The Chick Is In The Mail

'Yes, but when she threw her cloak over him, that betrothed them, according to the laws governing Maiden Morns.'

'What do you want, law or justice? If I hadn't tossed the troll, then by the same laws, she'd be hogtied to that piece of work instead.' She nodded at Ludlow. 'The troll's a better deal.'

'But it's not legal for trolls and humans to marry!' the duke exclaimed.

'Well, they're not married; they're only betrothed.' Zoli shrugged. 'You're the duke; unbetroth them.'

'I don't have that authority.'

'But you do have the authority to bother me with all of these silly lawsuits, don't you?' Zoli challenged. 'Is this what we pay our taxes for? Especially Ethelberthina.'

The duke's moustache began to twitch in an unsettling manner. 'You… pay… taxes, child?' he asked the girl.

'Ever since the Swordsisters' Union bought up most of my stock of Mama Ethina's Elixir of Equality,' she replied. 'It turns dragon-scale armor so brittle that it shatters on contact with a feather.'

'Nothing can do that to dragon-scale armor!' the duke objected. 'That's why the king's men all wear it.'

'Nothing could,' Lily said, stepping forward, her alchemist's robes rustling softly over the stones. 'But now something can; something Ethelberthina invented, and that's why she's independently wealthy.' She patted the girl on one shoulder and added, 'It's not turning lead into gold, but close. Fellow alchemist, I salute you.'

'Fellow alchemist, do you have anything that might shatter my stupid betrothal?' Ethelberthina asked.

Lily smiled. She was a beautiful young woman, with her mother's dark coloring and her father's home-loving nature. When she first entered Duke Janifer's service, many court gossips hissed that he had not hired her for her brains. The whispers stopped when Lily demonstrated that she had also inherited her mother's elementary yet effective way of dealing with rumormongers.

'As a matter of fact,' she said, 'I do. And it will settle all of these silly lawsuits besides.'

'Will it?' Duke Janifer gazed at Lily in awe. 'Huzzah! Tell us what it is, I beg you!'

'Nothing fancy; just trial by combat. Oh! To the death. It must be to the death. You can't get anything really settled unless someone dies.'

The hall fell silent, including the spectators.

The sound of Zoli's sword rasping from its sheath broke the quiet. 'Suits me,' she said amiably.

'It would.' Bursar Tailings huffed like an overweight dragon. 'Me fight a retired swordsister? Might as well ram a chisel through my throat and save time.'

'Do we have to?' Ludlow whined.

'Not if you drop the charges,' Lily said. 'No charges, no case; no case, no need for any sort of trial.'

'Good enough for me,' said the troll. 'Consider 'em dropped.'

'Me, too,' Ludlow said eagerly.

'After what she did to us?' Goodwife Eyebright snapped. Her hand, grown strong and swift in the ministering of domestic justice to her helpless brood, shot out and grabbed him by the ear. 'If it weren't for her and her prodigal troll-flinging, we'd both have what we wanted by now.'

'I don't care.' Ludlow squealed and squirmed. 'What good's a dowry if I'm dead? You want your kid married off so bad, you fight the tin-plated bitch!'

'All right,' said Goodwife Eyebright. 'I will.'

* * *

'Did I miss anything?' Garth Justi's-son asked Dean Porfirio as he sidled along the row of benches ringing the duke's arena. Normally the sand-covered enclosure was reserved for riding exhibitions, but today it had been hastily judged the best site for the upcoming trial-at-arms.

'Not a thing.' The wizard reached into a paper cone filled with salted nuts and munched primly. It was amazing how fast word of the combat had spread, fetching still more people to the ducal palace grounds. With the crowds came hucksters of every stripe. They seemed to swarm out of the ground, like maggots in meat, which coincidentally was what some of them were selling.

'Sorry I took so long,' Garth muttered, sitting down. 'I had to teach Ludlow some manners. He might be walking normally by next Market Day, if he finds an ice pack. No whelp calls my Zoli a bitch and gets away with it.'

The wizard stuck the paper poke under Garth's nose. 'Nuts?'

'Fair enough, she is that. But only a little, and I think our Lily caught it from her. Trial by combat to the death, no less! What was going through that girl's head?'

'Probably the notion that she could save you a lot of legal woes. She believed they'd all drop their cases because no one would be fool enough to fight Zoli.' The wizard ate some more nuts. 'Never underestimate fools.'

In the center of the sand-strewn ring, Duke Janifer stood between the two combatants and nervously asked, 'Ladies, are you certain you wouldn't like to reconsider?'

'I would,' Zoli said. 'It's not combat, it's bloody murder. I've eaten seafood that had more hope of killing me than this idiot.' She gestured scornfully at Goodwife Eyebright. 'Plus, she looks ready to drop her calf any second now. One needless death on my hands is bad enough, but two?'

'Will you withdraw?' Duke Janifer turned to Goodwife Eyebright, entreating her with his eyes. 'Pleeease?'

Ethelberthina's mother stood herself up a bit taller and held the sword she'd been given as though it were a carpet beater. 'I'd sooner die.'

'I was afraid you'd say that.' The duke sighed, shrugged, and tossed a bright orange kerchief high into the air. As he dashed from the arena he called back over one shoulder, 'When it hits the ground, start fighting!'

The audience gasped and held its breath. Zoli went into her preferred fighting stance, grim and silent, eyes fixed on the floating kerchief. Goodwife Eyebright, on the other hand, began jabbering the instant the bit of cloth left the duke's hand.

'My gracious, aren't you in a hurry? I'm sure it's not going to take you long to kill me, but don't you worry about that. Nor about the poor, innocent, unborn babe I'm carrying that never did anyone a bit of harm. Nor about all my poor little lambkins that'll be left orphaned and helpless, oh no, don't you give any of them a second thought! Mayor Eyebright will probably remarry quick enough, and then they'll have a stepmother, and who knows what she'll be like? But don't you fret over it, you've done your duty, you don't have to bother your head about whether they'll be decently clothed and fed and who'll tuck them into their cold, lonesome little beds of a winter's night with not even the comfort of a loving mother's kiss on their tiny, tear-stained faces, no. Don't you concern yourself over their bitter tears or their heartbreaking sobs or their-'

'Gnut save us, what's the wretch doing?' Garth exclaimed.

'What she does best.' Dean Porfirio sounded glum. 'What she did to force Ethelberthina to undergo a Maiden Morn. And it's working again. Just look at Zoli now.'

It was true: Under Goodwife Eyebright's verbal barrage, Zoli's sword drooped by degrees, leaving a hole in her defensive posture fit to drive an oxcart through. Her shoulders trembled and, as Goodwife Eyebright expanded upon the tragic fate awaiting her soon-to-be-motherless babies, she sniffled. Just as the orange cloth touched the ground, she burst into tears, dropped her blade completely and pounced on the kerchief in order to wipe her streaming nose and eyes.

Goodwife Eyebright had been a homemaker long enough to recognize something ripe for the plucking. While Zoli howled her heart out, the mayor's wife swung her own sword back, ready to strike. It was not an elegant attack, but with Zoli thus disabled, elegance was unnecessary. The blade swept straight for the former swordsister's head.

A second blade shot out and blocked Goodwife Eyebright's swing with a clang. Panting hard, holding the hilt of Zoli's discarded weapon with both hands, Ethelberthina glowered at her mother.

'Drop the charges,' she ordered. 'And the sword.'

'Young lady, you go to your room,' her mother said. 'This is no place for a child.'

'Says you.' Ethelberthina lifted her chin impudently. 'I've had my Maiden Morn rite: I'm not a child any more.'

'Then this is no place for you,' Goodwife Eyebright countered. 'This case concerns only me and that Zoli person.' She nodded at the crumpled swordswoman who was still blubbering on the sand, occasionally wailing something about the poor, comfortless little orphans.

'And my case concerns you and me. Or have you forgotten? I've simply decided to move it ahead on the duke's docket.'

Goodwife Eyebright laughed in a condescending manner. 'You can't be serious, darling. You fight me to the death? You'd kill your own mother? Not that you haven't tried to do that ever since the day you were born. But I don't mind. A good mother doesn't care if her child-who has been given every advantage at great personal sacrifice-turns out to be a little viper. I love you anyway.'

'Oh, I wasn't planning on killing you.' The girl dropped her sword, and grabbed hold of her mother's forearm. With a few quick twists and turns, Ethelberthina had herself under the startled woman's defenses with the edge of the blade pressed to her own small throat. Glancing up, she grinned and said, 'Whenever you're ready, Mother.'

Goodwife Eyebright tried to wriggle her sword away from her daughter's neck, but in vain. 'Ethelberthina, what are you doing and stop it!'

'Not until you do. Drop the charges against Zoli or I swear I'll make you cut my throat. Know what that means?'

'It means you are a very inconsiderate child,' the goodwife replied stiffly.

'It also means that you will have to go into strict mourning for two years. That's the minimum acceptable period for the loss of a grown daughter. Strict mourning,' she repeated. 'No celebrations of any kind.'

'No… what?'

'No celebrations,' Ethelberthina said. 'Oh, like, just for an instance say… weddings?' Her smile was a caution to the ungodly.