Mubārazah

The mubārazah is Idir’s answer to an injury done to a person’s honor: a challenge to single combat, made in the open and answered in the open. In the old days it was fought to the death. Custom has since softened it to first blood or to a yield, though the challenge itself has not softened at all.

Refusing is the part that binds. To decline a mubārazah is to say publicly that the challenger’s honor is not worth the trouble of drawing a blade over, which lands heavier than most of the offenses that provoke one in the first place. Accepting settles less than it appears to, because the accepting party then has to decide whether to lose, and how far the challenger means to push a loss once it is won. A person of sufficiently high station is not obliged to stand up personally, and may send a champion.

Lady Talia Salahaudhi put all of that to the Valiant Few as a live risk rather than a curiosity. Traxian Grayeras knew that Koa had killed his son and could call for a mubārazah over it whenever he chose, and there would be no quiet way out of one. Aldo’s guess at the champion who would be sent in Traxian’s place was Asiya Azrak.