“The first is that you keep the contest close,” Schmidt said. “We need to show the Korba from the start that the reputation the CDF has is not undeserved.”

“Not knowing what the rules of the contest are, how it’s played or whether I’m even physically capable of keeping up with it, sure, why not, I’ll keep it close,” Harry said. “What’s the other request.”

“That you lose,” Schmidt said.

“The rules are simple,” Schmidt said, translating for the Korban who stood in front of them. Normally Harry would use his BrainPal—the computer in his head—to do a translation, but he didn’t have access to the Clarke’s network to access the language. “There are three rounds: One round with Bongka—those are like quarterstaffs, Harry—one round of hand-to-hand combat, and one round of water combat. There are no set times for any round; they continue until all three judges have selected a victor, or until one of the combatants is knocked unconscious. The chief judge here wants to make sure you understand this.”

“I understand,” said Harry, staring at the Korban, who came up, roughly, to his waist. The Korba were squat, bilaterally symmetrical, apparently muscular, and covered by what appeared to be an infinite amount of overlapping plates and scales. What little information Harry could uncover about the Korban physiology suggested that they were of some sort of amphibious stock, and that they lived some of their lives in water. This would at least explain the “water combat” round. The gathering hall they were in held no obvious water sources, however. Harry wondered if something might not have been lost in translation.

The Korban began speaking again, and as he spoke and breathed, the plates around his neck and chest moved in a motion that was indefinably strange and unsettling; it was almost like they didn’t quite go back in the same place they started off at. Harry found them unintentionally hypnotic.