The dueling tournament followed a novel format that Archmund had made up on the spot, because he hadn’t done any tournaments in his past life.

  30 people had entered, about an equal mix of boys and girls; he’d begged two members of the Granvale Manor staff to enter to make the total 32 for easier computation, but it hadn’t worked.

  32 was enough to support an initial round of 16 duels; the losers would be paired against each other to fight again. The second round would be 8 matches of losers and 8 matches of winners; anyone who lost 2 rounds was officially out of the tournament. That left 24 people remaining: 16 with 1 loss and 1 win, and 8 with 2 wins.

  They would be paired up, as fairly as he could manage, yet again in the third round. 12 against 12. Again, anyone who lost twice would be eliminated, leaving sixteen total, for a fourth round of an 8 against 8 match.

  At the end, anyone with two losses would be eliminated, leaving ten victors with at least three wins.

  They would form his honor guard, if they took the offer to.

  And given what he’d seen of the economy, few would refuse elevation through Gemstone.

  This was all in theory, anyways. Archmund fully expected a few of the entrants to drop out of despair before their second fight.

  And unfortunately, none of the staff had volunteered. Most of the members of his household staff were content to live nice, normal, safe lives. In the end, Mary, with a long-bebored sigh, had agreed to enter the match.

  And for the final entrant to bance out the numbers?

  Well.

  He stood up. Some of the other visiting nobles — two boys, Redmont and Greenroot, and a girl, Bckstone — did as well.

  “Where are you going?” Princess Angelina asked.

  He smirked. “You heard the horns. It’s time for the duelists to come to the field.”

  She looked aghast. “You must be joking.”

  He wondered how he must look. A triumphant hero? A dashing rogue?

  “Granavale, this is hardly sportsmanlike. You’ve had half a year to train with Gem magic, that girl over there—” she pointed at Raehel, “—is clearly a mage from the Imperial University and I don’t know what you’ve been up to with her, and you’re of noble blood. You are going to beat the tar out of whoever you face, and it won’t be remotely fair.”

  He winced. The rogue, but without being dashing, then. She was right, but she didn’t have to be so smug about it.

  “Does your father know about this?” she continued, lowering her voice and gncing askance at the elder Granavale.

  “No, but he’d have bragged about it if he did.”

  She gred at him. He supposed she was disappointed.

  “Please don’t embarrass our Empire by making this any more of a farce than it needs to be.”

  The head chef of Granavale Manor, Willem Barst, was emceeing the tournament. It was an odd choice, but one Archmund stood by. Barst had a deep and resonant voice, a fir for the dramatic, and a kindly charisma. As a member of the household staff, he’d been given the privilege to use a Gem of Voice Amplification. His voice vibrated throughout the colosseum, carried over the wind.

  “Welcome, one and all, young and old, near and far, noble and commoner alike!” he boomed through the colosseum. “Welcome to the first Granavale dueling tournament! Here is a chance for you to show off your moves. To show off the swiftness of your feet and the deftness of your bdes. To show which of you is the best of Granavale!”

  The princess had been completely right, of course. It was horrifically unsporting and smug for a noble to enter a competition of peasants.

  “And for those who win?”

  Barst swept his hand over to the box where Archmund had been sitting not five minutes before. The Lord Reginard Granavale stepped forward and raised a Gemstone Rapier into the midday sun. As the light hit, the Gemstone fred, capturing the light and glowing like a shard of the sun.

  “A chance,” Barst said, “if you so wish, to pledge your life to House Granavale, and serve in their illustrious honor guard!”

  It would be horribly, horribly unsporting for a noble, with their superior nutrition and physical conditioning and combat training, to enter a tournament meant for peasants. It would be so horrifically unfair. It would be no contest.

  “If the contestants might take their pces,” Barst said.

  And yet the noble heirs of the neighboring counties — Redmont, Greenroot, and Bckstone — had entered the tournament. Perhaps whatever invitation he’d sent hadn’t made it clear that this was a tournament for peasants, or perhaps they were just stupid children. Perhaps this was his fault for assuming that an invitation that said “Please Attend The Tournament of the Granavale Harvest Festival” was meant to be for the people of Granavale County.

  Unchecked, they would win, and that would be an issue because he’d put his Gemstone Rapiers on the line. But it would be a diplomatic concern for a noble to serve on the honor guard of another of equal rank, so they might take the weapons and not be tied to him. Therefore, they had to be beaten. They had to lose.

  But he knew how nobles were. They would whine if they lost to peasants. They would demand reparations. Innocent people might die for their pride.

  So it was safest if they didn’t lose to peasants.

  It was one thing for a noble to lose by surprise to a peasant. It was quite another for them to lose to a noble in a tournament meant for peasants.

  That was why he’d joined the tournament.

  His first opponent was Beatrice of Bckstone County. A girl right around his age with long bck hair and dark eyes. Honestly, she looked kind of like him, moreso than Mary or the Princess or the other nobles or any of the commoners.

  They’d met only briefly just before, spoken for a few minutes and exchanged pleasantries during the lead-up to the festival.

  She hadn’t seemed like the type of girl to viciously seek every advantage open to her.

  But then again, neither did he.

  He bowed politely as they raised their wooden sparring swords in salute. She bowed, slightly less politely.

  “Granavale himself. So this was the catch,” she said gloomily. She let out a long sigh.

  He was distracted by her st name. On earth, Bckstone had meant something.

  “So much for my pn to win some Gemgear for myself,” she said. “There’s no such thing as a risk free return.”

  “To be clear, you’d have beaten up peasants for it,” he said.

  “You’d hit a girl, right?” she said, her voice dry. “Same thing.”

  Non-lethal duels in Omnio weren’t as formalized as fencing on Earth. The endpoint was either disarming your opponent, or putting them in a position where they’d be at a real risk of harm if the duel were to continue. In this duel, only wooden sparring swords were allowed — no hidden weapons or magic powers.

  “Duelists,” Barst said, his voice booming, “begin!”

  He decided he was going to disarm her. He circled gently, his feet light, his wooden sword testing the air before him.

  She held the sword with both hands, reading to block whatever he threw at her.

  He jabbed, darting forward, but she contorted back, her torso whipping concavely impossibly quickly.

  Even though Gems were banned as weapons, you couldn’t remove the enhancements to body and soul granted by them.

  He jumped back.

  He couldn’t see her.

  He felt the faintest brush of air at his side—

  He whirled, raising his left hand, catching her sword. It smarted, shuddering him down to the bone — but he spun with the force of the blow and threw her. But she jumped out of the way yet again.

  She was fast and silent. This was the unfair advantage of Gem powers. He had banned the use of those mystical receptacles of the dead, but he could not undo their effects on their wielders. Anyone who used Gems enough to begin the path to Attunement became innately stronger. That, he could not ban.

  He had to overcome.

  She was fast, agile, and evasive. He was subversive and could hit hard.

  It seemed that his path was obvious.

  He flourished his bde with a spin, before stabbing the tip into the dirt. It only went in about half an inch or so, even as he leaned against it, leering at her in what he hoped was a taunting manner. The workers had compacted the dirt when they’d built the colosseum.

  She circled warily. He’d made himself a sitting duck. She had no understanding of his fighting style, of his tactics, his psychology, so although she was clealry the type to rush in, she wasn’t stupid enough to run into an obvious trap.

  “There are no ties, you know,” he said, his eyes tracking her carefully. “This goes until one of us wins or loses.”

  She hissed. She still wasn’t taking the bait, giving him any obvious openings.

  Perhaps there were psychological levers he could pull?

  “If there’s a technical tie I could absolutely pull hometown advantage and count it as my win,” he added. It would make him look immensely spoiled and petty, but it would be worth it to keep a Gemstone Rapier in the hands of his own townspeople.

  That did the trick. She practically vanished from his view, charging at him as fast as an Olympic sprinter.

  She wasn’t going to hit him head-on. That didn’t seem like her style. She would feint or dodge to the side and strike at his back.

  He was ready for that.

  The thing about swordfights between people of vastly different skill levels was that they finished really, really quickly.

  In his past life, his neighbor had been an Olympic-level fencer. He’d fought her once with mock foam swords and lost in all of five seconds.

  He was no expert, but he’d journeyed through a Dungeon and leveled-up his stats. He’d fought his swordsmaster Garth Avant and realized just how outcssed he was.

  That was the level he was striving for. Not noble children pying with bdes, but battle-hardened veterans and their martial ways.

  So when Beatrice Bckstone swung her bde for his head, he whipped around and struck directly at her falling hand with his bde.

  Her sword went flying through the air, skidding over the compacted dirt. She tripped and stumbled, only managing to avoid facepnting by catching herself on her arms.

  “This is my victory,” Archmund said. He didn’t want to drag this out any longer than he had to.

  “I can still beat you,” Beatrice growled, though it was hard to take her seriously because she was on her knees in the dirt. He wondered whether it would be going too far to step on her back.

  It probably was. He settled for holding his bde at her throat instead.

  “I think you’re beaten,” he said.

  She had the same fire that he did. The same drive for victory, the same willingness to commit.

  She just wasn’t working at the same level.

  He gestured to the referee, who blew the horn to signify his victory.

  “No! I can still…”

  She gave up the ghost at st and pushed herself into a sitting position.

  “I…”

  Were those tears in her eyes?