Koben Ashi paused with the chair leg still raised. His eyes flicked from the talon knife to Ru’s face. The Fist’s cheek twitched as he exchanged glances with his two Fingers, who stared at Ru with dubious astonishment.
Koben swung his head back toward Ru with a growl. “Don’t be a fucking clown. The No Peak Pillar’s son in a place like this?”
“It’s true!” Dano babbled, finally breaking free of Tadino and stumbling forward. “He really is Kaul Ru. We came here to have a good time, that’s all! He hasn’t done anything wrong, he didn’t know who she was. He’s just a stone-eye college kid!”
Koben’s knuckles whitened around the chair leg. He wheeled on Juni. “You little whore, you found out he was a Kaul and you couldn’t keep your legs closed? Are you trying to get me tangled up with No Peak, you bitch?”
The woman’s face lost all its color. “No, no, Ashi, I would never . . .” She fell to her knees, crying for real now. “He came on to me, and I was afraid to say no.”
“That’s not true.” Ru’s eyes glittered with outrage. “Kobenjen, I had no idea who she was. I hope you can Perceive that I’m not lying when I say I didn’t mean to cause you any offense. But you attacked me without even bothering to find out the facts, so you’ve caused offense too. The only way to settle this is with a clean blade.”
Koben frowned. “Even if you’re a Kaul, you’re not green. You can’t duel me.”
Ru shook his head. “Not you. Him.” He turned his attention toward Tadino and pointed at him with the tip of his talon knife. “You set this up. You asked Dano to bring me here tonight, you introduced me to Koben’s girlfriend without telling me who she was, and you called the Mountain here to hand me a beating.” Ru’s expression was so fearsome that everyone left in the room could now see without a doubt that he was indeed the son of Kaul Hiloshudon. “I’ve never met you before tonight, so I can’t see why you’d hate me. You must’ve wanted to use me to harm my family. I take that personally. So you can fight me now, or you can answer to my father later.”
Tadino bolted for the stairs but didn’t get far. Koben’s two Fingers moved with the exceptional speed of Green Bones and caught him by the arms, dragging him back into the lounge and forcing him to face Ru. The bartender’s lips were pulled back in a frightened grimace; he appeared dumbfounded at the way his plot had so abruptly unspooled and unexpectedly reknit to ensnare him instead. His eyes darted around the room but found no help anywhere. Dano seemed as fearfully bewildered as a hare trapped in a fox den, and the crooked-faced stranger from the bar hung back.
“Choose your weapon,” Ru demanded.
According to Dano, Tadino used to be a barukan gang member. The man didn’t look weak or cowardly. In fact, he seemed like someone who’d been in his share of scraps before, not a person that most people would normally want to fight. He was larger than Ru by a comfortable margin. But he hesitated at the sight of the talon knife in Ru’s hand, the way the younger man held it with easy confidence, having been trained by his father from a young age.
“N-no weapons,” Tadino replied. Barehanded, he held the physical advantage.
Ru spoke to Koben Ashi. “Kobenjen, if I fight a clean-bladed duel with this man to settle our grievance with him, will you agree that there shouldn’t be any offense remaining between the two of us? And that our families don’t have to get involved?”
He held his breath for Koben’s answer. In the panic of the moment, he’d blurted the challenge of a clean blade because it had been the only way to reclaim control of the situation, to defend his own honor when it seemed he wouldn’t be given any chance at all. Now though, he truly wanted to punish Tadino. If Ru was going to face his father after this fiasco, he wanted to say he’d fought a proper duel to preserve his reputation, not that he’d been beaten black and blue for groping the wrong girl in Mountain territory. Niko had already broken their da’s heart so badly; what would the Pillar think of him, and what might he do to the Kobens, for such a humiliating incident?
Koben Ashi seemed to be considering the same thing. “Yes,” he said. “I agree.”
Ru sheathed his talon knife and wiped his bloody nose on his sleeve. Ordinarily, he was inclined to think generously of others, so when he encountered genuinely malicious people, his temper was ferocious. “Offer up any prayers you have to the gods, because a barehanded duel isn’t going to hurt any less, I promise you.” Seething, he touched his forehead in salute to his opponent without offering so much as a nod of respect. “Why did you do it?”