Hal awoke the following day feeling that her head had been beaten open from the inside with a mallet. She came round lying on a couch in the main salon. Emptied of guests the room was in disarray, the remains of the feast now cold upon the tables, puddles of wine upon the floor and chairs overturned. It was always the same. Once Marc's more official guests had left for the evening, the drinking and dancing grew wilder, and the Senator was famed for increasing the pace of the festivities to a dangerous level.
Hal forced herself to remember the previous night. Meracad, the fair-haired girl, had disappeared with her father quite early on. This had been disappointing for some reason but she could not recall why. She had consoled herself with taunting Braint and his wife, who left soon after, and that in turn had angered Marc. He wanted her to apologise. She refused, of course. The discussion had grown heated and they had drunk even more wine in consequence. By the early hours, maudlin and sentimental, they vowed never to argue again. A familiar story.
Fighting back waves of nausea she attempted to sit upright, the room orbiting her head in a dizzying whirl. The ghastly noise of somebody retching came from the far end of the room and then Marc himself staggered in, pasty-faced and sweating. He slumped in the chair opposite her.
"Quite a party," he said.
Hal managed a single nod in agreement.
"Not that I can remember it of course," Marc added. "I must be getting old, you know. There was once a time when I could party the night away and actually remember who I'd insulted the following day."
"In that case perhaps memory loss has its advantages," Hal speculated. "What time is it?"
"I don't know – sometime after ten I expect."
In spite of the queasiness in her belly she sprang up and hunted around for her jacket. "Ten o'clock? Beric will kill me."
"Why?"
"I'll be late for the academy."
"Couldn't you even stay for a post-celebration drink?"
"Sorry, I have to go."
Marc sighed and lay back with a groan, burying his face in his hands as she dashed unsteadily out of the room.
Hal charged our through the main doors, bolted across the garden and out onto the streets, attempting to keep her swirling belly in check. As far as Beric was concerned, being late for training was a sin, no matter who the duellist or how great their experience.
She almost lost her balance as she sped around the corner of the city guild hall, slamming into a heavy pair of oak gates which led to the academy above. Ignoring her bruised arm, Hal flung open the doors and raced up the steps leading from the busy street outside. The door to Beric's chamber, a poky little room at the top of the stairs, was still closed, she noted with relief. She crept past and into the academy.
The hall was full of novices training: the air singing to the swish of blades slicing the air, morning sun streaming down through tall, arched windows that ran the length of the room. One or two of the younger boys turned to greet her as she entered, and then an older man ran forward, his striking green eyes punctuating a thin, sharply-defined face. Beric's deputy, Finn, was possessed of an almost feline grace which defined all his movements.
"Hal, where have you been? Beric's furious!"
"Marc had one of his parties," she replied, as if that explained everything.
"It's not the first time, Hal. He'll have something to say about it."
"Let him."
Finn shook his head in near desperation. "I'll not defend you again, Hal."
"Where the devil have you been?" Beric's voice roared out across the hall. The clink of metal on metal ground to a halt, the room encompassed by still, tremulous silence.
"Celebrating my win on your behalf," she offered. Nervous glances passed between some of the younger boys. Having experienced a few similar tirades, older duellists looked on in amusement.
Beric stormed over. "I'll hear no excuses for her this time, Finn. I'll not have her setting this kind of example to these lads here. You do know, Hal, what penalty I exact for lateness?"
"I've heard this before, Beric," Hal retorted, feigning disinterest.
"Well, if you've heard it before, how come you're so stupid you want to hear it all again? I'll be taking sixty percent of your next winnings."
In spite of Finn's frantic gestures to keep quiet, Hal was outraged. "No wonder your reputation as the meanest man in the city goes before you, Beric. You know full well I need that money."
"I'll make that seventy percent for your insolence. If you carry on as you are doing, you'll be living a pauper's life for the months to come."
She made a petty show of flinging her jacket to the ground, turned her back on the training master and began rifling through the racks in search of blades.
"And I trust you'll be training until the evening as you see fit to waste the morning away." Satisfied that he'd won the argument, Beric turned to a clique of young novices who stood with mouths rounded into 'Os' of shock. "Well, what are you all gawping at? Get back to your work, the lot of you."
Finn let out a sigh of exasperation. "Hal, you should know better than to argue with him. You'll always lose."
"And he should know better than to treat me like a hired servant!" She narrowed her eyes, examining a rapier she had just pulled from the rack.
"Why don't you ask yourself where you would be now if it wasn't for Beric? After all, he was the one who saved you from a life at court. No one else would have done that."
"I would have managed."
"Like hell. You'd be either mad, dead or wearing a dress."
She grimaced, whipping the sword through a few tentative arcs. "Let's get started. The old goat already seems to think I'm slacking."
Exhaustion dogged Hal's heels as she parried, lunged and blocked her way across the wooden floor of the academy. As tiredness crept up on her, her concentration wavered, her mind wandering back to the previous night. What had been the name of that merchant's daughter? Meracad. She wasn't a typical heiress, that was certain. The newly rich of Colvé were normally so bold, so confident in their status and wealth. But Meracad had seemed watchful and distant, unsure of her place and role. She looked fragile, so vulnerable standing alone, her modest black dress clinging to her slim, waifish frame. And yet when she spoke, Hal sensed an independence of spirit, determination, power even. What a web of contradictions!
"Hal!" Finn yelled out in frustration as she lost her grip on the hilt of the rapier. It fell, skittering away across the floor, almost piercing the foot of a novice, who sprang from its path in a lithe leap.
"You'd best go home." Groaning, Finn picked up the sword and dropped it back into the rack. "You fight like a novice. And you've a duel in a week's time. Beric'll be lucky if he takes any money at all."
With a sullen nod she pulled on her jacket, aware that sunlight now flooded the western windows of the academy and that it must be early evening.
Weariness hit her like a wall as she trudged back home along darkening streets towards the rooms she had rented ever since she won her first prize money. Her home was a squat, ramshackle place by the river in a run-down district of the city. It boiled in summer and was as cold as an ice-block in the winter. Yet she loved it for the anonymity and independence it afforded her.
Just one small chamber served as both living quarters and kitchen, furnished with no more than a bench, a table and a pair of chairs. In the winter she slept above it in a cavity below the roof. During the summer, however, she preferred the coolness of the ground floor, its bare stone walls offering her some relief from the sweltering heat. A tiny leaded window beneath the ceiling let in a little light, but the room would be pitched into darkness when night fell.
She poured some water into a bowl on the table, splashed her face with it, and then drank the remainder straight from the jug. From a linen sack beneath the bench she pulled out some bread and fruit, devouring it gratefully. Then she lay back upon the bench and had almost dropped off to sleep when the sound of someone knocking startled her.
Groaning, she dragged herself up once again and opened the door which led directly into the street. Marc stood on the threshold, apparently recovered from the previous night's indulgences. Without waiting for an invitation he stepped inside, shaking his head in mock surprise.
"Hal, please don't tell me you still feel ill. I myself am remarkably recovered." His lips twitched upwards into a smug smile.
"I've been training all day," Hal moaned. "Unlike some of us, I have to work for my keep. And now Beric is taking seventy percent of my next earnings for being late this morning– for which I hold you responsible."
"Me?" Marc looked aghast. "My dear girl, you can hardly claim that I physically poured alcohol down your throat, now can you?"
"Maybe not," Hal said, slumping back down onto the bench, "but it was your party."
"In which case, allow me to make it up to you." Marc pulled up a chair opposite her and leaned forward with a conspiratorial air. "Now," he began, "you know how we senators like to entertain ourselves now and again."
"It has been observed," she said drily.
"Yes, well, we're having one of our functions tomorrow night in the court."
"Oh by all the ancestors!" Hal groaned again. "Not another one of your charity events for down-at-heel aristocrats?"
Marc looked at her with a pained expression. "Could you please try not to be so cynical? Besides, I'd have thought you'd be the first in support of down-at-heel, disinherited aristocrats."
"That," Hal retorted, "is a little below the belt."
"Be that as it may, I wouldn't mind it if you came and, well, lent a little moral support."
"Marc, you don't need any moral support. All you have to do is sit there and commiserate with them while they moan on about how the Emperor is constantly reducing their rights to steal yet more land off their tenants."
"Wasn't that moral support you provided when I had the argument with the Master of Réac over his taxation rights last month?"
"It was protection," countered Hal. "He came at you with a knife."
"Same difference," Marc sniffed. "Now, Hal, you know I won't give in so easily, so why don't you look at it in another way? You say that Beric has fined you for being late?"
Hal nodded, unsure of where the conversation was leading.
"Well, I'd say in that case, you're going to be a little hard up, which means you need all the free food and drink you can get."
"I suppose so," she conceded grudgingly. "Alright, I'll come if you stop bothering me about it."
"Excellent decision." Marc rose to leave. "I knew you'd see things my way eventually."
"You'll regret it!" she called after him as he left the room.
"Surely not," his voice trailed back. "And I'd get some sleep if I were you. You look like a woman who can't take her drink to me."
She threw the empty sack across the room, but he had already closed the door behind him and it slid in a crumpled heap onto the floor. Hal released a long, low growl of frustration and then stretched back out along the bench, one arm covering her face. Within minutes she was asleep.