Chapter 30 The Boxing Faire
The Boxing Faire
“Do you want one of these?” Alaric whispered, showing me a bag of what looked like gummy candies.
“You look tense, and these generally make me not-tense.” At my puzzled look, he explained, “Dervish gave us a few bags of different things. His uncle’s a praecurus and a bit shady, but Walker’s always been generous with his stash. ”
I pursed my lips as everything he’d said clicked together in my mind.
I looked up, not hiding my astonishment. “These are from Earth?”
Alaric nodded. “They taste like chewy, sugary things, but they make you feel really blobby and unworried. I just have to watch it when I mix them with whisky.” At what must have been a shocked look from me, he shook the bag.
“It’s fine! Why do you think I grabbed Walker when I first saw him on the lawn?
I was hoping to get us some treats, and his are reliable. I’ve gotten them from him before.”
My eyes popped a bit wider. “Dervish has given you human narcotics before?”
Was this a common thing? Praecuri and others bringing humans drugs over from Earth? It shouldn’t have surprised me, but I felt almost childishly shocked.
“Not only these.” Alaric pursed his lips, clearly puzzled by my reaction. “There are other kinds. He’s never called these ones nakotricks before, either. I call them squishies. They’re squishy to chew and make my brain squishy.”
I fought between wanting to laugh and to smack him.
“What else has he given you?” I demanded.
Bones walked up just then, deeply distracting in nothing but black trousers.
He’d even taken off his shoes. His body looked mostly the same, just a little darker and without the golden tattoos or the dragon on his arm.
He also looked a little heavier than he looked right now in real life.
Seeing him shirtless with the black hair, but still moving like Bones, mostly shaped like Bones, made me both nervous and slightly unbalanced me.
I found myself looking up at the face I didn’t recognize, hoping it might distract me from looking at the rest of him.
He’d hidden his scars, too. He’d also given himself darker body hair. Even so, it threw me, seeing so much skin, even if it wasn’t exactly his.
“Are you next?” Alaric asked.
Bones nodded without speaking, glancing at me, as if looking for my reaction.
We were in a different, much smaller square off the main one, patronized mostly by adult Magicals, many of whom might’ve been locals.
I’d noticed one or two faces I recognized from Malcroix, most of them older adults who worked there, not students.
At least one worked in the bestiary, and another I’d seen out tending the gardens.
A long oval had been drawn over the dirt with purple powder, maybe eight feet wide and fifteen feet long. I’d watched nervously as a number of witches and wizards squared off inside the arena, throwing magic at one another, hitting, grappling, and even wrestling in the dirt.
Betting seemed to be the main purpose of the matches, but I saw a number of other mages and witches standing on the sides like Bones, dressed in much lighter clothing and looking like they were waiting for their names to be called.
The arena and square stood behind a pub I’d never visited, and seemed to be part of the pub’s garden area. A booth stood on one side for placing bets, while benches and tables covered the other, with curvy waitresses serving whisky and beer.
“I’ll be fine,” Bones said to me, quieter.
I looked up at him, and bit my lip. “If you really are trying to impress me, you’ve got to know there are better ways. Anyway, I’ve seen you fight before.”
“No you haven’t,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “You were injured not that long ago. You’ve been injured for a while. You can’t possibly be in good physical shape, even if you’ve mostly recovered.”
“Part of why I want to do it,” he said, his expression a touch more grim. “I need to test my body a bit before I actually need to.”
“Brilliant,” I said. “And if you break something? Or something worse?”
He wrapped his bare arms around me, yanking me close.
“Aren’t you going to kiss me for luck?” he asked.
“RAFE!” A deep voice boomed from the other side of the rope. “RAFE GRYPHON! YOU’RE UP!” The heavyset, bearded mage in the grey jumper barely paused but turned his head to shout. “GUNTER! GUNTER RASMUSSEN! YOU’RE UP!”
I bit my lip again. Rafe Gryphon was Bones’s fake name.
I leaned up and kissed him, anyway.
I felt a flicker of heat stab through my magic when I did, right before he kissed me back, making that heat exponentially worse. He didn’t use his tongue, but I got the impression he was holding back, too, even before he let out a low groan by my ear.
“Fuck,” he murmured before raising his head. “I need to do something to deal with my excess energy right now, kitten. Or I’m going to do something a lot stupider than enter an amateur boxing match.” He kissed my neck and let me go. “Bet on me. You can buy us dinner when you win.”
I rolled my eyes. “Cocky prat.”
He grinned back, then lifted the rope and passed under it.
I walked back to the bench where the others sat, and saw that Alaric had already retreated to the same place, probably as soon as Bones walked over. He grinned at me, then pushed a metal tankard of ale over to my part of the wooden table as I sat down next to him.
He saw me looking at the paper bag in his lap and shook it, offering it to me a second time.
After the barest hesitation, I reached in and took two, popping them in my mouth and chewing.
He was right. I hadn’t wanted to get into it with Bones, but I was absolutely not loving the idea of watching him fight right now.
I’d spent too much time over the past month with him in the hospital, or in a literal coma, to relish the idea of watching him get banged up.
“You don’t need to worry, you know,” Luc said, his eyes studying mine. “He really is a one-man wrecking ball. I suspect he’ll spend most of the fight holding back so he doesn’t accidentally put the guy in hospital.”
“He told me to place a bet on him so I could buy us dinner,” I said, scoffing humorlessly as I drank down a few swallows of ale to wash down the gummies.
“Cheeky prick,” Elsbeth laughed.
Nyx smiled, too, and squeezed my arm.
Then, her eyes grew thoughtful. She stood up from the bench and held out a hand. “Do you have any gold on you? I’ll put some money down for both of us.”
I hesitated, reluctant at first.
Then I figured, what the hell? Bones said to do it.
Anyway, he was rich now. He could pay us back if we lost.
I dug into my coat pocket and pulled out all five of the square gold pieces I’d brought with me for the evening.
Really, bringing that much had been overkill.
I hadn’t worked out the exact conversion with Earth money, and it was sort of pointless to even try, but just one of those had bought me a very good meal, an expensive dress, a pair of boots, a stack of parchment, three ink pots, a bag of coffee, and a new scarf in London the past summer.
“Go ahead and bet it all on him,” I told Nyx. “If I end up broke for the rest of the night, at least I’ll get out of buying dinner.”
Elsbeth laughed a second time, glancing over from where she had her head on Dervish’s shoulder.
“I definitely need to hear more about the two of you,” she said, making a gesture with her fingers between me and her that indicated we would be talking later.
“I can’t help but be fascinated by this new development. ”
“Me too,” Dervish said, grinning. “Although I doubt all of your friends will agree,” he muttered afterwards.
I did my best to push aside the meaningful look he aimed at me when he said it.
Miranda and Draken would be back on the carriage sometime tomorrow. I still had no idea what I was going to tell them, but it was beginning to feel less and less realistic that I’d be able to keep this from them forever.
At the very least, they deserved to hear it from me.
They definitely didn’t need to hear it through the university grapevine, or even from someone like Dervish, who was a friend but still wasn’t me.
I would talk to Dervish later. And Luc. And Nyx.
They would understand me wanting to tell Miranda, Draken, and Jolie myself.
Maybe I could take them out to dinner in Bonescastle when they got back, or really, just invite Draken over and talk to them all in our room.
It would be pretty unfair to ambush them in a public place, even if I didn’t have to worry about coming to Bonescastle for other reasons.
I tried to distract myself by thinking about Elsbeth. I wondered how she and Dervish met, and how long they’d been together. She said she’d only come back to live in the Sanctum Occulus last year, so maybe it happened over the summer?
I also wondered if she knew or had spoken to my brother at all. There was no reason why she should have, given the age gap between them, but I still wanted to ask.
I couldn’t ask her here, obviously.
My attention got pulled back to the ring when Bones and his opponent, Gunter someone, bowed to one another, then stepped back. They each retreated until they’d taken up positions on opposite sides of the long, stretched-out oval.
Bones looked unnervingly relaxed. He stretched his arms in front of his chest while he waited, his expression almost bored as he looked over the other mage.
I knew some of that might be posturing, but it stressed me out anyway.
I found myself sizing up his opponent, as well.