“No active necromancy,” amended Crown.
Camilla said, “What about me?”
“Well, you’re beginning to see the problem, aren’t you?” snapped Ianthe Naberius, slithering her long and shining sword free from its sheath. “You’re fighting a dead man, you suicidal Sixth House pea-brain. You can’t pink me or kill me. I leave this body when I say I leave. But I’ll tell you what … for expediency’s sake … here.”
Prince Ianthe Naberius reached into her pocket. She removed a very pretty lavender handkerchief with a lace edging. She waved it at Camilla with an exaggerated see this? motion, then tucked it into her jacket, stuffing it deep down her shirt.
“Get that off me, and you can leave,” she said.
Camilla said, “Can I keep it?”
“What—my handkerchief?”
“It’s a nice handkerchief,” said Camilla.
“You’re not taking this seriously, are you,” said the Prince.
The zombies advanced. Prince Ianthe Naberius said, “Close ranks. Nobody gets outside,” and they made a square around the carpet. Nona found herself being dragged out, forced to watch the action from between the shoulders and heads of the dead soldiers. They had closed off the dais too. A few of them shuffled out of the way so that Crown, pinned to her chair, could see the action. Some of the dead men threw Camilla roughly down on the carpet. Her glasses were now very squiff on her nose, and she rearranged them more securely behind her ears. She mopped a little at her chest … she was bleeding freely and messily … and she picked up, from where they had fallen, her two long, plain, one-sided knives. Camilla shook out her arms like they were stiff, and she rolled her head from side to side, cheek passing across her chest, and she relaxed.
Nona wanted to scream again, but she was dizzy. Waves of something like nausea kept passing up and down the length of her head. She had blinked everything free from her eyes, so she was terribly worried the dye and plastic inserts had gone—certainly it was much easier to see. This was awful, like watching Beautiful Ruby do a flip trick off a bin without being able to filter it through your fingers to see whether he landed it or not.
The only fight that Nona had ever been invited to was between Hot Sauce and Honesty and some much bigger kids who didn’t even go to school. She could barely remember why they were fighting—she had still been quite new and confused as to her role as their friend—but she had been told to go down the street after school, past the dairy, to the old athletics stadium, and Hot Sauce and Honesty would fight the others there. Nona had dithered and thought she ought to tell the nice lady teacher about it, but Honesty said if she did she would get scragged. She hadn’t known yet what scragging was and was horribly afraid it was the thing Honesty did where he licked his finger and put that finger in your ear. When she had gotten to the fight she had been so nervous and excited that she was sweaty, but then Hot Sauce arrived and said the kids weren’t going to show up because one of them had got hit by a car. Honesty had said, Oho, who did you pay, and Hot Sauce said, Nobody, because I drove the car. Everyone went home happy.
Crown said, “Parietal to calcaneus. No exceptions, no mercies. Challenger has right of execution; may the River show mercy on the challenger; defender has right of property. Point, blade, ricasso, offhand. Call.”
Cam called out, “Camilla the Sixth.”
“Ianthe the First,” said the Prince.
“Three paces back,” said Crown. “Turn … and begin.”
When Crown said, Begin, Nona expected Camilla and the Prince to rush at each other. They didn’t. They circled each other instead, like they were beginning a dance and weren’t fussed about starting any time soon. Camilla kept both of her hands tucked up close to her chest, knives high, as though she wanted to defend her head. The Prince’s sword was held forward, light and ready and slender, gleaming under the lightbulbs and red where its polished surface reflected the carpet. It seemed too pretty to do any harm.
Camilla said conversationally, “No offhand?”
“I didn’t mean to take anything to this planet I couldn’t replace,” said the Prince. “I shouldn’t have bothered. Why two knives?”
“Shock and awe,” said Camilla.
The Prince stepped forward and flickered in and out, extending somehow and then snapping back to the same place she’d been standing, like a shadow jumping up a wall. Camilla did a graceless little shrug-step to one side. The Prince cocked her head like a bird, then jabbed her sword down toward Camilla’s thigh, but Camilla had already moved one of her knives to meet it so the sword just went ching.