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notice my blows though I knew they stung. He bent to pick up his weapon with his left hand, and I kneed him in the nose, exactly the way he had intended to knee me before. In a moment blood was flowing across his face. The laser skittered away from his misdirected hand.
    He turned, one hand to his face, cupping the blood, and jumped for his saucer. It lurched upward; it seemed he still had sufficient command of his body to control it. In a moment he was gone.
    Now I looked at Spirit, realizing what she had done. “You used your finger-whip!” I cried as though accusing her.
    She smiled smugly, whirling her finger to re-coil her weapon. The finger-whip was a spool of translucently thin line that hooked to her middle finger. When she flicked her digit just so—she had practiced this diligently in private—the weighted tip carried the line out rapidly to its full length of a meter.
    That, plus the reach of her arm, gave her a fair striking distance. Invisible the whip might be, but she could snap coins out of the air with it. That line could really sting, and sometimes cut into the skin. Spirit had savaged the scion's weapon hand, disarming him.
    It had not been a fair tactic—but of course the laser itself had not been fair. She had rescued me from a nasty situation. This was not the first time, though it was the most significant.
    I decided to drop the matter. Children were not supposed to have weapons, but Spirit had won the whip on a bet a year before and had made a point of mastering it. She had become the junior champion of the schoolyard, partly because of her finesse with her finger and partly because of her indomitable fighting spirit. Oh, yes, she lived up to her name! Once she had been tagged four times by an agile whip opponent, suffering scours on a leg, both arms, and one ear, but only came on more intensely, until her opponent, a boy of her own age, had lost his nerve and yielded the issue without being struck himself. He had realized that if he continued, Spirit would score, and her flicks had already come so near his eyes that it was obvious that discretion was the better part of valor. Pain could make her scream; it could not make her yield. Nerve, not skill, had won her that battle—but since then her skill had increased. Of course a finger-whip is a little thing, not capable of dealing death—but I knew from that time on that I never wanted to have my little sister truly angry with me. I had never betrayed her secret and neither had Faith, and we were not about to now.
    “We had better not tell our folks about this incident,” I said, picking up the scion's laser and pocketing it after noting that its charge gauge read about half. Several good burns remained in it. Now I had a secret weapon too, and the others would keep my secret.
    Silently, Spirit nodded acquiescence. I put my arm around her small shoulders and hugged her, my thanks for her help. She melted against me, letting down now that it was over. However tough she was in combat, she did need emotional support, and this I could offer. We understood each other.
    Faith came out of her stasis. “You shouldn't have done that, Hope,” she reproved me shakily.
    I exchanged another glance with Spirit. We both knew Faith's naïveté was a necessary aspect of her self-image. “I guess I got carried away.”
    “Did you see his nose splat!” Spirit said enthusiastically.
    “I didn't really mean to do that,” I admitted. “I was aiming for his chin, but he went down too fast.”
    “All that blood!” Faith said, horrified. She seemed oblivious of what could have happened to her had we not driven the scion off, and this was just as well.
    Faith had some clothing-patching material that she kept for possible emergencies in connection with her dress. She used this to repair and conceal the damage the laser had done to my clothes. The burns on my flesh would simply have to heal.
    We hurried on home, and by the time we got there Faith, too, had agreed