LITMIR.BIZ

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hung for a witch by now.’

      Barras grunted. ‘Let’s hope so. Let’s hope she’s not back in Scorron stirring up that little war again.’

      I could agree with him there. Barras’s father negotiated the peace and treated it like his second son. I’d rather a close relative came to harm than that particular peace deal. Nothing would induce me back into the mountains to fight the Scorrons.

      We left the palace by the Victory Gate in fine spirits, passing our flask of Wennith red between us while I explained the virtues of wooing sisters.

      As we entered Heroes’ Plaza the wine turned to vinegar in my mouth. I half-choked and dropped the flask.

      ‘There! Do you see her?’ Coughing, wiping tears from my eyes, I forgot my own rule and pointed at the blind-eye woman. She stood at the base of a great statue, The Last Steward, sombre on his petty throne.

      ‘Steady on!’ Roust thumped me between the shoulders.

      ‘See who?’ Omar asked, staring where I pointed. Dressed in tatters, she might in another glance be nothing more than rags hanging on a dead bush. Perhaps that’s what Omar saw.

      ‘Nearly lost this!’ Barras retrieved the flask, safe in its reed casing. ‘Come to papa! I’ll be looking after you from now on, little one!’ And he cradled it like a baby.

      None of them saw her. She watched a moment longer, the blind-eye burning across me, then turned and walked away through the crowds flowing toward Trent Market. Jostled into action by the others I walked on too, haunted by old fears.

      We approached the Blood Holes in the early afternoon, me sweating and nervous, and not just because of the unseasonal heat or the fact that my financial future was about to ride on two very broad shoulders. The Silent Sister always unsettled me and I’d seen entirely too much of her today. I kept glancing about, half-expecting to spot her again along the crowded streets.

      ‘Let’s see this monster of yours!’ Lon Greyjar slapped a hand to my shoulder, shaking me out of my rememberings and alerting me to the fact we’d arrived at the Blood Holes. I made a smile for him and promised myself I’d fleece the little fucker down to his last crown. He had an annoying way about him did Lon, too chummy, too keen to lay hands on you, and always snipping away at anything you said as if he doubted everything, even the boots you were standing in. Fair enough, I lie a lot, but that doesn’t mean cousins of some minor princeling can take liberties.

      I paused before approaching the doors and stepped back, casting my gaze along the outer walls. The place had been a slaughterhouse once, though a grand one, as if the king back in those days had wanted even his cattle murdered in buildings that would shame the homes of his copper-crown rivals.

      On the only other occasion I’d seen the blind-eye woman outside the throne room she had been on the Street of Nails up close to one of the larger manses toward the western end. I’d come out of some ambassador’s ballroom with an enticing young woman, got my face slapped for my efforts, and was cooling off, watching the street before going back in. I had been wiggling one of my teeth to check the damned girl hadn’t knocked it loose when I saw the Silent Sister across the broadness of the street. She stood there, bolder than brass, a bucket in one white hand and a horsehair brush in the other, painting symbols on the walls of the manse. Not the garden walls facing the street but the walls of the building itself, seemingly unnoticed by guard or dog. I watched her, growing colder by the moment as if a crack had run through the night letting all the heat spill out of it. She showed no sign of hurry, painting one symbol, moving on to the next. In the moonlight it looked like blood she was painting with, broad dark strokes, each running with countless dribbles, and coming together to make sigils that seemed to twist the night around them. She was encircling the building, throwing a painted noose about it, patient, slow, relentless. I ran back in then, far more scared of that old woman and her bucket of blood than of the young Countess Loren, her over-quick hand, and whatever brothers she might set upon me to defend her honour. The joy of the night was gone though and I left for home quick enough.

      A day later I heard report of a terrible fire on the Street of Nails. A house burned to ash with not a single survivor. Even today the site lies vacant, with nobody willing to build there again.

      The walls of the Blood Holes were blessedly free of any decoration save perhaps the scratched names of temporary lovers here and there where a buttress provided shelter for such work. I cursed myself for a fool and led on through the doors.

      The Terrif brothers who ran the Blood Holes had sent a wagon to collect Snorri from the Marsail keep earlier in the day. I’d been particular in the message I dispatched, warning them to take considerable care with the man and demanding assurances of a thousand in crown gold if they failed to ensure his attendance in the Crimson Pit for the first bout.

      Flanked by my entourage I strode into the Blood Holes, enveloped immediately in the sweat and smoke and stink and din of the place. Damn but I loved it there. Silk-clad nobles strolled around the fight floor, each an island of colour and sophistication, close pressed by companions, then a ragged halo of hangers on, hawkers, beer-men, poppy-men and brazens, and at the periphery, urchins ready to scurry between one gentleman and the next bearing messages by mouth or hand. The bet-takers, each sanctioned and approved by the Terrifs, stood at their stalls around the edge of the hall, odds listed in chalk, boys ready to collect or deliver at the run.

      The four main pits lay at the vertices of a great diamond, red-tiled into the floor. Scarlet, Umber, Ochre, and Crimson. All of a likeness, twenty-foot deep, twenty-foot across, but with Crimson first among equals. The nobility wound their way between these and the lesser pits, peering down, discussing the fighters on display, the odds on offer. A sturdy wooden rail surrounded each pit, set into a timber apron that overlapped the stonework, reaching a yard down into the depression. I led the way to Crimson and leaned over, the rail hard against my midriff. Snorri ver Snagason glowered up at me.

      ‘Fresh meat here!’ I raised my hand, still staring down at my meal ticket. ‘Who’ll take a cut!’

      Two small olive hands slid out over the rail beside me. ‘I believe I will. I feel you owe me a cut, or two, Prince Jalan.’

      Aw hell. ‘Maeres, how good to see you.’ To my credit I kept the blind terror from my reply and didn’t soil myself. Maeres Allus had the calm and reasonable voice that a scribe or tutor should have. The fact that he liked to watch when his collectors cut the lips off a man turned that reasonable tone from a comfort to a horror.

      ‘He’s a big fellow,’ Maeres said.

      ‘Yes.’ I glanced around wildly for my friends. All of them, even the two old veterans picked specially by my father to guard me, had slunk off toward Umber without a word and let Maeres Allus slide up beside me unannounced. Only Omar had the grace to look guilty.

      ‘How would he fare against Lord Gren’s man, Norras, do you think?’ Maeres asked.

      Norras was a skilled pugilist but I thought Snorri would pound the man flat. I could see Gren’s fighter now, standing behind the barred gate opposite the one that Snorri had come through.

      ‘Shouldn’t we call the fight? Get the odds set?’ I shot Barras Jon a look and called out to him, ‘Norras against my fresh meat? What numbers there?’

      Maeres set a soft hand to my arm. ‘Time enough for wagering when the man’s been tested, no?’

      ‘B-but he might come to harm,’ I flustered. ‘I plan to make good coin here, Maeres, pay you back with interest.’ My finger ached. The one Maeres had broken when I came up short two months back.

      ‘Indulge me,’ he said. ‘That will be my interest. I’ll cover any losses. A man like that … he might be worth three hundred crowns.’

      I saw his game then. Three hundred was just half what I owed him. The bastard meant to see Snorri die and keep a royal prince on his leash. There didn’t seem to be a way past it though. You don’t argue with Maeres Allus, certainly not in his cousins’ fight hall and owing him the best part of a thousand in gold. Maeres knew how far he

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