Abbee heard her own jawbone shatter. Her world went white for an instant. Hot pain seared through her face and chased away the shouting crowd. Her legs wobbled, and she went down to one knee, slapping her left hand on soggy straw and compacted dirt. Touching the ground was the part she hated the most in the bouts. Damp ground compacted by thousands of fights. Thousands of punches and kicks and buckets of blood. Some of the blood was hers.
But that wasn’t what she hated, touching old blood. She hated the memories of sitting on the ground, beaten and broken, with a one-armed man standing over her. Judging her and finding her lacking. Telling her to get up. Abbee hated herself for looking for his approval and never finding it. She hated him for abandoning her without ever saying she was good enough.
Hated him for disappearing and being impossible to find.
Abbee hated Ipsu more than anything because she’d given up looking for him. It had taken two years, two fruitless years of searching after emerging from Graywall, but she’d given up.
He’d made her give up.
Roars of the crowd rushed back into her awareness. Abbee knelt in the fighting pit of New Bend’s bout hall. Dirty and mismatched wooden boards separated the straw-covered pit from the bleachers, half-full with a rough-looking crowd of day laborers. Abbee looked up at the man who’d hit her. A big beast she hadn’t recognized. Abbee knew all the fighters in New Bend. She knew everybody who fought for coin. The beast was new. He stood with his back to Abbee, his arms raised to the crowd. Shouting for praise.
Flakes of glimmermote gathered at her wrists as new pain crackled through the nerves in her face. Her shattered jawbone knitted back together. She felt tiny slivers of bone worm through her flesh and reattach themselves together like a puzzle. Muscle fibers and tissue reassembled. Blood vessels grew back. The massive bruise forming on her face slowed and reversed progress.
The crowd shouted and pointed.
The beast looked over his shoulder at Abbee. His shaved head glistened in the torchlight. He was almost twice her height and probably weighed three times as much. He was about the same size as the giant she’d faced in Graywall. Enormous muscles rippled across his back. He looked like a monster, and he was. But he had one move. That right hook. His jabs were weak and his footwork sloppy. His tactic was to get in close and hit so hard the other person didn’t get up. His dark frown said he hadn’t expected Abbee to get up.
“Hey,” he growled. “No weapons, no talents. No talents. It’s the rule.”
Abbee felt her cheek muscles reattach beneath her skin. She grinned, half in amusement, half to make sure her face still worked. She opened her mouth to speak, and her breath caught on a knot of phlegm in her throat. She coughed and spat a thick glob of pinkish wet onto the dirt.
“That’s not the rule. The rule says I’m not allowed to use a talent on you.” She straightened. “You’re going to wish I could use it on you.”
The beast glanced up at the first row behind Abbee’s head. She knew who was there. Knew the beast would find no succor from the House soldiers watching the bout. Using talents against combatants in a bout was indeed forbidden, but the soldiers weren’t looking at Abbee. They were looking at the crowd, trying to find the healer they were sure must be helping her. They wanted the fight to continue so they could catch her in the act, which had a stiffer sentence. House soldiers loved dispensing lethal justice. They weren’t going to find anybody. Only a few people knew how her talent worked, and none of them talked to House soldiers.
The beast’s scowl deepened in confusion. “Healers can’t heal themselves.”
Abbee ran straight at him.
Ipsu used to say that human bodies were all the same. Some were covered with more muscle and ligaments than others, but the weak points never changed. Knees, wrists, groin, eyes, throat. Take out someone’s knee, and it didn’t matter what their pain tolerance was. They couldn’t walk. Break a wrist, and their hitting power was much reduced. Poke the eyes, and discover who could manage without sight. Abbee liked the throat. Damage the right spot on the throat, and a person couldn’t breathe. Take away the air, and the whole body broke down.
The beast made a clumsy grab for her, but she dodged and kicked him in the inside kneecap. He howled. Twisted and stumbled. His head dropped into Abbee’s range. She drove herself forward, plowing all her momentum and power into a single point twenty centimeters behind the beast. Her fist smashed into his exposed throat.
Cartilage crumpled. He tried to suck in a breath, but it caught with a terrible wheeze. Tried to speak and failed. She’d crushed his trachea. The beast’s hands flew to his damaged throat. Panic leaped into his eyes as his body seized up for lack of air.
Abbee straightened. “Like I said. You wish I could use it on you.”
The beast gasped and wheezed and toppled to the ground like a rotten tree.
***
“What’s with the short fight?” Bory complained when Abbee approached him in the alley behind the bout hall. A crisp breeze scattered scraps of paper into grimy corners. Bory stood in shadow, close to the main road. Easy to melt into the foot traffic streaming out into the night. Easy to get away if uptight House soldiers got nosy. Betting on bouts was illegal.
Abbee knew Bory liked longer fights. More hits. More bets. “Stop whining. I let him break my jaw.” She stuck out her hand.
“I still have no idea how you’re doing it,” Bory said. “I keep looking for somebody in the crowd who’s healing you, but there’s never anybody close enough. House soldiers went so far as to clear the first two rows tonight, too.”
Abbee snorted. That was the going theory these days. She was paying a Class Three or maybe even a Four to hide nearby and help sell the self-healing illusion. Everyone knew that healers couldn’t heal themselves, but everyone also knew that healers had to be close to do their work. The mystery was driving everybody crazy. The House soldiers had been trying to catch her in the act for weeks. Apparently, the first constable hadn’t told anyone about her talent. Nobody knew.
“If they get you,” Bory went on, “they’re not going to send you back to Graywall, you know. You’ve been out, what, a couple years? You’ll not get a second stint when they catch you cheating on the bouts. They’ll save you the trip and kill you on the spot.”
“How about you let me worry about that?” Abbee told him. She wasn’t cheating, and she wasn’t going back to prison either. She’d die first. Or try to. Her gift made that hard. Abbee snapped her fingers. “Gimme my cut.”
Bory grunted. “Here.” He dug into his pocket and produced a wad of paper bills.
Abbee closed her hand. “Coin, Bory. You know I don’t do that paper rubbish.”
“It’s what people are using now. Gotta get with the times.” Bory raised his brow. “If you don’t want it, I can keep—”
Abbee grabbed the money. She thumbed the edges, counting the brightly colored bills. “This is it?”
Bory shrugged. “People know your game now. The only ones who bet against you are from out of town. They don’t know better. Or the suckers. Tonight was light on suckers.” He pushed off the wall and stepped out into the street. “Next time, make the fight go longer.”
Abbee shot a rude gesture at Bory’s back. She walked in the opposite direction, down the length of the alley and out the other side to New Baker Street. Abbee spotted two House soldiers looking away from her, eyeballing a pair of constables across the street. The constables eyeballed the House soldiers back, each daring the other to step off their respective sidewalks. Abbee flipped up the hood on her leather jerkin and melted into the crowd exiting the bout hall. She turned right and climbed a short hill. Crossed an intersection and up onto the front porch of the Iron Bull Tavern. Abbee paused and glanced back east at the view.
It had been nineteen years since Towerfall, when the golems had stridden across the city and wrecked everything. A person might be tricked for a moment into thinking that nothing like that had ever happened. Moonlight illuminated the usual reddish slate roofs and the exposed rock of the escarpment cliffs on the left. The cliffs rose a thousand meters into the air and zigzagged across the entire continent. A plateau jutted out from the escarpment and obscured half the city. Abbee watched mists gather around the High Falls of Charrin as the river plummeted off the high edge. The water looked like falling salt in the night.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Abbee held her contemplation for a brief moment before the stark differences of reality poked in. The plateau was empty, for one thing. For the first third of her life, the Tower of Akken had dominated the city’s skyline. Eight marble spires reaching into the sky like bony fingers. The Tower was gone now. The plateau had a monument on it. Eight columns of obsidian, each three meters tall and ten meters in diameter, occupied the spot where the Tower gardens had once stood. Each column was covered with names. Everyone who had died the night the Tower had fallen had their name etched into stone. Hundreds of thousands of names.
Abbee didn’t like visiting the plateau nor the monument. Most people didn’t. Standing anywhere on the plateau felt wrong to them somehow, like a tiny tug on the spirit. Some people said it was the weight of the dead, of that terrible night, that made people feel spiritually drained. Others said it was ghosts of evil wizards, lingering in the shadows and preying on good citizens. Some professed those wraiths still walked the sealed basements beneath the monument. The basements were supposedly a rabbit warren of tunnels and chambers riddling the entire plateau. Most people didn’t think those tunnels existed at all. Everyone had their reasons for avoiding the plateau. Abbee had never felt any kind of tug on her spirit while on the plateau. She had no idea what people were talking about. Abbee hadn’t returned ever since she’d found a name on the monument that shouldn’t have been there. Kril Danner didn’t deserve that kind of recognition.
Shouts from inside the tavern. Excited shouts, rising to a crescendo. The porch’s floorboards vibrated. Abbee heard a whooping chorus. A surprised yell and a thump. The shouts slid into a groaning roar of dismay. The song of hope rising and crashing would go on for hours, until everyone ran out of spending money, got too drunk, or both. Hardly a night went by without someone breaking bones or getting a concussion at this tavern, and no one had to throw a single punch.
The Iron Bull was the only watering hole in Akken with a surviving animated bull. The owner, Karl Meekar, had owned the original Iron Bull Tavern on Tulley Street, in the Yards. He’d had to move it during the demolition of Akken, and they hadn’t let him come back. Something about the bull bringing in the wrong sort of crowd or something. While somewhat plausible with Akken’s new culture committees, Abbee suspected Karl’s reluctance to move had more to do with his advancing age. He was slowing down, and moving his whole tavern again was too much work. Plus, it was easier to rail against the new world order from outside the city walls, especially when a hat shop had replaced Karl’s old spot on Tulley Street.
Abbee ducked inside and lowered her hood. Scanned left to right, taking in faces, body language, groups. Who made eye contact with her. Who held it and who glanced away. The ones she could see, anyway. Magical lights were rare these days and only showed up in rich places. The Iron Bull wasn’t a rich place. The Iron Bull was lit by big oil lamps hanging on posts. Long shadows in the corners. Satisfied that there was no immediate threat, Abbee relaxed and took in the rest of the room.
The bull itself dominated the wide-open room in front. It looked less like a bull and more like a floating saddle. The floor beneath the bull was polished granite, unlike the rough-hewn pine boards everywhere else. The bull sat in a recessed pocket in the floor, so spectators could watch the action without standing on surrounding tables. The crowd was currently selecting the next bull rider, which involved a combination of prodding, cajoling, and the promise of free beer. Free beer usually did it. A cheer went up from the crowd as a young man climbed up on the saddle.
The saddle wiggled beneath him, as if asking him if he was certain. The young man grabbed the saddle horn with one hand and raised his free hand above his head. A bull’s shriek filled the room, and the animal coalesced into form beneath the saddle. Abbee had seen that bull thousands of times, and it still amazed her. It looked real. Every hair, every muscle, even down to the mean-looking horns on its head. It was a monster. The bull pounded its front hooves on the floor. Abbee heard the thumps over the crowd. The illusion was so good.
The young man’s face twisted in surprise at the first buck. It was a little one. A step up from the first wiggle. The bull gave every rider a couple of chances to get off, all nice like. Then it got violent. It bucked in unpredictable patterns so a rider couldn’t memorize the movements. Part of the problem of learning the bull was the recovery time in between bad falls. While broken bones mended faster with the aid of a healer, the mental scars hung around longer. The bull made people afraid of it.
Abbee walked around the crowd to the bar. She made eye contact with Karl. The grizzled old man nodded and poured out a finger of whiskey. Abbee picked up the glass and swirled the amber liquid in anticipation. She couldn’t get drunk, but she liked doing things that Ipsu might find offensive. Drinking alcohol was one of the many things he disliked. Fighting for coin was another. He’d be apoplectic if he ever found out about that.
Abbee grabbed an empty stool and saluted Karl with the glass. Behind her, the crowd roared with hope. Dismay right after. The young man hadn’t made it past the first real buck.
“You gonna ride tonight?” Karl asked.
Abbee massaged her jaw. “No. I already put on a show at the bouts. I’m done for the day.” She tipped the whiskey back. The Iron Bull was one of her favorite spots in New Bend. Karl had the animated bull and good whiskey and a roof that didn’t leak.
Karl gestured with the bottle. “Another?”
“One,” Abbee said. She drank the shot, counted out a couple of bills, and put them on the bar.
Karl wrinkled his nose at the bills but took them without comment.
“I’m seeing real coin less and less these days,” Abbee said. “Bory had bills. Bory. What’s the world coming to when even bookies deal in paper?”
Karl nodded. “The sound of commerce used to clink. Now it shuffles. Whispers, even.”
“I used to not care if my money got wet,” Abbee said.
“You’re telling me,” Karl said, gesturing at the length of the bar. “I lose a little money every night.”
“How much?”
“Depends on what people spill,” Karl said, shrugging. “Your whiskey will kill a bill in ten seconds. Scrapes the ink right off. Beer’s safer.”
“Watered down, you mean.”
Karl pointed at her. “You watch your mouth. This isn’t Tricky’s.”
“Who’s Tricky?”
The old barkeep rolled his eyes. “You young pups don’t remember anything.”
“I’m thirty-one.”
“Like I said. Young pup. Tricky ran what I would call a less reputable establishment in the North Bend. Watered down his liquor. Golems got him.”
A memory of a dark mover pit flickered in Abbee’s head. Falling in the dark with broken arms. She pushed the thought away. “Sorry, Karl.”
“Don’t be sorry. We weren’t friends. Got what was coming to him.” Karl shook his head. “Watering down booze should be a capital offense.”
“Don’t give the Council any more ideas about capital offenses.”
“Lucky for you, they don’t come out here to ask my opinion.”
“Lucky for me?”
Karl waved his hand. “Figure of speech.”
Abbee’s stomach rumbled. Using her gift made her hungry. “You got anything to eat in here?”
“Not much. Some bread and cheese. I had a roast pig, but that’s been picked over.”
“Bread and cheese sounds great.” She fished out some more money from her pocket and put it on the bar. “I’ll take a whole loaf, if that’s what you’ve got.”
Karl took the bills and went into the back. He returned with a small loaf of brown bread and a wedge of cheese. Abbee took both. She ripped a chunk off the loaf and stuffed it in her mouth. It was plain bread, but it tasted amazing. There was a baker around the corner, Whit, who knew what he was doing. Abbee sniffed the cheese. It didn’t smell funky like some of the fancy cheeses in the city. She inhaled that too.
The crowd shouted in dismay as another rider was tossed from the bull. “You sure you’re not going to ride tonight?” Karl asked.
“I’m sure.”
Karl rapped his knuckles on the bar. “You change your mind—”
“I know where the bull is.”
Karl moved away to take care of another customer. Abbee rotated on her seat and leaned against the bar. She watched a man wearing a drover vest mount the saddle. He moved with the assured grace of someone who rode continental trains for a living. Maybe this man thought his talent would help him with the bull. He was in for a surprise. Abbee folded her arms and watched. The drover didn’t have the determined yet wary expression of an experienced bull rider. He had no idea what was about to happen. The drover lasted maybe five seconds before the bull ejected him into the first row of spectators. Five seconds wasn’t bad. Hardly anyone got to ten.
A familiar face with a red beard sidled up to the bar next to Abbee. Henk Slempy had the chubby build of someone who lived with a pen in one hand and a sandwich in the other. He worked as a speaker relay for the repeaters. The old Akken repeaters had been a weird bunch who’d memorize whatever you said and repeat it verbatim to your message’s recipient. They always seemed able to find the person, no matter where they were in the city. The old repeaters never came back after Towerfall. DotPost tried to be a replacement, but nobody believed DotPost messages further than a hundred meters.
A local entrepreneur named Sully Winkley had stepped into the void. Abbee had heard about Sully from Whimsy during one of her monthly visits. She’d kept Abbee abreast of happenings in Akken. Apparently, Sully’s first trick had been inventing a system to ensure message coherence and security using Class Two Speakers. Sully put them in relay towers on top of buildings, forming a network across the entire city. Sully’s other trick was using DotPost as the last leg in the delivery chain. He didn’t compete with DotPost; he gave them steady work. Repeaters above, and DotPost below. The repeaters cost real coin. DotPost still ran on Dots, the ever-present pebbles everyone had in their pockets, like lint.
Henk grinned. “Fancy a dock?”
“What?” Abbee asked, frowning. She hadn’t expected the phrase nor the context. “You’re drunk, Henk. No.”
His expression turned hopeful. “Are you saying you’d … if I wasn’t? I can go—”
“Does Teena know you’re out here propositioning people like a Kivan sailor?”
Henk’s cheeks reddened. “She can go ride a golem, for all I care.”
“Oh, yeah? What’re you two fighting about now?”
“The same old thing. It’s always the same thing. That I don’t listen. That I say I’m too tired to talk. And I am. The messages never stop at the relays. I am going full tilt all day. All day. I’m tired when I get home, okay? I don’t—”
“You ever tell Sully you’re tired, Henk?”
“—need … What? No. I’ve never told him I’m tired, never. You know Sully. He expects the best.” Henk puffed up his chest. “And I deliver without complaint.”
“Right. And you think Teena’s going to be impressed when you tell her you’re too tired to talk?”
Henk opened his mouth. Closed it.
Abbee gathered up her bread and cheese. She left before Henk launched into the tiresome portion of realizing he was wrong while inebriated. Talking to drunk people was exhausting.
She skirted the crowd on her way out. The song of hope and dismay rose and fell. Abbee glanced at the slate chart to the left of the door, where someone had scrawled a list of names and times. The chart said Iron Bull Riders at the top in fancy lettering. Most names were written in chalk. The top name had been there so long someone had carved it into a wooden plaque. Abbee still felt a little charge of pride every time she saw the inscription.
Abbee, 27 seconds.