raised his eyebrows and took on an expression of dismay, as though his necromancer had just presented them with a leper. Only Magnus gave her a genial, if slightly bewildered, smile.
“Princess Corona, trust you to nab Gideon the Ninth!” he said, and to his dreadful teen: “See, now you can have a duel with someone else, and not bore everyone by how soundly Jeannemary the Fourth can thrash me.”
(“Nooooo, Magnus, don’t mention me,” hissed that dreadful teen.)
“I’d be ashamed to admit to that,” said the Third cavalier significantly.
The unfortunate Jeannemary the Fourth was going red in the face. She drew herself up to say something obviously unwise, but her sparring partner clapped her on the back with an unsinkable smile.
“Ashamed, Prince Naberius? To lose to a Chatur?” he said heartily. “Goodness me, no. Cavalier family since the time of the Resurrection. Should feel ashamed if she lost to me. I’ve known her since she was a child—she knows I’m absolutely no good. You should have seen her when she was five—”
(“Magnus, do not talk about me being five.”)
“Now, let me tell you this story—”
(“Magnus, do not tell anyone this story.”)
“Challenged me to a duel during a reception, said I’d insulted her—think it was a matter of propping her up with cushions, and to be honest, she would’ve had me if she hadn’t been using a bread knife as her offhand—”
Disgusted beyond all tolerance, the much-tried Jeannemary let out a primal yell and escaped to the benches on the other side of the room, far away from them. Now that she wasn’t looking, Magnus gave Naberius a look of frank reproof. The Third’s cavalier coloured and looked away.
“I want to see a match,” said Princess Corona. “Come—Gideon the Ninth, right?—why don’t you try Sir Magnus instead? Don’t believe him when he says he’s rubbish. The Fifth House is meant to turn out very fine cavaliers.”
Magnus inclined his head.
“Of course I’m willing, and the princess is gracious,” he said, “but I didn’t get to be cavalier primary due to being the best with a rapier. I’m cavalier primary only because my adept is also my wife. I suppose you could say that I—ha, ha—cavalier primarried!”
From the other side of the room, Jeannemary let out a long noise like a death rattle. Princess Corona laughed outright; Magnus looked extremely pleased with himself. The faces of the other two were patiently blank. Gideon made a mental note to write down the joke so that she could use it herself later.
Corona inclined her bright head in toward Gideon. She smelled nice, like how Gideon imagined soap was meant to smell.
“Will the Ninth honour us?” she murmured prettily.
Stronger women than Gideon could not have said no to an up-close-and-personal Corona Tridentarius. She stepped up to the dais, her boots ringing out on the stone: the older man opposite’s eyes widened when he saw that she was not going to take off her robe, nor her hood, nor her glasses. The air in the room thrilled, all except for the dreary scrape, scrape, scrape of the skeleton removing cobwebs. Even Jeannemary sat up from her posture of premature death to watch. There was a low murmur of amazement from Corona when Gideon twitched open her robe to reveal the knuckles latched to her belt; they glittered blackly in the sunlight as she slipped them onto her hand.
“Knuckle-knives?” said the Third’s cavalier in outright disbelief. “The Ninth uses knuckle-knives?”
“Not traditionally.”
That was the cavalier in the Cohort uniform, who had a voice as crisp as her collar. Naberius said with forced languor: “I simply can’t remember ever thinking knuckle-knives were a viable option.”
“They’re tremendously nasty.” (Gideon admitted to herself that the way Corona said it was kind of hot.)
Naberius sniffed.
“They’re a brawler’s weapon.”
The Cohort cav said, “Well. We’ll see.”
That was the strange thing about keeping mute, thought Gideon. Everyone seemed to talk at you, rather than to you. Only her erstwhile sparring partner was looking her dead in the eye—as much as he could through dark glasses, anyway.
“Does the Ninth, er—” Magnus was gesturing in a rather general way to Gideon’s robes, her glasses, her hood, which she translated to Are you going to take those off? When she shook her head no he shrugged in wonder: “All right!” and added the slightly bewildering, “Well done.”
Corona said, “I’ll arbitrate,” and they moved into position. Once again Gideon was back down in the half-lit depths of Drearburh, in the cement-poured tomb of a soldier’s hall. Cavalier duels worked the same