The man sagged, and when he spoke, his voice was thick and hoarse. "I, Lord Siisru Parsavamaatu, demand satisfaction at arms for your attack upon my wife."

The challenge brought the Kalif out of his own brief psychotic break, and he looked at the man: perhaps fifty-five years old, not decrepit by any means but no longer fit, and undoubtedly no match for him. The challenge had been an act of despondency; the man fully expected to be killed.

And suddenly the Kalif felt very tired. "I do not wish to fight you, sir," he said. "Each of us has reacted badly to this-" He groped. "This occurrence."

The man's head slowly shook. "It's a matter of honor. You struck my wife, knocked her down. The challenge stands."

The Kalif exhaled audibly through rounded lips. "Well then. If it must be."

"Please! Coso!" Tain had come up, but though he heard her, he ignored her. "Please! Don't do it! She…"

He cut her short with a chopping motion. His eyes were not angry however, only bleak. "We have no choice," he told her, then turned back to Lord Siisru. "Who will be your second?"

"My cousin, Lord Gromindh Parsavamaatu." A man who'd come near stepped through the circle of watchers now, to stand waiting. "And yours?" Siisru asked.

Coso almost answered Jilsomo, but Jilsomo was not noble, would not have been acceptable. It would have been taken as an insult. It occurred to him that he had no real friends among the nobility, outside the College. "Alb Tariil," he found himself answering. "If he's here, and if he'll consent to. Otherwise, Lord Roonoa Hamaalo."

Tariil was either out of earshot, or reluctant, and it was the tall and powerful Maolaaro who came forward.

"It was my challenge," Siisru said. "What weapon would you use?"

The Kalif shrugged heavily. "Sabers."

Siisru nodded. "Sabers then. Where?"

"The choice is yours."

"I am not familiar with this locality. Name a place."

"The drill field in the Sreegana. The ground is bare there, and sandy. The footing is good."

"So be it."

"The location was mine," the Kalif said then, following the ritual. "Name the time."

"At once."

He nodded. "As you wish."

No one followed them except their seconds and the Kalif's two bodyguards; it would have been totally outside protocol. The square seemed huge, their crossing a slow movement through a dark, deserted, dismal space. At the great gate, the guards watched them approach with idle curiosity, then with silent foreboding as they saw their faces, and wondered what this was about.

While the duelists waited silently on the dark drill ground, the senior guard signed out two sabers, both honed razor sharp, and at the Kalif's order, offered Siisru his choice. The nobleman tested the balance and feel of both, shrugged and chose. The Kalif took the other.

He bowed then to Lord Siisru. "You issued your challenge in extreme circumstances. I wish it had not been given, and would gladly see it retracted."

"It stands. I have no honorable alternative."

The nobleman's words had neither force nor indignation. He sounded like a man already dead.

"And if I refuse to fight you?"

The answer came tiredly. "Then I will kill you, for you would never run."

"Very well. Are you ready?"

The man's sword came up. "Ready."

Both took the guard position. "Lord Gromindh," said the Kalif, "you may give the command."

After a long reluctant moment, Lord Gromindh croaked the word: "Begin!"

To the Kalif, the "duel" was a macabre mockery, for Siisru moved slowly, as if under water. Clearly the man had not invited him to fight, but had chosen this as a form of suicide. The Kalif himself fought listlessly, as if hoping for something-Kargh perhaps-to intervene before he had to kill the man.

Then Siisru stepped back, lowered his sword and waited for a stroke. After eight or ten ludicrous seconds of nothing happening, he suddenly set upon the Kalif with furious energy, not skillful but dangerous.

The Kalif fended his strokes with a certain sluggishness, till the man's blade sliced his swordarm. Abruptly he reacted, and in a moment Lord Siisru lay crumpled on the packed and sandy ground. The Kalif stepped back, gripped his arm to stanch the bleeding, and turned to Gromindh, Siisru's second.

"It is done," he said quietly. "You can tell them he died with honor, my blood on his sword."

Gromindh met his eyes. "Did he now?" he muttered, then half-turned to look at nothing.

"Sergeant," said the Kalif, "call your regimental surgeon for me. Tell him to come tend to Lord Siisru's body. And to arrange for a mortician. Lord Gromindh can inform him if he has any particular wishes. Lord Gromindh?"

The nobleman made no response, gave no sign that he'd heard. The Kalif shrugged and turned to the big Maolaaro. "Good Roonoa, I am going to my apartment. The kalifal physician will tend to me there. You will do me a favor if you return to the celebration and tell them what happened. Ask Jilsomo to bring the kalifa. Make sure she knows my injury is not dangerous."

Roonoa bowed slightly and left without answering.

The Kalif wondered, as he walked to his apartment with a single guardsman, what would grow out of this. Nothing good, he felt sure of that. Meanwhile, tomorrow he'd have to find out who, in Siisru's family, he needed to meet with regarding reparations. To negotiate directly with the widow was out of the question.

Forty-three

The Kalif's physician had been at the party, too, but he'd been in the ballroom, dancing, and hadn't learned of the affair in the reception hall till after the principals had left. As soon as he'd heard, he'd hurried to his clinic to wait for a call.

He was there when his commset trilled, listened to the Kalif's description of his wound, then grabbed his emergency kit and left trotting, his night-duty assistant following with a folded emergency table. That damnable, bullheaded Kalif had refused to be brought to the clinic where he could be treated under proper conditions; he wanted to be at home when his wife arrived!

The physician had just finished prepping the arm when the kalifa came in with Alb Jilsomo. She was whiter than anyone he'd ever imagined, her blue eyes huge at the sight of the five-inch gash in her husband's arm. It wasn't deep though, just enough that tonus made it gape; no separate bonding of individual blood vessels was necessary. They stood watching, she and the exarch, as he injected bonding fluid into the anesthetized cut, cross-banded it, then sprayed a transparent wrapping on it, to support it till the sides of the cut cohered. Finally he put the arm in a sling, immobilized it against the patient's torso, and left.

The kalifa hadn't said a word, but she hadn't fainted, either, although she had sat down.

When the physician left, Jilsomo left, too. The Kalif opened his mouth to call him back and question him-ask what had happened and been said at the party, after Siisru and himself had left. But he changed his mind. He'd hear all he needed to in the morning, and it was more important now to talk with Tain, if she wanted.

She didn't, though. She seemed dazed, shocked, and he decided to leave her be for now. When she wanted to talk, she would.

Gromindh left the Sreegana with Lord Roonoa. His mind seeming turgid, too full for active thought. He supposed he should see to his cousin's wife, though he'd as soon she hung herself. With luck she would.

Honor indeed.

Then it occurred to him what needed to be done first, before something even more unfortunate happened; he went at once to a public comm in the Hall of the Estates, to call Siisru's son. They needed to get together man to man, right now, tonight, so Vilyamo could hear all that had happened, all of it, by other than second hand.