P. Hodgell - Honor's Paradox

She met his worried look steadily and gave a brief nod. If I can’t, both of us are wasting our time.

“So be it.”

“Will I do as a challenger?” Fash ambled forward. “You did say ‘anytime, anyplace,’ ” he reminded her with an amiable smirk.

So this was why he had taunted her in the outer ward, doubtless with Caldane’s approval. She glanced at Gorbel, who had regained his errant pook and was holding it apparently upside down. If she failed, who would Lord Caineron present as his heir?

“I said it, I meant it,” she said to Fash. “Choose your weapon.”

“Swords, then.”

Oh, schist. Fash knew perfectly well that swordcraft was her weakest discipline. Still, she accepted the blade thrown to her, and found it poorly balanced.

Before she could complain, Fash was on her with a vicious down cut. She blocked it, and felt the weight of the blow up to her shoulder. He slashed; she ducked.

This was hopeless. Attack.

He easily foiled her advance and, with a twist of his wrist, disarmed her.

A sigh arose from the onlookers, half satisfaction, half relief, but it changed to exclamations of protest as Fash lunged for her throat.

She turned her evasion into a backward somersault, kicking him in the face as she went over. He staggered with a bloody nose, cursing. Another backflip put her temporarily out of his reach. There had to be some way to defend herself. Under a nearby bench, neatly stowed, was Marc’s glassmaking gear. She snatched out the leather apron and wrapped it around her left arm, just in time to baffle another thrust. Whatever his original intentions, to pink or merely to humiliate her, that kick to the face had infuriated the man. Now he was out for blood. Well, so was she.

Jame snapped the apron’s braided belt like a whip, slashing his forehead. It wasn’t much of a cut but it bled profusely, hindering his sight. He swung wildly. She evaded with water-flowing, channeling his blow aside. As he staggered, momentarily off balance, she stepped in and slammed the heel of her palm into his nose, this time breaking it with an audible crunch. He couldn’t see, nor could he breathe except through his mouth, and blood was streaming into that fit to choke him. Jame circled warily. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Torisen watching with tightly folded arms, as if restraining himself. Fash swung again, this time clipping her shoulder. Cloth and skin ripped. The cut wasn’t much, but Rue was in for more darning. She glimpsed the straw-headed cadet to one side, fast in Brier’s grip as if struggling to intervene.

Time to end this.

She snaked the belt around Fash’s sword hand and jerked. The blade flew free. Lords ducked. It crashed down on the table and skidded to a stop, its point facing Caldane. The Caineron lord recoiled.

“Hic!”

A look of panic turned his florid face blotchy. He grabbed the arms of his heavy chair and hung on like a drowning man.

“Hic!”

The chair started to rise, with him in it.

“HIC!”

Gorbel dropped the pook and quickly rounded the table to stand behind his father. With his hands on Caldane’s shoulders, he brought his weight to bear and forced him down. Brandan (who didn’t like wine) offered his cup of cider. Gorbel took it and poured it down his father’s throat.

“. . . hic . . .”

The chair settled.

Meanwhile Fash angrily tried to wipe the blood off his face, although both forehead and nose continued to bleed. Jame stood ready with her leather shield and the belt, which she continued to twitch experimentally, trying to master its ungainly length and balance.

“Yield?”

He sputtered, fighting to regain control of himself.

“An . . . interesting demonstration, to make use of whatever crude means one finds at hand. And we all thought that your fighting style was so pure.”

“Never assume. What works, works.”

Torisen unfolded his arms and took a deep breath.

“I believe that my lordan has proved her point. Now, if we may proceed . . .”

Jame put aside Marc’s apron and belt. The cut on her shoulder stung. Would these petty tests never end? Then again, she thought, glancing at Gorbel, not so petty after all, for either of them. As for Fash, an old friend had said it long ago: To such a man, she would always be a lure and a trap, because he would never take her seriously.

But her brother was holding out the emblem of his acceptance. She stepped forward to receive it.

“Doggie!”

The pook hurtled between them, pursued by a miniature whirlwind in red. The latter knocked the glass token out of Torisen’s hand and Jame, recoiling, stepped on it. Crunch. Both regarded the shattered remains.

“Can we share anything without breaking it?” murmured Torisen. Then he sighed. “So be it.” Reaching into a pocket he drew out a small, feline carving, and gave it to Jame.

She stared at it. “Oh. I’d forgotten all about this.”

“I didn’t.”

Jame retreated with her prize, bemused.

Torisen dipped into the sack and drew out the next-to-last piece of glass.

“Caineron.”

Caldane still clutched the arms of his chair but had stopped hiccupping. He glared at the gory, snuffling spectacle that was Fash, then turned to Gorbel. “Well, go on. It seems, after all, that you’re the best of a poor lot.”

Gorbel approached the Highlord and stolidly received his token.

“Jaran.”

Kirien had been standing thoughtfully to one side. Now she shrugged as if making up her mind, slipped off her gray coat, and approached Torisen in a discreet but still revealing white shirt.

Exclamations of surprise and horror rose from some (but not all) of the lords. “It can’t be.” “It is!” “Another damned female!”

“So what if it is?” Kedan, acting lord of the Jaran, waved off the outraged faces turned toward him. “Jedrak made his choice and the rest of his house supports it. If the Highlord does too, what right do any of you have to protest against it?”

Torisen handed Kirien the token. “You picked a fine time to unveil,” he said, under cover of a growing storm of outrage.

“Unnatural, perverse . . .” “. . . bad enough that the Knorth have run mad, but the Jaran . . . !” “. . . rathorns and Whinno-hir, living together . . .”

Kirien smiled. “They had to find out sooner or later, for those who hadn’t already guessed. Not that it was ever meant to be a secret. ‘Observe, describe, learn,’ we Jaran say. As it is, your sister diverts attention from me as I do from her. Let them fight us both, or neither.”

Torisen considered this.

“I expect, when I have time to think, that I’ll be grateful.”

Later, Jame showed the statuette to Timmon and Gorbel. “We fought over it as children until it broke. I kept the hind leg . . .”

Until the changer Keral had taken it from her and dropped it into the fire over her furious protests.

“No mementos for you, brat. This is your home now.”

“. . . until I lost it. What did you get, Timmon?”

The Ardeth opened the linen packet and showed them.

Gorbel peered at the contents. “A fire-cured finger and a cracked ring? I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I except—I think—this is my father’s ring.”

“And his finger? If so, how did the Highlord get it?”

“I don’t know. I can’t guess. He said that it was my house’s business. ‘Do with it what you will.’ ”

Jame wasn’t sure that her brother had done a wise thing. She remembered her dream of Tori breaking Pereden’s neck and of the pyre at the Cataracts from which someone had taken what were surely these relics. Since Adric believed that he had found his living son in Timmon, he would presumably no longer continue his bone hunt and would hopefully resume control of his house. She heard again the Ardeth lord’s clear voice rising above the uproar over Kirien’s “unmasking”: “Be that as it may, we still have business to discuss.”