What happened next was like closing your eyes in a warm and stuffy room. The first feint from the Fifth House was the heavy drowsiness that filled the back of her head, all the way down to her toes; the second the weightless loll of the skull to the chest. Gideon tucked her offhand behind her back, said to herself: Stop blocking every blow! and did not even bother to parry. She pivoted away each syrup-slow thrust without meeting it, bent back from the follow-up with the dagger like they had agreed beforehand where it would fall: he pressed his quarter, trying to force her, and she very gently folded his sword to the side with hers, contraparried. The point of her black rapier flickered like paper touched with a flame and came to rest, a quarter-inch away from his heart, making him stutter to a halt. She bumped the tip of her sword into his chest, very gently.
It was over in three moves. A mental haptic jolt bunted Gideon awake, and there she was: rapier held still to Magnus’s chest; Magnus with the good-natured but poleaxed expression of a man caught mid–practical joke; four sets of staring, equally blank expressions. Their very good-looking arbiter’s mouth was even hanging very slightly open, lips parting over white teeth, gaping dumbly until she caught up—
“Match to the Ninth!”
“Goodness me,” said Magnus.
The room let out a collective breath. Jeannemary said: “Oh my days,” and the Cohort cav of the Second sat up at least two inches taller than before, thumb pressed furiously hard into the soft part under her chin in thought. Gideon was busy sheathing her sword a heartbeat after Magnus had sheathed his, jerky with lag time in returning his bow, turning away. Her sweat had turned to adrenaline; her adrenaline was singing through her as fine, hot fuel, but her brain and heart had not caught up with the result. The only emotion she was feeling was a slow-to-saturate relief. She had won. She had won even though moving in a robe and dark glasses was so stupid. Aiglamene’s honour could go another day intact, and Gideon’s ass could go spiritually unkicked.
Conversations were happening around her, not to her:
A bit plaintively: “I’m not quite that out of form, am I?—”
（“Magnus! Maaaaagnus. Three moves, Magnus.”）
“—Am I getting old? Should Abigail and I divorce?—”
“I didn’t even see her move.” Corona was breathing hard. “God, she’s fast.”
Because they were in closest proximity, her first gaze after the fight fell on the overgroomed cavalier of the Third, Naberius: his eyes were taut, and his smile was unnerved. His eyes were blue, but this close she could see that they were stained through in places with a light, insipid brown that made Gideon think of oily water.
“Next match to me,” said Naberius.
“Don’t be greedy,” said his princess, good-naturedly and a trifle distractedly. “The Ninth just fought. Why don’t you go toe-to-toe with Jeannemary?”
But it was clear that he did not want to go toe-to-toe with Jeannemary, and judging by the look on her face she was no keener on the idea. Naberius shrugged his shoulders back, rolling up the sleeves of his fine cotton shirt to each elbow. He did not drop his gaze from Gideon. “You didn’t even break a sweat, did you?” he said. “No, you’re ready to go again. Try me.”
“Oh, Babs.”
“Come on.” His voice was much softer, more coaxing and appealing, when he was speaking to Corona. “Let the Third show what it can do, my lady. I know you’d rather watch your own.” There was a peculiarly nasal lilt to his voice, a sort of posh elongated vowel that made it rathah. “Put me in. Dyas can get another look at me.” （Next to him, the Cohort cavalier who was obviously hight Dyas raised her eyebrows the exact one-eighth of an inch to indicate how much she wanted to get another look at him.）
“The Ninth?”
Gideon’s heart was still ricocheting around her chest. She raised her shoulders in an expression that the brethren of the Locked Tomb would have recognised immediately as the precursor of Gideon about to do something particularly daft, but Corona took it as acceptance, and said mock-indulgently to her cav: “Well, then, my dear, go off and make yourself happy.”
He beamed as though he had just been bought a new pair of shoes. Gideon thought: Shit.
The Cohort cavalier, Dyas, was saying: “Your Highness. The adept shouldn’t officiate for their cavalier.”
“Oh, pff! Surely just this once can’t harm, Lieutenant.”
“You can’t call yourself a disinterested arbitrator, Princess,” Magnus was saying.