Carnival

Michelangelo looked as if he wanted to step forward. He couldn’t, though, not with Lesa leaning on him. “Kii,” he said, “we needed to talk to you alone.”

The argument lasted the better part of three hours, but Lesa only participated in the first fifteen minutes. Her feet hurt, and moreover, Julian was sitting turned around in the chair in front of her terminal, his knees drawn up under his chin and his back braced against the desk, blinking at Kii wide-eyed as a boy watching his first Trials.

Michelangelo barely noticed when Lesa disentangled herself from him, other than to give her a grim little smile as she limped away to sit down beside her son.

This was Vincent’s job, this negotiation. She didn’t have the faintest idea of where to begin. And Julian deserved praise and a hug. One he wasn’t too grown up, today, to return.

She watched the discussion closely, however, and she quickly got the impression that Kii actually wasn’t opposed to helping them. That it might in fact be inclined to do so, but a sense of duty was stopping it. And so, when she interjected, she only had one point to make; Vincent had covered the rest.

“Kii,” she said, when Vincent had taken two deep breaths of frustration and curled his fingers into his palms, “sometimes the status quo needsrearranging. No matter how safe it is.”

“The Consent would not agree,” Kii said, its eyes filming white for a moment and then clearing, sun-brilliant again.

“The Consent aren’t here to ask, are they?”

Its feathers smoothed, and it stared at her.

“Kii,” she said, “what do youthink?”

“I think the Consent is too conservative,” it said. “I think the diversity of your species should be protected. I think preserving a small local population when there is a…menagerie…no, a panoply of you to experience is foolish.” It settled, and furled its wings. “You’re all so different,” it said plaintively. “And I’ve only gotten to meet a few of you.”

“Take you to Earth,” Michelangelo said. “If you make me a promise about the Governors, Kii. If you’ll take them apart.”

Kii recoiled, wings fanning. And Lesa dropped her hand to the butt of her weapon and took a single slow, deep breath. If she died today, it didn’t matter. Either the plan to subvert the Governors would work, and there would be no war—or she would have to have faith in her mother’s ability to discredit Austin and Singapore.

And there was Vincent’s promise. One way or another, Julian would be okay.

“Decide quickly,” she said. And when they turned to her, she shrugged, her lips pulled tight across her teeth to keep them from trembling. “We have to leave within the hour if we’re going to meet Claude and her seconds before noon.”

Ninety minutes later, Vincent, Lesa, and Michelangelo met Claude, Maiju, and another woman at the challenge square. It was otherwise empty, and Claude and her people had beaten them there and stood, waiting, not far from the center of the open court. Saide Austin was nowhere in sight, and Michelangelo couldn’t decide if he found that expected or surprising. New Amazonian dueling apparently didn’t bow to such niceties as seconds; other than the men she dueled for, Lesa went alone.

She limped in stiff boots that were the next best thing to braces, and she had refused Michelangelo’s offer of an analgesic. “I’d rather suffer than be slow.”

She’d gotten Agnes to cut the trigger guard off an old weapon for her, and wrapped the grip in cloth so that if her palm seeped through the sealant it wouldn’t slick the gun.

Michelangelo wished he thought it would be enough.

Even across the intervening distance, he saw Claude’s chin go up when Lesa rose, wobbling, out of the groundcar. Michelangelo offered his arm, but she brushed past with stubborn pride. Claude didn’t say a word, although the glance she exchanged with her wife said everything.

Michelangelo squeezed Lesa’s shoulder before he let her stagger forward alone. She flashed him an ashen grin and went, trying to stride but hobbling, and Claude’s retinue withdrew.

The duelists would meet at the center of the square. Alone. They would pace off ten steps, turn, and fire.

One shot only.

Which explained why more New Amazonian women didn’t die over a point of honor. Of course, most of them probably wouldn’t bother prosecuting a case as thickheaded as this one unless they had an ulterior motive—like Claude’s.

Michelangelo didn’t react or step back when Vincent laid a hand on his uninjured shoulder and squeezed. The least he could do was refuse to look down.