He turned away, pushing an errant book in his library back into alignment. “Think about that, Ileth. You can back out. Even at the last moment. It’s just not worth the risk, and it will be to your credit with me if you show that kind of sense.”
The rest of the morning rushed by, as quickly as the night had dragged. They were to fight at noon.
She’d been wondering about funerals at the Serpentine and she had an answer, of sorts. The parade down to the beach felt funereal. Santeel walked just ahead of her, wearing an outfit more appropriate for horse riding, with her hair bound up tight under a reinforced hat that could do as a helmet in a pinch. Did she expect a brawl to break out? Perhaps she didn’t know seconds were never expected to fight by Serpentine tradition.
Five of the dragoneers walked behind them, including the one, Hael Dun Huss, who had spoken kindly to her after the oath. They were probably curious to attend the event that had generated so much chatter. He walked with two other dragoneers near his age that she’d glimpsed him speaking to here and there, perhaps friends from his younger days as an apprentice. Joai and some other officials from the Serpentine brought up the rear of the column.
Down on the beach the fog thinned, though it obscured the Serpentine, to the disappointment of those who’d planned to pass around telescopes so they could watch from the wall. On the shore of the bay, sheltered by rocky arms, there was little wind. The fog muffled sounds. When Gorgantern arrived, shuffling and looking about as if expecting an ambush, he had only Galia with him. Out in the open he didn’t look quite as vast as he did in the confines of the Catch Basin.
Not long now. But she still worried she’d vomit up her breakfast. She’d forced herself to eat as if it were just another morning with nothing more ahead of it but a day of salting and hanging and smoking fish.
Ileth ignored the others working out the ground for the duel. Out in the bay there were river otters running up and down stones sticking out of the water like tiny islands. One of them was bashing a shelled creature against an edge.
Joai set down a basket with wound-vinegar and dressings. She sidled up to Ileth. “I have some brandy. You want a sip to steady your nerves?”
She shook her head. She might be dead in five minutes, and those otters would still be playing. The one with the mussel, or whatever it was, managed to get it open and had its meal. She’d be one of millions of deaths that day.
The Serpentine’s physiker-in-charge, an older man with what was left of his white hair swept back and cut at exactly shoulder length, supervised Joai. He must put something in his hair to keep it so neatly arrayed, Ileth decided, wondering at the strange things her brain was forcing her to attend to. The physiker stood by, close to the demarked zone (they used two old, holed, and overturned boats as the north-south borders, the shoreline as the east, and the seconds standing as two points on an imaginary line to the west, making something that approximated the traditional dueling alley. The physiker’s own apprentice carried the dueling swords, and together they checked and cleaned the blades before handing them to the seconds. It was terribly close now.
“Please let me stand for you,” Rapoto said, appearing next to her out of nowhere and startling her with his words. She hadn’t even noticed him in the procession. He was dressed to fight. Loose trousers, tight leather shoes, no coat, just a loose shirt allowing plenty of freedom of movement. Perhaps he’d nipped out early and waited by himself at the dueling ground. She wondered how he had worked it, as the Masters had piled extra duties on everyone, from the new novices to the wingmen, to forestall the entire Serpentine decamping to view the duel.
“No,” she said.
And now Santeel stood before her, holding the sword point down. “You have to step to your side, now,” she told Ileth, casting an apologetic look at Rapoto.
The dragoneers performed some sort of ritual among themselves involving putting their hands inside their clothing between bracing vests and outer coat, then opening their coats in a flash to reveal some kind of countersign. One, a sandy fellow with staring eyes that seemed to protrude so the whites showed, accepted the approval of his fellows and stepped to the edge of the dueling ground. He wore a greenish-gold short cape with a rich Hypatian-curtain-style fringe, and instead of a sword on his belt, he carried a brass-headed walking stick with a snarling, ogrelike face engraved on it.
“Gorgantern, you great toad, you got me, lucky fellow,” he said, planting his walking stick and leaning on it insouciantly. He turned to Ileth. “Have we met? I ride Etiennersea. When she lets me. I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”
“Dath Amrits,” Galia said from her position next to Gorgantern, “this is Ileth of the Freesand.”
Amrits gave a short bow. “Now that the introductions are out of the way—ahem! I’ve been selected to supervise the duel, with our good physiker Threadneedle.”
The physiker sighed. “Amrits, this is no occasion—”
“—for you to open your mouth until the blood starts flying,” Amrits finished. “As if we dragoneers need a physiker around to tell us someone’s dead. Have cheer, now. It’ll be over for one of you soon. But don’t take it too hard; the other will have a big bill to pay, so the dead one will have escaped that bother. What, you think anyone will want to use a sword that’s shed one of our company’s blood? And dueling swords go in pairs. You’ll have to buy both. Last chance to back out. No? Not a brain or scruple between you, then. My kind of reprobates. Choose up your weapons and retreat to opposite ends of the ground, my honorables. Go on! I’ll have you know I have a whole basket of undergarments still to pick up at the laundry and sort through today, so I want one of you stretched out for burial double-quick. Show some leg!”
Ileth suddenly couldn’t remember who was supposed to take a blade first. Gorgantern didn’t move, so she took the one nearest her. Galia was right, they were about the length of a rug-beater, only heavier. The blades were one-edged, straight as a plumb line, and had a heavy shield hilt, ornately engraved. It would cost the victor a good deal to pay for it. More money than she’d ever seen in her life.
She “retreated” to the northern end of the dueling ground. She swung the sword experimentally, trying to look as though she knew what she was doing.
On the other side, Gorgantern removed his coat and stood there in his shirtsleeves. He had a pained, faraway look on his face.
She realized she was still in her overdress. It was hard to move in it, and almost impossible to run or jump about without pulling material up, an impossibility while holding a sword. She stuck her sword in the sand, worked the buttons at the back, and shrugged it off.
Santeel gasped. “What are you doing?”
“Getting . . . ready to fight,” she said, kicking the overdress up onto the boat behind her and retrieving the sword.
“You’re in your shirt!”
“You think I should ta-take that off too? I have a sheath beneath it.”
“Don’t joke. Have you no shame?” Santeel asked.
“Grew up poor. Couldn’t afford it!” She felt clairvoyant. Mad as a day owl, Santeel Dun Troot was clearly thinking. She felt alive, focused, like she could count grains of sand on the beach just by looking at them. Gorgantern’s face was the color of a frog’s belly and the hair on his forehead stuck there.
Santeel picked up the cast-away dress and folded it, then folded it again and draped it over her arm. “At least you don’t have to tie up your hair. Which reminds me. I need to tell you something. I want to tell you . . . no, need to tell you . . . this is hard. I need to tell you”—she gulped—“good luck. Slice off something embarrassing. From him, I mean to say.”