“Bet you anything she practiced that in a mirror,” Eliot whispered.

The dynamic of the fight had changed. Now Bingle dropped the formal, balletic style they’d both been using. Quentin had assumed that that was where his training was, but it soon became apparent that he was some kind of technical freak, because he seemed to be able to shift styles at will. He went at her like a berserker, fast and furious, then cycled rapidly through a courtly dueling mode to a kind of shouting, stamping kendo style. Aral grew increasingly flummoxed trying to adjust, which was presumably what Bingle was after.

Breaking her silence, she shouted something and lunged flat out. Bingle met her attack with a parry so implausible it was vaudevillian: he stopped her blade—Quentin’s blade—with the tip of his, so that the two swords met point to point.

They bent ominously, almost double, for an unendurably tense second—there was a worrying saw-blade sound of flexed metal—and then Bingle’s sword snapped with a sharp, vibrant twang. He had to jerk his head to one side to avoid a flying shard.

He threw his useless hilt at Aral in disgust. The pommel clunked her on the temple, but she shrugged it off. She paused, evidently considering offering him the same largesse he’d offered her. Then, having made some inner calculation probably having to do with honor and principles and castles, she aimed an overhand cutting stroke at Bingle’s shoulder, the coup de grâce.

Bingle closed his eyes and dropped rapidly to one knee. As the blade descended he didn’t dodge, just brought his hands together smoothly and decisively in front of him. And then time stopped.

At first Quentin wasn’t sure what had happened, but the room exploded in amazement. He stood up to get a better view. Bingle had stopped the blade between the palms of his hands, in midstrike, bare flesh against sharp steel. He must have calculated the move down to the last erg and arc and nanosecond. It took a moment for Aral to understand what he’d done, and Bingle didn’t waste it. With the advantage of surprise he jerked the blade toward himself, out of her grip. He flipped it smartly, the hilt smacking solidly into his palm, and placed the blade at her throat. The match was over.

“Oh my God,” Eliot said. “Did you see that? Oh my God!”

The assembled barons forgot their noble reserve. They got to their feet, huzzahing, and mobbed the winner. Quentin and Eliot cheered along with them. But Bingle didn’t seem to see them. Those hooded eyes never changed their expression. He pushed his way through the crowd to Quentin’s throne, where he kneeled and offered Quentin back his sword.

The next time Quentin visited the waterfront the Muntjac was crawling with workmen, like piranhas on an unlucky Amazonian explorer except in reverse. They were putting the Muntjac back together—bringing it back to life. There was no part of it that wasn’t being aggressively sanded or varnished or tightened or reinforced or replaced. They’d got it up into drydock, propped it up on a forest of stilts, fixed the sprung boards, caulked and tarred and painted it. Out-of-sync hammer blows clattered from all quarters of the hull.