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Lessa gritted her teeth and hooked her foot into Kissen’s right leg. She would have sent her prosthesis skidding across the deck if Kissen hadn’t leapt back. The lady’s lungs were still straining as she held back her cough, but she regained her footing.

‘Must sting you that they call someone else captain, eh?’ said Kissen, goading her.

‘Captain or not,’ said Lessa, gasping, ‘the Silverswift is mine.’

‘Bah, the rest of the world is handed nothing and told to make do.’

Lessa bared her teeth. ‘I was not handed the Silverswift ,’ she snarled. ‘I earned it.’

‘And who are the crew loyal to?’ Kissen cut back. ‘Lertes, or you? The sea, or Middren? Because I’m fair certain they give not a shit what happens to anyone but themselves.’

Their two blades rattled once again as they charged and clashed, over and over in the rhythm of their hearts as they moved around the deck. It was all Kissen could do to keep up with the shift of Lessa’s sabre, the speed of her feet.

‘You know nothing of loyalty,’ Lessa growled. ‘You who are faithless, godless. You’re not on this ship for Middren. You’ve turned tail and ran.’

‘Hah,’ said Kissen, though she could not deny it. Should she not have stayed with Elo? Fought alongside him? ‘You know nothing about me, my lady.’

They were getting into a rhythm, a clatter of steel, a break; they circled. Was this a spar or a dance, a practice or a duel?

‘You call me thief,’ continued Lessa, increasing the pressure, ‘but it is you who stole Inara away and dragged her into danger.’

Kissen was getting truly angry now. ‘Is that what you really think?’ she said. ‘Is that why you’re ingratiating yourself with Skediceth, so you can maintain your sweet lies and not face the truth of it?’

Lessa drove forward, feinting left, right, then flipping her sword around so she could slide it up from beneath between Kissen’s arms. Kissen stepped back, back, tipping up her chin before the point scraped it; then locked Lessa’s blade and bore down on her, pushing her across the deck.

She was sorely tempted to strike her dirty: a headbutt, a knee to the stomach.

But she didn’t want to give the crew another reason to spit in her eye. Or her food.

‘You were so busy fighting for Ina that you never let yourself know her,’ Kissen snarled, pressing forward. ‘ You didn’t notice that she harboured a god for fear of hurting you. You left her in danger in the dead of night without even taking a moment to say goodbye.’

Should she pour salt on this wound? Likely Lessa thought about it in her every waking moment.

Perhaps if she had gone to check on her daughter that night rather than run off to Sakre, she would have seen that Inara was gone.

Perhaps the manor would have been awake to face the soldiers that came for them.

The same ‘perhaps’ that had spun around Kissen’s mind after her family had died. Perhaps if she had woken sooner. Perhaps if she had fought a bit harder, faster. Perhaps she could have saved them. Saved one of them.

‘Everything I have done was for Inara!’ snapped Lessa, holding well against Kissen’s strength, not easily overwhelmed. ‘I gave up everything I had for her.’

‘What did you sacrifice, my lady ?’ said Kissen. ‘A few warm nights by the fire? A cup of hot honey and oil before you slept?’

‘This!’ Lessa found her feet and bent a knee, pressing down on Kissen’s blade before ripping herself free. Kissen let her, even as she whirled her sword around and stabbed forward.

Kissen didn’t parry, and Lessa caught herself. Stopping with the sharp of her blade just short of piercing Kissen’s neck. ‘The Silverswift . My crew. My freedom. All for her. Do not tell me I have done nothing.’

Kissen reached up and grabbed the sword before Lessa chose to drive it further in. ‘Then do not tell me I stole her from you. You want to protect her. So do I.’

The lady’s cheeks were flushed with exertion, her skin glowing with a sheen of sweat. Some loose strands of her hair stuck to her forehead, her lips. She sliced the sword out of Kissen’s hand, drawing blood, bright and red, but Kissen did not flinch.

‘But I don’t want you ,’ said Lessa. ‘I don’t need you. And neither does Inara.’

‘You also thought you had no use for me.’

‘And I was right,’ said Lessa, showing the red on her sword. ‘I beat you to first blood.’

‘Did you?’

Lessa was breathing quickly, the fire of the fight still burning through her, and Kissen looked deliberately down towards her right hand. Blood was dropping from her wrist, pat, pat onto the boards. In their last break, Kissen had used the moment to nick the back of it.

Lessa stared at the blood for a moment, dripping down her fingers, then back at Kissen, her gaze appraising. After a moment, her mouth twitched in a strange, slight smile.

Then, her eyes focussed behind Kissen, and the smile fell.

Kissen turned, and there was Inara, standing at the door to her cabin. Beneath the pallor of sickness was a broken expression, somewhere between pain and anger.

Something more like betrayal.