The Golden Square had once lived up to its name, but not within living memory. It had been a theatre, hosting bawdy comedies for the artisan classes. Now it was a makeshift arena. The management let it out to any local gangs who had a score, and didn’t charge. The bookmakers’ takings more than covered costs and it kept the place independent of the fiefs, more or less. It had been on House of Maynard turf until recently, but the tide had carried the Firecallers’ borders past it. Some half-dozen of the Maynard men turned up, led by a grim-looking Ant- kinden woman with a shaved head. It was no secret that if the challenge match went against them, so would a great deal else.
They dressed drably, keeping under sleeves the white-patterned bracers that told of their allegiance. In contrast, the score and a half of Firecallers were rowdy and boisterous and wore their red silk scarves with fierce pride. Maynard himself had not shown, but the leader of the Firecallers, a broad-shouldered halfbreed, was holding court at one end of the sand.
Bello’s nerve nearly failed him three times before he managed to approach the place. There were all manner of toughs knocking shoulders outside it, from fief soldiers to the local labour, or tradesmen here for a flutter. In the end he waited for his moment and just darted in, pitching over their heads and dropping into the doorway with, for once, the poise of an acrobat.
‘Very adept,’ said a familiar voice from behind the door. He looked round, but it was a moment before he found Tisamon standing there. ‘You’re a good flyer. Perhaps you should try the Guild. You’re of an age to train.’
Bello blinked at him. It was strange to face this travelled, seasoned man and know something, as second nature, that he had no idea of. ‘The Guildhouse here’s a closed shop, Master. Unless you’re sponsored, you don’t get in. Nobody’s going to sponsor me.’
‘The Messengers keep other houses in other cities,’ Tisamon said, but then looked away as the bald Ant- kinden woman came over.
‘With you standing by the door, Mantis, it looks like you’re going to run,’ she said. Tisamon stared at her coldly but she faced up to him without a blink. ‘What? We’re all bug-food if you take your leave, man. Anyway, they’re asking for you. We’re about to settle this.’
Tisamon nodded. ‘Clavia, you keep an eye on this boy here. Don’t keep him with you, but I want him unharmed when this is done.’
The Ant-kinden, Clavia, frowned, but Tisamon waved her objections away. ‘Call it a condition of my employment.’
‘Rack you, Mantis-man,’ she spat out, but she was nodding. ‘Whatever you want. I swear, if you foul the works here, I’ll kill you myself.’
She stalked off to her fellows, who had a good view of the sand. Bello wanted to go with them but then saw why not.
The fighter was making his way after Clavia, and Bello was about to find a place, when someone said, ‘Oi,’ softly behind him. With a sudden stab of fear he turned, but then grinned to see a familiar face.
‘Master Holden!’
‘You’re up late, boy.’ Holden’s smile was barely there. ‘I see you got involved in all of this. I tried to warn you about it. It’s hard to make an honest living in this town, but you should at least give it a try.’
‘I’ve not joined a fief yet, Master,’ Bello said. ‘I just. .’
Holden shook his head. ‘We all have to pay the rent,’ he said sadly.
‘Even you?’ Somehow Bello had never thought of old Joyless Bidewell making the extra climb to Holden’s rooms above. ‘But you’re doing well? You said so.’
‘That’s a close neighbour to doing badly. They live on the same street.’ Holden tousled Bello’s hair. ‘Now you’ve got this far, now you see all these men, these criminals, making more money in a night than you see yourself in a month, you’ll see things in a different way. You’ll be a fief-soldier soon enough, working from the ground up. It’s a shame, but you’re not the first.’
‘Master Holden. .’ He wanted to say that he wanted to be a freelancer, a duellist, like Tisamon or Holden himself. It was not a job for a Fly-kinden, though, not even for the biggest and hardiest Fly-kinden there ever was.
‘Go find yourself a seat,’ the Beetle said to him, and passed on through the crowd.
Bello looked around, and saw that there were at least a dozen Fly-kinden already in the rafters, finding niches where they could enjoy a unique viewpoint. Some were wearing Firecaller scarves but he found just then he wanted to watch the fight more than he feared them. He let his wings take him up to a beam and sat there, his legs dangling. He felt the eyes of Clavia on him as he flew.
The sand, where the fighters would square off, was nothing grand, just a strip about twenty feet long, no more than five feet wide. In the fiefs they liked their fights close and bloody. At one end the Firecaller leadership sat enthroned. At the other end were Clavia and her few minions. Along each side, close enough that a missed stroke could clip them, were the gamblers, the drinkers and the fight enthusiasts who had come to make a night of it.
Tisamon stepped down before the Maynard men. He cut an odd, stark figure in his green arming jacket and gold brooch, his folding-blade gauntlet on his hand and his arm spines jutting. The crowd quieted. It was poor form to shout at the fighters.
A Beetle-kinden man stepped down before the Firecallers, and it was a moment before Bello cried out in protest, voice high above the mumble of the crowd. They looked, they all looked up to see him: a skinny little Fly- kinden child with his mouth open and his face pasty. He had eyes only for one, though: Holden, with a Firecaller scarf about his neck. Holden, looking up at him briefly, face resigned.
Tisamon had dropped into his stance the moment the steel was drawn, his claw hooked back, one open hand thrust forward. He was quite still, waiting for Holden to come to him. For a long time neither man moved. The crowd, no longer restless, became more and more involved, feeling the tension between the two pull taut.
Holden let out a shout and was at the other man, cutting at his ready hand, then thrusting past at his chest. Tisamon shrugged aside from the lunge, beat the cut away with his palm, was past Holden in a moment. They were left at opposite ends of the sand, no blood drawn. There had not even been the sound of steel on steel.
Holden, with the burning gaze of the House of Maynard on his back, approached again. This time he changed his stance, one blade high and one low. He thrust with both, then cut out and wide to stop Tisamon getting past him again. Tisamon’s offhand passed before his face and then cut down, slamming the spines through Holden’s shoulder armour but not biting deep. Bello heard the Beetle-kinden hiss. The shortswords drove in whilst Tisamon was close, trying to catch him. Again the other man was gone when they arrived. Holden was strong, and he was quick for a big man, but he could not pin his enemy down. Tisamon danced him from one end of the sand to the other, in a space designed to be too small for that, meant to force a bloody confrontation.
They paused, the length of the sand between them. Holden had so far been doing most of the work but his people were an enduring lot. Neither man was breathing hard. There was something about his stance, though, that Bello saw: something about Tisamon’s too. It was as though the two of them were party to a secret that nobody else watching had understood. In seeing it, Bello saw the secret, too, became an initiate into that tiny mystery.
They closed again and this time Holden held nothing back. His swords slammed at Tisamon from all angles, drove him before them like a leaf in a storm. There was a rapid patter of metal as Tisamon’s claw came in at last, moving like a living thing, gathering Holden’s blades and casting them like chaff. Tisamon struck with his offhand, the spines scoring across the other man’s face, and as Holden cried out, he died. The claw made its first and fatal strike, a swift dart of silver between Holden’s neck and shoulder. Bello felt the stab of it, even though his champion had won.
There was a hush as the spectators cast their thoughts back over those last moments, reconstructing them. Then the crowd, the idle punters, began to clap and cheer, and the lucky ones started to call in their creditors. Tisamon remained quite still, though, the dead man’s blood on his blade, and his eyes on the Firecallers. All the Maynard men had drawn knives or swords.
Tisamon had made sure he was at the far end of the sand, closest to the Firecaller chief. There was a lot
