had Durzo just said? The silver was another fake. You stole my ka’kari. Not a silver ka’kari at all. A black ka’kari. The ka’kari Durzo had been carrying for years, hidden covering the blade of Retribution.

The ka’kari choose their own masters. For some reason, the black ka’kari had chosen Kylar. Maybe had chosen him years ago, the day Durzo had beaten him for seeing Doll Girl again. That day, when a blue glow had surrounded the black blade. When Durzo had shouted, “No, not that! It’s mine!” as incandescent blue fire had burned into Kylar’s fingers. Durzo had thrown it away from Kylar so Kylar couldn’t complete the bond, because once Kylar completed the bond, Kylar wouldn’t call the silver ka’kari for Durzo. Now they knew he hadn’t called it because it had been a fake. There had never been any ka’kari in the city except Durzo’s black.

And Durzo had known from that very day that if he let Kylar live, the black ka’kari was lost to him forever. Durzo had even left it for him tonight so that Kylar would have a chance.

But now it was too late.

Durzo looked like there was more he wanted to say to Kylar, some way he wanted to vent his anguish. But he’d never been a man of words.

Instead, mere paces away, he hurled the knife at Kylar’s face.

Time didn’t slow.

The world didn’t contract to the point of the spinning knife.

But despair flash-boiled in the heat of an insane hope in Kylar’s heart. He didn’t even notice his hand come up, didn’t know how it had broken free, couldn’t say how the ka’kari had gone from the blade on the floor into his hand. It was just there.

In that unslowed fraction of a second, black goo flipped from his fingertips and splattered across the knife spinning toward his chest like spit against pavement.

When Kylar looked again, the knife was just gone.

Ting.

Kylar looked down to see what had made the sound. The ka’kari was rolling across the floor coming toward him. It wobbled as it rolled and when it climbed up his boot and dissolved into his skin, Kylar felt a rush of power.

With a mental shrug, Kylar burst through the phantasmal hands holding him to the wall. Settling smoothly on his feet, he extended a hand toward his old master and released the power arcing through him.

Durzo was hurled away as if all the force of a hurricane had been unleashed in his face. He tumbled end over end, sliding and rolling across the room until he slapped against the wall.

With the Talent, Kylar caught up Retribution and brought it to his hand.

“Don’t fight when you can’t win,” Kylar said. “And don’t fight when you don’t want to win. Right?”

Durzo struggled to his feet and stood, weaponless. He took a ready position and smirked. “Sometimes you have to fight.”

“Not this time,” Kylar said. He raised the sword and came forward at a run. Durzo didn’t move; he just looked Kylar in the eye, ready. At the last second, Kylar dodged to the side and dove through the window into the moonlit air whipping the north tower.