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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It had been a long afternoon, with no wind down the gorge to break the sweltering grip of the summer sun. Even down on the waterfront there was no relief. Workers on the docks had stripped their outer layers, some even bare to the waist, their only means of enduring the oppressive heat.
Not Barris. His tabard stayed on, with the Fleuracy badge pinned properly to the shoulder. Shirt sleeves fastened at the wrist, collar decorously closed around his neck. Trousers tucked into boots that had been polished with care the night before. He had tied his black hair back, to keep it out of his face, but that was the only concession he'd made in his appearance.
It was a statement.
Perhaps not the most reasonable one, he considered, as he paused at the top of the gangplank that lead onto the barge he had been instructed to load. He wiped at the sweat on his forehead, wondering if there hadn't been some other, less uncomfortable way to make his point. How much did clothes define a man, anyway?
The barge swayed in the river's current, and barrel he was in the midst of moving tottered. He put out a hand, but before he could steady it, it rolled out of his grasp. Lurching the rest of the way down the gangplank, it hit the deck with a thud that made the whole barge rock. Tierce and Romeric, tying down cargo, were caught unprepared and had to grab at the ropes to keep themselves from toppling over the low rail into the river.
"Sorry!" he quickly called out as he chased after it, but the other two only laughed, and then resumed their pointless conversation as if he hadn't interrupted them.
"That can't be the last bridge," Romeric waved a hand at the bridge that stretched across the river to the east, a fortified span crowned by three square towers. Fishing boats and tradesmen's barges slid beneath the high stone arches, along with one sleek pleasure craft with a bright red hull, pulled against the current by a crew of hired oarsmen. He leaned over the side of the barge so he could peer downriver. "I can see at least two more beyond it."
"It didn't say it's the last bridge." Tierce grinned despite his sunburnt cheeks. When he finished the knot he was working on, he leaned against one of the crates, taking a moment to rest and mop the sweat from his brow with a shirt sleeve. He and Romeric had discarded their tabards hours ago, and rolled up their sleeves like common dockworkers, but it hadn't kept them from suffering from the heat any. "It's just called Last Bridge. Maybe it was the last bridge when it was built a hundred years ago, but then the woodcarvers' guild built the Level. And past that is the Summer Bridge, built by...was it House Dunac, Barris? Or Ivrane that built the Summer Bridge?"
"It was Bonifel House." Barris gave his barrel a shove so that it butted up against those already stacked. His back twinged as he straightened, and he suppressed a grimace of pain. His muscles ached, his head throbbed from the glare of the sun, and there wasn't a bit of him that wasn't soaked with sweat after hours of labor. The last thing he wanted to talk about was bridges and who had built them, especially with this presumptuous, overconfident foreigner whose accent grated on his nerves like ice limes on a sore tooth.
