The offer detonated a round of wild cheers from the crowd. Behind me, some of those patrons not fortunate enough to enjoy a seat in the stepped benches had climbed up onto the tables instead, partly to see the action, partly to bellow their own encouragement. The crowd stiffened at my back, pressed forward, and I had an unusual moment of panic.
Rassambur is a fortress of air and light and open space; a woman might go to the god there, but she will do so on the broad stone beneath the wide sky. The memories of my childhood, on the other hand, were all of hot, cramped spaces. Our teak shack stood packed so tightly against those on either side that it seemed the only thing keeping it from tumbling forward on its rotten stilts was the weight of those other sorry dwellings pressing in. When my father came home from the docks, when he slammed the door behind him, there was nowhere inside that tiny cube to go, nowhere to hide. Even those times when I escaped, slipping beneath his clumsy, drunken grasp, there was only the warren of Dombang’s tight, twisting canals, the precarious planks and walkways laid between piers and makeshift houses, the cramped, reeking hulls of the spear-fish boats.
Rishinira’s Rage was a long way from Dombang, but the irresistible press of bodies, the smell of too many people packed in too small a place, the way the heat and anger had nowhere to escape—it all reminded me of home, my first home, before I found my way to Rassambur. It made me want to shove back, to turn and fight my way free, but the loose mass of men through which we had moved on the way in had hardened into a wall. Sweating, suddenly, gritting my teeth, I turned back to the scene playing out below.
It was clear at a glance that, without even moving, Ruc had backed Nayat into a corner. The men and women sitting on those seats around the pit hadn’t paid good coin to watch a fight that lasted barely four heartbeats. Even those who had won money betting on Ruc seemed vaguely disappointed, and those who lost were howling for the opportunity to double down. The scene hadn’t quite turned ugly, not yet, but it was clear from the tension in Nayat’s neck and shoulders that she felt the menace just the same as I did, the coming violence like a sound pitched just on the edge of human hearing.
Nayat raised her hands for quiet. The quiet was longer in arriving this time, and when it came it was frayed at the edges with mutters and murmurs.
“I would pay you,” she said, turning back to Ruc, “but I don’t have anyone for you to fight.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, toward where the blond man’s friends had carried him away. “I didn’t plan on you shattering Fion’s jaw quite so quickly. Maybe tomorrow night.…”
And then, while she was still speaking, while the mass of men and women in the room were still leaning forward, angry and eager to hear what would happen next, I did something that I still can’t quite explain.
I think that partly it was the crowd pressing in behind me. The only open space was in that pit, where Nayat stood with her arm around Ruc’s shoulders, and something, some old voice inside me that had been silent almost since childhood, whispered in my ear: It’s safer there. This, obviously, was madness.
Or maybe it wasn’t actually that voice at all, but the same girlish impulse that had driven me to follow Ruc out of the temple in the first place, some visceral thrill at the simple sight of him, the cut of his chest, the way he moved, the beauty of his skin beneath all those bruises. Or, maybe I just wanted to test myself. Rassambur is filled with tests, opportunities to pit the mind, or body, or spirit against something greater. Life outside those walls can feel blanched and attenuated, a series of motions leached of their meaning. Maybe it was as simple as that: I wanted to see what I could do.
“I’ll fight him,” I said.
The words landed in the pit, bright and unmistakable as coins, though what I hoped to buy with them, I had no idea.
Nayat heard the challenge, but when she raised her eyes to find the source, she looked right past me, presumably scanning the throng for some more obvious pugilist. I stepped down into the topmost rank of benches.
“I’ll fight him,” I said again.
Nayat saw me finally, frowned, then shook her head.
“Who in Hull’s name are you?”
“Does it matter?”
“As a matter of fact,” the woman replied, “it does. People come here to see a fight. I know every fighter in this city. I do not know you.”
Ruc, who before had seemed almost indifferent to the entire proceeding, looked up at me sharply when I spoke, narrowing that one unswollen eye to the barest slit, as though he were trying to see me through a blaze of a blinding light. As he studied me, he slipped out from beneath Nayat’s broad arm. It didn’t look like much—just a casual step to the side—but he shrugged as he moved, loosening his neck and back. He flexed the hand that he’d used to knock down the blond giant, testing it.
“I’ll fight her,” he said quietly. He’d never stopped looking at me.
It wasn’t until he smiled that I realized just how stupid I’d been. Since arriving in Sia, I’d given three people to the god—one every two months—and though I was certain no one had seen me, it was ludicrous to flaunt my presence. Not just my presence, but my skills. Which brought me to another part of the stupidity—for all I knew, Ruc Lan Lac would take me apart down in that pit. I might leave Rishinira’s Rage with a broken leg or a missing eye. Judging from the way Ruc punched, I might not leave at all.
It wasn’t the thought of death that bothered me; even then, I trusted in Ananshael’s justice and his mercy. A purposeless death, however, one that I’d thrown myself into for no other reason than a stranger’s green eyes—eye, I corrected myself—it would be an indignity to the history of my order, to the women and men who had labored so hard and patiently to train me. Worse and more probably, I might leave the pit alive, but with an injury that would leave me unfit to serve my god.
Those, of course, were the risks and possibilities I should have considered before opening my mouth. By the time Ruc had agreed to the fight, every glazed, drunken eye in the place was on me. In moments, the underlying chord of all those voices shifted from the thrumming bass note of building rage to the quicker counterpoint of argument and negotiation. I could only catch scraps of the conversation:
… She’s inches shorter.…
… A woman …
… All beat up. If she just …
… Four to one. Eight …
Though Nayat hadn’t yet agreed, her bookmakers were already moving through the rows of men and women, trying to drum up the next round of betting.
Ruc ignored it all. He seemed to have a knack for ignoring things. His gaze stayed fixed on me even as Nayat turned to him.
“Want to introduce your paramour?”
“I wish I could,” he replied. “I only just met her myself.”
Nayat frowned. “Doesn’t seem like you.”
To my surprise, Ruc grinned. “What? Meeting a woman?”
“Fighting someone who can’t fight back.”
“Oh, she can fight.”
Nayat turned back to me, her eyes sharp, appraising. “How do you know?”