Chapter Two The Financial State of Two Slumdogs
CHAPTER TWO
THE FINANCIAL STATE OF TWO SLUMDOGS
M IDNIGHT WAS UPON the city of Setgad.
Lythlet dragged herself toward home, her feet sore as they pressed over and over into uneven cobblestones.
The triumph of the night had faded; she was now simply tired, her pockets heavy from her hard work.
Her last stop had been a seedy pawnshop in Rendathos Ward, where she had exchanged the wedding pendant set for a handsome sum to hand over to Tucoras at dawn.
“Oi, is that you, Lythlet? Haven’t seen you in a while!” A man waved at her from the other side of the street, his grimy hair framing a cheerful smile.
It took her a moment to place him: it was Finneas, an attendant at the local brawlers’ square.
They’d met a handful of times before, when Desil used to come for his matches.
Though Lythlet had never had the time to watch a match—if she wasn’t rushing off to work, she’d have errands to run for home or for her employers—there had always been time to briefly greet this fellow.
Finneas grinned knowingly at her. “Yet another successful heist, eh?”
She froze, fear striking her, the coins in her pocket growing heavier. “Pardon?”
He patted a rolled-up gazette sticking out of his coat pocket. “You know, that burglary at the Athernara last night by the Phantom. Between that and The Setgad Dilemma being banned for good, today’s edition of the Daily Diamond was a ripper to read.”
Lythlet heaved a relieved sigh. “Yes, the city has scarcely been talking about anything else. All done with work?”
“Just got some notices the bosses want me to nail up. Take one, will you? One less for me to deal with.” He waved a handbill at her, and she took it gingerly.
CALLING FOR CONQUESSORS! announced the handbill in crisp baltascar-block print. MASTER RENVELD DOTHILOS PRESENTS AN OPPORTUNITY TO RELIVE THE GLORY OF OUR ANCESTORS!
“Conquessing? Some sort of bloodsport, is it?” she asked, vaguely recalling the name from somewhere.
“Right you are, Lytha. The match-master’s hunting for fresh faces to pad out next season’s roster, seems like.”
“Is it similar to brawling?”
“Brawling?” he guffawed. “Not in the least. Haven’t you heard your friends talk about it?
The arena runs nearly all year round, matches held once a fortnight and recruitment for new contestants running every quarter like clockwork.
The games may be outlawed on paper, but they’re hardly the best kept secret these days. ”
“I don’t recall Desil mentioning it before.”
“Your other friends?”
“I have no other friends.”
The attendant chuckled, misguidedly assuming she grasped the mechanics of making a joke. “Desil mentioned you’ve little knowledge of the world beyond your nose.”
Stricken by self-consciousness, she remained silent.
Desil wouldn’t have meant that maliciously—it was fact, plain and simple.
But it wounded her to think of just how much her world had shrunk in the last few years, of how isolated her life had become, rendering her foreign in her own home, ignorant of the latest whims of society.
With nearly all her hours slaving away for whatever ill-tempered boss she was employed by at the moment and the scant remainder spent sleeping and eating at home, if it wasn’t something mentioned by either Desil or her employer, odds were she simply knew nothing of it.
Desil was not the sort to willingly discuss tawdry matters like bloodsports, and Master Winaro in his better moods would much rather rant about how the latest motion passed by Governor Matheranos was only going to relocate even more resources away from the slums to the wealthier sectors.
Even this extended interaction with Finneas was a rare moment for her, and likely would not have happened were she still under the employ of Master Winaro, bound to the administration quarters until the wee hours to appease his demands.
Finneas went on, “It’s another bloodsport, except you’re not fighting any regular bloke off the street the way Desil did. Killing sun-cursed monsters, that’s what the game’s all about!”
His choice of words was odd; the archaic turn of phrase sun-cursed monsters sounded like something Desil would recite from a passage of the Poetics. “You mean beasts from the wildlands?”
He grinned. “That’s right. Sun-cursed monsters is what the match-master calls all them exotic animals—a most dramatic fellow, that one.
Every conquessor pairing gets twelve rounds in total, one a month and each round dedicated to a warden.
But getting someone to last that long’s nigh impossible even in a good year, and I hear this year’s been even worse.
Contestants have been dropping out like flies, seems like.
In for a round, out the next, and so the match-master’s hunt for his next great contestants continues! ”
“I suppose the prize is too meager for them to persist?”
“Oh, no, you’re off the mark on that. Conquessors—especially the famous ones—reeled in some legendary jackpots back in the day.
Brawlers don’t make as much, truth be told.
But it’s one thing to slug a man in the face, and another to get chased around by some beastie with fangs and spooky bits.
Gives me the shivers just thinking about it.
Our city’s built on proper holy land here, sacred and all that, and bringing in those ungodly beasties ain’t right at all.
Sacrilege! At any rate, they’re recruiting conquessors to begin in spring.
Have a look if you want. Desil might be good at it, you know. How’s the two of you been doing?”
“Fine, very good,” she lied, tightlipped. “And you?”
“I’m better than ever, meself! There’s a gorgeous lass I’ve been talking to, and fingers crossed it won’t be long before I’m plucked clean off the market again.
Might pop by a shrine to ask for eight minutes of divine luck right before I propose courtship to her, hah!
Say, I’ve been meaning to visit Desil at that teahouse he serves at. The, ah, what’s it called now—”
“The Steam Dragon.”
“That’s the one! Love me a good brew, and they’ve some fine leaves indeed.
But y’know, the square’s been having a hard time of it since Desil left us.
The bosses’ve been searching high and low for new talent to replace him, but damn if they’ve had any luck.
Hard to find someone who can replicate the Desil Demothi streak.
An undefeated champion for a whole bloody year!
I still have to deal with spectators coming in and asking if he’ll be returning to the square.
” Finneas looked at her hopefully, flashing a yellow-toothed grin.
“I don’t suppose he’s been thinking of coming back? ”
She returned a mirthless smile. “I fear not.”
“It’d be a pity to waste his talent, don’t you think?
I know you never got to see him in action, but he was just magic at drawing a crowd.
We’d get more coin in a single night with him than a whole month of everyone else on our roster.
He might’ve left because the violence and all that didn’t sit right in his belly, but he always trusted your advice, he said. If you talked to him—”
She shook her head. “He’s much happier now that he can keep his vow of peacekeeping to Tazkar. I won’t ask him to return to brawling.”
“Pity,” said the attendant, lips pursed. Then he shrugged, carefree as ever. “Well, as long as you two are doing well. I thought you might be missing the money, that’s why I brought it up. But I guess you don’t need it! Good on you, Lytha.”
She gave him a polite, pinched smile, his words stirring something tangled and prickly in her. “Well, I’m heading back home now,” she said briefly.
“So am I, once I’m done with all this,” he said, gesturing at the handbills.
She looked back down at her own. RICHES BEYOND ALL MEASURE! announced the brazen handbill. A brash promise she knew better than to trust. She folded it and tucked it into her pocket to dispose of later.
For tonight, there would be no more thought of fighting and brutality; she would return home to Desil and count their coins.
They had a future to budget for.
· · ·
H OME, AND WHAT a bitter thought that was.
She had reached the copse of kataka trees, mammoth growths resembling an eerie huddle of giants. Seeds of light burst from the leafy cluster, hinting at residents within, still awake at the midnight hour.
The very tree she called home stood before her, swallowing her entire view with its height.
Fifteen men abreast could fit across the trunk.
Rope ladders dangled to the ground, wobbly old things leading to dimly lit homes, for built into the kataka’s thick branches were small houses, each a rectangle no larger than a few arm-spans across.
Each home was a construction of the cheapest wooden boards to be found in the slums, nailed together with barely a care for what gaps remained.
Deathly cold during winters, sweltering in the summers, and wickedly tremulous during the thunderstorms that roared midyear, a kataka treehouse was only worsened by the requirement to climb that damnable rope ladder all the way up and down every time, a feat that would quickly leave one wheezing for air.
In the distance stood the Tower of Setgad, the moonlit guilloche of the city’s emblem gleaming on its glassy surface—a diamond, its boundaries breached by flames.
The highborn peers who frequented the heights of the tower would never know the ache Lythlet’s limbs felt, not with those winch lifts assisting their journey. It stole a sigh of envy from her.
She squeezed the bag of coins in her pocket, then began her ascent up the rope ladder with a groan.
Halfway through her journey, she heard something—a muffled cry, then a man saying something she could not make out. But she knew that voice, that sniveling tenor.
Tucoras? But he’s not to come until dawn!
She scrambled up the ladder, hands and feet working in a panic.