In the soup
Renate’s gotten herself into the soup, as Wodehouse would have put it—right up to her neck, and possibly a little deeper.
And it’s all Godfrey’s fault, though if his resemblance to Jeeves is to be believed, he’ll find some farcical way out of it.
The gizmos she’s looking for were fenced to a dragonlord named Hyuri, one so xenophobic he never talks with anyone except to fight them. (Quite the student of human-style swordplay, don’t you know. Hobby.) And, worse luck, a scheduled fight just got cancelled owing to the challenger’s getting himself severely damaged somewhere.
“Ha! A substitute!” (Gilbert and Sullivan. The Mikado. Never mind.)
Renate picked up a swordsman at her inn who would have served the turn nicely. While they were still uncertain about his compliance, however, Godfrey (despite static from Renate) started bizarre rumors about one “Emilia Eaglebourne,” a redoubtable swordswoman.
(The surname is a not-quite-linguistically-accurate pun on Renate’s first and last names, and the given name is obviously from her brother Emil. I walked right straight into this one, because I’d been thinking about pseudonyms for Renate since David suggested that her initials “Rava” would be a good one. So, completely unforced and un-hinted-at, I let Renate call herself Emilia as soon as she got into the inn.)
The swordsman did his bit—but Godfrey is hellishly efficient as a PR man, it seems. Hyuri issued a public challenge to Emilia Eaglebourne the very next morning. For that night.
She’s in the soup, all right.
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