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plucked bits of fruit out of his hair.
"Didyou disrupt this girl's Maiden Morn?" Janifer quizzed her.
"Yes," Zoli admitted freely. "You'd've done the same, in the circumstances." She explained the details of
Goodwife Eyebright's plot against Ethelberthina.
The good duke was appalled, but compelled to press on with his examination: "Then you admit to
assaulting Ludlow Pennywhistle with the flung body of Bursar Tailings?"
"Sometimes I don't know my own strength." Zoli giggled. "Sometimes I do."
"And did you thereby recklessly endanger the life of this troll?"
"I wouldn't saythat . I recked plenty. I knew Ethelberthina wouldn't let him come to harm. She knows
what sunlight does to trolls, so she swept her cloak over him the instant he hit the water. None of ushad
cloaks whoclaimed we did." She gave the wizard a nasty look.
"Yes, but when she threw her cloak over him, that betrothed them, according to the laws governing
Maiden Morns."
"What do you want, law or justice? If Ihadn't tossed the troll, then by the same laws, she'd be hogtied
tothat piece of work instead." She nodded at Ludlow. "The troll's a better deal."
"But it's notlegal for trolls and humans to marry!" the duke exclaimed.
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"Well, they're not married; they're only betrothed." Zoli shrugged. "You're the duke;un betroth them."
"I don't have that authority."
"But youdo have the authority to bother me with all of these silly lawsuits, don't you?" Zoli challenged. "Is
this what we pay our taxes for? Especially Ethelberthina."
The duke's moustache began to twitch in an unsettling manner. "You . . . pay . . . taxes, child?" he asked
the girl.
"Ever since the Swordsisters' Union bought up most of my stock of Mama Ethina's Elixir of Equality,"
she replied. "It turns dragon-scale armor so brittle that it shatters on contact with a feather."
"Nothingcan do that to dragon-scale armor!" the duke objected. "That's why the king's men all wear it."
"Nothingcould ," Lily said, stepping forward, her alchemist's robes rustling softly over the stones. "But
now somethingcan ; something Ethelberthina invented, andthat's why she's independently wealthy." She
patted the girl on one shoulder and added, "It's not turning lead into gold, but close. Fellow alchemist, I
salute you."
"Fellow alchemist, do you have anything that might shatter my stupid betrothal?" Ethelberthina asked.
Lily smiled. She was a beautiful young woman, with her mother's dark coloring and her father's
home-loving nature. When she first entered Duke Janifer's service, many court gossips hissed that he had
not hired her for her brains. The whispers stopped when Lily demonstrated that she had also inherited her
mother's elementary yet effective way of dealing with rumormongers.
"As a matter of fact," she said, "I do. And it will settle all of these silly lawsuits besides."
"Willit?" Duke Janifer gazed at Lily in awe. "Huzzah! Tell us what it is, I beg you!"
"Nothing fancy; just trial by combat. Oh! To the death. It must be to the death. You can't get anything
really settled unless someone dies."
The hall fell silent, including the spectators.
The sound of Zoli's sword rasping from its sheath broke the quiet. "Suits me," she said amiably.
"It would." Bursar Tailings huffed like an overweight dragon. "Me fight a retired swordsister? Might as
well ram a chisel through my throat and save time."
"Do wehave to?" Ludlow whined.
"Not if you drop the charges," Lily said. "No charges, no case; no case, no need for any sort of trial."
"Good enough for me," said the troll. "Consider 'em dropped."
"Me, too," Ludlow said eagerly.
"After what she did to us?" Goodwife Eyebright snapped. Her hand, grown strong and swift in the
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ministering of domestic justice to her helpless brood, shot out and grabbed him by the ear. "If it weren't
for her and her prodigal troll-flinging, we'd both have what we wanted by now."
"I don't care." Ludlow squealed and squirmed. "What good's a dowry if I'm dead? You want your kid
married off so bad,you fight the tin-plated bitch!"
"All right," said Goodwife Eyebright. "I will."
* * *
"Did I miss anything?" Garth Justi's-son asked Dean Porfirio as he sidled along the row of benches
ringing the duke's arena. Normally the sand-covered enclosure was reserved for riding exhibitions, but
today it had been hastily judged the best site for the upcoming trial-at-arms.
"Not a thing." The wizard reached into a paper cone filled with salted nuts and munched primly. It was
amazing how fast word of the combat had spread, fetching still more people to the ducal palace grounds.
With the crowds came hucksters of every stripe. They seemed to swarm out of the ground, like maggots
in meat, which coincidentally was what some of them were selling.
"Sorry I took so long," Garth muttered, sitting down. "I had to teach Ludlow some manners. Hemight
be walking normally by next Market Day, if he finds an ice pack. No whelp calls my Zoli a bitch and gets
away with it."
The wizard stuck the paper poke under Garth's nose. "Nuts?"
"Fair enough, sheis that. But only a little, and I think our Lily caught it from her. Trial by combat to the
death, no less! Whatwas going through that girl's head?"
"Probably the notion that she could save you a lot of legal woes. She believed they'dall drop their cases
because no one would be fool enough to fight Zoli." The wizard ate some more nuts. "Never
underestimate fools."
In the center of the sand-strewn ring, Duke Janifer stood between the two combatants and nervously
asked, "Ladies, are you certain you wouldn't like to reconsider?"
"Iwould," Zoli said. "It's not combat, it's bloody murder. I've eaten seafood that had more hope of killing
me thanthis idiot." She gestured scornfully at Goodwife Eyebright. "Plus, she looks ready to drop her calf
any second now. One needless death on my hands is bad enough, but two?"
"Willyou withdraw?" Duke Janifer turned to Goodwife Eyebright, entreating her with his eyes.
"Pleeease?"
Ethelberthina's mother stood herself up a bit taller and held the sword she'd been given as though it were
a carpet beater. "I'd sooner die."
"I was afraid you'd say that." The duke sighed, shrugged, and tossed a bright orange kerchief high into
the air. As he dashed from the arena he called back over one shoulder, "When it hits the ground, start
fighting!"
The audience gasped and held its breath. Zoli went into her preferred fighting stance, grim and silent,
eyes fixed on the floating kerchief. Goodwife Eyebright, on the other hand, began jabbering the instant
the bit of cloth left the duke's hand.
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"My gracious, aren't you in a hurry? I'm sure it's not going to take you long to kill me, but don't you
worry about that. Nor about the poor, innocent, unborn babe I'm carrying that never did anyone a bit of
harm. Nor about all my poor little lambkins that'll be left orphaned and helpless, oh no, don't you give any
of them a second thought! Mayor Eyebright will probably remarry quick enough, and then they'll have a
stepmother, and who knows what she'll be like? But don't you fret over it, you've done your duty, you
don't have to bother your head about whether they'll be decently clothed and fed and who'll tuck them
into their cold, lonesome little beds of a winter's night with not even the comfort of a loving mother's kiss
on their tiny, tear-stained faces, no. Don't you concern yourself over their bitter tears or their
heartbreaking sobs or their "
"Gnut save us, what's the wretch doing?" Garth exclaimed.
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