Cain moved first. Lillian let him, though Chaol probably thought it was a mistake. She knocked his staff aside and jabbed, which he countered, trying to throw her off balance.

Lillian kept giving ground, which she could see confused Cain. He didn't let it slow him down much - his knees were already doing that.

Cain had to be in his sixties or seventies. If he was a soldier and a good one, it meant he would have used his body hard. Even if he was careful he wouldn't have been able to avoid all injuries. Lillian's hands ached? Well, his knees had to hurt worse. Maybe his elbows. Maybe he was a little stiff in the left arm - yes.

Cain was good, and strong, and tough, but Lillian was almost as good, and definitely as strong - she proved it when he tried to muscle her staff aside, something Chaol had stopped trying after the first few sessions where she'd gotten serious - and just as tough, and she was younger.

Everyone was so scared of Cain. Lillian had let herself be before she'd thought about it some more. Chaol and Dorian and even Kaltain had seen him at his peak, had probably heard stories about him. The king had set him to teach Hollin. Cain might even believe his own legend by this point.

Lillian had no such stories to contend with. Cain was a man with a staff, and Lillian had known how to hit a man where it hurt since she was five.

The problem was how to manage the whole thing without killing him. To give herself more time to think she slowed down, matching his pace, as if her burst of speed at the beginning was nerves and not how she usually moved.

The king had said no follower had the right to yield for their liege lord, and that they would fight until they died. There weren't a lot of loopholes for Lillian to exploit, except, of course, the one she already had with Roland, back when Amerie had asked her to spare him. Cain couldn't fight if Hollin wasn't in the competition.

"I would appreciate it," Cain hissed, using her slower pace to surge in fast and grab her staff, trying to yank it away, "if you would pay me the respect of actually fighting me."

Lillian looked down, where he still had a grip on her staff, and then at her own grip, which hadn't let the staff move even a little.

She shrugged. "If you insist."

He wasn't expecting her to do her best imitation of Celaena's too-long strides, getting in to one side of their tangled staffs and stabbing one of her knives towards his throat, because in usual practice it was stupid: why would Lillian give up her reach?

It was precisely because it was so unexpected that he only leapt back and away instead of doing something like grabbing her wrist and trying to grapple with her. Lillian, more solidly braced now, simply twisted her staff out of his grip and jabbed down. The tip hit his foot with a thud, and Cain let out a muffled sound of pain and backed farther away, clearly limping, with a tiny drop of blood beading up under his larynx.

She supposed she might not have broken any bones in his foot - his boots were sturdy - but she wouldn't bet on it.

Lillian let him stand panting for a moment, watching her. She flourished the knife - hah, Celaena - and slipped it back into her trousers almost as quickly as she'd drawn it.

The king laughed, a high-pitched giggle that did not at all fit Lillian's picture of him, but she was more interested in Hollin, whose splotchy, flushed face had started to drain of color at all. His acne spots stood out more harshly.

Lillian made sure to meet his eyes, sketched him a little apologetic bow, and stepped easily aside from Cain's attempted surprise blow.

From then on she played with Cain, and she made it clear that she did so. She even let him get a few glancing hits on places that wouldn't necessarily impede her movement. Cain knew she let him, and she watched him get angrier and angrier, swinging more and wider instead of using the end. She led him around in circles, stepping backwards, sometimes getting near enough to the watching courtiers that they had to move fast to be out of range. When they ended up near Hollin and Dorian and Chaol, none of them moved. Kaltain hovered behind them, watching avidly.

"You won't win, Cain," Lillian said. "You can't. You wanted me to fight you? Why would I?"

This time it was Lillian who grabbed Cain's staff. He was tired and she wasn't: she'd hit his hands a few times and hadn't let him hit hers. She yanked it from his grip and sent it flying across the room, following it up with a showy spin and carefully calculated hit that was more like a hard shove to his diaphragm. It still knocked the breath out of him. When he was bent over Lillian knocked his legs out from under him for good measure.

"Killing you is going to be such a waste," Lillian told him, and raised her staff.

"Wait!" Hollin cried, hands out beseechingly. He didn't touch her, not quite, but Lillian could feel the heat from his hands on her arm. On the ground, Cain closed his eyes, still heaving for breath.

"I yield," Hollin said. "I - Lillian, don't kill him, I quit, I yield, I forfeit. I'm not the heir, Dorian is -"

Lillian lowered her staff and stepped back.

For a long moment, the only sound was Cain's harsh but slowly recovering breathing.

"You always did like to play with your food," the king said finally, apparently to Lillian, but since that made no sense whatsoever she said nothing in response.

"Father?" Hollin asked, voice cracking.

"Yes, fine, you conceded," the king said. "How Adeline birthed someone so spineless I don't know. Take your guard and go back to your rooms. One day I'll be able to look at you again."

Hollin shoved past Lillian, which she admitted was fair, followed by the little man who was clearly his assassin. They helped Cain to his feet.

All three bowed and got out.

Lillian felt personally that winning a duel to the death for the heirship of a kingdom without actually killing anybody deserved more fanfare than it received, since the king waved a lazy hand and Lord Mullison, in yellow again, stepped forward with a small stack of parchment. The king signed a few places, wrote in a name - Lillian craned her head to be sure it was Dorian's - and that was that.

"Oh," he said, right before he left, in full view and hearing of all the courtiers he'd invited to witness, "you'll have dinner with me tonight, Lillian, after you've cleaned up."

"Lillian and I have plans, Father," Dorian said, with heavy emphasis on the last word.

"Around seven," the king said, and swept out.