The Sixth stared at her for a moment as though she had no idea of the protocol—and then she drew both of her weapons at once in a way that nagged at the back of Gideon’s brain. The rapier looked, like Gideon’s, maybe a million years old. It was the first time she had seen it in a good light, and here it looked as though it had never been designed to take an edge blow; the blade was light and delicate as a cobweb. The offhand looked like Camilla’s whole House had gone searching down the back of the sofa for weapons. They had come up with what looked more like a long hunting or hacking knife than a duelling dagger: thick, meaty, cross-guarded, with a single sharpened edge. The whole effect was sadly amateurish.
The lovely and miserable Coronabeth had shouldered forward to stand at the table too, positioned in the space between them. She called to Judith and Palamedes: “Clav to sac—?”
“Hyoid down, disarm legal, necromancer’s mercy,” said the Second’s necromancer calmly. Coronabeth sucked a breath through her teeth. “Sextus. Do you agree to the terms?”
“I have no idea what any of that means,” said Palamedes.
Gideon drew forward to them, leaning in to hear Corona saying in an urgent whisper: “Warden—that means she can hit your cavalier anywhere below the neck, and it ends only when you give in. She’s being an absolute cad, and I’m not even slightly sorry for pantsing her when we were eight.”
“Nor should you be.”
“Don’t let her make an example of you,” said the princess. “She’s picking on you because you can’t fight back, like a bully kicking a dog. She’s given herself leeway to hurt your cavalier very badly, and she will, just to scare Octakiseron and Nonagesimus—no offense, Ninth.”
The Warden of the Sixth drummed his feet on the floor percussively. He said, “So you’re saying her cavalier can do more or less anything to my cavalier, all in the name of making me cry uncle?”
“Yes!”
From across the table, Captain Deuteros said sternly: “No more waiting. Default or fight. Corona, if you insist on arbitrating, arbitrate.”
Those exquisite eyes would have persuaded a stone to roll uphill, but finding no purchase with Palamedes, Corona raised her voice reluctantly: “To the mercy call. Hyoid down. The neck is no exception. Point, blade, ricasso, offhand. Call.”
“Marta the Second,” called Lieutenant Dyas.
Camilla did not call. She looked down at her necromancer and said, “Warden?”
“You can’t hit her in the head,” he said. “I think. I choose when you’re done.”
“Just tell me how to play it.” Camilla raised her voice: “Camilla the Sixth.”
Gideon had moved back to her necromancer. Everyone else in the room looked grave. For a moment she thought the Fourth were holding hands, but she realised Isaac was holding Jeannemary back: his hand around her wrist was a clamp, and her face the picture of outrage. There were bleakly hungry faces—the pale Ianthe, and Naberius licking his lips—and then there were the Eighth, who were filling their own bingo sheet by praying.
Harrowhark looked as taut and distant as a hangman’s rope, but something in Gideon’s face must have caught her attention: she went from distant to bemused, and from bemused to something even a little bit offended. Gideon couldn’t blame her. The general atmosphere was of a disapproving crowd before an execution, but she was trying and failing to smother a grin of savage anticipation.
Corona was saying, “Two paces back—can’t turn, damn!—this is so hard to do on a table—”
“Cam,” Palamedes said. “Go loud.”
“—and begin,” said Coronabeth.
Gideon had to give Dyas her due; it took her much less time than it had taken Gideon, fighting Naberius Tern, for the Second to realise she was in trouble. Lieutenant Marta Dyas was in every line of her a smart, efficient fighter: not given to folderol or showboating, at the very peak of her fitness. Unlike the Third, she was a soldier, far more used to fighting people who weren’t moving to a playbook of legal duelling moves. She had trained her whole life with the front in mind, with veterans and bloodthirsty recruits. Her sword arm was balanced and light, her posture neat but not starchy. She was incredibly reactive, ready for any gambit her opponent could bring.
Camilla hit her like a hurricane. She exploded forward with her rapier wide and her butcher’s knife held close, knocking the lieutenant’s hurried parry out the way and sliding away from a belated lunge with the dagger. She sliced a red gouge down Dyas’s immaculate white jacket and shirt, bashed her across the knuckles with the hilt of her rapier, and kicked her in the knee for good measure.
The kick was Cam’s only mistake. The pain clearly set every neuron in Dyas’s body shrieking with adrenaline. Someone like Naberius would have been prone on the table from shock, probably bleating and shitting. But the Second kept her wits about her—she took the pain with a stagger, kept her footing and held her blade, and parried another sweeping blow from Camilla’s knife. She moved back for breathing space—Camilla harassing her with strike after strike to get back inside her guard—until she could move no more: she was, after all, fighting on a table. Camilla’s foot lashed out to her offhand, and the dagger clattered to the ground. The Second, with an honestly beautiful dodge and a perfect reaction, took her one opportunity and lunged.
Dyas was desperate, and Dyas was of the Second House. Cam fought like a grease fire, but she left herself too many openings. Dyas’s thrust would have pierced a lesser fighter right beneath the collarbone and run her through. It caught Camilla Hect low in the right forearm as she nearly dodged it—piercing the meat next to the ulna and making her snarl. She dropped her cobweb-light rapier, grabbed Marta’s wrist, and yanked. The arm dislocated with a bright pop.
Lieutenant Dyas didn’t quite scream, but she got most of the way there. She windmilled at the edge of the table. Still holding the wrist, Camilla stepped past her, kicked her legs out almost dismissively, and drove her down facefirst into the wooden boards with a crunch. This left Camilla standing over her opponent, one foot pressed into the back of her neck, the dislocated arm pinned up at an angle that looked seriously uncomfortable. Dyas made a strangled, agonised noise, and Judith Deuteros snapped: “Mercy!”
“Mercy called, match to the Sixth,” said Coronabeth, as though saying it faster would make it over sooner.
There was silence, except for Camilla’s ragged breathing and the lieutenant’s tiny, half-amazed gasps. Then Jeannemary said, “Hot dog.”
Both cavaliers were oozing blood. It dripped from Camilla’s wound where the sword had stuck her, and it was soaking through Lieutenant Dyas’s shirt and dribbling from her nose, the exact same colour as her neckerchief. She had her eyes screwed up tightly. Palamedes was already standing beside the table, and with another excruciating noise he set Marta’s arm back inside its joint. This time she really did scream. Captain Deuteros watched, face absolutely blank.
“Your keys,” he said.
“I don’t have—”
“Then your facility key. Hand it over.”
“You have its exact copy.”
Palamedes rounded on her with a sudden fury that made everyone jump, even Gideon. “Then maybe I’ll throw it out the fucking window,” he snarled. “Two good cavs hurt, yours and mine, all because the Second tried to beat up the weak kid first.” He jabbed a finger at Judith’s immaculate waistcoat with intent to impale; she didn’t flinch. “You have no idea how many keys we’re holding! You have no idea how many keys anybody’s holding, because you haven’t paid any damn attention since the shuttles landed! You picked on us because the Sixth aren’t fighters. You could have fought Gideon the Ninth, or Colum the Eighth. You fought Camilla because you wanted a quick win, and you didn’t even watch her first, you just assumed you could take her. And I can’t stand people who assume.”