Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
That evening, Kalen didn't come to the private dining room.
Verna sent one of the guards down to the competitors' area to check on her, and the guard returned to say that Kalen was taking a quiet night to prepare for tomorrow.
"Leave her be," Thom said, helping himself to another slice of meat.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're staring at her empty chair."
Verna moved her eyes to her plate and picked up her fork. Just the four of them ate that night: herself and Thom, Marleen and the captain of the guards who joined them at Verna's invitation because she was good company and Verna didn't feel like a quiet table.
The food was decent, a meat stew and flat bread that was better than the previous night's. The wine had improved; the innkeeper had found some of her Eclipsian red in the cellar. Thom did most of the talking, happy that his champion, as well as Kalen, had acquitted himself well.
Verna laughed at his amusing anecdotes, but kept her thoughts to herself.
After dinner she went upstairs, and stood at the window for a long time looking at the arena across the street.
The torches along its outer wall were lit, throwing orange light up the stone.
The imperial banners fluttered in the night breeze.
Verna pressed her fingers briefly against the cold glass, trying not to think of the coming competition the next day. Some of the champions were huge and Kalen was going to have a fight on her hands.
Then she went to bed and surprised herself by sleeping.
The morning of the second day was overcast, turning everything dull and made the amphitheatre look less festive than in yesterday's sunshine.
Verna pulled her cloak tighter as she crossed the street.
Yesterday had been about skill and the speed of the horses, but today was going to be about hitting people until they stopped getting up.
She hadn’t seen Kalen before leaving the inn. She had looked without making it obvious, and hadn't found her. One of the guards reported she had been up before dawn and gone to the competitors' entrance an hour before the gates opened.
Verna wasn’t surprised. Of course she would have.
Thom was already in the box when she arrived, standing at the rail, rugged up in a heavy coat with a cup of something hot. He handed her a mug without being asked and they stood together looking down at the arena, which was being raked for the second time by two workers who moved quickly.
"How bad do you think it's going to get?" he said.
She pursed her lips. "They’ll be no quarter given. They’re all out to win,"
"She'll be all right."
"I know she will. She’s an excellent fighter," Verna said. Still, anxiety sat in her stomach like a stone. "I hope Pedro does well."
Thom snorted. "He’s as tough as old boots. He had to be to survive the pits."
The stands filled up faster than yesterday. The crowd had a different energy this morning, noisier and expecting to see something more brutal today.
Borgine arrived with his usual procession and settled into his chair. Bain came in beside him, the disappointment of the horse events gone and his good humour restored. When he looked over at the Eclipsian box, Verna ignored him.
The herald walked to the centre of the arena and the crowd settled to listen.
Hand-to-hand combat, he announced. With no weapons and each competitor to face another in rotating bouts, with points awarded for each win. Bouts would be stopped only if a fighter could not rise within a count of ten.
Could not rise within a count of ten.
"That's not a competition," Thom said quietly beside her. "That's an endurance test. He wants them worn down."
"He wants Kalen worn down," Verna remarked. "He thinks because she’s a woman, she’ll cave first."
Thom glanced sideways at her but didn't disagree.
The competitors came through the archway on foot this time, ten people in fighting gear walking onto the sand. The crowd cheered them in.
Kalen came through the gate fourth. She was in her fighting leathers, her dark hair bound tight from her face, her short sword absent.
She walked to her position in the line with the same easy movement she brought to everything.
Once in the line, she stood with her weight balanced and her hands loose at her sides.
The palace champion stood at the end of the line looking along it like none of them was his equal.
The first bout was called and two of the middle-ranked competitors walked to the centre.
What followed wasn’t pretty. It was fast and rough, two people hitting each other with the brute force of trained of fighters. One went down hard inside two minutes and didn't get up until the count of six. When he finally rose, his nose was bleeding and he moved with the care.
The crowd booed the loser, which Verna found depressing.
The bouts ran through the morning, growing steadily grimmer as it went on. As soon as one went down for the count, the next pair called. The sand became stained with blood, and gouged where someone had gone down. The healers were busy.
Kalen's first bout was against the eastern house champion, a solid man who was strong and fast. He had a habit of attacking high and then switching low when his opponent covered their head.
When they were called to the centre, the crowd made derogatory comments about the sex difference.
He came in fast and high.
Kalen moved under it rather than back from it, ducking inside his reach before he'd finished committing, and hit him twice in the ribs with short compact strikes that folded him sideways.
When he tried to grab her, she dropped her weight and twisted out of it.
Before he could recover, she was already behind him and she took him down with a throw that deposited him face-first in the sand with a thud.
A collective hiss echoed from the stands.
He got up on the count of four, which she had apparently expected, because Kalen stood at a close distance waiting for him to get to his feet, then she came at him again.
It took two more exchanges before he went down and stayed down past six. He made it to his feet, and he walked off the sand holding his ribs and limping.
Kalen walked back to her position in the line with a small cut opening above her right eyebrow, which she ignored.
The morning went on.
Her second bout was against a stocky man from the northern house who fought with the low crouching style of someone trained to close distance fast and get inside a taller opponent's reach.
Smart approach against most people. Against Kalen it meant he came in low and fast and ran directly into a knee that snapped his head back and sat him on the sand before he'd landed a meaningful blow.
To his credit, he got up on three and tried again.
He went down again on the next exchange and didn't get up until nine.
When he did, he was so unsteady the medical staff came to examine him.
Kalen waited while they assessed him, which the crowd noted and seemed to appreciate.
By midday she had won four bouts and her collection of damage was accumulating.
The cut above her eyebrow had bled freely down one side of her face before someone threw a cloth from the stands that she used to blot it without breaking her attention from the next bout being called.
A bruise was developing along her left jaw from a punch she hadn't fully slipped in her third bout, a big man who hit harder than anyone else in the competition and had clearly spent years doing little else.
She'd won that bout but not before he'd landed three solid shots that would have sat a lesser fighter down.
She hadn't sat down.
Verna began gripping Thom's arm at some point during the third bout, and hadn't let go. He hadn't said anything about it.
Olag was working through the field with a brutal efficiency that was hard to watch.
He was the best technical fighter in the competition by some distance, and he knew how to hurt.
Two of his opponents had needed to be helped off the sand.
One had not come back for their remaining bouts.
He hadn't taken significant damage from anyone, a cut on his chin and a reddening along his ribs that suggested one of the better fighters had landed something real.
He and Kalen had not been paired yet.
The order of bouts made it increasingly clear that this was deliberate. Borgine had designed the day so they would meet last.
By mid-afternoon the competition had thinned itself out considerably.
Three fighters were carrying injuries serious enough to affect their performance.
One was fighting with his left arm obviously damaged after Olag had done something to his shoulder.
The Velmart boy had surprised everyone by winning six of his eight bouts and was sitting fourth overall, bleeding from a cut lip and grinning about it in the way of young men who had more bravery than sense.
Petro, Thom's man, had ground his way through the day, winning more than he lost through sheer immovability rather than any particular technical brilliance.
He had been hit a great many times and had responded to each one by continuing to stand there, which appeared to demoralise his opponents more effectively than hitting them back.
He was sitting third overall, and looked like he'd been in a threshing machine, but he was walking under his own steam.
The board showed Kalen and Borgine’s second son were level on points going into the final bout of the day.
The crowd knew it. The crowd had known it was coming for the last hour and had been building to it with the specific anticipatory noise of people who had been promised something and were about to find out if it was real.
Borgine leaned forward in his chair for the first time all day.
Bain was very still, his eyes narrowed.
Verna stared down at them and nearly forgot to breathe.