Dirk struggled to his feet only to stand uselessly with his hands bound. Garse took two quick steps forward, and Jaan Vikary was finally moving. But it was Bretan Braith Lantry who reached them first and dragged Myrik off her with an arm around his neck. Myrik flailed wildly, until Lorimaar joined Bretan and between them they held the man still.

Gwen lay inert, her head up against the plate-metal door where Myrik had slammed it. Vikary knelt at her side, on one knee, and tried to put an arm around her shoulders. The back of her head left a smear of blood on the side of the aircar.

Janacek knelt too, quickly, and felt her pulse. Satisfied, he rose again and turned back to face the Braiths, his mouth tight with anger. "She wore jade-and-silver, Myrik," he said. "You are a dead man. I issue challenge."

Myrik had stopped screaming, though he was panting. One of the hounds howled and fell silent.

"Does she live?" Bretan asked in his sandpaper voice.

Jaan Vikary looked up at him out of a face as strange and strained as Myrik's had been just a short time before. "She lives."

"Good fortune," said Janacek, "but no thanks to you, Myrik, nor will it make a difference. Make your choices!"

"Let me loose!" Dirk said. No one moved.

"Let me loose!" he shouted.

Someone sliced apart his bonds.

He went to Gwen, kneeling beside Vikary. Briefly their eyes met. Dirk examined the back of her head, where the dark hair was already beginning to crust with clotted blood. "A concussion at least," he said. "Maybe a fractured skull, maybe worse. I don't know. Are there medical facilities?" He looked at each of them. "Are there?"

Bretan answered. "None functional in Challenge, t'Larien. The Voice fought me. The city would not respond. I had to kill it."

Dirk grimaced. "She shouldn't be moved, then. Maybe it's only a concussion. I think she's supposed to rest."

Incredibly, Jaan Vikary left her in Dirk's arms and stood up. He gestured to Lorimaar and Bretan, who held Myrik prisoned between them. "Release him."

"Release…?" Janacek threw Vikary a puzzled glance.

"Jaan," Dirk said, "never mind about him. Gwen-"

"Get her inside an aircar," Vikary said.

"I don't think we should move-"

"It is not safe here, t'Larien. Get her inside an aircar."

Janacek was frowning. "My teyn?"

Vikary faced the Braiths again. "I told you to release that man." He paused. "That mockman, as you would call him. He has earned the name."

"What do you intend, high-Ironjade?" Lorimaar said sternly.

Dirk lifted Gwen and laid her gently in the back of the closest of the aircars. She was quite limp, but her breathing was still regular. Then he slid into the driver's seat and waited, massaging his wrists to restore circulation.

Everyone seemed to have forgotten him. Lorimaar high-Braith was still talking. "We recognize your right to face Myrik, but it must be singled, as Teraan Braith Nalarys lies dead. Since your own teyn challenged first…"

Jaan Vikary had his laser pistol in his hand. "Release him and stand away."

Lorimaar, startled, let go of Myrik's arm and stepped swiftly to the side. Bretan hesitated. "High-Ironjade," he rasped, "for your honor and his, for your holdfast and your teyn, set down your weapon."

Vikary aimed at the half-faced youth. Bretan twitched, then released Myrik and fell back with a grotesque shrug.

"What is happening?" the one-handed oldster was demanding in a shrill voice. "What is he doing?" Everyone ignored him.

"Jaan," Garse Janacek said in a horrified tone. "This has disarrayed your thoughts. Lower your gun, my teyn. I have challenged. I will kill him for you." He laid his hand on Jaan's arm.

And Jaan Vikary wrenched free and pointed his weapon at Garse. "No. Stand back. You will not interfere, not now. This is for her."

Janacek's face darkened; he had no grins now, none of his savage wit. His right hand balled into a first, and he slowly raised it straight up in front of his face. Iron-and-glowstone stood shining in the space between the two Ironjades. "Our bond," said Janacek. "Think, my teyn. My honor, and yours, and that of our holdfast." His voice was grave.

"What of her honor?" Vikary said. Gesturing impatiently with his laser, he forced Janacek away from him and turned again on Myrik.

Alone and confused, Myrik seemed not to know what was expected of him. His rage had deserted him, though he was still breathing hard. A trail of spittle, tinged pink by blood, ran from one corner of his mouth. He wiped it off with the back of his hand and looked uncertainly toward Garse Janacek. "The first of the four choices," he began in a dazed voice. "I make the choice of mode."

"No," said Vikary. "You make no choices. Face me, mockman."

Myrik looked from Vikary to Janacek and back again. "The choice of mode," he repeated numbly.

"No," Vikary said again. "You gave Gwen Delvano no choices, she who would have faced you fair, in duel."

Myrik's face twisted into a look of honest bafflement. "She? In duel? I… she was a woman, a mockman." He nodded, as if he had settled everything. "She was a woman, Ironjade. Have you gone mad? She japed me. A woman does not duel."

"And you do not duel, Myrik. Do you understand? Do you? You"-he fired, and a half-second pulse of light took Myrik low, between his legs, so the man screamed-

"do"-and he fired again, and burned Myrik in the neck just beneath his chin, and then waited as the man fell and his laser recycled-

"not"-he continued, fifteen seconds later, and with the word a spurt of light that burned the writhing figure across the chest, and then Vikary was stepping backwards, toward the aircar-

"duel!" he finished, half in and half out of the car, and with the word came a flick of his wrist and a fourth burst of light, and Lorimaar high-Braith Arkellor was falling, his weapon half drawn.

Then the door slammed, and Dirk threw on the the gravity grid, and they jerked forward and up and out, and were halfway to the exit arch when the laser fire began to hiss and burn against their armor.

It was full night above the Common. The air was black crystal, clear and cold. The winds were bad. Dirk was grateful for the heavily armored Braith aircar, with its warm cabin, fully enclosed.

He kept them about a hundred meters above the plains and the gentle hills, and pushed the car as fast as he was able. Once, before Challenge had vanished behind them, Dirk looked back to see if there were any signs of pursuit. He saw none, but the Emereli city caught and held his eye. A tall black spear, soon to be lost against the blacker sky, it reminded him somehow of the great tree that had been caught in a forest fire, its branches and its leaves all gone, nothing left but a charred and soot-dark stick to echo its former glory. He remembered Challenge as Gwen had first shown it to him, when he had asked to see a city with life: bright against the evening, impossibly tall and shining silver, crowned by its ascending bursts of light. A dead husk now, and dead too the dreams of its builders. The hunters of Braith killed more than men and animals.

"They will be after us soon enough, t'Larien," Jaan Vikary said. "You need not search for them."

Dirk turned his attention back to his instruments. "Where are we going? We can't just fly blind above the Common all night, heading for nowhere in particular. Larteyn?"

"We dare not go to Larteyn now," Vikary replied. He had holstered his laser, but his face was as grim as it had been in Challenge when he burned down Myrik. "Are you so much the fool that you do not realize what I did? I broke the code, t'Larien. I am an outbonder now, a criminal, a duel-breaker. They will come after me and kill me as easily as they would a mockman." He knotted his hands together thoughtfully beneath his chin. "Our best hope… I do not know. Perhaps we have no hope."