mat, slightly side on, shield towards shield, our blades held low in our right hands.
'Signal cue/ I said.
'Three/ said the terminal speaker, 'two, one… commence/
Medea had been practising.
She swept round with her blade, and simultaneously parried my first approach with her buckler which squealed and sparked off mine as their fields met and repulsed.
I undercut defensively, gathering her blade in towards our shields so that for a moment all four weapons were locked in a protesting knot of spitting electrical energy.
We broke, and circled.
She came in again, leading with her sword. I fended it away with my buckler, then again, and then for a third time as we continued to go around.
She was canny. Sword and buckler work was as old as all the worlds, and the trick to staying alive was to use the shield more than the sword. The trick to winning, however, was to use the sword more than the shield.
I kept my buckler to the front but, by seeming to be unguarded with her own force shield lagging back as if casually forgotten, she was inviting me to overstep or make a badly judged lunge.
I left my blade well alone, keeping it where she could see it, and using my shield as Harlon Nayl had schooled me. The buckler was a weapon. Not only could it block, it could lock or even break a blade. I had heard of some duels where the small shield's solid-energy edge had actually delivered the killing stroke to an unprotected windpipe.
Medea rotated suddenly, driving my buckler aside with a swipe of her own, and lashed in with her blade, dancing across the mat. I was forced to parry with my sword, and then rally hard as she kept up the pressure.
Her blade sliced to within a handsbreath of my face and I cross-guarded desperately with both blade and buckler.
She drove her own shield in under my guard and her own locked sword and doubled me up with a punished strike to my midriff.
I fell onto the mat.
'Enough?' she asked.
I got up. 'We'll go again/
She came at me again, leading with the blade as I had expected. I ducked, swung round and feinted in time for her buckler to swing in to parry my blade.
The spitting electrical dish tore the sword from my hand, stinging my fingers.
Just as I had intended.
Her eyes were on my sword, distracted as it flew aside. With my now free right hand, I grabbed her buckler arm above the elbow and pulled it down so that her own power shield locked with her sword as she brought it up. She stumbled. I smashed her across the extended shoulder with the flat of my buckler and knocked her down.
I could have used the edge. I could have aimed for her exposed face. But we were sparring.
'Enough?' I asked.
She said nothing.
'Medea?'
She extinguished her buckler and pulled the strapping off.
'What's on your mind?'
Medea looked up at me. 'I never wanted revenge/ she said.
'You told me you did/
'I know. And I suppose I did. Part of me. Revenge… it doesn't feel…'
'Satisfying?'
'Like anything at all. Just empty. Stupid and empty.'
'Well… I could have told you that. In fact, I think I did.'
I helped her up. We didn't speak for a minute or two as we put the weapons back in the rack and returned them to the underfloor store bay.
Then we took beakers of water from the stand, opened the pugnaseum's side doors and went out onto the sunlit terrace.
It was going to be a hot day. The sky was cloudless and the light white. The shade of the woods seemed gloriously dark and inviting. The distant inlet was hazy with glare and the sea glinted like diamonds.
'Ever since I was old enough to understand what Fayde Thuring did,' she said, 'I've wanted something. I've always presumed it was revenge.'
'Revenge is a disguise for other, more valid emotional responses,' I said.
She looked at me sourly. 'Stop trying to be my father, Eisenhorn.'
She might has well have slapped me across the face. I had never thought of it that way.
'I only meant-' I began.
'You're a very wise man/ she said. Very clever. Learned. You give people the most profound advice.'
'I try.'
'But you don't
'Feel, Medea?'
'You know things but you don't feel them.'
Birds twittered in the edges of the woods and the orchards. Two of the junior groundstaff were pressing the lower lawns with a heavy roller. I wasn't quite sure I knew what she meant.
'I feel-'
'No. You don't feel the content of your advice, most of the time. They're just wisdoms, without heart/
'I'm sorry you think that way/
'It isn't a criticism. Well, not really. You are just so driven to do what is… right, that you forget to wonder why it's right. I mean-'
'What?'
'I don't know/
Try/
She sipped her water. You fight the way Kircher tells you to fight because he says that's the best way to do it/
'It usually is/
'Of course. He's an expert. That's why you defeated me. But why is it the best way to fight? Using those weapons, for example?'
'Because-'
'Because he told you? He's right. But why is he right? You never wonder about that sort of thing. You never wonder what mistakes or decisions were made to arrive at that right way/
'I'm still not sure I follow you…'
She smiled and shook her head. 'Of course you don't. That's my point. You've spent your whole life learning the best way to do everything. Learning the best way to fight. The best way to investigate. The best way to learn, even. Did you ever wonder why those are the best ways?'
I put my glass down on the low wall at the edge of the terrace. 'Life's too short/
'My father's life was too short/
