going to kill you, Ben!” the street goddess yelled up at a window above her.
A bright head popped out of it. “Not if I kill you first!” A young man’s face, pretty and delicate as Chamwiinik porcelain, capped with tousled golden hair that just had to be fake. “You’ve hidden my best striped jacket!”
“I’ve pawned your ugly jacket!” Her hands on her hips, her head tilted up to the window, the sun-haired, moon-bosomed woman turned her back to Kaab. Her buttocks . . . well, there might be some padding under that skirt. Against the cold, maybe. But then, there might not.
“It wasn’t funny the first time, Tess, and it isn’t funny now! Come up and get me my goddamned jacket! Or I swear I’ll—”
“Get it yourself,” she sang. “It’s under the bed, where you flung it last night sometime between when you got that message from your father, and when you finally stopped drinking.”
“Very funny.” But his head ducked back inside. The words wafted faintly out: “I looked under the— Oh.”
“Oh.” The woman Tess smiled to herself with those ripe guava lips. She leaned back against the wall, picked up a skein of her glorious hair, and started braiding it into tiny braids.
Kaab murmured a Tullan verse to herself: “If I were your sweet sister, I would braid your night hair into as many strands as there are stars in the sky . . . and if it took all night, and the next night after that, then who could fault or interrupt us?”
The door sprang open, revealing the gold-haired Ben in a fine, bold jacket of green and red stripes, buckling on a sword. At last! Kaab thought. Some clothes with color! But any approval she had for this Ben vanished when he seized Tess roughly by the arm.
“Let go of me, you sot!” she said.
Of course! He must be the man who sold her love, to pay for his vainglorious jackets. Pimp, that was the word. Local custom or not, Kaab couldn’t stand it. And hadn’t he also just threatened to kill this glorious woman? She had come to Riverside to try her sword, and this was her perfect chance.
She stepped forth from the shadows.
“The brightest of mornings to the one of you, and a heap of trouble to the other.” Kaab didn’t know how these people issued a challenge, but he could hardly mistake her meaning.
The pimp stared at her. And then he laughed. “Nice outfit, sister,” he said, “but the Riverboaters’ Masquerade was last month.”
Masquerade? Oh, he meant her clothes. Kaab tightened her woven sash ostentatiously, and showed him the scabbard at her side. “I do not joke.”
“I do not care,” he mocked.
“Shhh!” Tess pulled at his sleeve. “Ben, she’s one of those chocolate people!”
He grinned. “Chocolate, huh? And does your rich Trader mama know you’re out here in big bad Riverside, little girl?”
Kaab breathed in slowly through her nose. She had no trouble understanding Ben’s language. His accent was like the sailmaker’s, and he spoke as loud as a village priest.
“I will be clear,” she said distinctly. “You trouble this lady. You insult my people, my mother, and my dress. You have a sword. I have a sword. Is more clearness needed?”
“‘Is more clearness needed?’” He seemed to be mocking her accent. “Well, that depends.” He put his hand on his hilt. At last. “I might need to see what color your blood is.”
“Ben!” The glorious Tess was actually pulling on his arm. “That cart won’t wait forever! Do you want to see your father before he dies, or not?”
“This won’t take long.” He shook his woman off.
Decency required that Kaab just let him go to attend his father’s deathbed—but her liver-spirit was too stirred up to care. If he’d rather fight her, let him. She’d make short work of him and his insults. She drew her blade, all thoughts of formal challenge gone. And Ben drew his.
Like buzzards scenting meat, people were flocking to the space around them, making a rough circle for them to fight in, shouting incomprehensible things. It was crude, it was bizarre, it was outlandish—and Ixkaab Balam felt alive, for the first time in weeks.
Ben lunged at her at once—in a hurry to catch his cart, no doubt—but she knew this one; the sailmaker had taught her. Her wrist moved, and his blade slipped off hers with a grinding noise that made her grin. Take that, you mangy little pimp!
“She knows what she’s doing, Ben!” Tess cried. “For godsakes, stop!”
Kaab’s wrist finished the move, twirling her point around his to target his chest. But Ben was not to be had so easily. He stepped back, then came at her again, as if he couldn’t believe it hadn’t worked right the first time. Again she countered him, and this time her point reached closer to his chest.
The people kept yelling, again with no respect for the fighters, as if this duel were a servants’ tavern brawl. Above them she heard Tess’s voice blaring: “First blood! First blood!” What was she talking about? Kaab wasn’t bleeding, and Ben wasn’t either. “I’m the cause of the fight, and I’m calling it just to first blood!”
Circling Kaab, Ben growled, “Shut up. I’m going to kill her.”
“No you’re not! You haven’t got time! Just pink her and go!”
Kaab’s body was hot, but the fight was cooling her liver-spirit, and her head-spirit was reasserting itself. Ben was distracted. Maybe his woman was even doing it on purpose, to help Kaab rescue her from her pimp. It was the perfect time to try a special little play her shipboard friend had taught her, a trick he said would never fail: a fake thrust that led the enemy to aim for your shoulder, while you blithely went in straight to his heart.
It failed.
She felt a wasp-sting in her right arm. “Rose-torn demons of hell!” Kaab shouted, dropping her blade.
“First blood!” All around her, the people were crying it out, like an incantation. Kaab didn’t trust them. Her sword had skidded west. She reached down for it—
A burly old man had his foot on the blade. “You know the rules,” he told her. “Or if you don’t, you shouldn’t be here.”
Kaab looked up at him. “Are you of honor?” It came out wrong, but the grey-head nodded.
“This is Riverside, honey. We know no honor but the sword.”
He stepped back a pace.
“Now, pick up your blade; and go back to whatever traveling sideshow you came from, girl. And if you ever want to come here again, I advise you to take a few more lessons, first.”
She risked a look across the circle. Ben stood there, panting and grinning. The perfidious Tess pulled at his arm. “Now, Ben!” She spoke to Kaab directly: “I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s mean when he’s hung over.”
“I was provoked!” Ben objected.
