I slept badly in a too-soft bed with a cover that was both heavy and prickly. Sometime after midnight, I got fed up with it and used my multi-tool to cut a small hole in one corner. The whole thing was filled with feathers.

  Sleeping beneath dead birds. Crudmunching Dromoni. I tossed the cover on the floor and pulled a cloth of some organic fiber over myself. At least it wasn't hair. I hoped.

  Morning came with the rapping of heavy knuckles on our door. I jerked awake and almost threw myself off the bed before remembering where I was. Of course the Dromoni wouldn't use a com signal like normal people.

  The breakfast, at least, was magnificent. Seven different breads, with and without seeds, topped by nuts, berries, salt flakes, or nothing but a smooth, crunchy crust. Big bowl of butter, with a slightly strange smell to it. Maybe the Dromoni cured it from the milk of wild beasts instead of recombining it in a vat like everyone else. The vegetables were well-grown and fragrant, and covered the smell of the butter.

  I would have liked to stuff myself. The thought of the duel wouldn't allow me. What if Saradon hadn't gotten the message? What if the doctor had sold us all out? What if Saradon didn't trust me, or decided that it was better to die cleanly than risk some scheme by an off-worlder?

  What if I misjudged the gun?

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  I picked up the Dromoni pistol. I'd cleaned it and gone over the mechanism, dry-firing it and studying the position of the firing pin. It looked like a clean hit in the middle of where the firing cap would be when I inserted the cartridge.

  But there's a lifetime of difference between looked like and were. And it's the small details that kill you.

  I wished for a proper gunnery range, where I could sight in the pistol, and grow accustomed to it. I didn't even know how much of a recoil impulse it would have. Not much, I wagered. The ball was twenty millimeters, but the entire casing was merely thirty millimeters in length. The amount of powder was...

  I gave up counting. No use. I didn't know how thick the casing was, nor what type of powder it was, how fast it burned, or how efficiently. Trying to calculate muzzle velocities with so many unknowns would be pure guesswork. Faster than a walk, slower than light speed. Voidmuching lot of good that did me.

  I needed to fire right after he did. Not a second after, not an eye-blink after. A nanosecond after. Should have thought of that before going off into the dark, decided upon some kind of signal for when he'd fire.

  Too much uncertainty. Everything boiled down to uncertainty. I needed to be certain, to know when he'd fire.

  Except that I didn't. I could use Saradon's bullet to fire my own. All I needed to do was conjure a thread and stick it to his wards, then carve a push ward in my primer.

  Crudmunging dumb idea. The primer could explode from the engraving. But I didn't have anything better, other than relying on pure reflexes. And while I did have high thoughts about myself, I wasn't delusional. At best, I'd fire after Saradon's bullet hit me. At worst, I'd die before realizing he'd fired.

  Crud planet, crud people, crud Draud. I took out my engraving drill.

  And had a brilliant idea.