Chapter 48 Someone Else's Job

“After you put something on,” Lark said.

Jin looked down.

The ducks looked back.

Jory came to his rescue with a pair of spare work trousers from the booth he'd left beside the practice ring. They were too long. Jin rolled the cuffs until they stopped trying to eat his trainers.

Dessa inspected him.

“Promotion.”

“Your husband has excellent taste.”

“My husband would wear a sack if it had pockets.”

Jory kissed her soot-streaked cheek and went back to helping the gate crew clear the steps.

Lark retrieved the wooden practice swords.

Jin led him to a flat patch beside the surviving wall.

One stone at the start. Four strides to the left of a low pile of rubble. Back to the stone. Four strides around the other side.

Both finishes faced Lark, one pace apart. Jin tested them under his weight and set the two traces.

The second stayed beside the first.

Jin smiled.

“Same thing as the walk,” he told Lark. “Try to make me miss.”

Lark stepped toward the left-hand finish.

Jin chose the right.

His feet carried him around the rubble. At the arrival, he turned his wrist and tapped the swordsman's raised sleeve with the wooden tip.

Lark's own sword passed through empty air on the other side.

He looked at the blade.

Then at the stone.

“You couldn't do that this morning.”

“No.”

Lark's mouth opened.

Closed.

“I'd like my victory commemorated immediately. While it's still impressive.”

Jin laughed.

They waited for his recovery, then tried the other path. Lark came much closer that time.

“Again,” he said.

“Still want that commemoration?”

“Bigger letters.”

Jin handed the borrowed sword back.

The arena master found them there with six gold in a cloth purse.

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The hammerhide's posted bounty. One coin for each of the six hunters who'd brought it down.

Lark took three for his team. Jin handed Dessa and Kessa theirs and kept the last.

The trial's twenty-gold purse went to the defending champions. Jin watched the larger purse arrive and tried not to look like a starving dog outside a butcher's window.

Lark noticed.

“Come back next year.”

“Try being worse next year.”

“I'm working against that.”

Kessa turned her gold over in her fingers. Then she pocketed it and pressed her other hand against the saved bow grip beneath her shirt.

Jin didn't ask what she'd buy first.

At Calder's, he changed his own gold for twenty silver and added it to the eight in his purse.

Twenty-eight.

Enough to look at a better weapon without immediately apologizing to it.

He laid the knife's hilt and broken blade on her shelf beside its sheath. The ruined trousers went underneath, folded as decently as their new career allowed.

Calder picked up one bloody cuff.

“I was told you crowned the monster.”

“Temporary appointment.”

“Jory said it had a better uniform.”

“Jory is no longer my favorite tailor.”

She set the cloth down and looked at the empty place where Kessa's bow usually leaned.

Her expression changed.

Kessa held up the old grip.

“I'll bring you a drawing,” she said. “Something different.”

Calder nodded.

“Bring Tamsin one too.”

Kessa tucked the grip away and asked Calder for paper.

A horn sounded from the river.

Lark, who'd walked with them from the arena, turned toward the door.

“The marsh convoy.”

He was already moving.

Jin followed him into the street.

At the quay, a low barge scraped against the mooring posts. Men on board were trying to lower a plank while keeping three wounded passengers away from its edge.

A woman in a gray traveling cloak jumped from the bow with a coil of rope over one shoulder.

Her brown braid had come half loose. One boot was soaked dark to the knee. A long white scabbard knocked against her other leg.

She caught the drifting barge with the rope, hauled it toward the posts and turned to a man trying to climb over the rail.

“Wait. Let them get the plank down.”

The man didn't wait.

His leg folded beneath him.

She dropped the rope, caught him before his head struck stone and lowered him onto the quay.

The barge began drifting again.

Jin seized the loose coil.

The pull nearly took him off his feet.

He set his hips, wrapped the line around the post and let the wood take the strain before hauling the last slack tight.

The plank thumped down.

People came ashore.

The man on the stone had black veins climbing from a wound in his wrist. Each breath drew them a little farther toward his elbow.

“Demonrot,” someone said.

The gray-cloaked woman put her hand over the wound.

White-gold light ran between her fingers.

The black veins stopped moving.

Then they burned out, leaving living skin beneath them. The man sobbed into her sleeve.

She kept her hand there, the light still pouring through it long after the last black thread had vanished.

Her shoulders sank.

The plank slipped.

With her other hand, she caught its edge and held it level while the next two passengers crossed.

Jin stared.

Lark dropped to one knee beside him.

“What are you doing?” Jin whispered.

The woman looked up.

“Please don't,” she said, sounding tired. “I need someone to hold this.”

The scabbard scraped across the fallen man's side as she turned. She unclipped it with her free hand and offered the whole sheathed sword to Jin.

He took it automatically.

Lark caught his sleeve.

“The Hero,” he whispered.

Jin looked from the sword to the woman kneeling beside the wounded man.

She looked past his shoulder.

“Give that back.”

Behind Jin, the barge began to rise.