Promise of Blood

The carriage came to a stop in front of a three-story building off a side street at the far end of High Talian, the slums of Adopest. There was but a single entrance on this street, with a faded olive-green double door. Half of it was closed, blocked from inside, the paint peeling and the masonry crumbling around the doorpost. The other half was open, and a man of small stature leaned against the opposite post.

Adamat fetched his hat and cane from the carriage and held them in one hand, the other seeking a handkerchief from his pocket, which he used to cover his mouth as he stepped out. He paid the driver and approached the doorway, listening absently to the clatter of hoofbeats behind him as the carriage pulled away.

“Where in Kresimir’s name did you find an apple this time of year, Jeram?” Adamat wiped his nose and stuffed the handkerchief in a pocket.

The doorman gave him a slant-toothed smile. “G’evening, sir. Haven’t seen you for a month or two.” He took a crunching bite of his apple. “My cousin in the south of Bakerstown gets fresh fruit all year-round.”

“They say we might go to war with the Kez if negotiations don’t go well,” Adamat said. “You’ll have to wait until next fall for another apple.”

Jeram made a sour face. “Just my luck.”

“How go the fights today?”

Jeram pulled a worn piece of paper from the brim of a threadbare hat and studied it to make out the most recent markings. “SouSmith’s done three in a row, Formichael has won twice today. The two of them look ready to drop, but it’s the foreman has a death bug in his britches, says the two of them are gonna fight it out this hour.”

“Five fights between the two of them already?” Adamat snorted. “It’ll be piss poor, they’ll barely be able to stand.”

“Aye, that’s what the tables are saying, and there’s not much wagers yet. Everybody that’s betting has put it on Formichael.”

“SouSmith hits hard.”

Jeram gave him a sly glance. “If he can land a punch. Formichael’s better rested, younger, and half SouSmith’s weight.”

“Bah,” Adamat said, “you young ones always think the old have nothing left in them.”

Jeram chuckled. “Right, then, what’ll it be, governor?” He removed a folded paper from his back pocket, covered in smudges and long-erased lines. He set it against the doorframe and poised a piece of charcoal over it.

“What are the odds?”

Jeram scratched his cheek, leaving a bit of charcoal there. “I’ll give you nine to one.”

Adamat raised his eyebrows. “Give me twenty-five on SouSmith.”

“Risky,” Jeram grunted. “Figures.” He scratched down the numbers and folded the piece of paper, then jammed it back in his pocket. Adamat knew the paper was just for show. Jeram had a memory almost as good as Adamat’s, and without a Knack—he never forgot a face, never forgot a number, and had not once delivered wrongly on a bet, though many times was accused of such. That didn’t happen often nowadays, not since the Proprietor took over this boxing ring. He didn’t take kindly to anyone accusing his bookies.

Inside, the only light came from rectangular slat windows high up under the eaves. Adamat pushed past a series of curtains that muffled sound and hid the inside from prying eyes. The whole building was one big room, long since gutted, with a few stalls and cordoned-off rooms to give the fighters some privacy to recover from fights. In the middle was the building’s namesake: the Arena, a round pit twelve paces across, four paces below floor level.

A latticework of haphazard seating surrounded the pit, going back to either side of the building and nearly to the roof. Adamat ducked beneath the rear seating, crossed to the other side, and elbowed his way in among the men crowding the edge of the pit. The stands were full, men shoulder to shoulder in all the seats, enough for a few hundred gentlemen with their canes and hats, street workers with frayed jackets, and even a pair of city police officers, their black capes and top hats hard to miss among the crowd.

A fight had finished perhaps ten minutes ago, and the Arena workers were throwing down sawdust to soak up the blood, readying for the next one. A quiet murmur filled the room as men talked among themselves, resting their voices to cheer the violence ahead. Adamat breathed in sweat and grime and the smell of anger. He let his breath out slowly, shuddering. Bareknuckle boxing was a barbaric, feral sport. He grinned to himself. How fun. He took another breath, catching a whiff of pig. Not long ago the Arena had been a sty, and before that? A series of shops, maybe, back when High Talian was supposed to be the newest, richest, most fashionable part of the city.