“Nice knife,” Daniel said. Scorn dripped from the words. “Get it out of a magazine?”

“From the last fool who tried a blade against me.”

Daniel bared his teeth. “Come here. I’ll give you this one.”

Aristedes flicked his knife through a little series of spins, making it dance nimbly through his fingers. It was a stupid thing to do in a real situation, but the guy clearly knew how to use the weapon. Then his body tightened as he hissed a word and once more he flashed toward Daniel.

The body language before the spell that granted him speed had given him away. The kid was ready again. He sidestepped and swept his arms in a pair of half circles as Aristedes flashed by. There was the sound of shearing cloth, and then the sorcerer was past him.

Daniel turned to face Aristedes with a hiss of pain. His left arm, wrapped in the grey cloak, was bleeding, red spreading through the grey in a slow but growing stain.

“No armor there,” Aristedes murmured with a smile.

Daniel said nothing. He just took position again, holding his bloodied knife level, its point toward the sorcerer.

Aristedes looked down and saw the long, shallow cut across his right pectoral. A fine sheet of blood had mixed with the sweat that had broken out on his skin.

Heads were popping out of the debris and refuse now. Zero and his compatriots—maybe a dozen kids, all told—were emerging from their hiding spots to watch the fight. From the looks on their faces, it was the first time they’d ever seen their fearless leader get hurt. Hell, if they’d been anything like me when I was young, they probably had believed that he couldn’t be hurt.

Daniel Carpenter had just shown them differently—and the sorcerer knew it.

Aristedes’ face set into a grimace of undiluted hate as he stared at Daniel. Then he did something unexpected—he simply walked forward and pounced into knife range.

The exchange was brief. Most knife fights are. Daniel, the taller of the two, had the advantage of reach, somewhat negated by the length of the sorcerer’s blade. He wore armor over his torso and was stronger, but Aristedes was the faster of the two, even without magic—and he had a lot more experience.

Hands and knives flashed, all whip-crack speed and whispering violence as they parted the air. I couldn’t keep track of the individual cuts. There were just too many of them. I saw Daniel’s mail shirt turn aside another pair of strikes, one of them hard enough to send a titanium ring tinkling across the floor. A flicker of red fanned through the air, where one of the fighters lost a splash of blood.

Daniel let out a short grunt. Then another. Aristedes barked out a sound of both pain and satisfaction. The two parted, both breathing heavily. Combat taxes a body’s reserves like nothing else on earth. Seconds of it can leave you exhausted, even if you’re in great shape.