In the city of Corregal, sword fighting is a way of life - unless you're a girl. While young men compete for prestigious positions within the ruling Houses, young women have to rely on others to protect them from the dangers lurking in the streets...
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She led them home quickly, the two young men she knew and the one she didn't, across the river three times and through all the convoluted byways of the city towards Fleuracy House. Even Barris with his long legs had trouble keeping up with her, which was the point, because she didn't want him to have a chance to ask any of the questions she knew he wanted to ask. Questions for which there were only awkward answers.
Cagen Thul had done her a favor, really. Whatever impulse had driven Neda to challenge the foreigner to a duel had not been born of experience with the sword. If the watchman hadn't stepped in when he had, she would have humiliated herself nine-times more thoroughly than his public rebuke had done. She could just imagine the ridicule that would have ensued, had she actually tried to cross swords with the Jurati. With Barris and Tierce there to witness, no less.
But what had she expected, invoking Evod as she had?
Night had settled fully on the river by the time they reached home; even the towering mansions of the High Bank had surrendered the day's last light. Down below, nearer the water's edge, shadows thickened into blackness, with the lights on the bridges making dotted lines across the river. On a quiet street that cut up from the south shore of the Cille, Fleuracy House was hidden behind high stone walls, indistinguishable from its neighbors save for the twin falcons carved into the ironwood gate.
The gate was open, and torches lined the vine-wrapped arcade that led to the house, an austere, three-storied structure half-carved out of the hillside itself. Neda ran past the steward standing watch with barely a word. Evod's influence still curled around her tongue, and she was desperately afraid of what she might say, if she had to say too much. It wasn't fair. All she'd asked for was a little misdirection, so that she might go unnoticed on the Blade. Instead, she'd found herself stepping out of the crowd, pretending a competence she surely didn't own. But everyone knew that Evod, who was sometimes called the Master of Lies, had a devious sense of humor.
She crashed through the door into the house, desperate to reach her room before anyone could stop her. Instead, she nearly crashed into her father, who stood waiting in the pilastered entry hall. Eristan Fleuracy was nearly sixty, with grey hair and wrinkles on his face, but even so it was hard to think of him as old. Beneath his formal, grey-green tunic he was lean and straight-backed, and still quick enough to catch his daughter by the elbow as she tried to fly by.
He held her fast while he leveled a hard glare at the three who spilled through the door in her wake. Words weren't necessary, under that gaze. Both Tierce and Barris flinched from the unspoken rebuke, looking even more like boys than they usually did. They'd been due back at sunset, Neda remembered, in order to attend the Bell Guard dedication at the Gatehouse. Her father did not often set curfews on the young men he'd taken into his House, but when he did he expected to be heeded. There would be consequences after tonight, she was sure. She might have felt sorry for them, if she wasn't tied up with her own resentment at not being allowed to go herself.
