The duel is quick. The pale woman cuts the other’s nose with a wild, panicked swipe. She’s shocked at what she’s done. The other woman grins, blood on her teeth, and dances forward, cuts a deft slash across the pale woman’s arm. First blood to one, but the better hit to the other. Both look happy when I yell that it’s done. The women touch their wounds and lick their salty fingers and one of the seconds faints, but not at the blood—though that is what the paper will say—no, she faints at the pleasure on the duelists’ faces, the flush across their upper breasts, the strength of their arms, the
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