I spoke passionately, and my voice grew in volume as she stared at how much I knew. I found myself caught up in my own words, for I believed them. I leaned across the table, over Virago’s plate and cup, to thrust my face close to hers as I asked, “Tell me, brave one. Have you ever lifted arms against one who was not your own countryman? Against a Red-Ship crew? I thought not. Far easier to insult a host’s hospitality, or maim a neighbor’s son, than to kill one who came to kill our own.”
Words were not Virago’s best weapon. Enraged, she spat at me.
I leaned back, calmly, to wipe my face clean. “Perhaps you would care to challenge me, in a more appropriate time and place. Perhaps a week hence, on the cliffs where you so boldly slew the cow’s husband? Perhaps I, a scribe, might present you more of a challenge than your bovine warrior did?”
Duke Brawndy suddenly deigned to notice the disturbance. “FitzChivalry! Virago!” he rebuked us. But our gazes remained locked, my hands planted to either side of her place setting as I leaned to confront her.
I think the man beside her might have challenged me also, had not Duke Brawndy then slammed his salt bowl against the table, near shattering it, and reminded us forcefully that this was his table and his hall and he’d have no blood shed in it. He, at least, was capable of honoring both King Shrewd and the old ways at once, and suggested we attempt to do the same. I apologized most humbly and eloquently, and Virago muttered her “sorrys.” The meal resumed, and the minstrels sang, and over the next few days I copied the scroll for Verity and viewed the Elderling relic, which looked like nothing to me so much as a glass vial of very fine fish scales. Celerity seemed more impressed with me than I was comfortable with. The other side of that coin was facing the cold animosity in the faces of those who sided with Virago. It was a long week.