Rory raised up from his pallet sputtering and choking at the water that had been dumped upon his head as he slept off his drunk from carousing the night before. He wiped his eyes and raked his black hair back to see unsmiling men in cobalt blue dress suits with gold ties. They wore HUD visors that obscured their eyes, and their flat frowns were expression enough to know he was in trouble. "Rory Demaris ni Coriander", the older one of the pair said, “Your country has need of you."

They gave him enough time to shower and dress. Wearing the casual brown and maroon street gear of a common merchant pilot, he paid his tab to the innkeeper in gold Quants. The coins aroused interest from others in the foyer, sitting around on divans relaxing or at table. The decor was jungle and mist in style. Locals came here for reading, and drinking by day, and more bawdy entertainment by night. At present a few businessmen read from data pads or lips murmured as they sub vocally spoke to other parties through virtual commlinks.

At a corner table by a tall vertical window with streams of light casting wavering shadows sat two filtrigs, the alien tinkers humans value for starship drive upgrades and bootleg liquor. Squat and sinewy, they were vaguely humanoid, but with rat like faces and dorsal humps with shaggy fur. Their arms, bare except for gold or electrum bracelets, their six fingered clawed hands held flutes of fluorescent yellow green ambervis. One of them raised a glass as if to toast him. She seemed vaguely familiar, and the splitting headache suggested he had spent the night drinking more than beer.

Rory returned the salute with a nod. His keepers hustled him out the door into an air car that took him to the palace grounds. Coriander's sun was yellower than Altarsha's, and the sky bluer too. Wispy cirrus clouds drifted overhead, and the contrail of a stratospheric transport crossed over them. The air car raced 100 m above ground through an express lane reserved for nobles, then ascended to 10000 meters on a ballistic trajectory.

Beyond the metropolis spread the palace, a sprawling complex of terraced marble and acacia wood, all 6000 acres of it, looking small as a postage stamp from this vantage. It grew rapidly at the speed they were traveling and plummeted towards the ground on approach skimming towards the Lions gate. Supplicants and merchants waited to be checked through by house guards wearing service dress blue and gold uniforms. The guards snapped to with salutes as they sped through to a broad lane bordered by a graceful white colonnade and branched off to the gymnasium and armory complex.

His escort deposited him into an atrium with a bamboo parquet floor and wood paneled walls, the room lit softly by indirect glow lights hidden around the ceiling. The far door opened and his arms master walked in.

This was totally outside protocol. All he could think was that someone had challenged him to a duel and sent her to deliver the challenge. It still didn’t make sense. Unless he had fallen into some other plot, in the rarefied world of court politics.

Cassandra Orvieto, daughter to a gentry family that had served House Coriander for 10 generations crossed her arms, tapping her foot and looked at him with a skeptical eye. She took over as his instructor after his first sensei left his training when he turned of age as suddenly as she had appeared.

Orvieto wore a loose fitting black fighting dress that resembled pajamas more than anything else and black slippers with flat heels. "Did you enjoy yourself out there?"

Rory frowned. “Why the coercion?” He touched his aching forehead.

“The vendamasthra is in play.”

“Politics is not my problem. Did I offend some noble brat accidentally at a card game?”

The Game of Knives doesn’t care about your feelings Rory."

“We don't have any training sessions scheduled today."

"You know of the instability in the star jump lanes lately?”

“So? There’s a hiccup in n-space once in a while. A good navcom can recalculate the gradients and not lose more than a day or two in shipping costs.”

“The maryana home world mirror relayed a message to Altarsha about an unexpected nova obliterating one of their colonies.”

He liked maryanas, the diggers were a friendly sort, and if they looked like overgrown moles to humans, he never found them to be lacking in humor. And their metabolism could outdrink anyone except a filtrig. “How old is the news?”

“The scout relay courier arrived thirty-six hours ago.”

“You had house security roust me for that?”

“Jade’s starship was caught in the wreck. She’s just so many atoms floating in plasma now.”

“Rory. Rory!” Orvieto said.

Pulled back into the moment, he nodded slowly. “That’s impossible.” He staggered.

“Pull yourself together, mind like moon, mind like water-remember?”

The martial arts dictum hammered into him from the first day of dojo practice at age six when he first donned a gi two sizes too large for him was not enough to steady him.

“When that Zayan scum killed my father in a duel, your family was the only one willing to offer my mother sanctuary. I grew up with Jade when she was the only one at your court who showed any sign of caring for us…for me.” It seemed the whole world had tilted and he would fall off the edge any moment.”

“It was the gesture of a child to another child. You have another duty now,” Orvieto said. “Her house allowed you as a back up for her training. All your years of preparation kata and tekki, dueling skills and weapons craft, in my studio was not for your charity.”

“I always thought she would die on a special ops mission or in the arena.”

Orvieto’s jaw clenched. “The game of knives can only be bested by those with a lifetime of preparation, which we have given you.”

“Was it a special ops mission?”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“I’ll upload the scout report and go see for myself.” He could not bear the thought Jade might be dead and must needs search her out if there were any chance she might be alive.

“We forbid you to leave this world.”

He forced himself to count to ten. The worst thing that ever happened to him was because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut at the right time: the insult he had given to a Great House noble over a taunt about his mother. That had been Rory’s first encounter with the vendamasthra, the “game of knives.”

It wasn’t Rory’s fault evil men wanted his family’s property, and he knew with the intellect of an adult that he had only been the catalyst, not the cause of the disaster that followed. Still, the feeling of guilt tormented him whenever he thought about it. The corner of his right eyelid twitched.

“Your tell is showing,” Orvieto said.

“Screw that. Who, specifically, forbids? We’ll have words later about it.”

“The First Mother of Coriander bids you come to her for your orders.”

This was too much. He turned to go.

“Your ship is under lock in port. If you try to leave the paramani will impound it.”

“Try and stop me.”

#

Yanni Coriander, First Mother of Coriander, not the paramani of House Ashastra, the First Mother that ruled all mankind from the emerald dais, summoned Rory to the audience hall. The hall was austere in comparison to most houses. Only thirty meters across and a hundred meters long, teakwood parquet floor gleaming, slender white columns branching into tree-branch patterns uniting in peaked arches along the wall. Instead of a many tiered throne platform, a simple step up to a white marble floor where the seat of power for House Coriander incarnate. In the simple bowed wooden chair, she sat.

Coriander was not the most militaristic of the human houses in the galactic Commonwealth of Stars. But the First Mother of any house needed practicality to survive and Yanni had her personal bodyguard standing at her right hand. The shimmering body armor and a black and green suit with a neck scarf and thunderbolt service hashes and marking him a little lifelong servant of the house. Beauregard Morris was her paternal uncle and did not delegate her safety to anyone.

He was bald with gray blonde sideburns, a craggy brow and piercing blue eyes. He scowled. Small groups of merchants, accountants, and various functionaries of the court spoke in small groups at the periphery of the audience hall. Their eyes turned upon Rory too, as he walked in.

He paced up to Yanni and gave an obligatory knee and a curt nod and stood before her parade rest. He knew enough not to speak first once summoned by his ruler and his second cousin. Howbeit an older one, once removed.

"Rory, you should pay visit to court more often."

“Is Jade gone missing?”

She stared at him. Beauregard’s gaze darkened.

“We mourn her loss with you. Jade was your playmate as a child was she not?”

“More than that. She brought a rose from your very own garden at my father’s funeral. I kept that rose and grew more.”

“Once she protested her isolation from you but did her duty.”

“I suppose you expect my gratitude for at least letting me see her in the sparring arena.”

“No, I would have kept her away from you if I could, but someone above me thought otherwise. You were insurance.”

“Who? What?”

“Approach us.”

Rory stammered. “But protocol?”

Beauregard tongue-lashed him and told him to hop to for once in his life.

He looked around. The functionaries and bystanders, all the court stared.

Rory looked for the exits. Guards at every door stood impassive, faces blank. Yanni knew him too well. He had talked himself out of worse situations.

He walked onto the dais as Beauregard activated a privacy screen. They were enclosed in a bubble of random off phase continuum among the infinite possibilities of n-dimensional space. No snoop technology known to the Commonwealth of Stars, not in any of the seven sapient races, could penetrate a humantech privacy screen. Inside, the room seemed normal in color and light, but the oval wall enclosing them made the court look like wavering shadows underwater. The energy cost was tremendous, but within the budget of a world ruler.

He stopped, unable to contain himself, even as he regretted the cost his untimely words always incited. He barely kept the insolence out of his tone. “How is it I rate such an expensive audience, my lady?”

“The scout courier brought other news. A challenge from Sarpa.”

Half of humanity feared the saurian aliens might one day ignore the Commonwealth treaty and attack humans — for sport, territory, or meat. The other half, and Rory fell into this camp, dared them to try. He was always one to charge into a fray if he saw any chance of winning.

“What concern is that to someone of my lowly estate?”

They have done something we never expected — asked us to cede territory without a fight.”

“The Consular Battlefleet will stop a war between member states. I admit I never would have thought they had the nerve just to ask for territory without a fight.”

"The Sarpans have laid claim to three of our colonies along the arch radiant.

“And we refused, of course. End of discussion.”

“You know politics better than that.

He shuffled his feet than put his hands in his pockets. "Aye, it would be a lucrative grab for them but I doubt that Commonwealth Council will side with them on this."

“Janjavir of House Zayan delivered the sarpan ultimatum to the paramani herself at Altarsha.”

“The Zayanites are the most xenophobic house in the republic. They would feel unclean for getting within a parsec of sarpan diplomats.”

Beauregard snapped. “Mind your liege’s words.”

Rory shook his head. “House Zayan would grovel at even your feet if it served their purpose.”

“And hold a spire dagger behind her back until she got close enough to do me in.”

Rory raked a hand through his hair. “They will never risk losing anything they want to a deal involving aliens."

Yanni continued. “The pirate you handed over to the colonial police had a broken star and comet tattoo from prior military service.”

“Have you confirmed Jade’s death?”

Yanni turned her head not meeting his eyes.

“I thought so. I will go see for myself.”

“Where will you go? Who will aid you?”

“I will find a way to learn the truth. She deserves that if she is alive, all the more if she is dead.” Saying the words pierced his heart with an icicle of pain.

“What would Jade think of you if you abandoned her people to satisfy your grief?”

“Does it matter? The dead don’t know anything.”

“But you would know. The pirate was a former Zayanite soldier was he not?”

Much as Rory detested noble paranoia, he could not help his upbringing. Wheels within wheels. Plots within plots. Would he have killed a prisoner, he wondered, just this once? “Not necessarily. He might be in covert operations.”

“To what end? The coincidental timing of Jade’s death and the attack on you is too convenient.”

“Even if there were a conspiracy, no one could expect us to agree to ceding any territory and sarpans can’t invade without the Consular Battlefleet drawn in to stop a war between member states.”

"It' s a vendetta."

The Altari republic was unique among member states in permitting formal feuds under defined circumstances that would be outlawed elsewhere. The Commonwealth of Stars considered human customs a matter of their internal affairs and would not interfere as long as the feuds stayed within human territory. Open war with starships and planetary bombardment was off limits, but just about everything else was fair game. The calculus remained opaque to Rory.

“The Zayanites have not registered any vendettas against us lately.”

“It is Sarpa that issued the challenge.”

“But they think we’re just low life monkeys barely out of the primordial slime.”

“Think it through, cousin.”

By the rules of the code duello, a vendetta could be settled by assassination “outside the city gates.” But who would they target that wouldn’t incite a galactic civil war? And in a territorial claim of that kind there was no such thing as being outside republic jurisdiction. There was only one other way. “They want to settle this in a trial by combat?”

“In the grand arena on Altarsha no less. To humiliate us and show us our place while they use our own customs to take territory.”

“The Council of Stars will not let an alien race use another’s customs that way.”

“They have selected a champion. A sargon of their most junior creche.”

“Want to rub it in, don’t they?” Jade. Jade. What has become of you? He pressed his grief down into a small corner of the room in his soul where he hid his other wounds. “Jade is dead. House Coriander doesn’t have a champion — they’ll have to wait.”

“We have ninety days to answer the challenge in the arena.”

The smug smile on Beauregard’s face chilled Rory’s marrow. There were only a few champions in known space and they formed a clique so tight that nothing but rumors was known about them, all of them bad from his point of view.

“I know what you’re thinking but it’s suicide.”

“For an unenhanced human to fight against an eight foot tall saurian shod head to toe in titanium armor with claws that can rend if sword or mace doesn’t get you first? Yes.”

“You’ve got the wrong man.”

“We have trained you in our court as one of our own sons for this day.”

“I have never walked a mirror of the amari.”

“And now you shall.”

“That’s what I meant about suicide.”

“The agniadarza at the capital will test you, I’m sure you are up to it.”

The Mirror of Flame was the one gifted by the amari to the human species at the beginning of the Commonwealth, to the youngest race to join. Each of the other sapient races had a mirror of their own at their capital. The mirrors were the only known technology for faster than light communication. But they had other uses and he did not want to find out by experience what they were.

“You know I would like to whack the sarpans on their snouts any day of the week, but we have Jade to think about.”

“Did I not tell you she is gone?”

“Where is the body?’

Beauregard chopped a hand to one side. “Fool boy, she was caught in a supernova blast. How could there be a body?”

Too much, he could not bear it. He clung to vain hopes. “Nothing disappears without a trace.”

“We have considered all the possibilities. You will go as our emissary to Altarsha to complete our appeal for Consular intercession. If it fails, you will be where you need to be for your ordeal.”

“Can’t our illustrious paraman deal with it?"

"The war leader of the republic is not a quantum champion. It would be as suicidal for him."

“Ashastra’s champion then. Their First Sister stands for all humans. She can go.”

“The Lady Chani would, but the challenge is specific to House Coriander, and by the rules of the code duello we must answer or admit defeat and cede our colonies.”

Rory shook his head. He had never met any of the rulers of the first house of the republic. Jade was gone. Maybe it was his own fault for telling her his hunch. Damn all Zayanites.

Yanni continued. “Strictly speaking the cession would not be immediate. Judges of the change would have to be approved by the Commonwealth Council; referendums would be held within the affected planets to determine the degree of opposition. Those wishing relocation would have to be resettled.”

“Most humans would flee rather the than be ruled directly by Sarpa.” And what if Sarpa grew impatient? The chaos. The costs were too terrible to contemplate.

The sheen of light reflecting off Yanni’s brown eyes, so like yet unlike Jade’s drew him back. “I didn’t make the cut for Mahara, remember? I’m just a merchant pilot.”

“The republic is held together by custom more binding than any law. We must answer the challenge or be taken as cowards and weaklings.”

“Is that Zayan’s game, to weaken us by any means?”

“The paramani needs you to become something more than you were.”

“What do you want of me my liege?”

“Not me, the paramani Ashastra.”

Beauregard spoke. “Answer her, you rogue.”

Yanni touched Rory on the shoulder. “The republic has need of a champion.”

Rory was ashamed to say that he felt no compassion for the world at large, but just his loss and how to make up for it. Grief and rage mixed together, and he needed to act on it now, strike now.

He had been patient. He had played by the rules. He had been nice. Why hadn’t he made a formal bid for an arranged marriage? Asked for a quest to raise his station? Asked Jade to elope with him, persuade her to go rogue? Why?

It always came back to fear. That an ill-spoken word might hurt her, that they might set in motion the same forces that killed his father.

He could not live without her, he could not live with himself if she perished because of him, and now she had. The need for vindication gave way before the dragon of vengeance. He was too small to make worlds burn for their sins, he must himself burn for them. But first he had to find out what really became of her, and no words or threats would persuade him.

Alas, his cousin knew him. “I see you Rory. Consider this, can you do more to find out what became of Jade as a champion of our house, or as a rogue merchant pilot with a bounty on his head?”

The threat had the opposite effect on him she intended. Cornered, he could not flee, and he could not fight, but he could feign surrender for his own purposes. “Alright then, when do we leave?”

“Do not betray me Rory, or the Moon Ravens will hunt you down. “

“You would send Battlefleet assassins after me? Are you sure that’s a good idea, since you’ve given me a lifetime of preparation for that kind of thing?”

“Would it not be better to face one quest than a lifetime of running?”