He did a backwards standing jump, nearly toppled, caught his balance just in time. The messer swished past the tip of his nose. Pointless, he thought, and foolishly stubborn; like a chess player grimly, selfishly playing out the very end of a game when he’s down to his king and the other man’s still got his queen and both castles. But his body kept moving, the thickness of a sheet of paper away from the fast, sharp edge. He could feel his concentration slipping. It’d be so easy to give up, allow the Permian to demonstrate the self-evident truth, that he was the better man. Keeping going was dishonest, like pleading not guilty when everybody knew you’d done it. The Permian fooled him again; he wasn’t sure how, but he saw the messer coming and knew he couldn’t quite get out of the way this time. He felt it brush against him, he didn’t know where. Instantly he relaxed, and heard the clatter of his own messer on the tiles. There was a great roar, and he slid to the ground, landing in a puddle of something.
