But I could still extricate myself, I had to, and I stood up straight and lifted my chin and turned to Lord Corombos, saying, “No one needs to stand with me, my lord, because this challenge is absurd. I didn’t use any magic! I decline to challenge Lord Griset for touching me without my leave, and that’s the end—”
“Are you calling me a liar?” Lord Griset stepped forward, striking a dramatic pose. For a giddy moment I wondered if this could possibly be some bizarre entertainment, planned by Lord Corombos and about to be revealed as a farce. But no. Lord Griset’s eyes glittered with true hatred. “He used magic against me. I will not be pacified so easily!”
“I did not use magic!” My panic made me sound like a liar, even though it was the truth. A murmur went through the crowd. They didn’t believe me. “I did not, and so—yes, I suppose I am calling him a liar. Or, or mistaken. He was mistaken.” He wasn’t mistaken at all but lying through his teeth, but I’d learned enough about the way things worked to know I must allow a path for Lord Corombos to retreat gracefully, and to drag Lord Griset with him. “Anyone could make such a mistake. I’m not offended.”
Lord Griset’s eyes blazed with triumph, and cold shivers raced down my back. I’d made an error. Somehow, though I didn’t know how—
“No one calls me a liar without proving his assertions with his sword,” Lord Griset hissed, sounding for all the world like that snake I’d imagined when I looked into his eyes.
And that was how. Oh, Ennolu and Dromos save me, because no one else would. He meant to carry this through no matter what. And I barely knew which end of the sword to hold.
But I didn’t have a choice if I couldn’t get him to back down. Refusing to fight would destroy me in Calatrian society. The aristocracy would shun me. I’d be the laughingstock of everyone else in Nevaia, too, all the way down to the boys who swept the street crossings.
I might not care so much about that for my own sake, although I cared more than I ought to, but Stefan…Stefan. He’d tell me not to risk my life. But his reputation would be ruined, too. And while he’d probably protest that his goals for his future career were nothing like his father’s, I’d started to suspect they were the same in all but name. He’d built a life as a diplomat, a spy, a courtier, and a close friend to the duke’s consort. Stefan would be one of Calatria’s eminent men, as the Lord Chancellor had put it to me months ago, whether his father meddled in his progress or not.
Unless his consort made it impossible for him by displaying public dishonor and cowardice in front of a crowd of hundreds.
He would forgive me. Or…he’d say he did. He might even believe he had, until the full truth dawned on him, and he understood that with or without the confidence and support of Duke Lucian and Lord Benedict, he’d never be more than a spymaster everyone viewed as a dilettante and a joke, with a consort no one would allow in their doors.
No, I could fight this duel. I had to. I’d dance around with the rapier long enough for honor to be satisfied, and Lord Griset would poke me through the arm, and it’d hurt more than anything I’d ever felt in my life, and then a healer would fix it. And that would be that. Stefan would be furious, but his career and place in society wouldn’t be brought to an ignominious end.
“I will meet you if you insist, Lord Griset,” I said, my voice as steady as I could make it. “But this is unnecessary.”
“It is necessary to discuss this privately!” Lord Corombos boomed, gazing about with his mustache quivering and eyes bugging out. Everyone quieted down, and they even backed up a fraction, giving him room to maneuver. “Lord Griset, Lord Remigius, and your seconds,ifyou please!”
“I don’t have one,” I said, as Lord Griset and his second stepped forward.
“I don’t mind, if you’d do me the honor of choosing me,” said a voice I didn’t know, and a young lady slipped out of the crowd to come and stand beside me, neatly sidestepping the grasping hand of her mother, or perhaps an aunt, who tried to restrain her. She smiled at me, with a gleam of white teeth like a very pretty shark’s. “I’m rather more experienced with duels than I appear,” she added serenely.
It didn’t matter whether she was or wasn’t. I had one person helping me, and that was enough.
Under cover of the fresh hubbub of everyone on the terrace talking at once about this startling development, I hissed, “You’re my second now?” She nodded, with a bob and flutter of the feathers in her blonde hair. “Go and find my footman. Fritz. Go and fetch him. Can you do that? And thank you. Ennolu, thank you. I mean, you, not him. His name is Fritz! He’s very big, you can’t miss him.”
“He can’t fight for you, I’m afraid,” she whispered, leaning in confidentially. “No one can but a spouse. I’ve been practicing, you see, because I expect to fight a great many. I like flirtatious girls. They’re my weakness. Whoever I marry’s going to get me in an immense amount of trouble. I can’t fight for you either, unless you’d like to divorce Lord Stefan and marry me in a big hurry. Although I wouldn’t, if I were you. I’m quite lovely, but Lord Stefan’s extraordinary. I’ve always wanted to see him fence!”
I stared at her for a moment, trying to catch up. She thought her future wife would be the one to get them in trouble? Gods. No, it didn’t matter. It mattered that spouses could fight for one another, but I’d already known that. I didn’t want Stefan fighting a duel for me. It made my blood run cold. But he’d know how to get out of this, and I didn’t. I needed him.
“Fritz can’t fight for me, but he can fetch Stefan, and speaking of hurrying, if you don’t mind? Tell him to bring Stefan here at once.”
“I thought he was out of town? Well, you know best. I’ll be back soon,” she promised, and flitted off in a swoosh of sky-blue silk.
“My second has gone to make some arrangements for me,” I told Lord Corombos, with much more confidence than I felt, and he nodded and ushered us all off the terrace and in through a side door.
A small phalanx of footmen closed in around us at their master’s gesture, simultaneously keeping everyone else from joining the procession and making sure, I supposed, that none of the principals made a break for it.
We all ended up in a parlor toward the back of the house, a dark, heavily furnished room with nothing to recommend it except for a sideboard well stocked with liquor.
“Let’s all have a drink and cool our tempers, shall we?” Lord Corombos said.
Lord Griset waved the glass away as a footman tried to offer him one. “I need no cooling,” he snapped. “I will have my satisfaction now, or I’ll send for the city guards after all. Lord Corombos, don’t try to put me off. He attacked me. Viciously. And he’ll pay for it, one way or another.” He shot me a sharp, meaningful glance, and added, in a tone of great nobility, “I intend to make sure he never has the opportunity to attack anyone else the way he did me.”
Every word struck like a blow, knocking me off-balance, buzzing in my brain.
I staggered, caught blindly at the air, and was led to the side and pushed into a chair as everything went hazy around me. I blinked, and the footman who’d helped me sit wavered into view in front of me.
“I’ll bring you some wine, my lord,” he said, his voice oddly, throbbingly loud and yet impossibly distant.
Lord Griset meant to kill me. He wouldn’t want first blood, or the honor of proving, to society’s satisfaction and his, that he’d been in the right.
