Riposte.

"Elders, Rip, what were you thinking?" Tuli moaned. It was said getting the snobbish Ill'Enniniess knight to take anything seriously was virtually impossible, but it really wasn't, if you knew which nerves to trod.

"If what you tell me is true, I wasn't," I said in my least interested tone.

I let myself be hurried through the Silver Blades' foyer, down dimly lit corridors, and into a sumptuous reading room opposite the gymnasium and fencing strips that occupied the majority of the club's South side. I froze inside the doorway, rigid with the realization that a dining room had never been our destination.

"I thought we were getting drinks," I protested, eyes narrow.

"Sit," Stande ordered, helping Tuli all but push me into a deeply cushioned seat. He ran his hand through thinning hair as he turned away, his posture one of restrained agitation.

"This is bad," he muttered.

"It was necessary," I snapped coldly. These days, Stande looked older every time I saw him, and I had no patience for his melodrama. And for very little else, of late.

"As an officiant, you must admit the dueling code was violated. Even Frawlins said that I was attacked after the match and was perfectly within my rights to retaliate."

"The Di Bobras won't see it that way," he said gravely. "And the priest certainly didn't. He'll denounce you to his order, mark my words."

"Priests," I scoffed. I had the least patience of all for priests. "Let him."

"Did you have to kill that boy?" Tuli interrupted, thin brows nearly meeting between intent green eyes.

"You've asked that already," I said, making a show of picking lint from my sleeves. I didn't understand the gesture myself—dust was impossible to avoid, and it made no difference if a bit happened onto my clothes—but I knew it to be a sign of nonchalance; and I was feeling apathetic.

"I haven't yet heard an answer that remotely elucidates what you were thinking!" he said, exasperated. "Rip, you savaged that boy."

"It's hardly the first time a gentlemen has taken advantage of a social blunder to execute a rival."

There was a long moment of silence while I studiously ignored the gaping amazement on both men's faces.

"That it, then, silver-tongue?" I laughed, reaching the end of my capacity for suspense, and getting to my feet. "Just: 'What in the hells Rip?' And when I give you half an answer, you glare at me like a bass out of water? You're getting slow, my friend."

"I wouldn't have thought it possible, even for you," Tuli sighed, shuddering with emotion. "He was just a boy! In what possible way was he your rival?"

Okay, so that point didn't hold a lot of water after all.

"Di Bobra chose to answer insult with a blade," I said, simply. "He would have killed me if I'd given him the chance."

"He would have been justified," he said, "Clearly you antagonized him."

"I could tell he wanted to give it another shot," I returned dryly. Dry. Always so dry... I needed a drink.

"I can't be party to this," Stande said, throwing his hands up in frustration. "As the Silver Blades officiant I need to remain neutral, but I will tell you this... if his adherence to the code gets any more pragmatic, the club board is going to throw him out on his frosty Tilwen hindquarters. His membership is shaking in the wind as it is."

"Frosty—?" I squinted after the human fencing master's retreat, deciding there was nothing insulting enough in his words to be worthy of my notice. Barely. Although my hindquarters have generally been assessed as warm at least, if not hot...

"I am still waiting to hear of a perceived crime you might have held against Di Bobra?"

He was a lizard, I might have said. On an instinctive level, I sensed that the boy was cursed with weresaurism, and knew that after I'd beaten him in a duel, it was only a matter of time before he struck back, maybe without the benefits of the code duello to support me. I  had to kill him rather than risk an encounter when he was stronger.

I could have argued that point, looked my friend in the eye and said that a dozen small cues—an eye color, a hunch that he healed supernaturally fast, a kind of... smell—had all tipped me off, and rather than wait for evidence, I'd taken fate into my hands and executed him.

I could tell Pertuli exactly what I'd been thinking. But damn me if I was going to.

"Don't hold your breath," I said instead, stepping away. "I'm going to the red room for brandy."

"Brandy?" Pertuli asked, catching my arm. I glared at it, but he refused to release me. "Rip, you've been trying to quit for weeks..."

"And I haven't been drunk for longer," I growled. "What of it? Brother Tully may have cursed me back in Dauroj, but I'm beginning to think I'm more dangerous, sober." To his credit he didn't disagree.

I pulled free and left the room. Like an idiot, he followed.

Pertuli had been joyfully exacerbating my withdrawal symptoms over the last two moons, but it was beyond tedious. I suffered headaches—concerts of bass percussion—that pounded in time to Tuli's constant contrariness.

I stormed into the red room, a claustrophobic dining chamber nearer to the front of the club where spirits and hearty fare were available to members. Normally, the burgundy walls and rosy paintings looked on an area more private than the club's larger rooms, but for a quartet of bravos playing castles at the table, this night proved an exception.

"Out!" I barked, throwing myself into a quilted leather chair, red rage worrying the edges of my vision. "And send someone back with brandy—lots of it!"

I tried to pull a flask from my dueling jack, but found my kit too tight. And far too polished, yet again.

"This gods-damned thing!" I roared—half at Pertuli and half at myself. I leapt to my feet, twisting and tearing at the buckles like a madman in restraints. "I told you to stop polishing it!"

"Stay, friends," the swordsman on the far side called, going back to his cards. He had an obnoxiously chiseled chin, perfectly outlined by a goatee shaped with equal precision, but worse was the eye-hurting scarlet of the cape he wore. "Sit. We were here first, and I'm not leaving for that lunatic."

His fellows, already half on their feet, froze in uncertainty.

"DeGuer," a man in blue satin doublet and matching hat, whispered loudly on the right. "Let us move to the drawing room. That's—"

"C-Clasicant," the one in black on DeGuer's left finished. He smelled of fear even worse than the other three. "He's killed five men in the last fortnight, and by the look of him, it just became six!"

"Three," I corrected, annoyed. "Though you can stay and make it an even seven if you're so inclined..."

"Rip, you've got to stop!" Pertuli begged, interjecting himself between me and the men keeping me from my desired reclusion. "They're club members."

"Listen to your man, Lord Clasicant," DeGuer drawled with an apparent lack of self-preservation. He was older than Di Bobra had been, but still a child. They are all children. "I could easily take that as the threat it was no doubt intended to be, but we are in the middle of a game, and my friends owe me the opportunity to win back heavy losses. Take your trouble elsewhere, Tilwen."

He pronounced my peoples' name so precisely, it was clearly intended as a calculated non-insult. It was supremely aggravating.

My head lowered and I glared at him from under furrowed brows. Red flashed around the edges of my vision. My knuckles popped under the strain of my tightening fists as I pulled my disheveled dueling jack straight around me, folds of shirt poking through cracks or caught in the buckles.

"Okay, hey," Pertuli said quickly as I passed him. He took hold of my shoulder firmly. "That's enough social interaction for you—what's keeping that brandy?" Though his hackles had risen at being called my man, it was clear he was ready to let it slide.

"Stow it," I growled, pulling free. "The gentleman is clearly new to the Silver Blades, and requires an education in manners if he is to remain a member of our club." Pertuli's shoulders slumped in resigned appreciation for the university of knowledge I was about to imp—

I blinked, surprised to find myself on the floor, and shaken from the sudden impact of my chin with flagstone. Sitting up woozily, I shook my head a little and instantly regretted it. Ow.

"One preserve me!" blurted a shocked DeGuer.

"Wha—hap?" I vocalized nonsensically. The rage and red haze were gone, completely transposed by bewilderment.

"Come DeGuer, let us leave this place," a card player in a lilac coat said to his fellows. "Clasicant is clearly in his cups and intent on mischief; to quarrel with him would do you no honor."

"You may be right, Master Ferhauer," DeGuer answered, standing. "But our game is not finished; the night is early and you have let me loan you a great number of scales I fully intend to win back."

"Of course, of course," Ferhauer responded. "By all means, let us take your scales to the drawing room and you can add to them if you like!"

In a confusion of jovial chuckling and general merriment, the four ordered wine to be sent to the card room and left. I couldn't follow most of what was said, but I wasn't so insensible that I failed to notice DeGuer's parting compliments.

"When he has regained himself," he told Pertuli, "give your friend my good thanks for the education. Honestly—a Tilwen so drunk he trips over his own feet—until tonight I thought such a thing impossible!"

"I. Am. NOT. Drunk!" I howled, and as I flopped over on my side to wave a fist at him, the humans retreated down the corridor, laughing.

"More's the pity," Pertuli sighed.

The pain in my chin receded much more quickly than the wound sustained by my pride. Bravely, I pulled myself upright and flopped into a chair with a groan.

I began unbuckling my kit carefully this time, holding my frustration in check. Pertuli, silent as the grave, watched my progress without comment. He could at least offer to help, I groused silently. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of complaining out loud. After all, he strapped me into the damned thing.

At last I was liberated and threw the jack, an abbreviated shirt of thick leather with pauldrons and rerebraces to protect the shoulders, upon the card table. I had never understood why the dueling code had evolved to permit this strange bit of armor, but I suspected it was part of some unspoken social contract that said not all duels need be lethal. Just as dueling to settle petty grievances was illegal and yet entirely customary, the dueling jack was both contraband and ubiquitous in every leatherworker's stall and estate armory in Dragoskala.

I fished a flask out of my shirt, unstoppered it and took a long pull of the faewine within. I could almost hear the calm settle over me as the universe stopped spinning, all four dimensions realigned, and Pertuli gave his first humorless, meaning-laden chuckle.

"Now how did you sneak that in there?" he smirked. "Some officiants might consider a metal container under your clothes to be a form of armor..."

I glared at him. Did he just accuse me of cheating?

"Not that it counts, of course," he continued, his tone entirely too disinterested. "A whelp like Di Bobra would never have come within striking range, in a fair fight against the 'Great Riposte Clasicant.' "

" 'Zactly," I murmured, taking another long pull from the flask. It had exactly no chance of intoxicating me—since Brother Tully cursed me, I couldn't even enjoy a momentary dizziness from such lightweight spirits—but the act of drinking was still satisfying. I loved the taste... the aroma... the mouth-feel of the cold faewine pouring down my throat. "It's of no consequence if the kid couldn't even touch me."

Gods, I've been sober too long.

"Which begs the question," Pertuli said, clearly embarked on a line of reasoning that left me at the docks. Or maybe in a tavern near the docks...

"Why there is blood all over your shirt," he continued. He leaned forward to study my dueling jack on the table for a moment, and added, "and the inside of your kit. Rip, have you been stabbed?"

Oops.