The servants removed the breakfast and returned a few minutes later with a silver plate bearing a simple meal of fresh, dark bread, accompanied by lightly scrambled eggs perfectly done with the yolk still a bit runny, and fresh chives sprinkled over them. The edge of the plate held four colors of bell peppers ranging from bitter to so sweet I’d use them for desert. There was also a gold-colored card.

  No, not gold-colored. Solid gold, maybe ten centimeters across and engraved with a scene of two duelists standing at the ready. Some kind of last meal, probably. I pushed it away.

  At least there was a huge pot of excellent black tea that would have served a party of ten. It hung over a small electric burner, keeping the temperature just below boiling. Two cups later, I and Riina together had barely managed to lower the level in the pot.

  "Too bad I can't fill a thermos," I said.

  Riina gave me a strange look.

  "Come back alive and I'll make sure the pot is here," she said, and proceeded to do just that, asking the servants to leave it. I couldn't tell if that was a joke.

  The drum major with the silver staff came and led us to the appointed platform, the full honor guard of four grunts walking in a tight formation at our rear.

  It didn't improve my mood. My hands had started trembling again, and having armed men walking behind my back didn't help. I might have muttered about it.

  "Be still," Riina said. "Walk. Focus. Breathe."

  I was about to sneer at her when my brain intervened and I realized that she was right. I hadn't been breathing right, my breaths coming shallow and rapid.

  Panic. A fresh recruit's reaction. I deepened my breaths, making them regular by timing them to my steps. One, two, three, breathe in, one, two, three, breathe out. My shoulders loosened, my jaw unclenched. I switched my step length, giving me a funny gait but allowing me to do a fast-walking meditation. That helped, too.

  We arrived at the platform.

  It was a large oval, big as the Bucket's cargo bay, surrounded by golden trees with blood-red leaves. The ground was gold-shimmering pyrite. Fool's gold, iron and sulfur melted together. Even I knew that one. With the red trees, it made the plaza look like a blood-filled chalice. How fitting. All it needed was for the Dromoni to make it rain tears, and we'd have a nice, symbolic death.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Crudmungers.

  They stood around the sides, the silver and diamond accents of house Trevalon and its allies on the right, the gold and yellow stones of Draud's house on the left, Draud himself in the center looking smug, a tight crowd of hangers-on around him.

  Clear, thick barriers reaching the middle branches of the trees shielded them from us. Glass, or transparent aluminum. The Dromoni were rich enough for it, and cared enough for the safety of their spectators. Or maybe that a duelist might see an old enemy and put an oversized bullet in them. I knew I would have been tempted.

  Saradon entered from the opposite end, some eighty or ninety meters away. Far enough to make the diamonds on his cuffs invisible, except as the occasional sparkle.

  He'd changed his dress to one of pure black so matte as to absorb light, making him resemble a form-fitting shadow ward. Only his face remained visible, a pale oval above his black shirt.

  Very pale. Kid was scared.

  I didn't blame him. My own fingers trembled, and I pressed them to my thighs to mask it. Crudmunching Dromoni and crudmunching Draud. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing me shiver.

  I hated this part, before the battle started, when you have nothing to do but wait, and dream up horrible scenarios in your mind. Expecting that bullet in your back at any moment, the whoosh of flowing plasma, the crack of shattering wards.

  Except we didn't have any wards, only blood and guts to be spilled on the golden ground. Very traditional.

  I realized I had no idea what the signal to start the duel was. It hadn't been in the brief.

  My palms felt moist. Another downside to the Dromoni palm-slap. But I wouldn't be yanking on anyone's hand, and guns don't care about sweat.

  Too many thoughts. Everything going through my head at once. If Saradon fired now, I would get shot, my ward untriggered.

  Stand. Focus. Breathe.

  Right. Now I heard Riina's voice in my imagination, too. Soon, I'd be equating her to the rectors at the academy. Or perhaps I already had. She had that gravely weight.

  "You'd better move away," I told her, pointing to where Traz was walking around the edge of the plaza, away from Saradon.

  I expected her to give me some gruff but heartfelt advice, the kind commanders have given their soldiers since the dawn of time. Be brave. Stand fast. Fire when you see the whites of their eyes. Crudmucking things like that.

  "Don't die," Riina said, in her most grandmotherly, sing-song voice. She patted me on the arm and started walking away, toward the Trevalon side of the plaza, the same direction as Traz. Nobody wanted to be with Draud. How surprising.

  "Right," I said, conjuring a thread of force and feeling toward my ward on Saradon's bullet.

  It came, a sharp, hard stab, like a grain of sand caught beneath a finger nail. I drew on the thread, feeling it go cold and straight, like a taunt string pointing right to the bandoleer on Saradon's hip.

  He'd loaded the wrong bullet.