“Why? Why?”
“Champ!” Dasher’s familiar voice, a couple hundred yards away, announced his presence before Venture could embarrass himself any further.
Venture sank down on a damp piece of driftwood, a big gray log, and rubbed his sandy hands on it as he waited for his friend to reach him.
Anger. That’s what kept eating at him here. Anger and loss and guilt he thought he’d put behind him years ago.
Dasher sat down beside him. “You okay?”
Venture glanced at him, then down at the sand.
“Who were you calling out to?” Dasher asked him, in such an interested way that Venture lowered his hands, looked up at him, and answered.
“God.”
Dasher gave a startled blink, then looked intently out over the vast water. “Do you think he’s listening?”
“My mother always said he was with me.” Venture pushed a piece of torn black-green kelp, entangled with the white, hollow outsides of little crabs, away with his bare toe.
“Do you think that’s true?”
“I’m not sure.” He picked the stubborn grains of sand out of the peeling calluses on his palms. “He listens, though, I think.”
The cool wind came over the water and licked at his wet feet and hands, making them ache in the silence that followed.
“You were lucky, to have a mother like that. I’m sorry you didn’t have her longer.”
Venture nodded, though his mother had always said there was no such thing as luck either.
He pointed across the water, to the north, where they could barely make out the beginning of a peninsula jutting out. “There’s Calm Harbor, where I was born. Where my parents were born. We didn’t have any land to speak of, just a little cabin near the water, a lot like this one.” He gestured with his head back toward the cabin. “My grandparents were bonded servants, on both sides. But my parents weren’t, once they were of age to choose. My father worked as a valet at the resort Grant Fieldstone owns there.”
“Where’s your father now?” Dasher said, barely above a whisper.
“Earnest never told you?”
“I never asked. You don’t have to tell me.”
“He didn’t leave us or anything like that.” Venture stared at the moonlit water. “He died.”
Venture had lost more than his father the night he died. He’d lost his freedom. His father had already earned enough money to get Justice started as an apprentice to the local printer, but after his death, Venture’s mother had made the agonizing choice to have herself and Venture bonded to Grant Fieldstone.
“I’m sorry, Champ. It reminds you of him, being here?”
Venture looked at his hands, flexing his fingers. “A lot of things remind me of him.”
“Champ, what is it?”
“He used to fight,” Venture said slowly. “For extra money.”
“Your father was a fighter?”
“Not the way you’re thinking. It started when he was just a boy, with other boys making bets about who could beat up who. He kept winning, kept making more and more money at it, because the more he won, the higher price anyone was offered to beat him. By the time he was a man, he was fighting in storehouses and barns, late at night. He drew big crowds. There was a lot of money on the line.”
Venture glanced at Dasher, wondering what he thought of that. Dasher didn’t fight for money. Though he said little about his family, it was obvious that they were wealthy.
“He used the money to send Justice to school, then to pay for his apprenticeship, so he’d be able to do something other than be a hired hand on a fishing boat or a valet like him. My mother didn’t like him fighting, but they were struggling. He wanted to provide for my future, too, so he took on better and better challengers, because more people would come to watch, and pay more money to see that. It meant more, both for the winner and the loser. And he never was the loser. Until one night when I was six. My brother and my father left for a fight, and my father never came back. He was killed.”
Dasher’s voice caught as he said, “How was he killed?”
“No one ever told me exactly how, just that it happened during the fight, and that the man who killed him was from a town nearby, and didn’t seem to even care. He got in a brawl with some of the men in the crowd because he insisted that he should still get the winnings.”
“He killed your father and still wanted the money?”
Venture nodded. “But all he got was a good beating with a shovel and a spade.” Venture would have liked to be there, to help with that beating. The things he’d like to do to the man who killed his father so callously! The things he could do to him now, if—there was that rage again, that hunger for vengeance. If his mother could read his thoughts from the afterlife, she’d be horrified. Was there anything to who he was now that would make his parents proud? How could he ever know, when so much of who he was, was because they were gone?
“What are your parents like, Dash?”
“Not bad, not great.”
“You should go see them more often.”
“You’re right. I should.” Dasher eyed the pendant hanging from Venture’s neck. Venture often caught him looking at it. This time, though, he asked, in an oddly careful voice, “Champ, where did you get that?”
“It was my mother’s.”
“I thought so. She tell you anything about it?”
“It was her father’s. It’s been in the family for a long time. I think there was more, but I don’t remember. Why did you think so?”
Dasher shrugged. “I thought it must’ve been given to you by one of your parents. Why else would you wear it all the time?”
Another silence fell between them. Then Dasher blurted out, “Earnest and I have been writing your brother.”
“Why would you do that?”
Dasher rose slightly and reached into the back pocket of his pants. “To convince him to take care of this. We tried to get it done sooner, but he kept dragging his feet.”
Venture just stared at the folded paper Dasher held out to him, afraid to hope it could be the impossible. Dasher tossed it into his lap.
“Your exemption to the age requirement.”
“It isn’t.”
“It is.” He gave Venture’s head an affectionate shove. “Effective immediately. Just in the nick of time.”
“In time for what?”
“The Championship.”
“What?”
“Earnest and I talked about it. And since we got that,” he pointed at the exemption, “we think you should skip the Youth Championship and enter some absolute tournaments so you can be ready to give the real thing a try.”
“What?”
“The All Richland Absolute Fighting Championship, that’s what.”
“But it’s in three months. And I’m only seventeen.”
“That’s right. You’re seventeen. But listen to me, Venture Delving.” Dasher looked him straight in the eye. “I don’t talk to God like you do. I don’t know if the god of Atran even exists. But I know that someone made you. And if anyone asked him if you’re ready for this, he’d laugh. He’d laugh because the answer is so obvious. You are the answer.”
Venture shook his head, opening his mouth to protest, but Dasher said, “He’s given you the size and strength of a man, and you’re still growing every day. But you’ll have the crazy energy of a seventeen-year-old. He’s also given you the instincts of a champion.”
“Those other guys are all strong and talented.”
“Not like you. Is there a god over champions, a god for some people here and a god for some people there, or a god over everything and everyone? I don’t know. But whoever made you, whoever keeps you, he’s left a mark on you.” He slapped Venture’s chest as though there really were something there. “The mark of a champion.”
“What makes you think he keeps me?”
“You’re an orphaned bonded servant, and you’re going to be Champion of All Richland one day. Someone intervenes for you.”
“Dasher,” he said tentatively, “have you told Earnest all this?”
“Not all of it. He’d think I was losing my mind.”
“
Are
you losing your mind?”
“You seem to have that effect on me,” he replied, and Venture couldn’t help a smile, though his head was swimming.
CHAPTER TEN
The Founders Rock City Green swarmed with people hoping to get a peek at their favorite fighters as they arrived to register for tomorrow’s Championship. Nearby, a team of fifty warriors were drilling. Their bare, muscular forearms glistened with sweat brought on more by their insulating sword-proof vests and mail than by the heat of the day. They charged against each other in a choreographed, mock battle, then demonstrated hand-to-hand routines, while a recruiter spoke to those who gathered to watch.
But when their commander heard the murmurs of Dasher’s name, he stopped, and his men turned to watch the Champion instead. Venture wondered if the commander longed for the prestige of the beautiful plate armor, additional protection over the shoulders, chest, and back, reserved only for Crested commanders, or whether he was glad not to be burdened by it. And, if he ever did see battle, how would he feel about it then?
Compared to the arena, the registration tent was stifling hot, packed with fighters greeting each other and finding their way into the appropriate lines. Dasher, as a returning fighter in the top five, reported to an official on the other side of the room, leaving Earnest to lead Venture through the process.
When it was his turn, the registration official took the certificate of exemption from Venture’s hand, the letter from Justice, and the letter from Grant. Venture tried to keep his match face on as he prayed that there wouldn’t be a scene. He couldn’t help recalling the long night he’d spent before the Youth Quarter Championship when he was fourteen, lying awake and praying—no, demanding—that he be given the chance to compete, a shot at a place in the top three, at winning admittance to Champions Center. Beamer had been gone half the night meeting with tournament officials about him, convincing them to let him in.
Venture waited and watched all the men who already had their competitors’ badges, small tin discs imprinted with the government seal and painted black, draped around their necks with matching black leather cords. He’d been here before, had seen these fighters before, but now he wasn’t a just spectator, and they weren’t just Dasher’s opponents, they were his. He’d been excited, invigorated when they arrived in the capital city the day before, eager to unleash all he had on his opponents in the All-Richland Absolute Fighting Championship. This, in spite of the fact that, since it was his first time fighting, it was guaranteed to be an ordeal.
He would be competing not only for the experience, but in hopes of increasing his chances of placing in the future. The first day of competition was only for those who hadn’t made the final cut the previous year. These men fought in a massive single elimination competition, match after match, until only five remained. To lose was to submit, to give up or pass out, to be so badly beaten that the official ended the match, or to withdraw due to injury or exhaustion. The time limit was an unbearable thirty minutes. It was rare for any pair to last even half that long without one surrendering. In the event of a stalemate, they moved on to their next matches, to face each other later if neither one had been eliminated by someone else.
Often a man made it into the final five, only to be too fatigued or injured to participate in the second day of competition. The second day of the tournament was for the top five from Day One and the top five from the previous year, minus those who hadn’t chosen to return. These men each fought the others, and the one with the most wins was declared Champion. In the event any men were tied for wins, they fought each other to break the tie. It was a long shot, but if Venture could make it into the top five, next year he’d only have to fight the other nine or fewer top contestants, without the wear and tear of Day One.
Since he’d just gotten his exemption, Venture had only fought in three absolute tournaments before the Championship. He’d managed to take second to Dasher in one, and third in the other two. But those were just small, local tournaments. Here he would face veteran fighters who knew their way not just around a mat, but around the arena.
Venture heard excited murmuring behind him. The men around him turn to stare. Will Fisher had arrived, as always, with his entourage. Unlike Dasher, he traveled to tournaments with four polished carriages filled with trainers, coaches, servants, even a handful of girls. Venture was inclined to turn right back around; he had no desire to stare at Fisher, but Fisher locked eyes with him and walked right up to him.
“You’re the kid Starson took with him when he left Champions,” he said, in a low, accusing tone. “The trouble-maker. The bondsman.”
“That’s right.”
“What’s it to you, Fisher?” Earnest said.
But Fisher ignored him. “Your name’s Delving?”
“Right again. So what?”
“Tell me again where you’re from.”
“Fisher.” Dasher’s figure appeared behind his rival’s bulky frame.
“Starson.” Fisher turned to Dasher.
Dasher put his hands on his hips and gave Fisher a ready nod. “You were just leaving, right?”
The other fighters waiting in line fell in around Dasher, cutting Fisher off from his entourage. Fisher swept the group with his own glare, but he said, “Right.” And they parted to let him through.
“Is he still that riled up over what happened?” Venture said.
Dasher shrugged. “He lost charge of the new boys, but they didn’t do anything else to penalize him. I don’t think that has much to do with it. He doesn’t have the nerve to hassle me anymore, not after losing three Championships to me. So he’s going after you. Just wait until I get hold of him on the mat.”
Venture wasn’t so sure. There’d been a strange gleam of malice in his eye, even for Fisher. And it was disturbing to ponder what might have happened if Dasher hadn’t shown up. Venture looked around him at all these grown men. What made him think he could handle them on the mat either?
He turned to Earnest and whispered, “Look at them. Most of them are bigger than me, and they’ve all got that man-strength.”