Traz left, taking the silver-clad servants with him. Moments later, an older servant, dressed in green and bearing a silver staff that made him look like a Fed navy drum major at a military parade, came and asked us very politely if we'd follow him. The four guards, armed with short truncheons and needle-jet dart pistols in holsters at their hips, were there purely for our safety. Crud.

  We followed him out into the plaza. My shoulder blades itched. Every step, I expected to be shot. I knew it was irrational, a stupid pre-battle fear, but I couldn't shake it.

  Crud planet, crud people, and crud duels. I really, really didn't want to shoot the kid.

  We passed through marvels of horticulture and engineering, trees twisted into living seats and ponds suspended in the air above our head. I barely noticed. The parts of the trap kept swirling in my mind.

  Saradon was doomed if he fired, doomed if he didn't. I doomed him if I fired, but doomed him if I didn't. Voidmunching Draud.

  We ended up in a small chamber, two beds, two chairs, two couches, one table. Everything comfortable and cozy, looking soft and smelling fresh. Neither of us felt like sitting down.

  Dinner came, a whole sautéed chicken swimming in garlic and mushrooms, accompanied by bread still warm from the oven, and a row of tiny salad bowls, each with different combinations of herbs and spices. Neither Riina nor I ate well.

  "There has to be a way out," I said.

  Riina nodded. For a second, I believed she'd figured something out.

  "Yet I fail to see it," she said, looking up from her com. "The amount of texts on dueling is staggering, yet the rules are very simple."

  "You shoot the other man," I said. "Even a stupid Galactic can figure that out."

  Her poke was fast and strong, hitting me in the gut. I noted that she didn't jab with her finger, but her knuckle.

  "Self-pity doesn't become you," she said.

  "Noted," I said, my voice somewhat strained. Her jab had been hard and accurate. Sometimes I forgot that behind the grandmother face lay an old soldier. "Tell me the rules."

  "Read them yourself," she said. "Unless you've forgotten how. I have better things to spend my time on than to nurse your pity."

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  I growled something unkind in reply, but brought up my com and logged into the brief Riina's analysts on the Belithain had prepared.

  It was expertly written, a marvel of brevity and bullet points. I'd heard it said that the measure of a commander is the quality of her logistics and analysts. If so, Riina's men deserved a medal. I really should have read the whole thing on our way to Dromond.

  The rules for duels were simple. Two men entered a plaza previously designated, from opposite ends. The plaza had to be no less than twenty meters across, and no more than eighty. I assumed that these were the ranges at which their guns were somewhat accurate. Less than twenty meters would then mean assured hits, more than eighty likely misses. Wards and armor were forbidden, and their use to be met by sanctions. Plenty of blood for the spectators, check.

  The challenged party was to fire first. The challenger might fire directly after that, while the first shot was still in the air, but that was frowned upon as cowardly. As if I'd care.

  Guns were held one handed, which explained the short ranges. With a barrel long as my leg, any twitch would mean the bullet going wild.

  It also explained why the men were alone. I imagined that anyone standing behind or beside a duelist was in a high-risk position.

  The duel continued until one man hit something of the other. The brief called it striking true. Wonderfully poetic, the Dromoni. Too bad I couldn't shoot Draud with one of their poetic bullets.

  Except...

  "I've found it," I said. "All I have to do is shoot Saradon's gun. Or let him shoot my gun. Struck true, yet no harm."

  "Brilliant," said Riina. "Keep reading."

  The pistol was considered part of the man. Thus striking it was the same as striking the man, and harming it, you harmed the bearer.

  "Crud," I said.

  "Not as smart as you thought yourself to be?" Riina said.

  "Thank you for your kind words," I replied. "They are heartwarming, and shall be inscribed on my tomb. Or the Belithain, which is likely to become one."

  Riina cracked the sole of her shoe against the floor in our chamber.

  "That was uncalled for," she said. "Bathe in quicksand if you like, but you will not wish ill on my friends and family."

  Her wrinkles suddenly didn't line up into laugh lines, but the deep crags of a hard life and harder responsibility. Those were her people on the Belithain. I had taken them under my wing, but they were hers, not mine. If anything happened to the Kylians on board the ship, I would feel their loss. Riina would live it.

  "I am sorry," I said. "Truly sorry. You are not the enemy."

  "Neither are you, Jakob," Riina said. "Now get back to work."

  I got, and kept reading, but my mind wouldn't focus. There was something there, in those rules. I scrolled back to them, my eyes smarting from too much staring at the com readout, and started re-reading.

  "Riina?" I said.

  "What?" Riina replied, gruff. She rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands, looking a thousand years old.

  "The bullets aren't part of the guns," I said.

  "If you hit Master Saradon's bandoleer you will most certainly harm him, whether you strike the bullets or not," she said. "And if you hit it inside the barrel, you harm the gun."

  "But not if I hit it after it's fired," I said.

  Riina sighed.

  "Please don't tell me that you're putting all our hopes on being able to hit a bullet in flight," she said. "Even you must have more common sense than that. Or do you believe yourself such a sand-blasted great shot?"

  "Of course not," I said. "I intend to cheat."

  Flowers of Crystal

  They couldn't save their relationship. Now they must save a planet.

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  - Smart, proactive characters.

  - Good guys pitted against each other.

  - Research and brains-centered plot.

  - Clean romance.

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