Bloody Knuckles - From the Upcoming Rogue Dungeon Anthology

                                                                          Bloody Knuckles

                                                          by eden Hudson and James Hunter

Icy wind cut through the village like a knife, turning the snow that had fallen that morning into a frozen crust and blowing in much worse for the night. A hard-eyed youth hunkered down in an alleyway between a brightly lit tavern and a dark smithy. Threadbare scarves were pulled up over his shaggy black hair and around his face, while dirty rags and some straw from the stable nearby stuffed his ragged clothes for insulation against the cold. He pressed his back against the stone wall of the smithy in an attempt to soak up residual warmth. The smith had banked the coals over an hour ago and retreated to his home, but a low heat still bled through from the forge.

Roark—just Roark, he would growl defensively when asked for a family name—cursed and folded his arms behind him, flattening his bone-cold fingers against the stone. If he was freezing, a boy born and raised in the snowy Karasu Mountains, then Danella would be livid with the cold. Neither of them had the proper clothing to survive a winter this far north. The change in seasons had caught them off-guard. They’d been having too much fun enjoying the simple life in this little village of farmers and hunters, playing at domestic bliss. A cheap room paid for by Roark’s honest work with the smith and all the hearty farm town food they could eat off the coin from Danella’s less-than-honest cards in the tavern. The locals didn’t even have the black hearts and suspicious minds to accuse such a lovely young face of cheating.

But the smith had made it clear today he couldn’t afford to hire out any more piece work again until spring, and Danella knew as well as Roark did that kind hearts would turn black with suspicion if she started winning enough to cover both their room and board. The idle time of childish make believe was coming to an end.

A nearby slamming door and running footsteps made Roark’s ears prick up.

“Get back here, ya thieving wench!”

Danella’s lithe form dashed around the corner of the tavern, long, golden hair whipping along behind her. When she saw Roark waiting, she grinned.

“Time to run, love!” she said, her words coming in puffs of white. She grabbed his arm and jerked him into a sprint alongside her. “Our welcome here is quite worn out. How do you feel about a traveling to warmer climes—say, south?”

Roark stumbled a step, but recovered his balance quickly, then pulled his arm free so they wouldn’t both be brought down if one of them tripped. He threw a glance over his shoulder.

At the mouth of the alley, a lean form stood pointing after them and rubbing his face—no doubt suffering the effects of Danella’s hallmark pocket full of pepper flakes and sand.

“Get her!” the man thundered. Armored bodies darted around him, heavy cloaks fluttering like dark wraiths.

“I thought we weren’t stealing from the locals,” Roark accused hotly. “It was your bloody idea!” The plan had been to keep their standing good in Tanner’s Respite so they could come back and lay low when they needed to escape the bigger cities until the heat died down. In a place this small, their faces and crimes would be remembered.

“Have you ever seen a farmer wearing plate and accompanied by soldiers?” Danella snapped. “They’re not bloody locals!”

They hung a sharp right, Roark grabbing onto the corner post of the stable to make the turn without barreling into Danella. A brilliant fireball shot out of the alleyway, illuminating the wintry darkness, then crashed into the side of the granary.

Roark’s blood ran cold. Magick.

“You stole from a mage?” he cried.

“If I’d known the ruddy bastard had magick, I wouldn’t have tried to take his purse, would I?”

Roark shot a glare at her.

“Oh, stuff it!” she snapped. “Can’t you just throw a spell at them?”

“Magick isn’t some jester’s trick!” he growled. Writing spells was deadly when mishandled; every letter and bit of punctuation had to be perfectly precise to avoid dire consequences. Noble children were sent to the Academy to study for years before they could safely use it. “If it’s not perfect, I could do their job for them and kill us both.”

With a grunt of frustration, Danella shoved him into the curing shed behind the butcher’s shop. In the small space, their harsh breathing seemed incredibly loud. Roark swallowed hard, wondering whether they would be heard through the chinks in the shed’s timbers.

Another fireball soared past, but the mage seemed to be using the blasts to light up the early darkness of the winter night rather than aiming specifically at them. Or perhaps to burn them out. Wood splintered, and the blaze crackled as it spread from building to building. Soon the whole town would go up.

“Is it truly the danger of magick you fear or is it something else?” Danella whispered fiercely. “Afraid your spells won’t hold up in the face of theirs? That I’ll find out they’re real nobles and you’re only a pretender who taught himself how to scribble?”

Roark scowled through the darkness of the shed at her. Danella was beautiful and sleek as a golden mountain cougar, but she had teeth and claws just as sharp, and if he let her, they could rake him open just as easily. Over the few years they’d been drifting together, he’d grown used to her biting tongue and learned to give back as good as he got, but every now and again, she still scored a deep wound.

He wove his way around the hanging hams and sides of beef to peer out between the shed timbers. The small band of armored soldiers stormed down the street, ripping open doors and searching beneath porches and in outhouses. Snake-fanged helms covered their faces and the Tyrant King’s crest stood out on their tabards. Coming up behind them, the puffy-eyed mage scribbled spells on bits of parchment.

The sound of men and women calling frantically for water to quench the fires twisted in Roark’s ears, becoming a battle between his father, uncles, and cousins and the Ustars who’d attacked on Bloedrige Noct.

He swallowed hard and fought back the urge to panic. He had to think, had to get himself and Danella out before the mage thought to write a step-tracing spell.

As the Ustars drew closer and closer to the curing shed, Roark slipped a pen knife from his inside pocket. His heart thundered in his chest, his mind racing for a spell that would adequately protect him and Danella. Unlike the Tyrant King’s mage, Roark had no parchment or ink to hand—a lack that brought many a powerful mage to their knees. Roark, however, had learned that long ago that a spell didn’t have to be written on parchment. Carving it in human skin worked just as well. The tradeoff, however, was that this type of writing was far more dangerous. Rather than consuming the scrap of paper like most spells did, carving the spell into skin consumed the blood directly from the veins. Write something too powerful, and it would empty him out.

One of the snake-fanged helms turned toward the curing shed.

Invisibility would never work on both of them. Biological magick was by far the most expensive, either on paper or flesh, and he knew his body couldn’t survive the price to cast it on himself and Danella. The early winter darkness and the strange light cast by the flickering flames, however, might be used to their advantage. The eyes were much easier to manipulate than entire bodies.

The Ustar was only yards from the shed.

“Hide!” Roark hissed at Danella. Silently, the golden-haired thief melted into the shadows.

With quick, precise strokes born of careful study, Roark sliced the words An illusion of a boy with black hair and a girl with blonde hair run out of the curing shed and into the stable. into his arm.

Immediately, the spell took, magick searing through his blood. The pain bit deep enough that Roark had to grit his teeth to keep from crying out. He had just enough presence of mind to kick the door open and curl to the side before the crude illusions burst out, sprinting at the startled Ustar.

“Over here!” the man cried.

He swung a heavy battle axe through the middle of the boy. It sliced through empty air, and the illusions kept running.

Confusion darkened the Ustar’s features as he tried to decide whether he’d missed or he’d actually seen the blade go through the body. Already his fellow soldiers were racing after the youths as they disappeared into the stable, however. His mates shouted for him to come on. That decided it. Throwing a final glance back at the shed, the Ustar turned and gave chase.

Roark slumped against the shed wall with relief. Danella crept up beside him and peered out through the timbers.

“Now that,” she said, “was fair genius.” She gave him a peck on the cheek and Roark’s heart sped up again, this time with a feeling of fearless invincibility. “Well done, love.”

“Easy as sweetcakes,” Roark lied. He pushed away from the wall. “Where should we travel next?”

***

Located on the crossroads of heavily traveled trade routes and the wide Hebi River, the city of Frahoi did a bustling trade in both the above-board and illegal goods that passed through Traisbin. Their streets were wide and well-cared for, and they boasted a central green large enough to host dozens of merchants during more hospitable weather, as well as a thriving black market. It was large enough to disappear into, with a steady turnover of faces that kept new ones from being remarked upon.

By the time Roark and Danella arrived, the night and day had passed and a new evening was falling. Their elation at escaping the Ustars in the rural Tanner’s Respite had long since been stamped out by the stark combination of hunger and endless icy rain. Roark glanced around at the wood and plaster houses, trying not to remember the few times he’d seen Frahoi as a child. Always in much happier circumstances, either riding through to Academy or attending balls and feasts with his family.

A manor house used to sit on the river’s eastern bank, but like the von Grafs, its nobles had refused to bend to the Tyrant King and been stomped out under the despot’s bloodied bootheel. Now only muddy snowbanks lay where the house had been. Roark turned his face away, glad the damnable ice-rain hadn’t uncovered the ruins.

He pulled his straw and rag-stuffed coat closer around him, though it was soaked through. His stomach gnawed at his spine like a stray with a bone. It was hard to believe he’d last eaten only a morning ago, the morning of their run from Tanner’s Respite. How quickly he’d grown used to regular meals. But he’d learned long ago that complaining would only make him a target for Danella’s mocking, so he approached the subject from a sidelong angle.

“How much did you get from that noble, anyway?”

With a flourish Danella produced the man’s purse, bouncing it in her hand as she weighed its contents. It was smaller than Roark would’ve liked, but the expensive cut and embroidery gave him hope for a decent payday.

“Only a handful of coins, though I thought I saw silver in there when he paid the tavernkeep.” The golden-haired thief tossed the purse to him, and he caught it deftly.

Roark dumped four copper into his palm. No silver. They had lost their rural hideaway and almost died for barely more coin than they could get for the purse itself.

Danella grimaced down at their meagre earnings. “Which do you fancy most, love, a meal or a roof?”

Trying not to let his disappointment and frustration show, Roark glanced up and down the ice-slick street for marks to fatten the nobleman’s purse, but it was deserted in every direction. They were stuck with what they had.

“Let’s get out of this bloody rain,” he muttered. They could steal or work for a meal in the morning so long as they didn’t freeze to death overnight.

Danella gave him a sly grin that twisted the scar across her lips.

“My thoughts as well,” she said, nestling against him.

That warmed a good bit of the cold from his blood.

They turned down the next wide avenue and were surprised to see a trio of bundled shapes trundling through the rain. Halfway down the street, the folks ducked into the mouth of an alleyway. Before long, another pair came along and followed on the heels of the first three. And yet more had appeared behind them.

Roark cast a querying glance Danella’s way, but she stared down the closest mark as he hustled toward the shadowy alley.

“Give it a moment,” she said, pulling Roark past the opening. “Let’s have a better look before we dip into any pockets.”

They hooked back around the block. When they were behind the little backstreet, Danella grabbed the guttering of a wood and plaster house and clambered easily up onto the roof.

Roark followed with less ease. His dexterity had been improving through necessity since joining up with Danella, but his latest growth spurt had made him clumsier, his hands and feet seemingly working in opposition to his purposes as often as not. Add to that the ice growing on every surface, and he wouldn’t be winning any house-scaling races.

Eventually, he made it up onto the tarred roof beside the golden-haired thief, and they huddled together against the warmth of a chimney to watch the alley below. People of all shapes and sizes hurried through, alone or in small groups, cursing the clumps of wet slush that smacked down from the sky like sodden fists.

Without fail, each group of evening wanderers stepped down a short stair to a basement door and knocked. Moments later, they would be admitted by a hulking man with a bald head and face covered in more scars than Danella’s entire body.

“Not likely a town meeting, is it?” she murmured.

“Not tucked away like this.” Roark shook his head, wet ice dripping from the ends of his hair. “Maybe it’s a resistance hideout?”

Danella frowned down at the basement stair. She didn’t trust the resistance any more than she did the Ustars. They could both go hang as far as she was concerned, but she knew Roark had more right to be interested in the rebel’s guerilla organization than most. Thankfully, he played that hand close to his vest, never letting on what he’d once been to anyone but her.

The basement door burst open below, emitting what sounded like raucous cheering. The hulking doorkeeper and another big man dragged a shirtless, half-conscious man out into the rain. The man started and let out a yelp when the sleet showered his bloody face and bruised back. He came awake long enough to take a few stumbling steps, then slumped into the nearest wall and slid down to the dirt, letting out a long groan.

The other men chuckled at his short journey, then the doorkeeper tossed a shirt and cloak onto his lap. Without a backward glance, the men returned to the cheerful din in the basement.

Danella’s eyes lit up. “We’re safe to go in.”

“What is it?” Roark asked, frowning down at the man they’d left in the alley. The poor sod looked as if he’d been beaten half to death.

“A fight,” she said. “Where there’s a fight, there’s gambling, and where there’s gambling, there’s coin.”

Roark flashed her a wry grin. “I could stand to eat a meal and sleep in a warm room tonight.”

Danella laughed and pecked him on his bluing lips. “Let’s go to work, then.”

*

The hulking doorkeeper looked the pair of street youths over skeptically. Skinny, shaking with the cold, wet as drowned sewer rats. It was hard to gauge their ages; life on the streets lent a hard edge that made a youth seem both older and younger at once, but he doubted there was more than thirty years between them.

He hadn’t seen their faces around Frahoi before, and he would’ve remembered the boy. Unless he missed his guess, the youth’s complexion and the slight hook in his nose meant Lyuko blood. Didn’t get many of the Travelers hanging around the city in winter. But Pauli didn’t pay him to turn away folks with spending money, no matter what their parentage.

In truth it was the girl who put the doorkeeper most on edge. Even in the half-light of the little entryway, her eyes were a bit too bright, eager and hungry, like a starving alley cat watching a cook’s apprentice carry out the day’s scraps, trying to decide whether to wait for the apprentice to throw them down or to climb right up his side and start biting.

“Cause any trouble in there and you answer to me,” he growled, flexing the huge arms crossed over his barrel gut.

The girl gave him a sparkling smile that did little to ease his concerns. “Hand to the Creator, we’ll do nothing of the sort.”

***

Roark withheld his smirk and tried to appear innocent. Danella meant they wouldn’t answer to this musclebound man or any others. Had she been born to a noble family with the funds to send her to the Academy, Danella would’ve made an excellent mage. Half the training was centered around protecting your writs and spells from that kind of ambiguity of language.

The doorkeeper pocketed their coins with a grunt and jerked the door open for them, the heavy, reinforced iron creaking on its hinges. The smith’s apprentice in Roark got the better of him for a moment, wondering why they didn’t simply apply some lard or pressed oil to quiet the hinges. They obviously wanted to keep the fights a secret—since coming to power, the Tyrant King had outlawed all forms of martial sport—and that bloody creak was loud enough to wake the dead. Perhaps the creaking worked in their favor to warn them of unwanted intruders?

Those thoughts were driven from his head as the uproar inside washed over them.

Shouting and jeering and the meaty thud and smackof fists on flesh. The smell of sweat, tobacco, ale, and the oily smoke from the lamps hanging from every rafter and beam.

Admission had cost them the nobleman’s purse and half what they’d taken off the unconscious bloke in the alley, but it looked as if that had been a wise investment indeed. Not two paces from the door, they were surrounded by a crush of bodies drinking and bumping into one another and elbowing each other out of the way. Every eye was on the combatants circling one another in the roped off ring at the center; no one had a glance to spare for those treading on their feet or leaning over them to see better. It was a pickpocket’s dream.

With a quick squeeze of the hand, Roark and Danella split up, slipping through the crowd to search out the easiest marks.

People shoved and pushed one another to get closer to the ring. Some called encouragement to the fighter they’d just put their money on; others booed and hissed at the opposition. Roark squeezed through the human swarm, slipping the occasional coin from a pocket or loose-stringed purse, never stopping near his targets.

The chill he’d been suffering since hunkering down outside the blacksmith’s shop the night before quickly fled, and his face flushed with the heat. Though large enough to host the fight ring with room leftover for spectators, the basement space was never intended for the nigh on a hundred rowdy occupants crushed around it. He shed his stuffed coat and tucked his hand wrappings into his holey boots, hoping the warmth there would dry them faster.

As Roark got closer to the ropes, he slowed, the brutal art of the bareknuckle fight within drawing his attention.

He had snuck out of the manor once with his elder cousin Dirk to watch a gauntlet of boxing matches in Korvo, featuring a fellow by the name of Ironsides who’d been dominating the bareknuckle circuit at the time. The nine-year-old Roark had never heard of him—news like that rarely trickled down to his level—but Dirk had talked about the man as if he were the king of the ropes, ruling the ring with swift, powerful, yet calculated punches.

Looking back now, Dirk had probably been no older than Roark was now, barely fifteen years under his belt, and had only been regurgitating what he’d heard from men in Korvo, but to the younger Roark, his cousin had seemed like an expert. He had hung on Dirk’s every word, listening to how Ironsides had trained his body to take the most powerful blows and give back worse. The fight didn’t disappoint, either. Boxing wasn’t like the fencing Roark and the other von Graf children had been taught; there were no polite acknowledgements and salutes when you scored. You only won in a bareknuckle boxing match when your opponent was unable to stand, and not a single one of old Ironsides’s opponents had been left standing that night. It had been beautiful and brutal and held the younger Roark’s imagination enraptured for weeks afterward.

In the basement, the older Roark was soon engrossed once more in the carnage before him, too intent on the fights to remember that he and Danella were there with an ulterior motive. Some matches were fast and graceful, over in an instant, others drawn-out and ugly. The crowd roared with approval when two brawny heavyweights slugged it out with earth-shaking widowmaker punches, and howled with delight when a pair of wiry whiplashes of men flashed around the ring, trading shots at top speed. They seemed keenest, however, for the mishmash of the two, power versus swiftness. Roark, too, was fascinated watching the opposing styles try to outmaneuver each other.

Four fights had passed and the fifth was starting when Danella worked her way around to Roark. She flashed him a grin, cheeks flush with success. He did his best to return it, though if he were being honest, he’d forgotten that lightening pockets was supposed to be his objective. Whether or not they ate tonight depended on it.

“Any luck?” she asked.

“Some,” Roark hedged guiltily, fingering the few coppers in his pocket. “You?”

“Haven’t picked a loser yet.” Danella grinned and jingled the nobleman’s refilled and now much heavier purse. “Shall we find somewhere warm to celebrate before anyone notices their funds have gone amiss?”

Roark cast one more glance back at the men in the ring charging toward one another like battling mountain rams, then followed Danella through the crowd, past the hulking doorman—who scowled at her cheery wave—and into the frozen night.

***

Roark was already awake when Danella whispered his name. He’d been staring into the darkness for at least an hour while the moon came up out the tiny attic window of their rented room, remembering the Ironside matches, the taste of ale his older cousin had passed him, and the scolding they’d gotten when they returned home to find half the family waiting up for them. His mother had railed into him, her Lyuko temper in high form, calling Roark down for everything from leaving the family without a hint at where he’d gone while all of Traisbin sat on the doorstep of civil unrest to letting his cousin talk him into such an unwise decision when one day Roark would be head of this family.

More than anything, though, Roark thought of the rare smile his normally stoic father had given him upon leaving his room that night. Erich von Graf had stopped at the door after Roark’s mother, still fuming, stalked out. It’d been nothing more than a twitch of the lips and a twinkle of pride in his gray eyes, just enough to let Roark know he wasn’t angry, but it had changed Roark’s view of the entire night.

Back then Roark had thought of von Graf manor as unassailable, his father unkillable. He’d been so stupid and childish to take it all for granted. Worse, he was that much more of a fool to be pining after that lost life all these years later. That safe, comfortable world was gone. The Tyrant King had cut it down in a single bloody night. There was nothing now but survival, he and Danella against the world.

When Roark felt the golden-haired girl stir beside him, he didn’t move or speak right away. His throat was locked shut with a painful lump.

“Roark,” Danella murmured, twisting around to lay half on him, half against his side. She shook him gently. “Are you awake?”

He took his time yawning and stretching, until he was certain he could speak normally.

“I am now,” he said.

She rested her chin on his chest, the sharp point stabbing into his breastbone. “Did I tell you my idea or did I just imagine we spoke about it?”

He slipped a hand under her chin to protect himself.

“You must’ve imagined it,” he said. She did that from time to time, had entire conversations with him in her head, then forgot it hadn’t happened in reality. It was a harmless quirk until she did something they hadn’t talked about and got the local guards on their trails. Or worse, when it finally came out and she had the discussion, but the resulting conversation went differently than the one she’d imagined—usually with the real Roark disagreeing with something her mental version of him had agreed to.

Bracing himself, Roark asked, “What was this ingenious idea?”

Danella propped herself up on her elbows. He shoved those off his stomach and onto the straw tick. She looked soft, but she was bony as the third hell.

When they had settled into a more comfortable position for both of them, she went on.

“Boxing,” she said.

Roark snorted. “They’ve invented it already, love. A sort of combat sport. I hear it’s popular in Frahoi.”

“The only thing your wit is lacking is wit,” she sneered, pinching him. Roark laughed, and she dug her nails in, but that only made him laugh harder.

“Did you see the winnings they gave out to the fighters?” she asked, serious again. “We had a good haul tonight, but that fat bloke who knocked that other man’s head in, he practically had to carry it home in a potato sack, didn’t he? Money like that would set us up with a room and meals for a fortnight.”

Roark’s brows shot up under his shaggy fringe of black hair.

“You want to steal the prize money?” he asked.

“I want to win the prize money.” Her eyes glittered in the half-light from the window. “You write a spell that makes you a hundred times stronger and join the fights. Meanwhile, I’ll take bets against you—you’re bound to look like the underdog no matter who they pair you off with, so I can drive the wagers up a bit and—” she snapped her fingers. “We walk away flush as royalty.”

“I suppose you want us murdered by angry Frahoi citizens?” He sat up against the wall, shivering as the cold plaster pressed against his back. “They’ll smell a foul turn, Danella.”

“No they won’t!” she said, sitting up, too, and taking most of the blanket with her. “You’ve said yourself, there isn’t a mage or burungwizard who hasn’t turned to the Tyrant King or been executed. No one would ever expect real and true magick in some muddy back alley, and certainly not for something as petty as a few coins.”

“A minute ago it was a potato sack full,” he muttered. Details had a way of changing around Danella based on what made the best argument in her favor. “Anyway, you can’t just write a spell to multiply your strength by a hundred. You could end up snapping all your bones or ripping your skin. It’s the same principal as why I couldn’t just write a spell to warm us up. I might’ve boiled us from the inside out.”

She threw up her hands. “Then some other spell to help you win! You’re the Academy educated one here, think of something.”

He shook his head.

“Come on, Roark,” Danella pouted. “This is brilliant, and you know it.”

“It’s not what magick is for,” he insisted, trying to order his thoughts so he could explain himself.

She scowled. “Damnation! Is it for anything? I’ve known you for years now and all I ever hear is what magick bloody can’t do.”

It seemed as if Roark could never recall his father’s voice when he was actually trying to, but in moments like these, moments when he was considering crossing a line he’d been raised to toe, Erich von Graf’s voice was as clear as if he were standing in the same room.

“Magick isn’t a toy, it’s a responsibility entrusted to the von Grafs to protect the people and lands in our care.”

“It’s for protecting people,” Roark said, then shrank back a bit and glared at the wall, embarrassed at the intensity of his reply.

Rather than sneer at his earnestness, however, Danella leaned into his side.

“That’s what you’d be doing,” she said. “Protecting the both of us from freezing or catching our death. You remember how hard it was last winter, don’t you?”

Roark scowled down at the stitches in the blanket, remembering how sick she had taken, the sound of her coughing like she was ripping her lungs and throat apart, the blood trickling from the corner of her lips. He’d had to drag her to three different holy men and beg them for something, anything to bring her fever down. If not for the charity of the last one, Roark knew Danella wouldn’t be sitting next to him now. The monk had warned Roark that the sickness was the sort that weakened a body’s health for good; if Danella caught ill again, he might not have the chance to drag her anywhere but the graveyard.

The thought of writing his golden-haired love a seal to make certain she went on to the next life soured Roark’s mood even further. Surely his father would understand why he had needed to use magick for this, just this once.

“I could speed my reactions a bit,” he muttered, picking at a loose thread on the blanket.

“Yes!” Ecstatic, Danella climbed into his lap to kiss him, and all thoughts of plans and magick and death fled.

*

The doubts returned the next evening on the roof that overlooked the boxing alley. Roark and Danella had climbed back to their perch, early this time, to watch the spectators flow in, and while she kept an eye out, he crafted a pair of spells on scraps of stolen parchment.

For one minute, I am twenty percent faster at perceiving and reacting to aggressive movements within a five-foot radius of me. and For one minute, the muscles in my right arm are fifty percent stronger.

The first one seemed safe enough; it wasn’t so fast that he’d run himself into inanimate objects, and it would wear off quickly if he got into any trouble. The second one… He didn’t think it would snap the bones in his arm. The Academy had been taken over by the Tyrant King before Roark had made it to his final year, when they would’ve learned the biological calculations necessary for bodily spells, so he couldn’t be certain, but half again as strong seemed a safe gamble.

Anyway, if it failed, it would wear off in one minute as well, and the damage should be confined to just the one arm. He could survive one-armed for the months it took the broken one to heal, surely?

“Ready, love?” Danella asked.

Roark gave her what he hoped was a confident smile. “Of course.”

***

The doorkeeper crossed his arms and harrumphed when he saw the street rats from the night before sauntering up.

“You brats’re looking dryer and warmer,” he said. “How many of our clientele left lighter last night?”

“Not yourself, that’s for sure,” the blonde girl said, eyeing his barrel gut. Then her eyes traveled to his thinning pate. “Unless it was hair gone missing. But I swear I didn’t touch it.”

“Oi, mate.” The boy stepped in, no doubt hoping to keep his girl’s sharp tongue from getting them barred from the establishment outright. “What do I have to do to get a fight?”

The doorkeeper sized the boy’s skinny frame up. “Age a good ten years.”

“We were only here last night scouting the competition,” the boy said. “I could’ve thrashed any one of those blokes. Let me in one bout, and you’ll see I’m telling the truth.”

The doorkeeper rolled his eyes. The street rats were getting cockier every year. In his day, arrogance like that got you a beating you were lucky to wake up from.

“Fine, I’ll give the boss your name,” he said. If nothing else, he’d enjoy watching the lad get his arse kicked. “What’s the name?”

“Roark.”

The doorkeep nodded. “One young lord’s special for Roark.”

*

Roark’s heart stuttered, afraid for a moment his luck had finally run out and something he’d said or done had hinted at his lost family and title. Would the doorkeeper call the Ustars? Send straight for the Tyrant King?

Rather than sounding an alarm, however, the doorkeeper only jerked the heavy portal open with a metallic screech.

Danella hooked her arm through Roark’s and pulled him inside. Once they were well away from the doorkeeper, she laughed.

“That was bloody perfect!” she said. “He’ll tell his boss to put you up against the biggest bastard they’ve got. The wagers against you are going to be sky-high.”

“What was perfect?” Roark stared at her, trying to catch up. “Shouldn’t we make a run for it?”

“From the young lord’s special?” she said, mouth still quirked in a crooked grin. “Of course not. This is coming out better than we could’ve hoped for!” She rubbed her hands together as if the coins were already burning her palms.

“What are you on about?” Roark craned his neck toward the door, searching for signs of incoming Ustars. “What young lord’s special?”

“Every rough part of town’s got one. It’s a special thrashing they hand out to the wealthy lads who come around slumming thinking they’re tough.” Her eyes sparkled. “Never fails to send ’em running back to their mums crying.”

Roark swallowed as he realized the full import of her words. “You realize I’m the young lord in this scenario, don’t you?”

“Don’t fret, love.” Danella stretched up on her toes and cupped her hand around his ear as if she were imparting some huge secret. “Word has it we’re going to cheat.”

He elbowed her off. Facetiousness wasn’t as funny when it was directed at him.

While she slipped through the crowd replacing what they’d spent on admission, Roark shoved himself to a spot up against the ropes, where he had a good view of the fists, blood, and teeth flying. His own hands balled, and he flinched whenever someone threw a punch, unconsciously dodging. He tried to tell himself he would be fine. He’d trained in the rapier since he was old enough to hold one, and Danella had taught him everything she knew of street brawling, trying to toughen him up. But he doubted pocket sand, biting, eye gouging, or blades would be allowed in the ring.

The scraps of parchment seemed to writhe like worms in his pocket. He slipped a hand in to palm them, hoping they would be enough.

It felt like only a moment had passed when the caller shouted, “Roark and Talliard!”

A mountain of a man ducked into the ring and doffed his dingy homespun shirt to show a torso as furry as a Bleak Forest bear and as wide as three of Roark.

Heart leaping like a pronghorn, Roark shrank back a few steps, letting the crowd swallow him. He pressed the first spell to his chest inside his shirt and the second to his arm. The magick went into effect the moment they touched, strength and power coiling in his muscles and a sudden lightness filling him. His vision distorted like a water droplet, everything within five feet brilliantly clear and everything beyond blurred and uninteresting. Mentally, he began counting down the seconds until his spells wore off.

“I say, where’s this Roark?” the caller demanded, searching the faces. “Our young lord begged for a chance to prove hisself, now he’s run off? Did he get a look at the size of Talliard and piss hisself from fear?”

“Here,” Roark answered, his voice betraying him with a cracked edge. He cleared his throat and stepped under the rope. “Here.”

When the caller saw the “young lord” the doorkeeper had told him about, he let out a gut-shaking laugh. Talliard was one of their best heavyweights, nearly unbeaten in the half-year he’d been fighting, and the man trained with Pauli himself. He would snap this twig of a boy before the spectators could place their bets.

Roark straightened up, raising his fists and staring down the enormous bear of a man he’d been pitted against.

Talliard began a slow circle, meaty fists held high, knuckles out.

Roark stumbled a bit. He wasn’t used to this circuitous type of footwork. Fencing was a game of angles and lines, and the few street scraps he and Danella had found themselves in had been utter chaos of bodies and weapons, no time to judge steps.

Talliard lumbered across the ring toward him, throwing a slow jab. Roark dodged easily, bringing a gap-toothed smile to the big man’s face. The first move had been nothing more than a test of his speed.

Roark scowled. He could feel the seconds ticking by until his spells wore off and this giant killed him. He didn’t have the time to waste on being toyed with. He had to get inside Talliard’s measure and end this quickly.

Bracing himself, he lunged, distesso, and threw a straight, hard right at Talliard’s gut. Power corkscrewed in the muscles of his arm, twisting the fibers tight, then stretching them out in an instant. His fist slammed into the monster’s gut like a crossbow bolt, followed quickly by a second less-primed strike to the ribs. Both killing blows in fencing, though neither seemed to have much effect here. Before the big man could retaliate, Roark stepped out of measure, shaking the shock out of his arm.

Talliard blinked, surprised at the force of the punch this scrawny lad was packing, then let out a booming laugh at the boy’s look of alarm. Poor fool must’ve expected him to immediately double over in pain. Wild grin lighting his features, Talliard closed the distance and swung a widowmaker that would lay a larger man in his grave.

The curving blow seemed to slow before Roark’s eyes. He ducked under the giant’s arm, stepping to the outside and slammed the knuckles of another hard right into Talliard’s temple as if it were the basket guard on his rapier.

The big man shook his head to dispel the black edging into the corners of his vision. That had been a mite harder than the first two blows Roark had dealt him. He was still recovering his bearings when the lad came back. Roark threw a left, hardly more than a feint, then stepped in, dealing out another of those big rights toward Talliard’s chin.

Talliard slammed his huge left arm into the boy’s slashing uppercut, drawing a pained grunt of surprise from Roark, though the clash rang up into the big man’s shoulder as well. Damnation, that brat could throw a punch! Talliard lashed out with a crushing blow of his own. The lad slipped it by a hair, moving so fast the big man’s eyes could hardly keep up. The best he could do was to keep swinging and hope one eventually connected. The giant knew all he needed was one solid hit to win this.

Roark knew it as well and did his best to remain ahead of the bigger man’s blows. He lunged in with a deep step, passo straordinario, and threw another right at Talliard’s temple, exploiting the one blow he knew so far worked.

The punch landed, but at the same moment, the giant’s fist swung backward from his shoulder, coming down like an axe. Without the spell, Roark never would’ve seen it coming. He lunged backward, but the man’s knuckles caught him in a glancing blow that loosened his teeth and split his bottom lip. His head snapped down, chin bouncing off his chest as his knees went weak, but he managed to stumbled out of line before the giant could land another blow.

Talliard followed him across the ring, swinging punch after punch. Roark backstepped and lunged, backstepped and lunged, throwing dalla spalla jabs and punches from his shoulder at the end of each lunge.

Finally, one of Roark’s punches connected with the big man’s chin, rocking his head back like a cracked whip.

Talliard’s teeth clashed together as his head bounced off his back. His skull felt suddenly light. He threw out a final looping widowmaker, aware as he did it that he was falling. Faces flashed past him, then ropes, then boots. Then he was staring up at the beams of the basement ceiling, listening to howls of disbelief and delight through what sounded like earfuls of water.

Roark stumbled back to the ropes, chest heaving. He’d won, and barely a moment before the spells wore off. Movement in the tiny radius of his perception sent his body into motion again, right fist cocking back to defend himself.

The fight caller stopped suddenly, holding up his hands. One of them held a heavy-looking purse.

“Easy now, lad! Easy!”

“Sorry, mate,” Roark breathed, letting his shaking fists drop. That had been a big too close to disaster for comfort.

“Here’s your winner, folks,” the caller said, tossing him the bag of coins. “The young street lord Roark trounces the heavyweight! Talliard’s fat arse goes down in shame!”

Boos mingled with the cheers, and as the last of the perception spell wore off, Roark saw money changing hands in the audience. Danella’s golden hair shined like honey under the greasy lamplights as she collected her considerable dues.

As the caller jeered at Talliard to get up so they could get on with the next fight, Roark ducked under the rope and disappeared into the crowd. He had won, but he felt no sense of satisfaction. He hadn’t earned any of it. It was a cheat. The victory tasted like ashes in his mouth.

As a few strong men dragged Talliard out of the ring and the next fight started, Roark squeezed through the crowd to Danella, spectators slapping him heartily on the back the whole way.

“That was bloody brilliant!” the golden-haired thief said, throwing her arms around Roark’s neck and kissing him.

When he pulled back, a bit of his blood shined on her bottom lip.

“Bloody cheating was what it was,” he growled under his breath.

Danella’s eyes narrowed and she pulled him in closer, lowering her voice.

“If you think any one of these sods would’ve done us differently for the same amount coin, you’re sore mistaken, milord,” she sneered. “Take your honor to the market and see how much you can get for it.” She jingled her winnings in her hand. “I’m going to enjoy the fruits of our labor.”

Roark licked the split in his lip and turned toward the door. He didn’t feel like arguing with her bloody street wisdom at the moment.

“Let’s just get out of here,” he said.

*

They had barely gone a block before Danella noticed they were being tailed.

“Turn left up here,” she said in a low voice. It was in the opposite direction to where they were staying, but she didn’t want to lead their follower back there. “We’re being followed.”

“Who is it?” Roark asked, but thankfully he knew to follow her direction without looking back.

“Gent built like a horseshoe nail,” she said. “Maybe a tough from one of the local gangs. Like as not he wants to roll us for that purse you just won. Or maybe the house is mad their young lord’s special didn’t go to plan and they sent him to make sure you get your comeuppance. This way.”

Seeing they’d momentarily lost the wiry man, she broke into a sprint, clambering up window bars and brickwork and guttering onto the roof before he caught them up again. Roark followed Danella up a few steps behind and a good deal more clumsily, but finally made it into the shadow of a gable beside her.

Down below, a tall, gaunt man with graying sideburns strode along the street as if he owned it, dark eyes sweeping for his quarry. Realizing they had outpaced him, the man stopped in his tracks.

Then suddenly, he looked up.

Danella’s heart stopped. No one ever looked up. It was the reason rooftops were such valuable property in the thieving game. Only another thief or an assassin would think to search the heavens for his prey. Seeing it made her skin crawl.

She and Roark huddled instinctively deeper into the gloom, holding their breath.

Time passed, and finally the man grunted and turned around, heading back the way he’d come.

Roark started to stand up, but Danella grabbed his arm.

“Don’t move,” she whispered. “It’s a ploy.”

Sure enough, a few moments later, the man doubled back. He watched the street from a block farther east, still casting his eyes up, down, and all around.

“Seven hells,” Roark breathed. “Think he knows we cheated?”

Danella shook her head. “I didn’t see him in the basement. Probably hangs around waiting for fighters to leave with their purses and jumps ’em.”

“There were a lot of people. You might’ve missed him.”

“Miss that wolf?” she hissed. “Do you think I’m as bloody dozy as you? I’d spot that killer a mile away through driving snow.”

Roark scowled, but didn’t contradict her. Even a nobleman’s son raised in the lap of luxury could see that the man had a certain striking air about him, a look of deadly competence that couldn’t be dismissed with a passing glance. He drew the eye like a maka-ronin or the Akerian tigers she used to hear stories about in the orphanage.

It took several long minutes of shivering in the cold, but the man finally gave up and left. Danella had them wait several long minutes afterward to be certain, but he didn’t reappear from any other angle and didn’t follow the circuitous route she had them take through the city to make sure they’d truly shaken him.

Still, she couldn’t relax until the door was locked tight and she had shoved a chair under the handle. After all, in the stories, it was always when you least expected it that the tigers pounced.

*

The young couple lived like kings for a few days, drinking wine like water and eating enough roasted meat and sugary desserts to make themselves sick. Danella kissed Roark’s split lip and bruises frequently and talked up his fight until it sounded as if maybe he’d won it himself rather than letting magick take the prize for him.

With a little care, the money from the purse and the wagers would have been enough to last them a month or more, but like candy around an unattended child, it soon disappeared. When it was gone, Danella suggested they hustle another fight.

Roark’s conscience bit at him with much less ferocity this time. The first bout had been harder than expected, even with his magickal aides, and to hear Danella talk, he’d earned the victory. The intensity of the street tough who’d tracked them across the city had faded from his memory as well, the wine and endless celebration dulling it down into nothing more than a silly night fear only children and fools would shrink from. Having gotten away with their first con in Frahoi entirely unscathed, both youths felt a pervasive certainty that they were invincible.

So it was that they returned to the basement little more than a week later.

*

The doorman only nodded to them this time, a touch of grudging respect in his squinted gaze as he took their admission. As they made their way through the basement, several of the regular patrons called out greetings to Roark.

“Oi, the young lord’s hungry for more blood!”

“Come to swat down another biggun, lordling?”

“They’re not going to wager as heavily against you this time,” Danella grumbled under her breath as they wove through the crowd.

“There’s still the winnings purse,” Roark said.

She grunted an unenthusiastic agreement, icy blue eyes roving to the pockets and moneybelts closest to them. Roark caught her hand as it slipped toward an inattentive spectator.

“Don’t chance it,” he entreated. “Not ’til we’re on the way out. Then you can take anything you like.”

She scowled. “Fine, as you like it.”

Roark became less and less certain Danella would hold to her promise as the night stretched on. Fights came and went, and still his name wasn’t called. Her hands fidgeted constantly, and her eyes were never far from the closest pocket. If something didn’t happen soon, he feared she would do something to get them chased out of the place.

Just when Roark had made up his mind to go ask the doorman if he’d forgotten to put his name in, the caller shouted:

“Our young street lord and surprise scrapper, Roark!”

Hurriedly Roark activated the spells—he’d grown more confident since with the success of his last enchantments and increased his reaction speed to a solid thirty-five percent—then ducked into the ring.

“And!” the caller swung around, encompassing the whole of the crowd in a maniacal grin and sweep of his arm. “A return you’ve all been waiting for! The one, the only, Pauli Ironsides!”

The house went mad. Roark’s eyes darted around, searching for his opponent. It couldn’t be the same man. There was no way the same Ironsides from six years ago was still fighting.

Icy slush ran through his veins as a gaunt man with graying sideburns and a body like a horseshoe nail ducked into the ring, slipping a thin gold chain from around his neck and handing it to the caller for safekeeping.

It was the tough who’d stalked them after their first fight.

“Back for a one-night only engagement,” the caller shouted with delight. “Bareknuckle boxing champ of Traisbin, and owner of this fine establishment, Pauli’s going to show our young scrapper a move or two!”

“Thrash him, Pauli!” bloodthirsty voices screamed from the sidelines. “Knock him clean off Terho!”

Roark caught Danella’s eye in the crowd, her scarred mouth hanging open in a panicked O. They should cut and run immediately. Get out of Frahoi and hide out somewhere this canny devil could never find them.

Before Roark could take a step, however, Pauli Ironsides advanced, and the reaction spell sent Roark backpedaling out of the way. The older man’s eyes glinted.

“You’re a fencer, aren’t you?” Pauli asked, an unsettling joviality in his voice.

Roark frowned, unable to understand why the man was talking to him. He lunged, a short passa piccolo step, and shot out a quick right, hoping to back him up, but Pauli bobbed his head aside easily and threw a jab that snapped Roark’s nose.

Roark stumbled back, nose and eyes screaming with pain, blood gushing over his top lip. Red flecks showered out in front of him as his harsh exhales caught it.

A few drops landed on Pauli’s fists, but he paid the blood no mind.

“I wager you’re death with a rapier,” he said, cutting off Roark’s next lunge mid-step and rocking him back with a pair of measured punches to his ribs. “That’s a nobleman’s weapon, isn’t it?”

Roark staggered, folding over the pain in his side, and tried to take a deep breath. Those shots had clearly been at half power, but it felt as if they’d bruised his innards. He threw an off-balance fist at Pauli, and the older man sidestepped it, letting him trip over his own momentum.

“That’s a bit more the level of speed and grace I’d expect from a boy your age,” Pauli said. “You wouldn’t happen to have a scrap o’ parchment on you, then?”

Roark bit off a curse, barely dodging a fist like a flatter hammer. Instead of knocking him out cold, the punch grazed his eye and glanced off. Water poured from the affected socket, obscuring his vision. He blinked frantically, trying to clear it.

Pain exploded through his jaw, fairly turning his head around, and he found himself lying flat on the packed dirt, staring at a pair of worn boots.

A hand appeared in his vision. Roark rolled away quickly, lurching unsteadily to his feet. His head spun, and he had to grab the rope to keep from falling again.

Pauli smiled and winked at him, but Roark was too suspicious to see the affability through the haze of accusations—correct accusations—the man had just leveled at him.

“No surprise there,” the caller shouted, coming between them and raising Pauli’s fist, still wet with Roark’s blood, high for the howling crowd. “Your winner, beloved proprietor of this fine establishment, and still undefeated bareknuckle boxing champion of Traisbin, Pauli Ironsides!”

*

Roark and Danella made it to the door before Pauli extricated himself from the multitude of slaps on the back and congratulations.

The doorkeeper set himself between the pair of youths and the exit, silently crossing his enormous arms over his barrel gut.

Roark snarled, blood in his teeth as he reached for his pen knife. At his side, Danella grabbed for her pocketful of peppered sand. They might well be outnumbered, but they wouldn’t go down without a fight.

Before the situation could dissolve into a skirmish, however, Pauli caught up to them.

“Easy now. We only want a word.”

“Sod off,” Roark snapped, wielding the pen knife like a dagger. He’d never fought with a short blade, but he knew if you stuck a man, he wasn’t likely to get close again. As long as he had a little distance to work with, Roark could carve some sort of spell for escape into his arm. Casting something for both himself and Danella was a deadly risk, but if he had to, he’d chance it to protect her.

Pauli stopped a pace away, palms out to show he meant no harm.

“You’re welcome to try more violence, if you like,” Pauli said. “But it didn’t serve you well the first round, did it?”

“We’re not going to stand around here while you call down the Ustars on us,” Roark growled.

Pauli chuckled. “And have myself arrested while I’m at it? The Frahoi city guard turns a blind eye to my establishment, but if the Tyrant King’s men got in on the raid, they’d be forced to do something about me.” He shook his graying head. “I don’t know you, lad, but I’m not prepared to hand anybody over and take myself down with them—no matter how high the price on their head.”

Danella went still at Roark’s side. She’d been cornered before, and the results were never pretty. She knew she could go quietly until she had a chance to break and run, but she doubted Roark could. Nearly the entire time he’d been on the streets, she had been watching his back; he’d never been alone and hopelessly outnumbered, and so he hadn’t been forced to learn that there were times you had to take your medicine and hope you lived to come out wiser on the other side.

“What do you want?” she growled.

“Like I said, no more than a word,” Pauli promised.

Behind him, the crowd had realized no blood was likely to be spilled at the door and turned back to the ring to watch the next fight.

“That was magick you were using,” Pauli said, leveling his piercing gaze on Roark. “The rest of these folks might be too blind to see it, but I’ve trained a fair number of boxers from the ground up. I know the way a fighter’s body moves, and at your age, it doesn’t move like that. I won’t ask you where you came from or how you got here, but judging by what you left behind, I doubt the road endeared you to his excellency the Tyrant King.”

Roark’s feral sneer answered that question well enough.

Pauli went on, encouraged. “You’re wasting your life grifting, the both of you. A young man skilled with magick and a blade, a sticky-fingered young escape artist with a sweet face no one would suspect—the resistance needs people like you.”

“The seven hells can take your resistance,” Danella snapped. “We won’t be pressganged into this war by you or anyone else.”

“No coercion,” Pauli said. “I’m not the Tyrant King. If you don’t want to join, you’re free to go. What I’m offering you is an opportunity to make something more of yourselves. I can give you the keys to take down the Ustars and the whole damned empire Marek’s built on the blood of Traisbin. You don’t have to live the rest of your life drifting with no future and no purpose. You can use your skills to save people, to free them.”

The arm holding Roark’s pen knife dipped steadily as the older man spoke until the blade hung by his side. He could hear his father’s words ringing in his head—“Magick isn’t a toy, it’s a responsibility entrusted to the von Grafs to protect the people and lands in our care.”

Cool fingers slipped into his free hand. Danella.

“Keep making speeches about futures and purpose,” she said in a dark voice. “I know your resistance. You press yourself on good people when you can’t run away fast enough, then leave them to have their guts run out across the orphanage floor when the Ustars come. I’ve seen it, and I’ve paid back in full the men who did it.”

A little cornhusk doll appeared in Roark’s mind along with the garrison of soldiers Danella had told him about. She had left the lot of them in their beds with gaping wounds across their throats. The resistance’s guerilla fighter had suffered a similar fate when she found him, his neck had been opened to the world in an inn not a day’s ride from the slaughtered garrison.

“There was no purpose to any of it but to feed the worms.” Danella’s voice remained steady, but her hand shook in Roark’s. He squeezed it gently. He’d been there for her nightmares and drunken tirades just as she had for his, and he knew the full strength of the fury and fear possessing her now, a pain and anger someone like this Pauli Ironsides could never understand.

Roark lifted his chin and stared defiantly into the man’s dark eyes, his decision made. He hadn’t had anything of value since Bloedrige Noct when everything was taken away from him, but he had his loyalty.

“What will you do, then?” Pauli asked, a note of quiet compassion in his question. “Keep drifting from town to town, hustling fights and cutting purses, always running to stay one step ahead of the Ustars? Slip by with just enough to keep your bellies full and a roof over your heads? That’s no life.”

“If you’re fast enough it bloody well is,” Roark said, bringing the crooked smile back to Danella’s face.

“You can’t outrun this war,” Pauli said. “It catches up to everyone eventually.”

“Nothing can catch us,” Danella said, holding up the gold chain he’d taken off before the fight. She tossed it to him.

Pauli caught it out of the air and sighed. He jerked his head at the doorman. The reinforced oak screeched open behind them.

“When it comes for you, you’re always welcome here,” he promised them. “Remember that.”

The youths turned and fled up the basement stairs and into the snow and ice of another bitter winter night.

Pauli cursed under his breath, clutching the gold chain in his fist, then said a prayer of protection for them. It was the best he could do for those who didn’t want his help.

*

Neither Roark or Danella breathed easily or slowed their pace until they’d put several streets between themselves and the boxing den. Neither suggested returning to their little attic room in the inn.

“There has to be somewhere it’s warm this time of year,” Danella insisted, pulling her cloak tight around her. “Should we make for the southern coast?”

Roark glanced over his shoulder toward the mouth of the alley. A tall, lean form stood just inside the shadows, its noble carriage too familiar for comfort.

Roark nearly tripped over his own feet. When he looked back, his father was gone.

“Aye, love,” he told Danella through a suddenly dry throat. “This town palls all of a sudden.”

*

“Get some distance and keep your guard up!” Pauli shouted at the fighters in the ring, though he was mainly talking to Talliard. The big man had a bad habit of exposing his middle to his opponent. He had bulk enough to take punches from even the really big savages like himself, but if Talliard were in a fight for his life, he’d be slaughtered, even by much a smaller opponent…as Crane’s chalked training knife was busy showing the big man in white slashes and stabs across his belly.

Crane danced in again, and Talliard swung a widowmaker at the smaller man, but it was too late. Another pair of chalk wounds marked the giant’s vitals.

Pauli shook his head. “Taking his head off won’t do you any good if he’s already opened your guts!”

Across the room, the big iron door swung open on its hinges, shrieking, and a stripe of bright sunlight fell inward.

At the sound, Crane’s knife disappeared up his sleeve and he raised his fists like he and Talliard had been slugging it out all along.

Pauli stayed leaning on the rope, but craned his neck to see who had come in. It wasn’t common for the doorkeep to let anyone in during the day without loudly announcing them; luckily training guerilla fighters for the resistance didn’t look much different from teaching men to box, especially when you had rusty hinges to warn you of unwanted intrusions.

Rather than a city guardsman looking to shake Pauli’s establishment down for a little extra coin or a nosy Ustar they might have to make disappear, a shaggy-haired whip-thin youth stopped halfway to the ring.

Pauli knew the boy instantly, though the year and a half since he’d last seen the young street lord looked to have run him through the ringer. His jaw and cheekbones were sharp as razors. Shadows pooled under his feverish eyes, and a deadly glint on the verge of madness danced in their gray depths. There was a slight tremble to the boy’s fists and shoulders, and in this sweltering summer heat it wasn’t likely to be from the chill air. It was rage, pure and simple, boiling up from the depths of the boy’s soul.

And he was alone.

With a harsh curse, Pauli crossed the packed dirt floor to meet him, stopping just outside the reach of a fencer’s lunge. Caution was, after all, the better part of survival.

“The war came and got you, didn’t it?” Pauli said, already knowing the answer.

“I don’t care what it takes.” Roark’s words were hoarse with pain and fury. “Show me how to kill every one of these Ustar bastards and raze that bloody tyrant’s empire to the ground.”