"He's usually just annoying." When nobody has made announcements that it's enormously important who is technically free and who isn't.

"And who spoke up, when he said that?"

It is possibly sort of pathetic not to be able to give an account of what happened just because it was a direct attack on her. But the next thing was said by Redempció, and she doesn't want to complain about Redempció.

"Redempció said that Màxim could chase him off and have the refreshments himself, and then Màxim said that if a dog had had them they weren't refreshments anymore, they were table scraps. And then Guim challenged him."

"And this was all....innuendo, and not actually about the food?"

They stare at him in confusion. Guim actually looks up from the floor to blink at him. Queralt gestures, frustrated.

"Màxim was calling Guim an animal, and Margarida a whore, and then a whore who has been with an animal, and then saying that that was the only reason he had not slept with her."

See, that was not in fact obvious if you are from a completely different country! "I understand. And no one spoke to object to this, until Guim challenged him?"

"No." Sullenly.

"We were playing darts, we didn't hear until Guim yelled at him."

"Are there customs here around - when a challenge to a duel has been issued - trying to negotiate an acceptable apology before you fight?"

"You can't accept an apology for that."

"I see. So then they fought?"

"No, Màxim refused and called Guim an animal again and tried to get him kicked out of the party. Or maybe whipped. But then I said he had to fight him."

"Well, first Guim said the thing about his uncle raping him."

"A true thing about his uncle raping him, or a false thing?"

"I think it was more of a metaphor," says Marcel, who is having a slightly hard time keeping a straight face here.

"He wouldn't fight me. He really can't shoot, though, that part's true."

"Evidently because he's spending all his time with swords."

"I think I now understand what happened. Thank you for answering my questions even when they were about obvious-sounding things. I would be interested in what Valeria has to say to you all, and then I will see what the Goddess has to add to that, or where She might disagree."

"Mm.

Margarida, you did nothing wrong. I am sorry that this happened to you. Queralt, you acted well in getting help, and may well have saved your cousin's life. Marcel, I suppose your sole procedural objection is appreciated. Both of you probably should have spoken up about the lack of healing, but the same is true of half the people on that hill.

Guim. I will not tell you that you should not have challenged Màxim. It is good for you to defend Margarida, and it was not a minor insult. But you did not need to threaten Màxim's life, and you did not need to provoke him until he accepted. Were you at any point genuinely afraid that you would be thrown out of the party, or that you would be beaten?"

Guim doesn't immediately answer.

"If you were, then you were wrong to be. No visiting noble of Menador has any right to have his servants beat you, ever. There are members of this house who may, but none who would do so because you attended a party organized by your own family just outside your own home, or because you defended a lady from a dire insult, as you should. I cannot tell you that you will always be safe. But you will always be ours, and no one else's.

If you were secure in that, and you should be, I would tell you that you should have challenged Màxim, and then made it known that he would not fight you, if he would not. He cannot pretend that it is not cowardice, if you are unharmed. Be satisfied that the man who insults you is a coward, and that you have nothing to fear from him. To bait him into fighting you by making him as angry as possible is stupid, but more than that, it is beneath you.

Alfonso. You were one of the oldest people on that hill, and you told me that you knew that Guim and Màxim had both threatened to kill one another. I am glad that you defended Guim's honor and right to be there, and right to issue a challenge. I am glad that you attempted to clarify that the duel should not be to the death. But it is not enough, in that situation, to declare that the duel is to disable. You could have attempted to arrange a postponement, and have it later in the castle. You could have offered to defend Margarida in Guim's stead, and made it obvious that Margarida had defenders, and gotten Màxim to fight someone he was not so murderously angry with. If he had refused you, no one could possibly be confused about who had acted badly, or who would be ostracized going forward.

Where you acted to defend one another, each of you acted well. Where you were impulsive, careless, and needlessly vicious, you acted poorly. There is never a time to abandon what one must defend, but you need not defend it carelessly, or feel that you defend it alone."

 ....that is not, exactly, what she would have said a year ago, but then, the situation is not what it was a year ago, either.

Guim is pretty skeptical that it would have been fine if Màxim had gotten away with not dueling him. If Màxim is going around unharmed, after saying all of that, then even if Guim says he's a coward, that still means that he can't stop him.

....admittedly, he's going around unharmed right now, which also doesn't feel amazing.

This is honestly extremely encouraging, as things to tell them go. 

"I think Valèria is wise and you should listen to her. I think in particular - I have spoken with many of your house, today, about who is in whose bed for what reason, and one thing that struck me as very different between here and Lastwall is that - it is assumed, here, that if a woman does not have a man that she has no one to defend her, that she can rely at best on her father and her brothers and her lover and any other man will not exert himself in her defense. 

But it is Evil to threaten a woman as Margarita was threatened, or to speak of one as he spoke of Guim, and the right thing is for every single man nearby to say at once that they will not stand for it. And usually if this is done it need not even come to a fight, because it is a foolish man indeed who fights when he sees that everyone is arrayed against him. The words that you repeated to me are not words you should tolerate hearing spoken about anybody. I do not recommend you be more eager to kill people over them but I would recommend being more eager to object to them. If a boy said things like that in the household where I grew up, every person in earshot would answer at once that they must have heard wrong, and if he persisted that he had better leave.

And if he declined to leave, or if it wasn't a place they could ask him to leave - they'd punch him in the face and break his nose, probably. That doesn't kill anybody, and I think it still usually suffices to make the point. Though I do not understand your culture or your traditions well enough to confidently suggest that would work here, and I don't think randomly trying to do bits and pieces of other traditions works very well. But - maybe it is worth knowing how that would go, in a place that does not allow dueling, and knowing that it does not result in anyone countenancing that sort of conduct. And however it shakes out in practice - the Good is to defend anyone who needs it, with as little force as you can get away with employing. But not any less."

Guim nods.