Gorgantern nodded. “Huh. She’s clever. Thinks she can humiliate me by making me apologize because I won’t duel a girl. Your little plan has no bottom, and it’ll sink you. Suppose I accept.”
“Pl-Please do,” Ileth said.
“Women don’t fight duels,” Santeel said, stepping between her and Gorgantern and unleashing a glare hot enough to melt snow into Ileth’s face. She jerked her delicate chin at Rapoto.
“Oh, they do,” a new person put in. It was Galia, the apprentice who helped oversee the female novices. She stepped forward, the heels of her tall riding boots making distinctive clicks on the floor as she walked. The buckles on her riding-coat added their own chimelike notes. She must have been spending the day among the dragons. She glanced from Ileth to Gorgantern and back again. “Even against men. Garella did—years ago. She told me the story.”
“I’d still rather you let me stand up against him,” Rapoto said.
Galia cocked her head. “You, Rapoto? I didn’t know you could fight.”
“Don’t know the first thing about it, Galia. But if I’m going to have one, I’d like it to be against someone who knocks down a girl half his age and a third his size.”
“I’ll fight fancy-boy and the girl both,” Gorgantern laughed.
“Stop . . . s-stop swanning into this,” Ileth said. “It’s my challenge, it’s my fight.”
Gorgantern sensed the crowd’s feeling. “You want an apology, mushmouth? So be it. I’m sorry you are such a useless whelk that you spilled soup on me and burned my hand.”
“Everyone dislikes you, you know,” Santeel said to him, though as far as Ileth knew today was the first time they’d spoken. “You could do the right thing and beg her forgiveness. I do mean beg.”
“He made her bleed from the ear,” Rapoto said. “In the law that could be maiming. An apology isn’t enough. We should bring this to a jury.”
The crowd, excited by the prospect of a duel, loosed a few groans at the idea of the drama sputtering out into questions and answers in front of a jury.
“I’ve a mind to give her that duel,” Gorgantern said.
“I d-d-doubt that,” Ileth said.
Gorgantern scowled. “You d-d-d-don’t think I could be master of the Catch Basin if I didn’t have brains? That takes hard work and a mind both. You have your duel. Since you demanded it, I’ll set conditions. Uh—dueling swords.”
“Dueling swords?” Galia growled.
“Dull. Rounds on tip,” Gorgantern temporized, as though he was beginning to have doubts.
“I’m n-not afraid of a . . . of a—of a point,” Ileth said, slowly and carefully. “Let’s have-have points. The sight of blood doesn’t bother me.”
“Enough,” Rapoto said. “You shouldn’t set conditions with blood still wet. If they’re going to do this, it needs to be carried out properly so there’s no question of law. Let’s give it until tomorrow, to let tempers cool. Who will be intermediary for, uhh . . . ?”
“Ileth,” Ileth said.
“I will,” Santeel volunteered.
Rapoto put his finger on his chin. “As you were part of—”
“All the more reason to speak for her,” Santeel said.
“You’ll have to take her place at the Catch Basin until the duel, you know,” Galia said.
Santeel grimaced. “If I must.”
“And for Gorgantern of the Catch Basin?” Galia said. Gorgantern crossed his meaty arms and frowned at the women. “Nobody? Very well, I’ll be intermediary for you, old lad.”
The watchers at the windows had a job of it passing the news about sides back and forth to the crowd behind.
“Too many women involved in this,” Gorgantern said. “Seems unfair to me. You’re ganging up.”
“Oh, for wind’s sake,” Rapoto said. “This is turning farce. Let’s finish our meal. Ileth, you should go see if Joai is about and have a dressing for your ear. Gorgantern, you ladle the soup for me. Watch that you don’t douse me, or you’ll be fighting a second duel if you’re still alive after this one.”
By tradition of the Serpentine the parties were not bound by Rapoto’s need to meet again, in daylight, after one full day had passed in order to try to reconcile. The duel would go forward as challenged and accepted, with the only questions left those of time, place, and weapons.
Also by tradition of the Serpentine, the place had to be outside its walls and out of view of the gate.
The long-established rules, which Galia explained to Ileth the evening of the brawl in the kitchen, revolved around ending the contest. The duel would last until one party accepted defeat or shed enough blood to become unsteady of arms, legs, hands, or balance; a physiker intervened in the name of humanity; a duelist’s weapon was dropped, lost, or thrown away; the seconds both agreed that one combatant had suffered a defeat; or the insensibility or death of one party. The Serpentine had a further tradition outside formal dueling: both parties could, at any time after the first exchange of blows or shots (in the case of pistoled crossbows), agree to shake hands and call the matter settled. In any case the aggrieved party would have honor restored and the challenged party would consider the matter settled.
The final twist the Serpentine put on dueling was that seconds were not to become involved in the combat in any way. If, for whatever reason, the aggrieved or challenged party could not participate in the duel, it defaulted to the credit of the duelist who did enter the dueling ground. Seconds attended only to see to their party’s interests and could intervene only in the case of foul play.
Back at the Manor, Ileth bore up under pitying stares of the sort she would have had if she were in her eighth or ninth month of carrying a socially unrecognized child. Santeel Dun Troot’s alternating bouts of contempt and indifference had curdled into something like hostility, but she still displayed the same partisanship as the Matron when it came to affairs outside the Manor. They might be contemptuous of each other within, but in the rest of the Serpentine they stood as sisters.
Gorgantern and Ileth agreed, through their respective intermediaries, to duel on the beach Bayside. Ileth’s demand that they use pointed dueling swords—which she was entirely a stranger to; she’d never even held one—was settled. When she was a child still able to run around in summer shirtless she’d played with an old curved naval falchion the Captain had hung up on the wall of the Lodge and held mock-scabbard duels with some of the weathered sailor-folk calling for dinner, but the only fighting advice she’d ever had from the Captain with swordplay was Yell so’s they hear you in hell and swing short. He also told her that getting wounded wasn’t so bad in the moment. You were too excited from the fight to feel pain; you just felt the impact, more like getting unexpectedly shoved.
Which might be useful advice now, if she’d asked him what swing short meant.
“Why do you want a real edge?” Galia asked when they met in the garden behind the Manor where Ileth had been put to work gathering summer herbs for drying to keep her out of the Catch Basin. “You could die on those points. This isn’t mock and muck, you know,” she said, using slang for the Serpentine’s weapons drills.
“I have a . . . chance of drawing blood with a p-point,” Ileth said. She went on to explain that with blunt weapons it was a contest of strength. She doubted she could either wear him down or do him more than enough damage to enrage him with a blunt weapon, whereas more likely than not he’d just hammer her into the ground. With a point she might score a lucky hit and satisfy the conditions of the duel.
They chatted for a bit about the interest in the duel across the Serpentine.