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jackets and breeches tied at the knee, in sandals and one heavy offhand glove, they looked as if they could almost have been relatives. Piraeus was taller, of the angular Mantis build. His long fair hair was tied back, but what should have been a handsome face was marred with ill temper and harsh feelings. His arming jacket was slit to the elbow to accommodate the spines jutting from his arms. Salma was dark, his hair cut short and his skin golden, and he had been the ache in plenty of maidens’ hearts since he arrived in Collegium from his distant homeland. He possessed a grace, though, that was not far short of the Mantis’s. The two of them stood quietly and sized each other up, one with a scowl and one with a smile, and there was nevertheless a commonality about them.
    Kymon took a deep breath and held out the two swords: each of them mere wood covered with a thin layer of bronze, but there was nobody in that room who had not discovered just how hard they could strike home.
    Kymon looked from one to the other. Stenwold knew that the old man was still a military officer of the city-state of Kes, which could call him back from his prestigious civilian position at any moment. It had been twenty years from home for old Kymon, however. Here he stood, in a Beetle’s white robes rather than armour, and he no longer missed the voices of his Ant-kinden people in his head.
    ‘Salute the book,’ Kymon directed. Piraeus and Salma turned to the north quarter of the room and raised their mock blades. The object of their salute was affixed to the wall: a great brass blade within the pages of a book carved from pale wood. On the open pages, one word to each, were scribed Devotion and Excellence .
    ‘Clock,’ said Kymon, and the mechanical timepiece hanging opposite the book groaned into life. The antagonists turned to one another as Kymon left the ring. The moment his back foot lifted from the arena they were in motion.
    The first blow took place in the first moment of the match. Piraeus’s strike had come with blinding speed, aiming to break the nose of the foreigner, at the very least. Salma swayed backwards without shifting his feet, and the champion’s lash, at full extension, passed a few inches from his face. He had, indeed, seen Mantis-kinden fight before.
    Then the fight proper was on and, to the thrill of the spectators, Salma was immediately on the offensive. He was fighting in proper Prowess style, leading with the edge of the blade, feet tracing a geometry of arcs and sudden straight advances. His free hand was up at chest height, leather gauntlet ready to deflect the Mantis’s strikes. There was nothing that was not book-perfect, from the prints in the fencing manuals, until every so often he threw in something else. A lunge, a sweep, a brief discontinuity of footwork, that was his alone, some style of his own people. Though he knew how Mantids fought, Piraeus had never duelled a Dragonfly-kinden before. There was an edge there that let him keep up the offensive long after Piraeus should have wrested it from him, but the edge was eroding from moment to moment. Soon the Mantis would get the measure of him.
    And, without warning, without anything in his stance or movement signalling it, Salma was far too close, virtually up the other man’s nose, within the circle of his arms, and – they all saw it – there was a moment when Piraeus had his arm up, spines extended, about to gash across the foreigner’s face. It would have maimed Salma, perhaps blinded him, but it would have seen Piraeus thrown out of the fight, his team disqualified, and of all things he wanted to win . In that moment of hesitation Salma brought his blade up to lightly tap the back of the Mantis’s head.
    They broke. Salma was at the edge of the circle, casting a bow to his team-mates. Piraeus stood, utterly still, with that anger peculiar to his kind that burned cold and forever. Salma and his team-mates would, everyone knew, regret what he had