City in the Sky by Glynn Stewart

ancient bloodlines.”
    “ Kels! ” Hiri bellowed, silencing Erik before he could speak. “You do this, I am done with you.”
    “What does it matter?” Kels spat back. “You'll name precious Letir your heir as soon as he weds my whore of a sister – you know, the one he's been bedding for the last year, as you turn a blind eye.” He turned back to Erik. “I'll have your blood for this, you half-blood scum .”
    “I am not your enemy,” Erik said softly, the same words he'd used to Jaras. “But for this, I may choose to become so. If you are so insistent, I will meet you. Blade to blade. For your slighted ego and your sister 's right to happiness.”
    For an instant, it seemed almost as if Kels would back down, then he jerked his head in a nod. “Tomorrow. The Square of the Gods at dawn.”
    “I'll be there,” Erik replied flatly, and watched as calmly as he could as Kels stalked from the room.
    Silence reigned for a long moment, and then Hiri's hand came down on Erik's shoulder, and Erik turned to look at the shorter Aeraid.
    “There's no changing it, lad,” the septon Rakeus told him. “This has been coming for a long time. The Gods themselves couldn't have stopped it.”
    “I don't want to have to kill your son,” Erik said quietly.
    “As of today,” Hiri said sadly, “I don't believe I have a son.”
     
     
     
    The whetstone scraped on the sky steel of Erik's rapier, sounding loud in the silence of the small atrium at the back of the Tarverro seat. While the atrium was under glass, focusing sunlight to keep the plants alive even in the middle of winter, it was still cold in the small indoor garden.
    The lack of any wind contributed to the lack of any sound except Erik's stone on his sword. The sky steel weapon didn't really need sharpening, as the smallsword had no edge, merely a point. While making the point sharper would help against armor, Kels would not be wearing armor the next day. It was simply a method of controlling his tension, and it wasn't as if the sky steel's legendarily hard surface could be damaged by the effort.
    Footsteps sounded behind him, but Erik ignored them, continuing in his pointless ministration to the blade. The footsteps continued, until they were directly behind him, and a voice broke the silence.
    “You've been barely three days among your people, and already you want to risk your life?” Arien asked. “Even Hiri's alliance can't help you if you're dead , you know.”
    “I do not fear Kels,” Erik said quietly.
    “Then you're a fool,” his grandmother replied. “You are septon Tarverro – a septon with no heir, the sole male of your line. If he kills you, we return to being an heirless line, with no prospect of survival except by bringing another male in.”
    “Men marry into sept s,” Erik replied. “Such a marriage would not destroy the sept .”
    “Men seek such a marriage,” Arien told him. “Your aunt is pursued for them. If you die, I fear one will marry her solely for the sept . If you die, all that your grandfather and I rebuilt from the faded ashes of our line goes to waste. Would you see that happen?”
    “You encouraged me to this course,” Erik reminded her.
    “I didn't expect you to throw his oath in his teeth and meet him blade-to-blade on your fourth day in the city,” Arien replied exasperatedly. “We could have worked slowly, pulled it off before he realized it was happening and handed Kels a done deal. He couldn't challenge you if it was already done .”
    “Could we have?” Erik asked. “Really?”
    “We could have tried ,” his grandmother snapped.
    “And we may have failed, and he seems impetuous enough that it would likely have changed nothing,” Erik replied. “To fulfill this task, I would have had to fight him anyway. It's better this way.”
    His grandmother laid his hand on his shoulder, and he heard her take a deep breath and sigh. “I'm sorry, Erik,” she told him. “I shouldn't snap at you, but I'm worried.