“You’re not fighting anyone else.”

“I wouldn’t fight you if you were armed and I wasn’t.”

Master Blint drew back the knife and threw it past Kylar’s ear. Kylar didn’t flinch. It wasn’t that he didn’t still wonder sometimes if Master Blint was going to kill him. It was that he knew he couldn’t stop him.

When Blint attacked again, it was full speed. Kick met stop kick, punches were diverted, jabs dodged, blows absorbed against arms, legs, and hips. There were no tricks, nothing showy. Just speed.

In the midst of the flashing limbs, as usual, Kylar realized that Master Blint would win. The man was simply better than Kylar. It was usually about now that Kylar would try something desperate. Master Blint would be waiting for it.

Kylar unleashed a storm of blows, fast and light as a mountain breeze. None of them alone would hurt Master Blint even if they connected, but any would cause him to miss the next. Kylar fought faster and faster, each blow being brushed aside or only connecting with flesh tensed for the impact.

One low spear hand got through, jabbing Master Blint’s abdomen. As he hunched over involuntarily, Kylar went for the full strike on Blint’s chin—then stopped. Blint lashed up fast enough that he would have blocked the strike, but with no contact where he’d expected it, he brought the block too far and couldn’t bring his hand back before Kylar lashed his still-cocked fist at his nose.

But Kylar’s strike didn’t catch Master Blint. It was brushed aside by an unseen force like an invisible hand. Stumbling, Kylar tried to recover and block Durzo’s kick, but it blew through his hands with superhuman force. Kylar smashed into the beam behind him so hard that he heard it crack. He dropped to the ground.

“Your turn,” Blint said. “If you can’t touch me, I’ll have a special punishment for you.”

“Special punishment”? Beautiful.

Hunched on the ground with both arms throbbing, Kylar didn’t answer. He stood, but when he turned, in Blint’s place stood Logan. But the sneer on Logan’s face was all Durzo Blint. It was an illusion, an illusion seven feet tall, matching Blint’s moves precisely. Kylar kicked viciously at his knee—but his foot went right through the figure, shattering the illusion and touching nothing at all. Blint stood two feet behind it. As Kylar staggered off balance, Blint raised a hand. With a whoosh, a phantom fist shot from his hand and knocked Kylar off his feet.

Kylar bounced back to his feet in time to see Blint leap. The ceiling was twelve feet high, but Blint’s entire back hit it—and stuck to it. He started crawling, and then disappeared as shadows writhed over him and merged with the greater darkness of the ceiling. First Kylar could hear Blint moving to a spot above him, then the sound cut off abruptly. Blint’s Talent was covering even the scuffing sound of brushing against wood.

Moving constantly, Kylar searched the ceiling for any shadow out of place.

“Scarred Wrable can even throw his voice, or any other sound,” Blint said, from the far corner of the ceiling. “I wonder if you could.”

Kylar saw, or thought he saw, the shadow moving back toward him. He flung a throwing knife at the shadow—and it burst apart, leaving his knife quivering in the wood. It was another illusion. Kylar turned slowly, trying to hear the slightest sound out of place over the pounding of his heart.

The slight brush of cloth hitting the floor behind him made him spin and lash out. But there was nothing there except Blint’s tunic in a pile on the floor. A thump announced Blint himself landing behind Kylar. Kylar spun once more, but something caught his left hand, then his right.

Master Blint stood bare-chested, a dead look in his eyes, his real hands at his sides. Kylar’s wrists were held in the air by magic. Slowly, his arms were pulled apart until he was spread-eagled, then further. Kylar held his silence for as long as he could, then screamed as he felt his joints on the verge of dislocating.

The bonds dropped and Kylar crumpled, defeated.

Durzo shook his head in disappointment—and Kylar attacked. His kick slowed as it approached Durzo’s knee as if it were sinking into a spring, then bounced back, spinning him hard and throwing him in a tangle to the floor.

“Do you see what just happened?” Durzo asked.

“You kicked my ass again,” Kylar said.

“Before that.”

“I almost hit you,” Kylar said.

“You fooled me and you would have destroyed me, but I used my Talent and you still refuse to use yours. Why?”

Because I’m broken. Since meeting Drissa Nile four years ago, Kylar had thought a hundred times about telling Durzo Blint what she’d told him: he didn’t have a conduit, and it couldn’t be fixed. But the rules had always been clear. Kylar became a wetboy, or he died. And as Blint had just proved again, Kylar wouldn’t be a wetboy without the Talent. Telling Blint the truth had always seemed like a quick way to die. Kylar had tried everything to get his Talent to work or to learn about anything that might help, but had found nothing.

Blint breathed deeply. When he spoke again, his voice was calm. “It’s time for some truth, Kylar. You’re a good fighter. Deficient still with pole arms and clubs and crossbows and—” He was starting to lecture but noticed it. “Regardless, you’re as good at hand-to-hand fighting and with those Ceuran hand-and-a-half swords you like as any fighter I’ve seen. Today you would’ve had me. You won’t win next time, but you’ll start winning. Your body knows what to do, and your mind has got it mostly figured out, too. In the next few years, your body will get a bit faster, a bit stronger, and you’ll get cleverer by half. But your weapons training is finished, Kylar. The rest is practice.”

“And?” Kylar asked.

“Follow me. I’ve got something that may help you.”

Kylar followed Blint to his workroom. This one was smaller than the one Azoth had first seen in Blint’s old safe house, but at least this house had doors between the animals’ pens and the work area. It smelled much better. It was also familiar now. The books lining the shelves were like old friends. He and Blint had even added dozens of recipes to them. In the past nine years, he had come to appreciate Blint’s mastery of poisons.

Every wetboy used poisons, of course. Hemlock, and blood flower, and mandrake root, and ariamu were all local and fairly deadly. But Blint knew hundreds of poisons. There were entire pages of his books crossed out, notes scrawled in Durzo’s tight angular hand, “Fool. Dilutes the poison.” Other entries were amended, from how long it took for the poison to take effect to what the best methods for delivery were, to how to keep the plants alive in foreign climes.

Master Blint picked up a box. “Sit.”

Kylar sat at the high table, propping an elbow on the wood and holding his chin. Blint upended the box in front of him.

A white snake slid onto the table with a thump. Kylar barely had time to register what it was before it struck at his face. He saw its mouth open, huge, fangs glittering. He was moving back, but too slowly.

Then the snake disappeared and Kylar was falling backward off the stool. He landed flat on his back but bounced up to his feet in an instant.

Blint was holding the snake behind the head. He had grabbed it out of the air while it was striking. “Do you know what this is, Kylar?”

“It’s a white asp.” It was one of the most deadly snakes in the world. They were small, rarely growing longer than a man’s forearm, but those they bit died within seconds.

“No, it’s the price of failure. Kylar, you fight as well as any non-Talented man I’ve ever seen. But you’re no wetboy. You’ve mastered the poisons; you know the techniques of killing. Your reaction speed is peerless; your instincts are good. You hide well, disguise well, fight well. But doing those things well is shit, it’s nothing. An assassin does those things well. That’s why assassins have targets. Wetboys have deaders. Why do we call them deaders? Because when we take a contract, the rest of their short lives is a formality. You have the Talent, Kylar, but you aren’t using it. Won’t use it. You’ve seen a little of what I have to teach you, but I can’t teach it to you until you tap your Talent.”