Razasani Sun

[Rance]

The sun in Razasan was a thing of legends. No, it was not her precious and despised Glass Sun, neither powerful enough to turn sand into scorching fluid nor burn flesh without its tarsweat into peeling ribbons. The Razasani sun was a gentler and less officious presence. It bled red across the landscape six hours past midnight and dragged itself in a low arc across an unoffensive sky. One could stare upon it at the right hours and feel no need to blink or look away; rather, Gloria could, for the gray baubles of her eyes had already been half-mutilated by Jernoah's burning brightness.

Mornings in Razasan were her favorite. The alleys and streets still stank of garbage and dung, and that was a homely stink that clung to the nostrils and the top of the mouth. But before sunwake, there was never really any smell but that: there was a cleanliness about it, devoid of humans and horses and bodies and cooking food.

I belong in a place like this. I belong—

Raf Ironback hit her in the side of the face. She hit the muddy ground and breathed in a mouthful of dirt.

"Oh, ye've got t' be fuckin' kidding me," he bellowed, his meaty hands thrown up in exasperation. "Tell me, tell me that you're slow or something, or that you just don't have as much brainmeat as everybody else. Like — like—" he grabbed at the air with his hands, "—like you're some fuckin' moron staring off at the sun for a moment of poetic reflection in the middle of a fight!"

She wiped her lips with her stump.

"The sun," she offered in explanation, "looked pretty."

"The sun looked pretty!" the white-bearded dwarf snarled, strangling the air wth both hands. "I get you up at the asscrack of dawn to better you so you don't lose what's left of your brain getting pummeled in the pit, the least you can do is give a shit enough not to let me buckle the side of your head with the first blow."

She started to peel herself up out of the grass and mud, pushing herself to her feet with her lone hand. On a knee, she looked at him with glazed eyes and said, "I doubt very much that you've got the wherewithal to appreciate the simplicity of the scenery, Raf. How often do you get to see a view," Gloria said, her accented voice a whimsical carousel, "like that?"

His impatience flared. He stormed toward her, and though he was two feet shorter than the girl, he grabbed the lapel of her blouse and dragged her face down inches from his. "You don't look like you got a wink of sleep," he spat.

"I was writing."

"Writing what?"

"A letter."

"More fuckin' letters. Of course."

"To Glenn," she reasoned.

When she spoke, he jammed his nose almost against her mouth. Took a breath. On her lips, the natural odor of a commoner: the rot of her cork-colored teeth, a hint of mintleaf to soften the sharpness. And underneath it all, there was an acidic boil to her breath, a faint discourse of upset between mouth and belly. The muted wideness of her eyes made her look like a sleepless loon, a near-sighted bird who rathered the images of fantasy than those of reality. "Were you up drinking?"

"I drink," she said, "but rarely, and—"

Pock. His palm bludgeoned her cheek. Again. Pock, pock, like two slaps to awaken a drunkard. "Be honest," Raf hissed.

"Poppy," Gloria said. "I wrote, and — and I couldn't sleep, and I'd been given some poppymilk for my hand, so I thought I'd take a bit in a tumbler of whiskey, and..."

He unhanded her with almost violent carelessness. She dropped into a seated position on the grass. Her black hair was a veil of dirty black-and-ash, and though she was but nineteen, a few twists of gray had already started to twist themselves through the ragged curls. She extended her only hand, her left, to its quivering extent: a week before, she'd landed a number of solid blows on an opponent in the fighting pit, but she'd forgotten to loosen her fist or choose the palm to do the work. Bruises and bloody scabs crowned her hand, and though Raf had known, she'd continuously comforted his concern with statements of I'm fine, I'm fine.

"How many times," he said, "have you taken it?"

"Three times," she admitted, speaking down into her knees.

"Why?"

"I wanted to write."

"But it hurt?"

She nodded.

"Who gave it to you," Raf said, though he'd already started to piece together the answer. "The poppy. Who gave it to you, Gloria?" Raf didn't need to ask; asking, sometimes, was a treacherous path to take: it confirmed truths and killed other possibilities. When she spoke, he sat down on the grasses beside her, letting his stubby knee press very faintly against hers. The confirmation of touch without the illusion of comfort.

"Lady Follox," she said.

"When?"

"Several nights ago. She came to share dinner. We discussed our agreement. I told her of my aches, that — that I wanted so badly to write, but I found it impossible to. You have to understand, Raf," the girl began, brushing clumps of hair out of her eyes as if she was about to embark on some passionate explanation, "it's a good way for me to empty all these poisons out of my head. I know you don't know him. I barely know him. Razasan is fine, it's quite fine, but..."

"Razasan is a cesspool," he corrected.

"I think it's fine," she returned, "but it's not my home, it's not where I would choose to be."

There was a potential in the poise of her cracked lips, a dam ready to burst with admissions of emotions and faults and broken shards, pieces of her she'd chosen to bury away and that the remnants of the poppy were silently encouraging her to spill forth. Raf reached out with a clumsy fist and clapped it against her shoulder. "That's enough," he said, a brutish warmth even in his unkindness. "Look, don't go getting that mess all over me. You're here now, and if that's the way it's gotta be, it's gotta be that way. So you stay here until you choose not to be here, and that's that. That's that. Besides, I think this letter-writing is a bunch of fool's bullshit."

"Bull's shit," she corrected him.

"Whatever it is, it's a waste. You're a fighter in my pit, and that's what matters. What I can't have is a fighter who's culling pain with poppy."

"I'm tired of losing," Gloria said.

"Then stop choosing to."

She picked at a spot of old blood on her muddy blouse. Her stare was distant. Unsettled. Somewhere else. With detached amusement, she examined the black-bruised spine of her hand, flexed her remaining fingers into a half-functional fist, and unwound them once more. Then, with a ginger hand that had spent too much of its time striking ore and hitting people, he reached around to her opposite cheek, and carefully guided her head down, down, atop the bend of his knee.

"I want you," he said, squinting at the sun, "to be careful with Follox, Gloria. She's a woman of function first. How you serve her is most important. Kindness is probably somewhere down at the bottom of her list of priorities. That poppy's a fine idea on the surface, but too much of it and you'll find it's more of a necessity than a convenience.

"Soften the mind too much," he said, "and you'll dull your fist. And all you'll do is lose."

He'd stir her tomorrow morning, then, for a harder practice with a clearer mind. For now—

"I want to go home," Gloria said.

Several minutes passed. Around them, Razasan had started to wake, but the sun was still a hot coin of redness on the rim of the sky.

Raf said, "It does look pretty."

[Rance]

Raf Ironback had a saying. Or maybe it was more of an instinct and less than a saying, because every time he cited it, it came out with different words. Or, more exactly, it was less an instinct and more like a pervading idea, a modus oprerandi that vaguely guided him in his role as the resident pit-manager for the Gruelmaster: People want to be entertained. It was neither a clever nor a wise adage. Rather, it was personal advice to follow when he felt like he was too greatly bending the unspoken rules of pit-fighting to accommodate the needs at hand. Because business, the old dwarf knew, was business, and being fair didn't always tuck you into bed at night or buy you that Sixthday's evening whore that he enjoyed so much.

Ensuring that entertainment was always at hand meant he had the responsibility to oversee two things: one, that his fighters were capable to fight again; two, that his fighters were pleased, provided for, and properly groomed for their hard and brutal evenings of work.

Gloria Wynsee, being the newest — and arguably most controversial, for how the sneers and groans of disgust came up from the men in the audience when she entered the pit — required the most stringent regimen. But fuck, if they didn't pay to see what would come of her! Inevitably, it was always a loss — Follox's deal with the girl had cemented that truth — but grave interest hovered in the crowds the way it might during a hanging or a beheading: When's that girl gonn' fight again? and Can't wait t' see that dark-skin punchin'-sack get her teef rattled, and Mebbe one day, they'll punch her clothes roigh' off, and they'd all laugh and get drunk and pour money into the betting-coffers.

So he worked her hard. Harder than the others. She'd already a raw talent for fistwork, the kind that came from years of unfocused stubborness. She lacked any sense of self-preservation amid others' fists. She didn't just punch with her lone fist: she commanded with it, wielded a frightful power and ferocity when she must. Fighters were trained; scrappers, however, and survivors, were products of inherent necessity.

Before sunwake, he worked on that bit of Jerno-coal, hit her, snarled at her, spit at her, sought to break her, remold her.

But in the pit, she lost every fight. In her glassy, gray eyes, he always saw the reason: Resignation. Boredom. A dullard's complete lack of investment. She fought to a peak, then willingly tumbled back down.

Because Lady Follox, her benefactor, demanded it.

* * * *

"I'm not asking you for much," Raf said. "It's a favor, though, and I'd be indebted to you."

"It's breaking the rules, though."

"What rule, exactly?'

"The rules," sputtered Hallister, who danced effortlessly aside as Raf tossed a half-hearted jab at his cheek. "You're the son'abitch who wrote them up, and here you are asking me to go directly against them."

Gritting his teeth with frustration, Raf barreled forward and threw a flurry of sharp, precise punches at his opponent. Hallister, who'd been shaped and hardened by several years in the Razasani military — and who'd only recently lost his officership — seemed only to twist or turn his head or hips to effortlessly avoid every one of the dwarf's blows. He left precise streaks and gouges in the wet earth where his feet slid in almost dance-like patterns. Finally, Raf spun, tossed a punch meant more to disorient than to strike, and then pivoted in a clear circle to throw a violent elbow toward the soldier.

Hallister caught it in his hands, but it didn't keep the dwarf from slamming him against the outside wall of the Gruelmaster. Over the meaty arm, he said, "I know the rules aren't absolute—"

"Nobody's going to bat an eyelash," Raf said.

"Fuck if they won't, Ironback. You know as well as I, the rules are there to keep the semblance of legality. They let you run the pit because you keep it on the up-and-up."

"This won't change that."

"Everyone's going to see it," Hallister said. "If I do what you want me to, the whole crowd, the Guards you pay off? They'll see it, and my reputation will go straight into the pot. If," he said, then heaved forward to fling Raf away, "I don't get arrested that instant."

In a mixture of frustration and impatience, Raf threw himself forward again at Hallister. The dwarf had frightfully quick strikes: his brutish arms pumped forward in a series of sweeping strikes that the former soldier couldn't help but to avoid entirely. To get even a hint of one of those knuckles would have sent him hurtling into unconsciousness.

"Do I pay you good?" Raf asked.

"Yes. Yes, you do."

"Do I ask much from you?"

"I bleed enough for you."

"Do I ask much from you," Raf asked again.

Hallister shook his head.

"Do I treat you well?"

The fight began to dissolve from Hallister's arms. He rubbed his face. "I've never gone hungry, that's for sure. But the crowd—"

"The crowd doesn't give an unwashed boar's ass about the fuckin' rules, Hal. You might be one of their favorites, but they're blind as a nest of bats. They won't stop giving you that adoration you so desperately crave, if that's what you mean."

Raf cocked back his arm to come again, but Hallister raised a flat hand in silent concession. He swigged from a battered wineskin, then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. When he spoke between gulps, he sucked down heavy, swelling breaths. "It's not just your rules I'm afraid of breaking," Hal admitted. "It's mine too, Raf. You're asking me to forget a whole moral guidebook. You're asking me to surrender a certain kind of standard that I've strived to hold myself to."

"Aren't you holier-than-thou," Raf said.

"Why me," Hal asked, his eyebrows arching upward. "Seriously, Raf. Why not any of the other gutter-trash you hire? Why couldn't you have them do it?"

"I don't trust them," he said. "They'd pull their punches. Whatever morals you think you have, you're a soldier. There's a killer somewhere in there. Don't tell me that's not true. That's why you came to me in the first place, wasn't it, Hal? No more military life, but still a taste for the fight on the tongue. It doesn't go away. I know. I know.

"That's the Hal I want. Fuck the other one, this wine-drinking pretty-boy who smiles perfect teeth at everyone he beats. Fuck him. He's useless," the dwarf said, and raised his hand in silent request for the wineskin.

"I want the Hal that goes for the kill."

[Rance]

"The poppy," Raf whispered in her ear, his voice a ghostly hiss above the din of the pit-crowd. "Have you avoided it, as I told you to?"

Gloria, whose black sweat ran in rivulets down into the divot of her collarbone, gave a sharp sideways glance at the white-bearded dwarf. "You know me better than that. I'm neither bound to it nor bound by it. I took it for pain, and that's it. Revisiting it wouldn't be prudent."

"Look me in the eye."

She did. She sharply pinned his stare with hers. Her Sun-bleached eyes were, for a few moments, devoid of feeling, and the piercing inhumanity in that glare matched what few descriptions he'd read of Jernos in books: that their gray gazes were better stones than eyes, that their ever-tiny pupils lacked emotion or poise. They might have hunted stonebears in the deserts, but they were stonebears to the core.

Gloria had practiced that leer, that weapon of clarity and precision, ever since stepping foot into Ruann. A memory flooded her...

"A mere woman looks to her feet as she moves through the world," Mothersister Aubergine preached, pacing before them with one authoritative fist positioned before her belly and the other gesticulating passionately in the air. "But a Jerno woman stares out into a world she intends to make her own." She said this to a huddled mass of choirgirls, a sea of black-haired children whose perspiring skin gleamed like oiled copper. "Consider a question for me."

"Yes, Mothersister," they said as one.

"Do you know why so few outsiders come to Jernoah?"

"No, Mothersister," they said as one.

"Don't simply humor me," Aubergine said. "Venture a guess. Anyone?"

Merla, who'd never grown lower teeth, perked up and said through her sloppy lisp, "Outsiders don't like Jernos."

"No."

Then Jion, who had more hair on her upper lip than most boys, straightened her back and offered, "Because outsiders are afraid of Jernos."

"No."

Meanwhile, hiding behind her twisted knots of hair, Glour'eya stifled a smile. She took pleasure in their wrongness; secretly, she yearned for it, and measured good days and bad days with this silent cruelty. They had such large mouths, thought themselves such willing students, and Aubergine never hesitated to break the scaffolds of pride out from under them. They thought so greatly of themselves, believed themselves such indomitable girls, that they never thought before they spoke. Desra, too. Couldn't forget Desra. Desra was the worst of all of them. Glour'eya hated all of them, and while they might have had their laughs after candlesleep about her polluted bedding, she had her satisfaction in the daytime watching Aubergine dismembering their tiny sputters of confidence.

Aubergine, her shoulders a slump of disappointment, said again, "Does anyone know why so few outsiders come to Jernoah?"

Silence. Until Desra, two rows down, raised her hand, cleared her throat, and recited the response as if she'd memorized it from a book: "Because outsiders cower under—"

"Because outsiders cower under the stare of a Jerno woman," Glour'eya blurted, almost leaping to her feet, "and their cocks break themselves right in half out of fear from what we might do to them!"

Snap. Snap, snap, a thumb and a middle finger flickering in front of her eyes. Raf said, "Where's your mind fuckin' off to, princess?"

She swallowed. "Sorry. I'm sorry, I—"

"Stay here. In the now. Look," Raf said, and he was close enough to her ear that his white beard bristled against her throat and cheek. "I know you got shit on your mind. Far be it from me to say you can't, but you let your mind take over too much of the game, and your body won't listen. Hallister might look darling, but he's a purebred killer. Razasani officers don't rise to rank without proving themselves in battle, and Hal's done that. His teeth are still there because he's too fast to get them knocked out. He'll apologize when he's done with you, but in the pit, he'll devour you whole."

She looked out beyond the pit-wall toward the crowd. The usual scattering of half-shaved drunkards and commoners. Men in leather tunics. Women in crumpled dresses. Barely six teeth between all of them. Drinking, shouting, some watching her, one making crude gestures with his tongue between two fingers, others shouting soundless jeers and insults. None of them could she hear, but underneath her skin, they boiled a soundless poison. A glance to her left, and she thought she saw Jion. To her right, a whisper of shadow. Desra? No. Just old haunting memories. Choirgirls and sand. A burning wasteland of sand a sea apart from here that still stuck to the inside of her conscience like old marmalade...

(Myrken Wood, for all it did to break you into pieces, was the best memory you've ever had.

But Jernoah? Fuck Jernoah.

One line of a letter leaped to existence in her mind. The words unraveled behind her eyes.

I think you can handle a bit of poison. Better you than someone who can't.)

The ring of a cattle-bell. Hallister stood, flashed her a smile from across the thresh-floored pit.

Like a wolf let off its leash, Gloria Wynsee leaped at him.

[Rance]

That she'd but one hand didn't matter, and Hallister saw it when she came for him. He'd watched her fight from the sides of the pit, preparing for his own later bouts, but he'd never seen her from this perspective, never looked perfectly down the angle of her nose to see the embers in those hollow eyes. He was, always had been, always would be a soldier: in the field, he'd wielded a warhammer, a one-handed maul with which he could shatter skulls through helms and crush collarbones into powder between the creases of armor. During the 'Sputes (the histories homogenized them — The Landowner Disputes of 214 —and downplayed just how violent those actions really were, especially in that they'd necessitated military intervention for private feuds) he'd earned himself quite a reputation as being a fearless soldier as well as a compassionate mediator.

A slip in judgment, though, and he'd mauled two teenaged prarie-girls in the confusion of a battle. They'd only been fleeing, had only been trying to run from the violence, and he'd swept by them with one stroke, thought they were with the mass of rebels, so he'd swung, snap-snap, and their brains looked like sprigs of gray broccoli on the flanks of his horse—

("It could happen to anyone, Hal."

"I'm better than that."

"Collateral damage is just part of war."

"But those girls were scared."

"They were in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Those girls were so scared.")

A begrudging court-martial.

From the 'Sputes to the pits.

Innocent girls then. Innocent girls now.

But this one had fire.

Her left hand lashed out in a series of quick, distracting punches. Her forearm surged like a piston, and her hips twitched hard enough behind each strike to send her dirty skirts flaring like patchwrk fire. With the back of his hand flapping almost carelessly, he swept each blow away. Didn't block them, didn't interrupt them (any good shield crumbles under a direct blow; a good shield-wielder knows to angle it ever-so-slightly, let the offending blade or bludger graze off it. Same went for fists). When her first barrage of strikes tapered off, her blunted right arm hacked down at him like a weapon. He twisted himself and drove his hand up underneath her chin. Her teeth snapped together. She reeled back, arms circling.

This crowed enjoyed seeing a woman bleed. This was a pit for fellows. And hypocrites.

A kick was a truly dangerous maneuver, but he risked it here. He slid forward and threw out his boot not toward her stomach, but toward the blur of her skirts, aiming for a knee. It never struck; she twisted, reached out for him, managed to wrap her arm around his neck, and drove him down like a bag of wet grain to the floor. His spine buckled against the wood underneath the thresh, and she came down with an unrelenting elbow toward—

(Desra damn well earned it, too, the girl thought)

—his mouth.

Only time to turn a cheek. It ricocheted off his cheekbone, slid down across his ear, and the blow dissolved. Meanwhile, he thrust his hand up to her neck, a single finger extended, and slammed it like a blunt arrow against the soft meat between throat and clavicle. Her tongue lanced out, lapped at the air with a "Glurp!" noise, and she scrambled back to put space between them.

* * * *

In the crowd, Lady Follox tilted her leaden goblet and asked for more wine. The red fluid soothed her sour throat. Tiny flecks of gray metal floated on the fluid's surface.

Watching it all pleased her very much.

* * * *

Pain ceased being useful in a fistfight. As a prohibitive message, it served only to create a greater conflict: one inside, the constant combat between fight or flight. Hallister had learned to dull it years before, and it was clear the girl had as well. Though she clambered backward to tend to her throat, she was already on her haunches when he closed the distance. He swept one hand harmlessly out across her face, never touching, never even glancing off her, but influencing: she gasped, flinched her head back, and by the time she'd forgotten about the rest of her body, he'd already landed several blows under her ribs. Hot breath belched out of her. Again, again, he hit her, even heard a muffled crack as one of his fists drove further against her than he'd intended—

Their skulls went snap-snap

—and, like a tide's tired wave, she started to crumble. Her structure broke. Knees wobbling, her lips dangling a single string of saliva, her gray eyes glassy, Hallister knew he'd won. Before he reached down to the cuff of his folded boot, he swallowed bile and flicked his gaze up at the audience.

Raf was there.

Are you sure?

The dwarf nodded.

Hallister sucked in a mouthful of numbing air. He bent down and slid the slender knife out of his boot.

It didn't matter, really.

It wouldn't be the first girl he'd killed.

[Rance]

It had all become so routine, and so quickly: every few days, another fight in the pit, another opportunity to express herself through the swing of a fist only to feel the gradual tug of boredom as she sometimes watched fists flutter by and other times felt them stop against her jaw and her nose. And every one of them — every single one, no matter how firm its strike or how bloody her face afterward — was routine, too. Those fists had never been out to destroy her. Never had a single one of the fighters she'd encountered as a fledgling brawler thought I want to kill my opponent[i]. Instead, they thrived on other desires entirely: [i]I want to get paid or I want to win. Their fists said it. They were all far better actors and laborers than they were fighters. Never once had any blow she'd dodged or taken in the pit posed a threat until--

Until, half-attentive, she saw Hallister stride toward her with a gleaming line of steel sticking out of his fist.

The realization of the drawn weapon rippled through the Gruelmaster's basement like a surge of tidewater. Cheers and shouts went numb, silent. People stopped drinking their mugs of beer. Collectively, like a single being, their muscles constricted and jaws tightened. It was against the rules. Weapons were against the rules, and for a people who so adored the illegal pleasure of hard fists striking tender flesh, to see a weapon brought to bear shattered even their comfortable understanding of a world governed by laws, rites, and rule.

Silence. Silence, except for Hallister's scuffing boots, his blasts of nasal exhalation, and the ring of steel whisking through the air. He closed the distance between himself and the girl in seconds and started slicing.

Once, she'd hated knives.

Do you remember, Glour'eya, said the Jerno in her mind, that conscience she'd tried to suffocate with new habits and new memories. Do you remember how you feared them? How, before you had two of your very own, one at your hip and one in your boot named Liam, you would refute their necessity to all you met?

Before you knew a Perfect Stroke, before you'd driven a knife of glass through two cruel hearts at once, you hated the very thought of a knife.

Myrken Wood had taught her this rule, an essential of anyone who sought to survive the attack of another's knife:

You would not walk away unscathed. A knife is precise. A knife is tiny, sharp, agile, and in even the most unskilled hands, it is nearly invisible.

You will be cut.

You will bleed.

Accept that truth.

(Had it been Ariane, tall and bold, who'd told her such a thing? Had it been Agnieszka, with her unfettered hate and fury, in some loud argument with the girl? Or Giuseppe, whose eyes and fingers were knives themselves? Had it been Liam as he'd drawn his blade upon her, and she heard it in the stink of his breath and seen it in his snarling eyes? Maybe Son, before she thought him so desirable. Who, who, who had told her such a thing?)

The first blow drew blood. She swept up her handless stump. Steel whickered in three slices across sleeve, sliced her in a series of lines from her elbow to the middle of her forearm. Warmth flooded her skin. Relentless, the blade bit for her like a snake's head. It glanced off her ribboned elbow and lunged toward her face, a red-and-silver tongue ready to snap.

She whipped her head back. The knife never found its mark.

In the back of her mouth, saliva gathered. A broken molar began to throb.

Hallister retracted, shifted his grip to an underhanded one, and came forward again, his foot driving down into the floor as he tried to pin her to the pit's wall with stabs. Two consecutive blows slid in under her forearms and cut tiny pink lines in her belly. "Fuck you," she heard him say, like a mantra under his breath: "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you," a tight-lipped, nearly-silent chant.

This man, this Hallister, wanted to kill her.

No.

Not the Black Smoke. Not Rhaena Olwak. Not the Red Devil, not the Storyteller, not It or Threepoints Marsh. Not the Black Man, not Aleksei River. Not Jernoah, not childbirth. And certainly not some overzealous pit-fighter with a little bit of steel.

He came again. Weapons empowered their owners with advantage, but what accompanied that confidence was always a penchant for sloppiness. Fists could not defeat a knife, but the knife wasn't her opponent. So she ignored it in those last few seconds; she let it flicker toward her, take tiny lumps of skin out of her, let it cut free its share of skin and dress. When he overswung, when opportunity arose, she availed herself of it: a twist on her heel, then, to rapidly turn herself aside and leave the blade gouging into the space where she'd been. With his arm outstretched mid-thrust, all of him was available to her.

Gloria's lone hand didn't crash into him or strike him. Instead, she grabbed his wrist, twisted her hip to take him — for but a mere half-second — out of his sense of balance, and then bent his hand a wholly inhuman angle. She rolled his hand down into his wrist, folded his wrist down to his forearm, and the knife fell free of his grip and she was screaming into his face without realizing it, howling like a vicious beast as she relentlessly knotted every one of his tendons and bones against their natural grain, and she felt his wrist and forearm snap like a bundle of twigs but never heard it, and with every passing second, she felt more bones inside his wrist simply splinter and he was on the ground, now, flailing, and she kept bending until the tiny half-broken bones were tinier shards and his digits dangled like useless worms and—

Raf had her by the shoulders. Dragged her back while she continued screaming at Hallister, the dwarf's voice a thousand leagues away as he said, "Come off him, girl, get off him, it's done." Two men had bounded over the pit-wall, two armored members of the Guard, and whisked Hallister and his shattered limb away.

Someone was shouting, "I won't die for you. You didn't earn it, you didn't earn it," and only when she realized it was her did the world begin to come back to Gloria: the chaos of the crowd was a din of noise; her forearms were sleeves of blood; she gagged on something in the back of her throat, and on her tongue dangled a worm of Black Oil, a wet tendril that lashed at the backs of her broken teeth and dared to be let out, let loose, let free to turn the offender inside out—

Raf Ironback saw it. Like a clump of damp, black yarn in her mouth trying to will itself free.

He closed her jaw, dragged her through the crowd, and disappeared.

[Rance]

Into a dry-storage room where tangles of herbs dangled like brittle web from the ceiling. Raf Ironback shoved her into it, and she nearly fell into a stack of barrel of salted pork. There was no light save for a beam spilling in through a basement window. Dusty motes danced like bugs in that stream of flickering firelight from the streetlamps. Huffing out a rattling breath, Raf glanced her over, bruised and bloody, and took limited assessment before nodding his head and reaching back to pull shut the door.

But a wiry, feminine hand lodged itself between the door and the jamb and wrenched it open. Behind a gilded veil, Lady Follox's face was a twisted mass of fury and displeasure. She stormed into the small storeroom, a wildfire of skirts and sleeves, and drove her hand into Gloria's shoulder. "You stupid, stupid cunt," the woman blazed, pinning the seamstress to the wall. "What," she roared, "was that? Tell me, right now, what that was about—"

Raf reached out. "Aremeda, this isn't the time."

Gloria wrenched herself away from Follox's touch. "He pulled a weapon on me. You saw it clear as day."

"That gave you no right to break our bargain!"

"Better I should die, then, than shatter your precious standards?"

"You're bound by contract to do exactly as I say when I deem it," Follox said.

"I signed nothing."

"That makes you no less accountable."

"I signed nothing."

Follox thrust her face down nearly into Gloria's, glaring at the girl. While Gloria was remarkably tall by most standards, just a few fingers short of eighteen hands, Follox was taller still, partially due to the wooden platforms in the slender scaffolds of her boots. "Business such as ours is not bound by signatures in ink or blood, Wynsee. You give a woman your word, you stand by that word, or you die by that word, but you do not break that word at any cost."

Gloria swung her arm upward and nearly crammed it against Follox's nose. The sleeve had been cleanly sliced four times, and where the fabric had been split, red gaps smiled out of the skin. A webwork of fresh blood stained her dark flesh. "You never asked for this. This wasn't part of our bargain, and you know it."

Raf threw his hands in the air. "Oh, fuck your bargains. Both of you, spitting at each other like a pair of—"

Follox swept her head around to leer at Raf. Gloria glared at him too. And simultaneously asked, "Like a pair of what?"

The dwarf clapped his palm to his brow. "Shut up, Raf."

"You," Follox said, "aren't a party in this. This is between the girl and me, dwarf."

"She's my charge," Raf responded. "It's my duty to ensure her safety."

"What are you now, Raf? My father?" Gloria asked.

Raf stared at them both, his eyes wide and incredulous over the swollen bauble of his nose. In complete disbelief, he clapped his palms to the sides of his head and flicked his eyes back and forth between the two of them. "You know what," he said, calm voice belying his exasperation. "I can't believe you two. Cats with fuckin' claws out, and the minute I try to inject some kind'a reason into it, you both turn on me like I'm the enemy. Aremeda, business is business, so let's conduct it like business and not like a pack of wild animals. The tenets of your bargain were, as I remember, distinct."

"That she lose," Follox said, "until I give her the command to win."

"Hallister broke the rules," Raf said. "Gloria didn't."

"I defended myself," Gloria added.

"And Hal won't be seeing the inside of the pit for a long time—"

"If his wrist has any say in the matter," Gloria finished.

Follox's jaw tightened underneath her veil. "That your fighter put one of your others at significant bodily risk should be a deeply concerning matter to you, Raf. That he could have even managed to sneak a weapon into the pit on his person demonstrates a clear lack of organization on your part."

Gloria's head snapped backward with surprise. She turned to Raf. "Now she expresses concern about my livelihood."

"You want to throw fights in my pit, Aremeda," the dwarf continued, "I'm fine with that. You want to instruct the girl to lose until it becomes more lucrative for her to win, I'm fine with that. But this is the risk you take. There are always factors you can't account for, always new ingredients tossed into the recipe. I'm all for a reasonable business agreement, but reality and necessity outweigh those."

The seamstress said, "What good would it do you, Aremeda, if I was dead?"

Follox's right fist tightened, and her left hand swept up to unconsciously stroke at the length of her forearm. Her fingernails scraped at the fabric of her sleeve as if soothing some pain beneath. She deflated. She settled back on her heels, but whisked her hand underneath Gloria's chin and gripped it in two fingers. "We're not done. You're obligated to your agreement. You've already capitalized on my aid, and I'll not stop until I've recieved commensurate remuneration. This once is your only allowance. The dwarf is going to ensure that none of his men ever tip the scales again, or I'll gladly bring the local Guard down upon this warm shithole of an establishment.

"In two days, we talk. In the meantime—" Follox wrenched the embroidered veil from her face, tore it from its seams, and tucked it into the collar of Gloria's dress, "—clean yourself up. You're a bloody disgrace."

Follox stormed out and slammed the storeroom door behind her.

"Is there another fight tonight?" Gloria asked the dwarf. Her gall had vanished. She stared at the floor.

"I'll have them cancel the rest of the card."

"He almost killed me."

"I know."

"You asked him to."

The dwarf reached above his head and tapped a string of dried garlic, setting it into a pendulous sway above him. He didn't answer. They both stood a few feet apart from each other in the storeroom. Gloria's forearm occasionally pattered another droplet of blood to the thresh floor scattered beneath them. They both listened as the basement beyond began to clear out. Feet rumbled up the stairs where beer and ale awaited onlookers. Restless spectators went elsewhere to feed their bloodlust. Shuffling boots passed by the basement window, casting long dashes of shadow across Gloria's face.

Anger burned inside the confines of her chest. Anger, and underneath it, a spark of gratitude. Raf Ironback would never verbally admit to having asked Hallister to wield that knife, but Gloria Wynsee was neither complete fool nor daft imbecile. Enough times in her life, she'd tried to tip scales, had tried to plant ideas and implement plans that would neither implicate her nor do more than subtly alter the situations around her. She, however, had always been clumsy; she'd always left her marks, her evidence, like a careless clockmaker.

She didn't ask about the knife. And in return, he didn't ask her about the Black Oil that, like a bit of living liquid, had started reaching out of her mouth at the end of the fight.

Some questions were best left unanswered.

"She's going to want me to win from now on," Gloria said.

"I know."

"It's going to have to be believable."

"I know."

They did not speak anymore that night. He helped her cleanse the various wounds, applied ointment to them, and was even kind enough to string some threads through a few thin needles for her. The stitches would be her own to perform, but even with four fingers, Gloria Wynsee was a far better seamstress than he could have ever been with ten.

Her heart ran all through the night, a fluttering tha-thum tha-thum tha-thum in her chest that was neither native nor natural. Her heart had ceased its own pace, and like a slave, like a good, good rat'vak, it listened to another heart entirely, ascertained its rhythm, mimicked its frantic beat.

She wondered if, far away, he noticed it too.