She and Ryber pushed past spectators who groused and swore and shoved at them to move faster. Quit blocking the view. Get out of the thrice-damned way. It set Stix’s teeth on edge. Even the rowdiest of Nubrevnans—with whom Stix had spent plenty of evenings at the Cleaved Man—seemed an orderly lot compared to these people.
Stix missed them. She missed Vivia even more.
When they reached the end of the bench, Ryber led the way up a rickety set of stairs to the exclusive seating area. There the Masters of the Ring kept private boxes. Thus far, none of the Masters had been willing to sponsor Stix. She’d used every trick in her Waterwichery arsenal trying to convince them, from creating fog on the spot to freezing water in their mouths. But all they’d done was glower and say, Too powerful. How’re we supposed to design a fight for you when all it takes is a single snap and you’ve frozen everything?
Stix had been forced to admit they had a point. There wasn’t much sport for someone with total control over water—and the truth was that Stix was unbeatable. She had never encountered a waterfall she couldn’t scale, a wave she couldn’t ride, an opponent she couldn’t decimate.
Her father had always told her such natural power made her overconfident, that one day, You will meet someone you cannot match. And in the end, he’d been right: the voices had snuck up on Stix, unexpected. Unfathomable.
Now here she was, over a month since they’d arrived, still battling against them. Still losing every day.
The raiders that guarded the highest scaffolding let Stix through at the flicker of a gold coin, and she and Ryber strode quickly down the covered walkway. Banners and curtains trailed at the corner of Stix’s vision; the crowd’s roars thrummed in her ears, blessedly muffled this high.
The smell was muffled too, thank Noden, with salty ocean wind to lick over the wooden planks.
Soon Stix and Ryber reached the final private box on the walkway, where the final Master of the Ring awaited. The only one Stix had yet to meet. She doled out four gold coins each to the two guards here. Two for letting her in and two for alerting her that the final Master had returned to town. Then the tallest guard called in an alto voice, “Visitors,” and prodded Stix and Ryber through the doorway.
Though not as resplendent as some of the other decks Stix had visited, the space was still draped in fine rugs and cushions. Wind kicked over the waist-high railings, flapping at two strips of jagged-edged red cloth. It carried bidding and laughter and roars of anticipation for the next fight—and it carried moisture that sang to Stix’s magic. A harmony of humidity, of distant sea spray off the bay, of brackish droplets from the marsh.
On a long chair lay Admiral Kahina Léon.
She sucked at a pipe, smoke rings circling her white-haired head and cool-toned walnut skin. She wore an impeccably pressed coat that reminded Stix of a Nubrevnan naval uniform, except where her own coat in Lovats was navy, Kahina’s was rich, starfish red—and Stix suddenly felt like a new recruit, failing to meet muster in her sweat-sticky white blouse and brown breeches.
One more thing she missed from home: her clothes.
Beside Kahina stood the Hammer, his stone arm gone. He looked at Stix and Ryber with no attempt to conceal his annoyance. Up close, Stix’s spectacles revealed amber-brown skin and black hair coiled into six long tails like she’d seen on some travelers from a southern stretch on the Fareastern continent.
“I don’t throw fights,” he said in Dalmotti with a slight accent, and Stix frowned, confused.
Ryber, however, understood his implication immediately. “We aren’t here to bribe you.” She moved in front of Stix with liquid ease and puffed out her chest with the confidence of a well-seasoned merchant. Her ware, of course, was Stix.
They’d played these parts—trainer and fighter—enough times now that Stix should have been comfortable with them. But unlike Ryber, who could slip as easily into roles as she could new clothes, Stix always felt stiff. She didn’t have the Sight; she’d seen very little of the world outside of Nubrevna; even speaking in Dalmotti required concentration because she hadn’t practiced it in almost a decade.
“We have come to offer you the fighter of a lifetime.” Ryber offered Kahina an Illryan-style bow: fist to forehead, chin dipping low. They’d heard that Kahina, like Ryber, had roots in Illrya. “I present to you, Stix of Nubrevna.”
“Sticks of Nubrevna?” Kahina puffed her pipe. “Never heard of her.”
“Because this is her debut in the Slaughter Ring.” Ryber flashed a smooth smile. Another braid sprang free. “Until now, she has only ever fought in Lovats.”
This was true. The extent of Stix’s spectator sporting had been done at the Cleaved Man every sevenday.
“She was called the Water Brawler there,” Ryber added. “And she’s never lost a fight.”
Also true.
“And you are the first Master of the Ring we’ve approached with this opportunity.”
Definitely a lie.
Kahina sniffed. “Another Tidewitch. We have plenty of those in the Ring.” She shifted away.
Stix stepped forward. “I’m a Waterwitch, actually. A full Waterwitch.” To prove her point, she offered her right hand to Kahina and let her title dangle in the air like bait on a hook. Her Witchmark hung there too, a hollow diamond indicating full mastery over all forms of water.
Kahina paused. “A full Waterwitch, you say.” Her honey-dark eyes sharpened onto Stix’s face. Seconds drifted past.
And Stix slowly felt their roles reverse. She became the bait. She became the target of a fish too large to escape.
Kahina removed her pipe from her mouth. A jade thumb ring winked. “Have we met before? You look … familiar.”
Ryber, who was usually so poised—so good at mimicking the people she’d once seen and never forgotten—glanced at Stix with open surprise.
“No,” Stix said. “We haven’t met before.”
“Indeed?” Kahina smiled, a sideways thing. “Well, in that case, Lady Fate must favor you today, for I have just the idea for you.” She turned her face to the Hammer, though her eyes remained on Stix. “Tell the guards that Kahina wants the Water Brawler in tomorrow’s arena.”
The Hammer scowled but didn’t disobey. He simply stalked into the hall, red cloth over the doorway flapping behind him. Meanwhile Kahina popped her pipe back into her mouth. The bowl sparked, sending smoke to wreathe around her white hair.
A Firewitch, Stix thought as she and Ryber aimed for the exit after the Hammer. No one ever mentioned Kahina is a Firewitch.
* * *
It was sunset by the time they reached their inn in the Baedyed territory of Saldonica. Streetlights flickered to life, and evening patrols directed crowds as a day’s work segued into a night’s revelry. The voices pushed against Stix’s skull, furious she had left the Ring. Come this way, keep coming.
“I know,” she groaned at them, clutching her forehead as she staggered out of a hired carriage and toward the tidy inn. Though she didn’t lean on Ryber to ascend the stairs, she did regret picking a room on the third floor. It had seemed private at the time; now it seemed impossibly far away. It didn’t help when an orange tabby tangled in her legs halfway up the narrow, creaking steps.