A fortnight after their arrival in King's Landing, life inside the Red Keep had managed to settle into something Jinx was willing to call normal only because the first several days had been considerably worse. The voyage had left everyone battered enough that he had expected pain to be the main problem once they reached shore, but for the actual northerners it turned out the south had invented a much more ordinary kind of misery. King's Landing was too warm, too bright, too close, and somehow always smelled faintly of hot stone, horse dung, smoke, salt, and several thousand people who had apparently agreed that streets did not need to breathe.
Brandon suffered the worst and complained about it least effectively. He spent most of the first three days stretched across whatever piece of furniture happened to be nearest a window, shirt half-open, hair damp against his forehead, glaring at the sun as though it had personally insulted House Stark, while Jinx discovered that even doing nothing could become exhausting when his body had spent most of its life expecting cold air. Neither of them slept well at first because the chambers remained warm long after sunset, and Jinx lost count of how many times he woke to find Brandon had dragged his bedding onto the floor beside an open window in the hope that stone might somehow remember winter.
Eddard endured it better, though not nearly as well as Jinx had expected after years in the Vale. The mountains had accustomed Ned to milder summers than Winterfell's without preparing him for the heavy southern heat pooled between the Red Keep's walls, and during the first week even he occasionally stopped halfway through climbing a staircase simply to breathe without pretending it was effortless. Jinx had caught him once standing beneath the shade of a covered walkway with both hands braced against the stone, his face slightly flushed beneath sweat, and Ned's expression when he realized he had been seen made it obvious that mentioning the incident would be treated as a betrayal between twins.
Arthur and Barristan had considerably less sympathy.
Both Kingsguard had spent years serving in the south and therefore moved through the same heat as if nothing unusual were happening, though their remaining injuries prevented either from enjoying the northerners' suffering too openly. Elia was worse in a different way because the warmth seemed to improve her mood after weeks in the North, and Jinx eventually stopped complaining in front of her when he realized she found something deeply satisfying about watching three Stark brothers discover that weather could be hostile without containing snow.
The injuries disappeared faster than the heat did.
That became Grand Maester Pycelle's newest obsession.
Jinx had brought only a small quantity of the alchemical mixtures from Winterfell because most of what he kept in his hidden laboratory had never been intended for travel, but there had been enough preserved salves, powders, tinctures, and concentrated extracts to treat the damage from the voyage properly once they were no longer trying to keep a ship afloat at the same time. The difference became noticeable within days. Eddard's reopened stitches closed cleanly without the angry swelling Pycelle had expected, Brandon's shoulder regained movement much earlier than the old maester considered reasonable, and the bruising beneath Arthur's ribs faded so quickly that Pycelle examined him twice in one morning because he apparently distrusted his own first examination.
Oberyn found the entire thing entertaining until Pycelle began asking questions.
Jinx found it entertaining for considerably longer.
The Grand Maester arrived one afternoon carrying enough parchment to make the visit look less like medicine and more like an interrogation conducted by paper, and he had barely finished checking the smooth new skin beneath one of Eddard's former wounds before turning toward Jinx with a series of questions about distillation temperatures, preparation order, preservation, dosage, and whether the strange silver residue at the bottom of one bottle was metallic or mineral. Jinx answered the harmless parts because refusing everything would only make Pycelle more interested, but once the older man started asking for the actual recipe he leaned back in his chair and explained that most of the necessary ingredients could only be grown properly at Winterfell.
That had not discouraged him nearly as much as Jinx hoped.
Pycelle wanted seeds.
Jinx told him they would die.
Pycelle wanted samples.
Jinx told him the living roots spoiled once separated from Winterfell's soil for too long.
The old maester then suggested sending gardeners north, which forced Jinx to explain that the plants were being cultivated in conditions he had spent years adjusting and that reproducing those conditions elsewhere would probably require more effort than waiting for him to make another batch. Most of that was true, though Jinx neglected to mention that the greater obstacle was his complete lack of interest in handing the Citadel a recipe he had developed himself merely because Pycelle had discovered the professional equivalent of puppy eyes.
The pyromancers were worse.
They had begun appearing every few days after hearing from somebody in the kitchens, or perhaps from Pycelle himself, that the strange medicines involved alchemy. Jinx never figured out which rumor first brought them, and after the third visit he stopped caring. They spent most of their time asking whether heat was used during preparation, whether volatile reagents were involved, and whether the mixtures could be adapted to burns, while Jinx spent most of his time wondering how an organization devoted to wildfire had somehow produced men who looked personally wounded by being told that no, he was not going to show them his laboratory notes.
The actual healing was worth the annoyance.
By the beginning of the second week Brandon could move his left arm without the sling, Eddard no longer guarded his ribs whenever he stood, Oberyn had abandoned most of his bandages and immediately started behaving as though that meant Elia could no longer tell him what not to do, and Arthur had returned to training before anyone sensible thought he should. Barristan followed a day later, which Jinx took as proof that Kingsguard possessed a collective inability to rest whenever swords were nearby.
Jinx had healed fastest.
That surprised nobody anymore.
Once the hunger was controlled and his body had enough food to work with, bruises faded almost as quickly as they appeared and the damage from the restraints became little more than pale marks around his wrists. The split places at the corners of his mouth took longer because eating kept reopening them, but even those had vanished by the time he stopped waking every few hours expecting the floor beneath his bed to tilt like a ship.
The heat improved at roughly the same pace.
Jinx did not know whether his body had truly adapted or whether he had simply become tired of noticing how much he hated it, but sometime around the tenth day he realized he had walked from Maegor's Holdfast to the kitchens without arriving damp beneath the collar. Brandon stopped sleeping beside the window shortly afterward, and Eddard finally began wearing something heavier than the lightest shirt he owned without looking as though he regretted every decision that had brought him south.
That was apparently when Arthur Dayne decided they had all become healthy enough to start doing stupid things again.
The challenge came the previous morning while Jinx was eating.
Arthur had appeared beside the table after training, still wearing a loose white practice shirt with sweat darkening the cloth between his shoulders, and waited until Jinx finished chewing before mentioning that he had heard entirely too much about the seven sword forms Jinx supposedly created without ever actually seeing Jinx use them seriously. There was no accusation in the words, which somehow made them more difficult to dismiss, because Arthur sounded less like a man calling a boast and more like someone who had spent two weeks trying not to ask a question and finally decided patience had become pointless.
Jinx initially told him no.
Arthur remained there.
Jinx kept eating.
Arthur asked whether the refusal meant the stories were exaggerated.
Jinx looked up at that, found exactly enough quiet amusement in the Sword of the Morning's expression to understand what he was doing, and realized with some irritation that Arthur Dayne had apparently spent enough time around Oberyn to learn that pride worked better on certain people than persistence.
Eddard had been sitting nearby and immediately found something fascinating about his cup.
The duel was arranged before Jinx finished breakfast.
Now, one day later, Jinx was standing in the Red Keep's lower training yard wondering when exactly a private test between two swordsmen had become an event large enough to attract half the castle.
The yard itself was normally used by household guards and Kingsguard whenever their duties left enough free time for practice, a broad rectangle of beaten earth surrounded by stone galleries and shaded walkways. Weapon racks lined one wall beneath faded awnings, old cuts scarred several wooden posts used for drills, and the packed ground carried enough footprints that Jinx suspected every guard in the castle had found some excuse to train there that morning.
Most of them were not training anymore.
They had formed an uneven ring around the yard instead.
Some stood openly with arms folded or helmets tucked beneath one arm, while others pretended to be occupied near the weapon racks despite never once looking at the weapons in front of them. Jinx recognized several gold cloaks mixed among the castle guards and wondered whether one of them had been present when their captain lost his arm, though nobody seemed eager enough to approach for him to find out.
Rhaegar stood beneath the shade along one side with Elia beside him, both dressed considerably more comfortably than they had been on the day they returned. Barristan waited a little farther forward, his arms folded across his chest while he watched Arthur with the particular attention of someone who had fought beside the man often enough to notice things most spectators would miss. Eddard and Brandon had claimed places nearby, and Brandon's shoulder appeared completely healed except for the occasional unconscious roll he gave it whenever he had been standing still too long.
Jinx had expected all of them.
He had not expected Rhaella.
The queen sat beneath a shaded gallery with two ladies nearby and enough guards positioned discreetly around her to preserve the fiction that she had simply happened to choose this particular courtyard for an afternoon visit. She caught Jinx looking and gave him a small smile that made it obvious she knew perfectly well why he was surprised, though she did not rescue him by offering an explanation.
Jinx looked away before the attention became awkward.
He had become unexpectedly fond of her over the last fortnight.
Their first conversation had not remained isolated. Rhaella had invited him to supper several more times, sometimes with Elia and his brothers present and sometimes merely because she had discovered Jinx would sit quietly in her solar without treating every silence as something that required filling. He had learned that she liked older histories more than court chronicles, disliked overly sweet wine, and had a habit of touching the edge of whatever book she was reading whenever something elsewhere in the room made her nervous. She had apparently learned that Jinx was capable of falling asleep almost anywhere if people stopped expecting him to speak for longer than twenty minutes, because after finding him unconscious beside one of her windows she had ordered a cushion placed there the next time he visited without ever mentioning why.
Having her here still felt different.
Arthur stood near the center of the yard waiting for him.
Dawn rested sheathed at his left hip.
Even without being drawn, the pale greatsword drew eyes from everyone around them in a way ordinary steel never could. Jinx had seen the blade often enough during the North and the voyage that its appearance no longer surprised him, though seeing it hanging from Arthur's waist while Dark Sister rested against his own made the old stories surrounding both weapons harder to ignore.
Arthur carried another sword as well.
That one was almost aggressively ordinary.
Its leather grip had been darkened by use, the guard was plain steel without decoration, and the scabbard carried several scratches that suggested it belonged to the training yard rather than any famous house. Arthur had not explained why he brought both, and Jinx had deliberately avoided asking because he wanted to see what the man intended.
Dark Sister remained sheathed against Jinx's left hip.
He had dressed lightly enough for the heat, wearing a loose black shirt with the sleeves tied back from his wrists and trousers that allowed more movement than anything suitable for court. His hair had become a problem sometime during the second week because the silver-blond spreading through the black made every loose strand more noticeable against his face, so he had tied most of it behind his head and already regretted leaving the rest free once the warm breeze began pushing it into his eyes.
Arthur looked toward the crowd.
Then toward the queen.
Then back to Jinx.
Something in his expression suggested the audience had not been his idea either.
Jinx found that reassuring.
"I thought you wanted to see the forms," Jinx said eventually, though he kept his voice low enough that the people around the edge of the yard had to work if they wanted to hear. His eyes wandered across the circle again before returning to Arthur, and he added that this looked considerably more like somebody had advertised a tournament without bothering to tell either participant.
Arthur followed his glance toward the guards.
A faint weariness touched the knight's face. "I mentioned the duel to Ser Barristan."
Barristan did not react.
Arthur allowed a pause before continuing that Barristan had apparently mentioned it to Rhaegar, after which Arthur had stopped knowing who told whom.
Rhaegar looked toward Elia.
Elia looked elsewhere.
Jinx understood enough.
He glanced toward Rhaella again and found the queen watching him with that same restrained amusement. There was no point trying to discover that part of the chain because Jinx suspected every answer would eventually become somebody told Rhaella and she decided she wanted to watch.
Brandon had considerably less interest in pretending innocence.
He was already smiling.
Jinx ignored him.
Arthur's attention returned to Dark Sister. "I asked because I have watched you train your brothers with pieces of them, and I have seen you use something resembling the second and seventh forms when circumstances became serious. That is not the same as seeing the system itself."
Jinx rubbed his thumb once along the mouth of Dark Sister's scabbard while considering how much he actually wanted to show. Arthur had been asking about the seven forms almost since Winterfell, though never with the obsessive persistence Rhaegar applied to magic. He had approached them like another swordsman confronted with a language he could partially understand from movement alone, recognizing familiar ideas inside unfamiliar structure and becoming more interested whenever something refused to fit the swordsmanship he already knew.
That made refusing harder.
Jinx could have taught him descriptions.
Arthur wanted to feel them from the other side of a blade.
There was a difference.
"You're not getting all seven today," Jinx said after a while, watching Arthur rather than the crowd. "Some of them depend on things you don't have yet, and I'm not letting you learn why the seventh is a terrible idea by having you accidentally discover it while everyone here is standing close enough to become part of the lesson."
A few guards near the front exchanged looks.
Arthur did not.
He had heard enough about Juyo and Vaapad from Winterfell to know Jinx was not making the warning for theater, and his hand moved briefly near the plain sword at his hip while he considered the limitation. When he eventually nodded, it was the simple acceptance of someone who cared more about testing what was available than arguing over what was not.
Jinx appreciated that.
Then Arthur reached for the plain sword.
He drew it first.
Steel whispered from the scabbard, ordinary and polished, with no pale meteor-forged sheen and no history following it into the air. Arthur gave the blade one easy turn in his hand, checked its balance despite obviously knowing it already, and let the point settle toward the ground while keeping Dawn untouched at his other hip.
That answered one question.
Jinx's hand settled around Dark Sister.
He did not draw.
Arthur noticed.
The crowd did too.
Jinx could feel attention tightening around the yard, though he tried not to think about how many people were now silently waiting for him to do something worth having abandoned their duties to watch. He had never enjoyed audiences as much as Brandon did, and something about standing in the middle of a ring of guards made him briefly miss fighting in Winterfell's yard where the most annoying spectators had usually been Lyanna shouting advice nobody requested.
His eyes moved toward Ned.
Eddard was watching quietly.
There was no encouragement in his face and no concern Jinx could easily identify, only the familiar steady attention of someone who had already watched him demonstrate each form often enough to know that the sword staying sheathed did not mean nothing had started.
Arthur shifted his leading foot.
That was enough to bring Jinx's attention back.
The knight did not settle into any exaggerated stance. His shoulders remained loose, knees slightly bent, weight placed carefully enough that he could move in several directions without announcing which one he preferred. Jinx had sparred with good swordsmen before and great swordsmen rarely enough to remember all of them; Arthur belonged firmly in the second category, and the small amount of movement required for him to become dangerous bothered Jinx more than any elaborate flourish would have.
He smiled despite himself.
Arthur noticed that too.
Jinx finally drew Dark Sister.
The Valyrian blade came free with a softer sound than ordinary steel, its dark ripples catching the afternoon light while several people around the yard unconsciously leaned closer. Jinx let the sword settle low beside his leg instead of immediately assuming one of the seven forms, feeling its weight through fingers that had spent enough time without it over the last month to notice how natural holding it had become again.
For a few moments neither moved.
The training yard gradually became quieter around them, though not completely silent. Armor shifted somewhere near the back, someone whispered and was immediately hushed, a horse called faintly from another courtyard beyond the walls, and Jinx could hear Brandon reposition his boots against the dirt because apparently even standing still became difficult when his brother was about to fight Arthur Dayne.
Jinx rolled one shoulder.
The heat had stopped bothering him until now.
He could already feel sweat starting beneath the back of his collar.
Arthur's eyes never left the sword.
Jinx realized he was waiting.
Not for an attack.
For the first form.
That made the whole thing unexpectedly easier.
Jinx moved Dark Sister upward and allowed his posture to settle into something simpler than Arthur probably expected, feet finding their place almost without thought while the blade came forward into the foundation from which every other form had grown. There was nothing especially beautiful about Shii-Cho when stripped of speed and experience, and that was part of why Jinx liked beginning there.
Arthur's expression changed only slightly.
Recognition came first.
Then curiosity.
Jinx shifted his grip once and waited for Arthur to understand that the lesson had already started, while around them the guards finally seemed to remember that whatever they had expected from a duel between the Sword of the Morning and the strange Stark prince, neither man appeared particularly interested in giving them a spectacle before they had finished learning what the other one was doing.
Arthur did not give him another heartbeat to settle into Shii-Cho. His left hand crossed his body and drew Dawn in a pale flash while the common sword remained in his right, and the first attack came before the famous blade had fully cleared its sheath, ordinary steel cutting low toward Jinx's leading leg while Dawn followed above it toward the shoulder that would have to turn if he tried to escape the lower strike. The two attacks were not thrown merely because Arthur happened to possess two swords; one constrained the answer while the other waited to punish whichever answer Jinx chose, and the suddenness of it wiped the faint smile from Jinx's mouth.
Dark Sister met the lower blade first, but Jinx did not try to stop Arthur's strength with strength of his own. Shii-Cho carried him through the contact in a broad turn of the hips, the simple foundation of the first form redirecting the common sword across his body while his rear foot slid through the dirt and took him outside Dawn's descending line. Arthur changed the second cut before it finished, shortening his arm rather than allowing the pale greatsword to travel uselessly past him, and the pommel came toward Jinx's temple with considerably less ceremony than Jinx had expected from the most celebrated knight in the Seven Kingdoms.
Jinx ducked beneath it and cut upward.
Arthur caught Dark Sister between both blades.
For an instant the three swords locked close enough that Jinx could see the concentration in Arthur's eyes rather than merely the calm mask he wore for everyone around him, and that interested him more than the strength pressing against his wrists. Arthur was not smiling anymore either; whatever courtesy had existed before the first attack had been put away with the scabbards, and Jinx twisted Dark Sister free before the two blades could close around it like shears.
The first exchange had lasted perhaps three breaths.
Nobody around the yard moved.
Jinx heard one guard exhale somewhere beyond Arthur and then lost track of the spectators entirely when the Sword of the Morning came after him again. Arthur used Dawn differently from the common sword, giving the pale blade the longer lines and heavier commitments its reach deserved while the shorter weapon remained close enough to intercept Jinx whenever he tried slipping inside, and the combination forced Jinx backward across several paces of packed earth before he found the rhythm beneath it.
Shii-Cho was almost offensively plain against that level of craftsmanship, which was precisely why Jinx stayed with it. He did not answer Arthur's complexity with complexity of his own; he cut from familiar angles, used broad defensive sweeps, changed lines with uncomplicated footwork, and let the first form do what it had always been meant to do by reducing swordsmanship to the few things a body could not avoid needing.
Arthur understood that quickly.
His common sword stopped chasing Dark Sister and began threatening Jinx's hands instead.
Jinx felt the adjustment before he fully saw it and laughed under his breath as he withdrew his wrist from a cut that would have opened three fingers. Arthur's eyes flicked toward his face at the sound, but the knight did not answer, and the lack of conversation pleased Jinx because there was nothing either of them needed to say while their blades were already explaining the problem.
Arthur attacked high with Dawn and stepped through behind it, the common blade held lower along his ribs. Jinx caught the pale sword near its middle, let the impact drive Dark Sister down rather than fighting it, and changed forms before Arthur could make use of the advantage.
Form V arrived with his weight.
The difference was violent enough that Barristan straightened at the edge of the ring.
Jinx's defense ceased giving ground. Dark Sister struck Dawn aside with a short, ugly counter that returned Arthur's own force through the contact, and when the common sword stabbed toward Jinx's stomach he turned it with the back of his blade before driving a descending cut at Arthur's shoulder hard enough to make the knight cross both swords above himself.
Steel screamed.
Arthur's knees bent beneath the impact.
Jinx did not remain there to admire it. Djem So wanted the opponent's aggression returned heavier than it arrived, while Shien preferred attacks redirected into immediate answers, and Jinx let himself move between those instincts rather than separating them neatly for the audience. Arthur cut at him and received something harder back; Arthur pressed forward and found the pressure folded against him; Arthur tried using the second sword to create an opening and Jinx made that extra commitment become another line he could attack.
Brandon's grin had disappeared somewhere during the transition.
Eddard had folded his arms without noticing.
Barristan watched Jinx's feet.
Rhaegar watched Arthur's.
Rhaella, who had enough experience around trained warriors to know when the people around her suddenly became more attentive, kept her eyes primarily on Jinx and occasionally lost him anyway.
Arthur was still adapting.
That was the troublesome part.
Most men would have required several exchanges to understand that meeting Form V with greater force merely fed the counter, but Arthur surrendered that contest almost immediately. Dawn ceased crashing against Dark Sister and began touching it instead, changing angles at the last possible instant while the common sword worried at Jinx's guard from the opposite side, and Jinx found himself giving ground again because Arthur had decided he would rather make the form answer questions it disliked than continue asking the ones it was built to answer.
Jinx's mouth twitched.
There was a reason people called him the Sword of the Morning.
Arthur stepped left, made Dawn look committed to Jinx's neck, and turned the strike into a horizontal cut toward the ribs when Jinx adjusted. The common blade arrived almost simultaneously from the other direction, and Jinx felt the trap closing early enough to change again.
Form II narrowed everything.
The broad strength vanished from Jinx's shoulders. Dark Sister seemed to shrink with his movements even though the blade itself remained unchanged, the weapon settling into one hand while his body turned side-on and the unnecessary motion simply disappeared.
Arthur's common blade passed within an inch of Jinx's shirt.
Dark Sister touched it near the guard and carried it harmlessly past.
Dawn followed.
Jinx moved his wrist.
That was almost all.
The dark blade caught Dawn at an angle no heavier than necessary and slid along the pale metal while Jinx stepped through the space Arthur had intended to close. His point stopped briefly beside the seam beneath Arthur's arm before moving away again because the exchange was a duel rather than an execution, and Arthur's head turned just enough to acknowledge that he had felt where the thrust could have gone.
Makashi suited Arthur in ways Jinx had expected and several he had not.
The knight immediately became more economical once he recognized what Jinx was doing, shortening his strikes and allowing the second sword to cover the openings Dawn's greater length created. He could not reproduce Makashi without having learned the principles beneath it, but mastery had given him enough understanding of distance and timing that he began answering pieces of the style through instincts developed over thousands of ordinary duels.
That was when Jinx finally saw the problem.
It had been hidden by Arthur's skill.
Almost everything Arthur did was excellent. His balance was excellent, his edge alignment nearly perfect, his sense of distance better than any knight Jinx had fought, and the ease with which he controlled two different weapons made most dual-wielding Jinx had seen look like tavern performance by comparison. There were no obvious bad habits to exploit, no lazy hand, no repeated opening large enough to deserve the name.
The weakness sat deeper than mistakes.
Arthur fought like a knight.
Not an average knight, nor even merely a great one, but the final and almost absurdly polished expression of the same martial language taught throughout Westeros. His feet, shoulders, guards, engagements, counters, and instincts had been refined far beyond the men who had first taught them to him, yet beneath all of that refinement lay assumptions shared by nearly every castle yard in the Seven Kingdoms: how a swordsman generated power, where his body ought to be while doing it, which lines were safe enough to occupy, how commitment should be balanced against recovery, and what another trained swordsman was likely to regard as reasonable.
Arthur had taken something basic and mastered it until very few men alive could punish its limitations.
Jinx could.
The realization did not make Arthur lesser in his eyes. If anything, it made Jinx more interested, because breaking a poor swordsman taught nothing and breaking a good one usually taught only that he was good.
Arthur deserved a language he had never heard.
Jinx slipped beneath Dawn, flicked Dark Sister across the common blade twice in quick succession, and abruptly disengaged rather than taking the opening that followed. Arthur did not pursue recklessly, though he advanced enough to prevent Jinx from simply resting at distance, and Jinx found himself thinking that the man was going to be irritatingly difficult to educate.
He changed forms again.
Form IV looked like a mistake for less than a heartbeat.
Jinx's weight went forward, his stance opening in a way Arthur's instincts immediately identified as commitment, and Dawn came around to intercept before Jinx had completed the first step. Jinx was no longer where the sword expected him to be by the time it arrived.
Ataru took him over it.
His boot touched the flat of the common sword for barely enough time to change direction, and Arthur tore the weapon away before Jinx could put real weight on it, but that had already served its purpose. Jinx twisted through the air, Dark Sister cutting downward as his body passed Arthur's shoulder, and Dawn rose just in time to catch the blow with a crack that rang against the surrounding stone.
Several guards swore.
Jinx landed behind Arthur, pivoted immediately, and attacked again before the knight had finished turning.
Ataru did not allow the yard to become flat.
The wall, the ground, Arthur's own weapons, changes of level and momentum—all of it became somewhere Jinx could pass through rather than scenery he had to move around. He dropped beneath one slash with his palm almost touching the dirt, drove upward into a turning cut, planted a foot against a scarred practice post and changed direction before Arthur could trap him against it, then passed over a sweep that would have caught most men in the knee.
Arthur kept up.
That made Jinx happier than it should have.
Dawn intercepted Dark Sister above Arthur's head while the common sword came across Jinx's middle. Jinx folded backward just far enough for ordinary steel to whisper across his shirt, planted one hand briefly against the ground, and used the movement to carry both feet around beneath him before landing outside Arthur's reach.
Arthur followed.
The common sword thrust.
Jinx caught it with Dark Sister while still moving, turned his wrist, and drove his heel down into the earth as Form V flashed through the movement for only an instant.
The counter carried everything Arthur had put into the thrust back through the cheaper blade.
A crack sounded.
Arthur's right hand jerked.
Half the common sword spun away through the sunlight and buried itself point-first in the packed dirt several yards from Barristan.
The entire yard seemed to notice at once.
Arthur looked at the broken weapon still in his hand.
Jinx looked at it too, breathing harder now despite the faint smile pulling at one corner of his mouth. "That one appears to have surrendered, Ser Arthur," he said while pushing a silver-streaked strand of hair out of his eyes with the back of his free wrist. "You may want to speak with whoever armed you before the next war."
A few guards laughed before remembering Arthur Dayne was standing three paces away with Dawn.
Brandon did not bother remembering.
Arthur examined the broken sword another moment and tossed the remains toward the edge of the yard without looking. The hilt struck dirt beside one of the weapon racks, and when his now-empty right hand returned to Dawn, he changed his grip rather than his expression.
There was amusement there, but only barely.
Jinx stopped smiling when Arthur settled into the new stance.
With both hands on Dawn, the knight became more dangerous rather than less.
The second weapon had expanded Arthur's options, but it had also required part of his attention and changed how freely he could commit his body behind the greatsword. Now the pale blade moved with the complete authority that had built Arthur's reputation, every cut cleaner and heavier, every recovery shaped to feed the next attack without wasting anything in between.
Jinx met three strikes and learned more from them than he had from the previous dozen.
The first numbed two fingers.
The second forced him half a pace sideways.
The third nearly touched his shoulder because he had expected Arthur to recover by the shortest line and the knight deliberately chose a slower one simply because Jinx had begun expecting perfection.
That earned a quieter laugh from Jinx.
Arthur was learning him back.
Good.
Jinx retreated two steps, not because he needed distance so much as because he finally knew what he wanted to show.
He let Dark Sister lower.
Barristan noticed first.
The old knight's posture changed before anyone else reacted, his folded arms coming apart as his attention moved from Jinx's feet to the line of his shoulders. Arthur saw it a moment later and did not advance, though Jinx could tell from the slight tightening around his eyes that he had no idea what he was looking at.
There was no recognizable stance.
That was the point.
Jinx had learned years ago that styles created habits even when they were designed to destroy other habits. Shii-Cho wanted foundations, Makashi wanted economy, Ataru wanted movement, Form V wanted domination through return force; even the styles that encouraged adaptation still carried assumptions about what the next movement was supposed to accomplish.
Slaughter Art began by removing the assumption that there would be a next movement.
Jinx breathed out slowly.
The yard seemed to change with him.
He did not gather strength in the ordinary way, nor tense himself into some enormous preparatory posture. His body became quieter instead, loose in precisely the wrong places, while something inside his mind narrowed until Arthur Dayne, Dawn, the distance between them, and the single cut required to end everything became the only things that remained important.
There was no second strike.
There was never a second strike.
Every attack in Slaughter Art began with the absolute conviction that this one would finish the fight. If the opponent survived, that fact did not diminish the next attack, because the next attack became the only strike that had ever mattered the instant it began.
The distinction sounded ridiculous when explained aloud.
Inside the body it changed everything.
A swordsman normally preserved something. Balance for recovery, breath for the next exchange, position in case the attack failed, strength for a longer fight, awareness of whatever might follow afterward. Slaughter Art preserved nothing except enough control to place the blade correctly, pouring intention, structure, acceleration, body weight, timing, and killing purpose into the present movement with the certainty of someone who had already decided there would be no future exchange to prepare for.
Arthur felt it before Jinx moved.
Jinx knew because the knight's eyes changed.
Barristan felt it too.
So did Eddard, Brandon, and Rhaegar, though not in exactly the same manner. To people who understood violence closely enough to recognize what their instincts were telling them, darkness seemed to gather along Dark Sister—not smoke, not flame, and nothing as simple as shadow, but an oppressive stain around the Valyrian steel that made the weapon look heavier than metal had any right to look.
Barristan's hand drifted toward his own sword before he noticed himself doing it.
Arthur tightened both hands around Dawn.
Eddard did not reach for a weapon.
He knew Jinx too well for that.
The people farther back saw something else.
A young guard near the weapon racks blinked and no longer seemed to be looking at Jinx at all.
Where the silver-streaked Stark boy had stood, a giant cloaked shape appeared to loom over the yard, impossibly tall beneath robes that drank the sunlight around them. Its hood contained no face, only a depth of blackness from which two violet eyes watched without blinking, and a tremendous scythe rested within its hands with a blade broad enough to reap men as easily as wheat.
One of the gold cloaks stumbled backward.
Another whispered a prayer.
Rhaella's fingers closed around the carved arm of her chair, and one of her ladies made a frightened sound before covering her mouth. The queen did not look away, though the thing her eyes insisted stood in the yard bore so little resemblance to the boy who had fallen asleep beside her window three nights earlier that her mind seemed unable to hold both images comfortably at once.
Elia turned toward Rhaegar.
His face told her he was not seeing the same thing.
Jinx knew none of those details.
He had no room for them now.
Arthur stood before him.
That was enough.
Jinx moved.
Dirt exploded beneath his rear foot.
Arthur barely got Dawn between himself and Dark Sister.
The impact did not sound like swords striking.
It sounded like something breaking.
Arthur slid backward despite catching the blow correctly, both boots cutting trenches through the packed earth while his arms absorbed enough force to make the muscles beneath his sleeves jump. Jinx did not press against the bind because Slaughter Art had no interest in winning one; the instant the first strike ceased being lethal, it ceased mattering at all.
He withdrew.
The second attack became the only attack.
Dark Sister cut for Arthur's neck from the opposite direction.
Arthur ducked rather than block.
The blade passed close enough to stir his hair.
The third attack came down through the space he had used to escape.
Arthur threw Dawn overhead in a hard cross-guard and caught it, but Jinx's entire body had already committed through the descending line. Arthur's knee touched the ground before he could stop it.
Barristan took a step forward.
He stopped himself there.
Arthur shoved upward and separated the blades, moving sideways rather than trying to regain his feet in place. It was exactly the sort of adjustment Jinx wanted from him, the knight abandoning the expectation that a dignified recovery mattered when survival demanded something uglier.
The next strike chased him.
Arthur rolled.
Several spectators gasped because the Sword of the Morning did not look like the Sword of the Morning while scrambling across dirt beneath a killing cut. He looked like a man avoiding death, and Jinx thought that might be the most useful thing Arthur had done all afternoon.
Dawn swept upward from the ground.
Jinx turned just enough to let the pale blade pass his chest.
Arthur used the missed cut to regain his feet and immediately attacked rather than retreating, which made Jinx's focus sharpen further. Dawn came toward his head with both hands behind it and no attempt at elegance, a brutal diagonal stroke designed to force Jinx either out of range or into a block strong enough to interrupt his relentless advance.
Jinx stepped into it.
Dark Sister met Dawn near the guard.
The blades shrieked.
Jinx changed his angle while the steel was still touching, redirected the heavier weapon past his shoulder, and drove his elbow into Arthur's chest. The knight staggered, though he recovered before Jinx could exploit the opening in any conventional way.
Slaughter Art did not exploit it conventionally.
Jinx's next thrust went straight for the heart.
Arthur twisted.
Dark Sister cut cloth and drew a thin red line across his ribs.
Rhaella rose halfway from her seat before realizing she had done so.
Jinx barely registered the blood.
The thrust had failed.
Therefore it had never mattered.
His next cut was already the ending.
Arthur saw it coming and did something Jinx had not seen him do once during the duel.
He abandoned proper form completely.
Rather than meeting Dark Sister with the strongest part of Dawn or shifting along one of the efficient defensive lines ingrained through decades of training, Arthur threw himself inside Jinx's reach, caught Jinx's sword wrist with one hand, and drove his shoulder against Jinx's chest while Dawn remained trapped awkwardly between their bodies.
They hit the ground together.
The vision over the yard broke.
The enormous Stranger vanished from the eyes of the untrained spectators as abruptly as it had appeared, leaving Jinx and Arthur tangled in dust with two famous swords dangerously close to places neither man particularly wanted them. The dark pressure around Dark Sister faded for Barristan and the others more slowly, like the memory of a storm after thunder had already moved away.
Jinx lay on his back for half a second.
Arthur had one forearm pressed across his collarbone.
Jinx's hand still held Dark Sister.
Dawn lay across Arthur's own ribs at such an angle that using it effectively would require space neither of them possessed.
Arthur was breathing hard enough that sweat ran from his jaw onto Jinx's shirt.
Jinx looked at him.
Arthur looked back.
Arthur had only just begun to ease his weight away when Jinx drove his fist into the knight's jaw. There was no warning beyond the slight turn of his shoulder, and the blow landed with enough force to wrench Arthur completely off him, sending the Sword of the Morning skidding backward through the dirt before he rolled over one shoulder and came to a stop several paces away. The reaction around the yard reached Jinx as a confused swell of boots and half-started voices, but he stayed on his back for another moment with Dark Sister still in one hand, staring up at the washed-blue sky while his chest rose and fell beneath a shirt that had somehow acquired several new holes during the last few minutes.
A lock of hair fell across his mouth when he sat up, and Jinx caught it irritably between two fingers before noticing where it ended. His hair had hung almost to his backside when the duel began, yet what remained now dropped unevenly around his shoulders, one side longer than the other where Dawn must have passed through it during one of Arthur's closer cuts. Several black-and-silver lengths were scattered through the churned dirt around him, and when Brandon's expression began doing something suspicious at the edge of the yard, Jinx gave his brother a look strong enough that whatever comment had been forming wisely remained behind his teeth.
Dark Sister made the correction easier than looking for a knife. Jinx gathered the surviving hair loosely behind his neck and brought the Valyrian edge through it in several careful passes, shortening the ruined length until it settled around his chin, then used his fingers to find the worst uneven places and trimmed those too while Eddard watched with the strained expression of someone who did not enjoy seeing a sword that sharp anywhere near his twin's throat. The cut was hardly something a court barber would have admired, but it stopped feeling as though Arthur had let a horse chew on one side of his head, and Jinx let the severed handful fall before looking down to inspect the rest of the damage.
His shirt was worse than the hair. Dawn had opened the cloth near one shoulder without touching flesh, another cut ran along his ribs, and whatever had happened when Arthur tackled him had torn part of the hem nearly to his waist, which reminded Jinx that the tailor he had hired several days earlier had promised to finish the first set of clothes by the end of the week. He wondered whether the man had managed it yet, decided he would find out later, and rose while brushing dirt from his knees with the sort of irritation that had very little to do with actually losing anything.
Across the yard, Barristan had reached Arthur and was helping him upright while the younger knight carefully moved his jaw from side to side. The sight would have been ordinary enough if practically everyone around them had not already relaxed under the assumption that the duel was finished, and Jinx could see the exact moment Barristan noticed that Dark Sister was still in his hand rather than being returned to its sheath. Arthur followed the older knight's attention, and both of them became very still when Jinx lifted the blade horizontally before his chest.
"Round two, bitches," Jinx said, and the words carried far enough across the suddenly attentive yard that Brandon bent forward with a hand over his face while Eddard closed his eyes for a moment. Jinx did not give either Kingsguard time to decide whether he was joking; his free hand closed around Dark Sister just above the guard, and he dragged his palm along the edge with enough pressure that Valyrian steel opened him immediately.
The blood came bright for only an instant. Thin crimson lines ran beneath his fingers and gathered along the dark ripples of the blade while Rhaella rose from her chair beneath the gallery, but Jinx's attention stayed on Arthur and Barristan as he moved his bleeding palm farther along the steel. When he spoke the two High Valyrian words, Rhaegar's posture changed at once, and Elia and Oberyn both turned toward Jinx with the unmistakable recognition of people who understood what they had just heard.
"Lykirī bardūs," Jinx murmured, and the words carried strangely through the warm air. Write in silence.
The blood blackened beneath his hand.
It did not merely darken toward the near-black red of old blood; the color disappeared completely until what ran from his palm looked like wet ink poured from a moonless place. The black spread through the grooves and folds of Dark Sister, coating the blade from guard to point before beginning to drip beneath it, except some of the droplets refused to fall straight downward. They curled around the steel, stretched into narrow threads, or hung beneath the edge until Jinx moved the sword and sent them flying in brushlike streaks across the dirt.
Sound began disappearing with them.
The yard had not become silent, but the difference was immediate enough that men started glancing around without understanding why. Armor no longer rattled as sharply, boots scuffed the ground with dull little whispers, and the distant noises of the Red Keep seemed to retreat behind layers of cloth while Blackscript spread in thin veins beneath Jinx's feet.
Jinx turned Dark Sister once in his hand and watched black liquid flow over the steel without affecting the weapon's balance. His palm had stopped bleeding normally, the remaining blackness drawing itself toward the blade instead, and when he finally looked at Arthur and Barristan again there was enough satisfaction on his face that Arthur shifted Dawn into both hands without being told what was coming. "Now I think I'll show you what a Valyrian blade is truly capable of," Jinx said, and the last word had barely left him before Barristan drew his own sword.
The old knight moved first because he understood immediately that standing still while the strange substance accumulated was a mistake. He approached from Jinx's right with his sword extended enough to test the edge of Dark Sister without committing his shoulders, and Jinx met the probing cut lightly, allowing Blackscript to smear across Barristan's steel rather than trying to overpower him.
Barristan knew something was wrong before the blades separated.
The amount was small, little more than a wet black streak near the upper third of his sword, yet the point dipped several inches below where his wrist expected it to stop. His arm corrected automatically and brought the weapon back into line, but Jinx saw the slight tightening beneath his eyes when the movement required more effort than it had a heartbeat earlier.
Arthur saw it too.
Dawn never touched the same part of Dark Sister twice during the next exchange.
That made Jinx's smile widen.
Most swordsmen would have tested the strange weight again because disbelief usually survived longer than good judgment. Arthur Dayne and Barristan Selmy required exactly one demonstration before both began treating every trace of ink as part of Jinx's reach, and they changed the way they fought without wasting time discussing it.
Arthur used Dawn's greater length to keep his hands farther from Dark Sister and abandoned the deep blade engagements he had relied upon earlier. Instead of catching Jinx's sword and controlling it through prolonged contact, he began striking at angles that allowed Dawn to glance away immediately, touching steel for fractions of a second before recovering, while Barristan shortened his own movements and refused to let the blackened section of his sword drift too far from his body.
Jinx pressed anyway.
Dark Sister struck Barristan's weapon again.
Another narrow line of ink transferred.
The effect compounded.
Barristan's next parry arrived on time because he recognized the change before it could surprise him, but his elbow bent farther beneath the burden and his stance widened unconsciously to support it. The sword itself had not gained visible mass, yet every droplet of Blackscript clinging to it increased the effective gravitational load pulling downward, and the older knight's shoulders began compensating for a weapon that now demanded more from him simply to remain level.
He adjusted brilliantly.
Rather than continuing to hold the sword high where the growing burden worked constantly against his shoulder, Barristan lowered his guard and began fighting from beneath Jinx's blade. His point remained threatening near the stomach and ribs, thrusts replacing many of the larger cuts he had used before, and because the weapon no longer had to be lifted as far between attacks, the added weight became less crippling than Jinx had expected.
Arthur made an even stranger choice.
A stripe of Blackscript reached Dawn after a parry near the strong of the blade, and Arthur felt the pale sword pull downward at once. Instead of wasting strength trying to force it back into his original high guard, he let the added burden carry Dawn lower and turned the descent into a sweeping attack toward Jinx's legs.
Jinx hopped over it.
The pale blade passed beneath him with more force than Arthur could normally have generated through that line because the same burden slowing the recovery also dragged the descending stroke harder toward the ground. Arthur immediately stepped around the end of the swing rather than trying to lift Dawn straight back up, rotating his entire body until the blade returned through a lower path that kept him from fighting Blackscript's pull more than necessary.
Jinx landed and barely avoided the return.
That made him laugh.
The sound was faint inside the spreading silence, but Arthur heard enough to know he had amused him.
Barristan attacked while Jinx was still landing.
Jinx turned Dark Sister across the thrust, and the ink coating thickened at the instant of impact, becoming dense enough that Barristan's sword was slapped several inches off line. Black liquid crawled farther down the older knight's blade before he tore it away, and this time the burden became obvious even to the less experienced spectators because Barristan's wrist dropped immediately beneath it.
He changed hands.
Not completely; he kept his right hand on the grip, but his left settled over the pommel whenever he needed to recover from a heavy engagement, using both arms for the upward part of the motion and releasing again once the point was back where he wanted it. The adjustment cost him some reach and flexibility, yet it prevented the growing gravitational burden from simply dragging his weapon out of position after every contact.
Jinx had expected resistance.
He had not expected them to learn this quickly.
Arthur came from the left while Barristan occupied the right, and for several seconds Jinx stopped thinking about the watching court because both Kingsguard had finally started treating Blackscript as something more complicated than an enchantment they needed to avoid. They were mapping it through consequence, learning how much contact produced how much burden and changing their movements around that information while Jinx was still trying to worsen the problem.
Arthur let Dawn strike Dark Sister near the guard, where the contact would be briefest, then immediately rolled the blade off rather than binding. Barristan refused a parry altogether and stepped away from the black edge, letting Jinx's cut pass through empty air before thrusting toward the hand controlling the sword instead.
Jinx twisted aside.
Barristan's point cut through the torn sleeve near his elbow.
Arthur was already there.
Dawn came down from above with both hands behind it, and Jinx almost blocked before noticing what Arthur was trying to make him do. The pale greatsword already carried several stains of Blackscript, and Arthur had deliberately chosen a descending strike because the added gravitational burden made that direction easier rather than harder.
Jinx moved instead.
Dawn hit the ground hard enough to tear dirt loose.
Arthur did not attempt to raise it immediately.
He stepped around the embedded point, changed his grip, and used the blade almost like an anchor while Barristan attacked across the opening, buying himself the half-second needed to bring Dawn back into motion through leverage rather than brute strength.
That was better.
Far better than most.
Jinx's grin faded into something more focused.
He swept Dark Sister horizontally toward Barristan and deliberately let the ink fly before the blade reached him.
Barristan saw the spray.
Instead of retreating straight backward, where the droplets would have followed the line of his movement, he dropped one shoulder and turned almost side-on. Most of the Blackscript passed beside him, though several drops struck his left arm and spread across the sleeve.
His arm sank.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
Barristan's expression changed.
The difference between a sword becoming heavier and an arm becoming heavier was more serious than he had expected because the burden now followed the limb itself rather than something he could change grips around. His next motion began slower at the shoulder, and Jinx immediately attacked that side.
Arthur intercepted.
Dawn met Dark Sister with the flat rather than the edge, and Arthur broke contact instantly, but Blackscript still crawled over the pale metal and joined the earlier stains. Dawn's point dipped farther this time, enough that Arthur had to widen his stance and settle the weapon near his hip.
He stopped trying to restore its original balance altogether.
Jinx noticed.
Arthur had accepted that Dawn was going to remain heavy.
Instead of exhausting himself fighting the enchantment, he began building his entire style around the altered weapon.
His guard stayed low. He used thrusts from the hip, short rising cuts that relied on both hands, and descending blows that let the added burden contribute to their force. Whenever Dawn needed to come upward, Arthur moved his legs and torso beneath it rather than lifting entirely through the shoulders, turning his whole body into the recovery.
Barristan followed the idea almost immediately.
His own sword was lighter and carried less Blackscript than Dawn, but the older knight shifted toward a compact stance with his elbows kept closer to his ribs. He stopped wasting motion on wide cuts and began using thrusts, half-cuts, pommel strikes, and short deflections that asked as little as possible from the weighted steel.
Jinx found himself pushed backward.
That irritated him enough to become enjoyable.
Blackscript streamed from Dark Sister more heavily as he retreated, painting broad strokes through the air and splashing across the ground behind each step. The ink spread over the packed dirt in irregular pools, and as Arthur advanced his boot touched the edge of one before he could redirect.
His leg became heavier immediately.
Arthur felt it and stopped himself from taking the second step he had planned.
Most men would have stumbled.
Arthur converted the interrupted movement into a planted stance and drove Dawn forward in a thrust while keeping the affected foot firmly beneath him.
Jinx knocked the pale blade aside.
Barristan came around Arthur's other shoulder.
His leading boot touched a second pool.
He recognized the effect before his full weight settled.
Instead of trying to wrench the foot free, Barristan shortened the step and used the sudden heaviness as a brace, dropping his center lower and stabbing from a position that looked awkward but kept him from fighting both Jinx and the ground simultaneously.
Jinx slid away from the point.
Barristan did not chase into the pool.
That mattered.
The two Kingsguard had already understood that Blackscript rewarded lingering contact. A few droplets produced inconvenience; a coat became a problem; standing in one of the thicker pools long enough would turn every movement into work, so they began treating the blackened ground like open flame.
Their footwork changed completely.
Arthur stopped crossing his feet even when the angle normally favored it, because he could no longer risk discovering halfway through a turn that one boot had become too heavy to follow the other. Barristan used smaller lateral steps and kept testing the ground with the front of his boot before committing his weight, sacrificing speed for the certainty that he would not plant himself inside a patch of ink.
Jinx responded by moving the pools.
Barristan saw the first one crawl.
His eyes widened only slightly.
The ink beneath him ran against the slope of the dirt like spilled oil being pulled by an invisible hand, and Barristan jumped away before it could reach his rear foot. Jinx flicked Dark Sister toward him, and the moving pool rose into a narrow ribbon that lashed at his ankle.
Barristan cut it.
The black ribbon divided around his sword.
For half a heartbeat the severed pieces remained liquid.
Then both hardened.
Barristan's blade was caught between them.
His arm dropped beneath the sudden burden.
Jinx pulled.
Barristan stepped with it rather than against it.
That saved the sword.
Instead of entering a contest of strength he could not win while the Blackscript increased both resistance and weight, Barristan followed the direction of the pull, allowing himself to be dragged one step toward Jinx while he rotated his wrist and slipped the blade free through the opening created by his own movement.
Arthur attacked during that step.
Jinx had been waiting for him and brought Dark Sister around, but Dawn stopped short of contact.
Arthur feinted.
The real attack came from the crossguard.
He stepped inside Jinx's sword reach and struck him across the cheek with Dawn's pommel.
Jinx's head snapped sideways.
The crowd reacted somewhere inside the muffled world.
Arthur withdrew before Dark Sister could touch him.
Jinx spat blood into the dirt.
It blackened before it landed.
His smile returned.
The next sweep of Dark Sister sent a sheet of ink across the ground.
Arthur and Barristan separated instantly.
Neither tried to jump the entire width of it, because both had seen enough now to know that getting caught while airborne would be worse than touching the edge with control. Arthur stepped onto the narrowest section with the front of one boot, felt the burden grab the limb, and used the contact as a pivot rather than trying to cross normally.
Barristan went the opposite direction and vaulted over a dry training block beside the ring.
They came at Jinx from nearly opposite sides.
He had wanted that.
Blackscript rose from the ground around him.
Three narrow columns appeared almost like strokes of wet calligraphy pulled upward by an enormous brush, then bent toward Arthur and Barristan as they hardened. Arthur cut through one before it finished forming and ducked beneath the second, while Barristan changed direction so sharply that the third passed in front of him instead of catching his torso.
Jinx turned his wrist.
The missed construct liquefied in midair.
Barristan saw it change.
He was already moving before it reformed behind him.
The black spear hardened where his back had been less than a heartbeat earlier and shattered against the stone training post beyond.
Arthur reached Jinx first.
Dawn came low.
Jinx parried.
The impact transferred another heavy smear of Blackscript onto the pale blade, and Arthur's shoulders tightened as the sword became heavier still. Dawn had reached the point where lifting it normally would have exhausted most men within a minute, yet Arthur did not even attempt to raise it normally anymore.
He let the point fall.
Then he stepped over it.
His body rotated around the weighted sword, and the motion turned Dawn into the center of a brutal circular cut that used the very force pulling it downward as part of the attack.
Jinx's eyes widened.
Dark Sister barely caught the edge.
The strike drove him sideways.
Barristan was waiting.
His sword had become visibly slower too, but not his mind.
The old knight stopped trying to beat Jinx's blade and attacked only the spaces around it, targeting wrist, elbow, knee, shoulder, every place that allowed him to threaten Jinx without giving Dark Sister another long contact with his steel. When Jinx tried painting Blackscript onto him directly, Barristan abandoned the line rather than insisting on finishing an attack that had become dangerous.
That was not how most famous swordsmen fought.
Pride usually made skill brittle.
These two had enough of it to be dangerous without possessing so much that they refused to look ugly when survival required something different.
Jinx liked that.
He increased the pressure.
More ink poured from Dark Sister with every movement until the sword looked less forged than painted into existence, its original rippled steel visible only in brief flashes beneath the living black coating. The silence deepened as the amount spread, and even the harshest impacts between weapons arrived as subdued thuds rather than ringing steel while the battlefield beneath them became a shifting patchwork of safe dirt and black pools.
Arthur's left boot had accumulated enough droplets that he now carried the leg differently.
Barristan's sleeve was nearly black from elbow to wrist.
Dawn hung lower with every exchange.
Barristan's sword did the same.
Both men were being dragged toward the earth one contact at a time.
Neither stopped.
Arthur used the burden in his sword to make downward attacks frighteningly powerful, accepting that each one demanded a longer recovery and positioning Barristan to cover that weakness. Barristan compensated for his weighted arm by keeping his elbow close, stabbing from the shoulder only when necessary and letting footwork provide the reach his arm no longer wanted to give him.
They had turned Jinx's enchantment into a new problem and then built answers while still fighting inside it.
Not perfect answers.
There were none.
Arthur could not make Dawn light again without removing the ink, and Barristan could not convince a weighted arm that gravity had stopped mattering. The longer the fight continued, the more every solution cost them, because Blackscript's strength was not in one overwhelming moment but in the accumulation they could never fully escape.
Jinx understood that better than anyone.
He stopped trying to finish them.
Instead he began feeding the problem.
A glancing touch against Dawn left another streak.
A missed swing deliberately threw droplets across Arthur's shoulder.
Barristan avoided a ribbon only for the liquid end to splatter across his boot.
Neither event looked decisive by itself.
That was the point.
Arthur tried another descending cut and discovered the recovery took just a fraction longer than before.
Barristan attempted to shift his front foot and felt it resist.
Jinx attacked through that fraction.
Dark Sister slipped between Dawn and Arthur's shoulder, not cutting him but brushing the blackened edge across the white cloth of his sleeve.
Arthur's entire arm dropped.
The sudden increase nearly pulled Dawn from his hands.
Barristan stepped in immediately.
His sword intercepted Dark Sister.
The impact coated it farther.
His own arm sank.
For the first time both Kingsguard were caught beneath the burden at once.
Jinx stepped forward.
Arthur did not retreat.
Barristan did not either.
Arthur released one hand from Dawn and supported the weighted blade along his forearm rather than trying to hold it normally, turning the greatsword into something closer to a braced spear. Barristan shifted both hands onto his own hilt and lowered the point until the weapon's weight no longer had as much leverage over his wrist.
Jinx paused for only an instant.
They had adapted again.
Arthur thrust from the brace.
Barristan moved with him.
Jinx parried Dawn, but the pale sword did not travel away this time because Arthur had stopped asking it to. He simply let the weighted blade remain low and occupied Dark Sister while Barristan attacked around the opposite side.
Jinx twisted.
Barristan's sword grazed his ribs.
Arthur pulled Dawn back only as far as necessary.
Jinx stepped into him and drove a shoulder against his chest, but Arthur planted the Blackscript-heavy boot instead of trying to move it. The same burden meant to slow him turned the leg into an anchor, and Jinx bounced off a man who had suddenly become much harder to displace.
Arthur's mouth twitched.
Jinx stared at him.
That was clever.
Barristan attacked again before Jinx could appreciate it.
Dark Sister knocked his blade aside.
The Blackscript on Barristan's sword deepened.
Barristan let the weapon drop instead of fighting it and used the downward motion to cut at Jinx's thigh.
Jinx jumped.
Arthur's weighted Dawn swept underneath him.
There was no safe place to land.
The nearest dry patch lay behind Arthur.
Jinx turned in the air and landed instead inside his own ink.
Blackscript accepted him without adding the same burden it imposed on the two knights because the enchantment answered its wielder, and the instant his boots touched down he dragged Dark Sister upward.
The entire pool rose with it.
Arthur and Barristan reacted at the same time.
Arthur threw himself toward the nearest clean ground despite the weighted leg fighting him, while Barristan abandoned his sword completely when the ink seized it and jumped backward empty-handed.
That decision saved him.
The weapon remained behind.
Blackscript wrapped around it, hardened, and slammed the sword flat against the ground with enough force to bury half the blade in dirt.
Barristan landed without a weapon.
Most men would have looked at it.
He looked at Jinx.
Arthur came between them.
Dawn was almost absurdly heavy now, black streaks covering enough of the pale blade that each movement pulled visibly through Arthur's shoulders. He could no longer fight with anything resembling the graceful style he had used at the beginning, so he stopped trying and planted himself between Jinx and Barristan with Dawn held low in both hands.
Barristan moved toward the abandoned training weapons instead of his trapped sword.
Jinx sent a ribbon after him.
Arthur intercepted it with Dawn.
More ink crawled onto the greatsword.
Arthur's arms dipped nearly to his waist.
He grunted for the first time.
Jinx heard it even through the silence.
Barristan reached the rack.
He did not choose another sword.
He took a spear.
Jinx blinked.
Barristan tested the weapon once, noticed that the long wooden shaft gave him distance from the ink-coated Dark Sister, and came back into the fight before Jinx had finished appreciating the choice.
That was when Jinx understood why both of them had survived long enough to become legends.
They were not merely better at the knightly style than everyone else.
They were better at abandoning it.
Barristan used the spear without pretending to be a spearman, relying on the same judgment of distance that made him dangerous with a sword rather than trying techniques he did not possess. Arthur used Dawn like a weighted executioner's blade because graceful swordplay had become wasteful, keeping it low and waiting for moments when one committed strike justified the effort needed to recover it.
Jinx found himself giving ground again.
The Blackscript should have made that impossible by now.
It would have made it impossible for almost anyone else.
Barristan's spear point kept him from freely closing on Arthur. Arthur's downward cuts had become slower but terrifyingly heavy, the Blackscript's gravitational burden adding its pull to every committed descent. Jinx could redirect one, but doing so while Barristan threatened him from beyond Dark Sister's reach forced him to expend attention he would rather have used controlling the ink.
He sent two tendrils low.
Barristan jumped the first and struck the second with the wooden shaft rather than the spearhead, allowing Blackscript to coat something he could abandon more easily if needed.
Arthur deliberately stepped onto the third.
Jinx almost thought it was a mistake.
Then Arthur dropped his center of gravity and used the newly weighted boot to brace himself while Dawn descended from both hands.
Dark Sister met it.
The packed earth under Jinx's heel cracked.
His arms folded several inches beneath the impact.
Arthur had turned the curse on his weapon and leg into leverage.
Jinx laughed again, breathless this time.
Barristan's spear came for his side.
Jinx liquefied Dark Sister's coating and let the spear pass through the black layer instead of meeting steel.
The Blackscript climbed the shaft.
Barristan released it immediately.
He did not wait to see how heavy it became.
The spear fell between them, already pulling toward the ground harder than wood should, and Barristan stepped inside the reach of both longer weapons with nothing in his hands.
Jinx barely had time to wonder what he intended.
Barristan punched him in the mouth.
Jinx staggered.
Brandon's laughter reached him only as a faint, distant noise.
Jinx wiped the corner of his mouth and found another dark smear on his knuckles.
Arthur was breathing hard enough now that his chest moved visibly with every breath. Barristan's left arm dragged slightly from the Blackscript still coating it, his original sword remained trapped beneath hardened ink, Dawn looked as though the earth itself wanted to pull it from Arthur's hands, and both Kingsguard had dirt across their clothes where they had been forced into movements no castle-yard master would have called proper.
They were still coming.
Jinx's irritation disappeared.
What replaced it was much more dangerous.
He lifted Dark Sister slowly while the black pools around the yard began moving toward him in thin streams, curling across the dirt from every direction. Arthur lowered Dawn and settled his weight through both legs, while Barristan glanced only once toward the weapon rack before deciding there was not enough time to reach another spear.
Neither knight said anything.
There was no need.
Jinx could see the adjustment happening between them through nothing more than where Arthur placed himself and where Barristan chose to stand behind his shoulder. They had learned in minutes what the Blackscript did to steel, limbs, footing, and recovery, and while none of their answers removed the enchantment's advantage, they had survived long enough to make Jinx work for every bit of it.
That was much more than most people ever managed.
Ink climbed Dark Sister in a slow spiral and gathered along the edge until the weapon seemed to carry a second, liquid blade around the first. Jinx shifted his wounded hand on the hilt, feeling the cuts in his palm sting beneath the cooling blackness, and watched Arthur adjust his grip on the impossibly burdened Dawn while Barristan lowered himself beside him empty-handed rather than step away.
(a/n: Jinx future new look since i grew tired of the old- )