When I came out to fight again, I felt like my skeleton was trying to escape.

  I kept this to myself, of course. With Devyne present, and Gruin for that matter, I would sooner give myself a hernia than admit to feeling anything as weak and pedestrian as fear. My little explosion about not wanting to die seemed to already have damaged me in the Grynkori’s eyes, and I still felt somewhat bitter about being viewed as weak.

  “You think I don’t have a chance,” I guessed. They were probably right, though having looked at my other competition I at least knew that the remaining five contestants were far from the level of Ganistran and his foe.

  Devyne didn’t meet my eye, and Gruin just grinned.

  “Then I look forwards to proving you both wrong,” I snapped, and marched out into the arena with a gait that demonstrated total fearlessness. All bullshit of course, but if one is to lie then one should always do it well.

  My opponent was either lying similarly well, or felt a lot more confident than me. He was a knight, and perhaps an aristocrat too, and actually made a show of arriving to fight in full plate armour before stripping it down to step into the actual arena in normal clothing. Pure aesthetic and showmanship, I thought, but the crowd ate it up as they did virtually everything else carried out by a handsome-ish contestant with a modicum of skill.

  I swallowed, and kept my jaw tight, my body tighter. I moved my arm with an eagerness I didn’t feel and forced my feet to start moving, barely resisting the urge to prance around before our contest could even start. Wasting energy would do me no favours.

  All at once, my opponent and I moved in and started swinging. I’d only seen this one fight once, unfortunately, and I imagined he knew more about what I could do than I did him. All the same, I found out soon that I had the advantage of him.

  I wasn’t just stronger, faster and more enduring—I had the edge in skill, too. However this man had managed to get his way this far into the tourney, he wouldn’t be moving one step farther than this. He—

  He scored the first touch, and I was sent, baffled, to wait back in my corner for the next exchange to be declared. I realised I’d been baited only by the time we were already approaching one another again. That it was the very same mistake my last opponent had made with me, of course, did not register.

  Round two was mine, and easily. Though anger distracted me it also brought me an intensity of focus and determined effort that meant I made no similar lapses to my first. That left only the sheer abilities at play to determine a victor, and those were just as much mine as they’d been before. I took a touch in under ten seconds and sent my enemy skulking back to their own corner. The difference was noticeable, but I’d seen already that it was far from insurmountable. I kept my wits about me, and scored the next touch again.

  Crowds do so love an overdog, and my mood was lifting by the touch. The next one came easiest yet, much to the spectators’ thrilled reception, and I strutted my way back out of the arena with my sword dangling at my hip. I spared a single glance over my shoulder to see my opponent with his head low as he marched off. An older man, his father perhaps, was barking something I couldn’t hear over the din, face like thunder. It all seemed upsettingly familiar.

  Feeling enough cognitive dissonance to immediately combust a weaker man, I turned from the sight and plastered my stupid grin back on. Gruin was scowling as I approached him in the stand.

  “Didn’t bet this time after all,” I guessed.

  “Fuck off.” He got to his feet and stalked away, and I just let the smugness of my recent victories fester. Had I a single critical thought in my head, I might have wondered why he stayed to watch me when I wasn’t standing to bring him any cash.

  I took Gruin’s seat in the stands and stayed to watch the remaining bouts, finding my confidence dissipate as I saw that the men still left in the tourney were all better than my most recent opponent by far. Better, I had to admit, than me. Just as I felt whatever confidence that had remained to me crumble, the announcement came.

  They had a woman give it, a young and pretty thing probably hand-picked to please the crowds, but she spoke confidently enough. She thanked everyone for their patronage, and cheerily declared a three-day pause to the tournament while its contestants rested up. That was received well and badly.

  Well by the contestants themselves of course, who generally seemed quite pleased. Badly by the spectators, who just wanted more action sooner rather than later, and badly by me. I hadn’t been finding myself plagued by any issues of stamina or soreness, and if my opponents had been then so much the better—I’d take that advantage eagerly.

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  “This is good, right?” Devyne asked, “giving you the chance to rest up?”

  I thought about how best to respond for a moment before doing so.

  “Well, it probably disadvantages me in the long-term given how quickly I recuperate…So I approve. Wouldn’t want my win to be soured by an unfair edge in my favour eh?”

  He ate that right up, of course, and I could practically see his eyes shining as we stood up to finally join Gruin in taking our leave from the stadium. It was around then that I got confronted by the most unpleasant thing to find me that day.

  It was the little shit who’d brought me my first message from the esteemed Thaumaturge, and it seemed Wyrickai had another for me. The boy looked ever so slightly apologetic as he opened his mouth to speak.

  “Apologies, sir, but my master requests your presence to finalise the business you both agreed upon when last you spoke. Are you available?” Clearly he’d chosen this exact time to make sure I was, and I was left scrambling to try and get myself out of this despite the fact.

  But my answer didn’t come. Gruin spared me from having to make it by walking up behind the boy, grabbing him hard by one shoulder and dragging his face down to meet a raising fist. His head jerked back as if from a hammer-blow and the strength left his legs instantly as he dropped down boneless to the ground, head slack upon its neck. I stared at the limp body for several long seconds, letting out my caught breath only when I saw his chest still rising and falling.

  “You’re welcome,” Gruin said happily.

  I was stunned, and for once didn’t waste the time in snapping out at him in ways he would only ignore or argue with. Instead I more productively looked around, confirmed there were no witnesses, and then turned back to the now-groaning boy lying deliriously in the dirt.

  “What did you do!?” Devyne looked white as a sheet and seemed to be trembling more than the unconscious man was, I ignored him and knelt down by the Thaumaturge’s assistant.

  “We need to move him fast,” I told Gruin, “give me a hand will you—”

  Apparently I was still not quite accustomed to the Grynkori’s strength, or perhaps I was only just now witnessing the extent of his people’s capacity for load-bearing in particular. The messenger was not so small for a man, and yet he was hefted up over Gruin’s shoulder like he weighed no more than a blanket.

  “Where are we dumping him?”

  In the end we dropped him in an alley just one street down from the arena, one that I knew was rather heavily patrolled by guards and would see him discovered soon. I could only hope that when he came to it didn’t lead to any inconvenient remembrances on his part—somehow I wasn’t certain Gruin being the one to strike him would be a piece of nuance Wyrickai appreciated.

  Devyne certainly didn’t appreciate any of the nuance here, and seemed to have remained silent only because of some stunned shock overcoming him as we moved the unconscious idiot. Once that deed was done, and the source of his stupefaction removed from sight, he found his words once more. As I may have expected, they were very inconvenient and annoying words too.

  “Is this what you do then?” he spat, “just assault people who you don’t like?” He clearly intended the question to be some sort of knifepoint aimed at me, but I didn’t feel particularly pricked by it and, clearly, neither did Gruin.

  “Pretty much,” the Grynkori shrugged. I could see exactly where that answer was moving Devyne and decided to be a bit more diplomatic in giving my own response. Which was to say, dishonest and sneaky.

  “Of course not, I don’t know why Gruin did that and he won’t do it again if I have anything to say about it,” I shot a glare at the Grynkori that was not at all false, and kept an eye on Devyne from the corner of my vision.

  He was receptive enough to it, though I could tell I didn’t have him yet.

  “Look, Gruin, can you give us a moment to talk in private?” I tensed as I asked the question, all too aware that Gruin might refuse me out of sheer spite. Or stubbornness, or paranoia, or a sense of amusement. Come to think of it Gruin was not the most accommodating of fellows, but he conceded today at least. Grunting something about lanks and stalking off to turn a corner and let Devyne and I speak unimpeded.

  I took a momentary, relaxed breath with his absence, then tried to think of the best way to try and instill some harmony between his behaviour and Devyne’s squeamishness.

  “We’re dealing with a Thaumaturge,” I said at last, “do you understand what that means?”

  Devyne actually paused. I’d been hoping for a reaction like this, Thaumaturges were something my education had given me some insight into, but the general air of mystique they cultivated around themselves meant that I still knew precious little, and that ignorance, as ignorance usually did, had turned into fear.

  I didn’t doubt Devyne’s upbringing had featured a more extensive amount of learning than mine, more on that later, but it seemed he was still far from comfortable about the wielders of magic. He blanched.

  “So you think this Thaumaturge might actually be a danger to you? A physical one.”

  Once again I hesitated before answering that. The more I thought about it, the less overtly dangerous Wyrickai struck me as being. But that might just be because the primal shock of our first encounter was wearing off. He’d not actually threatened me directly, and I had to admit I didn’t exactly hear many reliable stories of mad Thaumaturges blowing people to pieces when slighted, but that didn’t mean I wanted him as an enemy if I could get away with it.

  “He’s a potential danger, and currently I don’t have anything that might deter him if he chooses to become a real one.”

  “Maybe you do,” Devyne said at once, “do you have a spare afternoon…” He winced, glanced perhaps involuntarily back to the alley we’d left that messenger in, and sighed, “yes, I suppose you do.”

  “I do,” I confirmed, and the two of us headed off quickly. I didn’t know where too, apparently there was no chance to explain, but I knew it was a fuck-sight better than taking my chances with Wyrickai.

  ‘Knew’, right. I thought I knew so much back then.

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