The ceremony began with each of the dorms sending up a representative to kneel before Roy and offer their sword to him. The north dorm boys chose Gormus for his hard work. Though Queen surpassed Gormus in swordsmanship, Gormus’s leadership and commanding skills were top notch. Fie approved of this choice immensely. Gormus took to his knees before Roy and passed him his sword, whereupon Roy placed the sword on his shoulder, and Gormus swore his oath before the king.
The ceremony went smoothly, and the day proceeded into its final event: a tournament held before the king. This was no team competition but rather a match between two brilliant representatives of the new knights, Queen and Persil. Oddly enough, this turned out to be the same matchup as was in the East—North Interdormitory Duel.
It was a marvelous battle. Queen moved with all the speed of lightning, and Persil met his every blow with deadly accuracy, enthralling the spectators. Unlike the previous match, where Fie’s cheering helped him pull off a win despite Persil initially gaining the upper hand, Queen won this match outright with his superior skill.
Qurio was awake again, and she stared at the battle intently (although whether she was watching per se, was debatable). “Your daddy’s incredible, isn’t he?” Fie asked her.
Then, just as the ceremony showed signs of winding down to an end, a howl of “I refuse to accept it!” rose from the ranks of graduating knights. There stood Luka, yelling, “Do they really mean to let such a fine occasion as this pass without the opportunity to display my magnificent swordsmanship? It is preposterous, I tell you!”
“What’s done is done.” Kerio sighed. “You weren’t chosen to be the representative because I beat you in the qualifying matches. And then Persil beat me.”
“Well, how come we had only two representatives?” Luka shot back. “I should think the spectators would find my illustrious swordplay most enriching!”
The north dorm squires—knights now, rather—all shouted as one, “Give it a rest, Luka!”
One of the east dorm knights sighed. “Oh well. Come on, let’s get him out of here.” The two groups of young men looked at one another, nodded, and stood up to remove Luka from the scene. However, Luka protested mightily.
“Come on, Luka, work with us.” Someone grunted.
“Let go of me, you mongrels!” he howled.
“Hey, come on now—ow!”
“He kicked me, that little—!”
And in no time at all, a fight broke out, ending the stately ceremony with an all-out brawl. Heslow paled at the scandal of it, but Roy only sighed, slipped on his mask, and went to find Crow.
“Wow,” Crow said. “I haven’t seen you wear that thing in ages. What’s wrong?”
“I would have thought it was obvious.”
Crow grinned.
The chancellor sighed as well as he watched the knights destroy the ceremony he had worked so hard to make beautiful. Then he looked over to his neighbor and saw a grin spreading across her face. Oh no. He had a bad feeling about this.
“Will you hold her for a second?” she asked, and she carefully deposited the baby in his lap. Then she sprang from her seat and dashed off to the brawl.
The few knights standing off to the side blanched.
“Oh no! It’s her!” one of the knights yelled.
“Oh great, that’s the last thing we need.” Another one groaned.
“Whoo!” Fie cried. “Let me join in!”
“Hey, Queen! Get your wife out of here!” a knight bawled.
“Wait, Fie!” Queen yelped. “Stop!”
Undaunted, she cried, “Duel time! Duel time!”
She grabbed a wooden sword with a practiced hand and leaped into the fray. Those happy days weren’t over after all.