Eighteen
That first fight sets the pattern for the days to come.
As Ky predicted, neither Venci nor the crowd is happy with our decision to take the pot rather than reign as champion, and we walk off to hisses and boos.
The ringmaster hands over the money with bad grace.
I stare at the bits and stripes—stripes, plural, I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than one of the rectangular coins in one place—while Weslai rapidly counts them on a table back at the warehouse.
Ky watches him like a hawk as he carefully separates his cut; she sweeps the rest back into the bag.
“I’ll put half in our account toward the entry fee, and we can use the rest on Star,” she says happily. “Fuck me, that was a rush. When that thing kicked Star I thought my heart would quit.”
“I knew he would win,” Weslai says. “That big bastard was all show.”
I catch Ky’s eye and snort a laugh. Truth be told, I’m feeling a little elated myself.
We decide to keep Star’s combat body at the warehouse—I’m not going to be fighting Twisted anytime soon, and I certainly don’t want to keep hauling it up the stairs.
I’d anticipated the need for this, so the Mark 4 makes it easy to remove his foundation sigil.
He complains incessantly about the lack of dignity until I reinstall it into his thief body, and from then on he accompanies us in that (thankfully much lighter) form.
For the next few weeks, I make the hike up every couple of days and check in at Weslai’s place.
Usually the fixer has a fight lined up, and I spend some time on repairs and maintenance before heading to a new pit.
Most of the venues are less impressive than Venci’s, usually just a single tier of spectators looking down into a simple circular arena.
Mordax turns out to have been on the impressive side as far as champions, too.
I see a lot of strange designs, but none of them are as clever as Lorrimer’s.
As expected, these runics are built to charge at each other head-on, slamming together and battering the opposing runic into scrap.
With everyone using this simple strategy, the contests are decided by raw size and strength; the champions are enormous behemoths as big and heavily armored as their masters can make them.
Star makes waste of these oversized beasts with terrifying efficiency.
He’s simply too fast for them to contend with, slipping easily around their clumsy strikes while their masters yell desperate instructions.
With his opponents unable to get to grips, it’s a simple matter of either finding their core or wrecking enough legs that the opposing runic is immobilized.
He and I get better at this with practice until most of our matches conclude in less than a minute.
I don’t get a lot of applause, but the pots keep rolling in.
I enter the warehouse by the front door these days. The piles of boxes are different each time as Weslai’s other clients come and go, but his little den remains in the same place. I can hear talking and laughter.
Ky and Weslai are sitting by the table, chatting.
The fixer is telling a story that involves broad, possibly obscene hand gestures, and Ky is shaking with laughter, rubbing her eyes with the back of one sleeve.
She looks shockingly alive, white hair gleaming, her face transformed by mirth from its usual hawkishness into something more approachable.
Weslai mugs furiously, eyebrows waggling.
Watching, I feel a spike of something. Anger? Regret? I want to be part of the fun, I guess, but that’s not quite right, either. I want to be where Weslai is sitting.
Ky and I haven’t gotten to talk much lately. When I’m not fighting or working on Star, I go home, and she stays here. With Weslai and his funny stories.
I saved her life, didn’t I? I killed someone, and all he did was get kicked in the balls. It seems… wrong.
I run my hand through my hair, exasperated, and shake my head. This is so, so stupid, obviously stupid. Knowing that doesn’t make the feeling go away, though, the jagged little chunk of spite deep in my chest. I clear my throat noisily, and they go quiet until I emerge.
“Hey hey!” Weslai calls. “It’s the man himself. The champion!” He grins. “Or at least the champion’s pet human.”
Star squirms in my pack. [Agreement: an apt description!]
“More like the champion’s… father?” Ky’s eyes narrow thoughtfully. “I mean, Taj built him, but…”
“So in this metaphor, sex is me sitting at a table with my saws and clippers?” I open my pack to let Star out. “I’ll pass, thanks.”
“Yeah, that sounds terrible,” Ky agrees. “Whatever. The two of you are doing great.”
“Too great,” Weslai says. “We’ve picked off most of the likely pots. And word is starting to get around about wonder boy and his invincible runic.”
I bristle at boy, but I keep my expression calm. “So what now?”
“Funny you should ask,” the fixer says. “I got a proposal regarding that. They should be here any minute.”
“You didn’t tell me about this,” Ky says, instantly on guard.
“I figured it’d be better to let them lay it out for you!” Weslai says, raising his hands defensively. “If you don’t like it, tell them to get lost.”
A bell rings as the front door opens again. There’s some inventive swearing, and then a familiar raised voice.
“Wes?” Venci shouts. “Where in the Heap are you?”
“Back here, lovely!” Weslai shouts back.
The pitmaster arrives a few moments later, looking almost subdued without her glittering impresario’s coat. Behind her, to my surprise, is Lorrimer. The woman looks sullen, though it’s hard to make out any expression through her fringe of hair. As best I can tell she’s staring right at me.
“You can’t live in an apartment like a normal fucking person?” Venci complains.
“I need the space,” Weslai says smoothly. “Besides, I find the solitude and… discretion conducive to my work.”
“It certainly makes you less likely to get visitors,” Venci says. Her eyes flick to me and Ky. “I’ve met Taj, but I don’t think we were properly introduced.”
“Kycilea,” Ky says. “Call me Ky.”
“Wonderful. Did Wes tell you why I wanted to talk?”
“Not exactly,” Ky says. “But I think I can guess.”
“You two have really kicked over the anthill, you know? I’ve been asking around, and I know you’ve been hitting pits all over the city. Knocked off a dozen champs so far. That about right?”
“Fourteen, by my count,” I put in.
“Fourteen. Right.” She thumbs another one of those seeds into her mouth and bites down with a crunch. “But you’re running out of pits, aren’t you? Nobody else has a champ with more than three or four wins. Pretty measly pot, that.”
“That’s possible,” Ky allows. “Weslai and I were just discussing what it would take to get some big street matches.”
“Street matches are rigged, everyone knows that. Best you can hope for is a cut in exchange for taking a fall at the right time. And anybody can do that, so there’s no money in it.”
“You have another proposal?”
Venci smiles. “Obviously. Be a champion.”
“It’s the next logical step,” Weslai volunteers. “Let the fights come to us.”
“I can see why you didn’t want to start that way,” Venci says. “It’s more lucrative to take all the big pots, that makes sense. But now that you’ve built up a reputation, you’ll get more challengers than you know what to do with. That’ll build up your pot real quick.”
“And you’d like us to use your pit, I take it,” Ky says.
“Why not? It’s the best in the city, and I’ll get you more challengers than anybody else.”
“And I trust her not to fuck us over,” Weslai says. “Venci’s an honest woman.”
“Don’t let that get around,” she says dryly, crunching another seed. “You’ll ruin my reputation.”
“Ky,” I say, “can we talk for a minute?”
“I don’t like it,” I say when we’re sequestered behind a stack of crates.
“I’m not sure I do, either,” she says. “But we may not have another choice. She’s right about running out of rich pots.”
“How much have we got so far?”
“Almost eighty stripes. Nearly enough for the entry fee, but that’d leave nothing extra for upgrades for Star. And he’ll need to be stronger if we’re going to have a chance in the Ascent.”
Eighty stripes. An absurd amount of money, yet somehow not enough.
“I’m going to need a bit for myself, too,” I mutter.
“You know that slows us down.”
“I know. But I have obligations.” The Clawmarks’ deadline is coming up.
“Then I think we have to do it,” Ky says. “If we time this right, we can build up the pot and then cash out all at once to get everything we need. I may be able to get a little extra from Venci, too. She’s hungry for this, I can smell it.”
“I thought you were worried about… you know. Your other problems following us home. Setting up shop in one pit seems like it would make things easy for them.”
“I’ve been keeping an ear out,” Ky says. “Nothing so far. Nobody seems to be asking about us, at least not around here. The Cavcante are not known for their subtlety, so if they were trying I ought to know.”
“Won’t they be able to find Weslai? He arranged the match, didn’t he?”
“Nah, he used a cutout to set up the deal. He’s smart, he knows what he’s doing.”
Another little spike of… envy? I grit my teeth. “So you think this is our best bet.”
“I do.” She eyes me gravely. “You’re comfortable with that?”
I sigh. “If you are. I’m not the one who’s a fugitive.”
“Great. Stay quiet and let me see what I can pry out of Venci.”
We rejoin the group. Venci and Weslai are chatting, while Lorrimer is on her knees across from Star. He stares back at her curiously.
“We might be amenable,” Ky announces. “But I have to come clean here. This isn’t the only offer we’ve gotten, and some of the others are quite attractive.”
“It isn’t?” Weslai says.
Venci narrows her eyes. “What exactly makes them so attractive?”
“Sal Graybeard offered us a quarter of the house rake for each fight.”
“Sal’s a fucking cheat and his pit smells like rotting garbage,” Venci spits. “Ten percent, and you’ll still make twice what you will with him.”