19.

The House Rule

Grand Arena, Requiem City, AGH 47–48

The man at the admissions desk opened her papers to the second sheet. Gunnhild watched his face while he read it. The two commendations were on the first.

He set a weight on the corner that kept curling up. From somewhere beyond the office came a heavy wooden crack, a shout, and then another crack. Someone laughed. Gunnhild had been listening to the laughter in this place since she came through the gate, trying to decide what it was for.

The man reached for a cup. He had one arm, and the water jug was close enough to the edge that she almost moved it for him. He filled the cup and set it in front of her without difficulty.

“Have you eaten?”

“Yes.”

“Good. He sometimes forgets to ask.”

“Who does?”

“Lumix. You'll speak to him before we do anything else.” He lifted the weight and squared the papers against the desk. “He's upstairs.”

She left the water alone. “Is there an assessment?”

“There will be, if you decide you want one.”

“After he decides whether I'm worth assessing.”

The man looked at the second sheet again, then put the papers on her side of the desk.

“It's a conversation. No fee, no equipment issued, nothing to sign until you've had it. He'll tell you what the house offers.”

“And if I don't like what he offers?”

“Then you can go.”

The answer came readily enough. People were generally willing to explain how she could go.

Outside, somebody called for another try. She drank the water. It had grown warm in the jug, but she had been walking since before noon and finished it.

The man pointed out the stairs. He was the quartermaster, he told her; she would need him afterward if she stayed. By the time she had gathered her papers, he had turned back to a long book and the work her arrival had interrupted.

*   *   *

Lumix's room had two chairs, a table and an open window. No one stood behind him. There was room to get past his chair to the door.

The old dragonborn took the papers and read both sheets. His bronze scales darkened in the hollows of his face. He wore a good coat and more medals than Gunnhild had ever seen on one person at such close quarters. Every medal was crooked. Not the careless tilt of a ribbon caught under a collar: they leaned in different directions, some so far over that he must have held them there while he fastened them.

She looked back at his hands before he finished reading.

He set the papers down.

“What was done to you, and what do you want?”

She had prepared to explain the tribunal. There was a way to do it, briefly, that mentioned her service before the finding and did not sound as though she thought the finding had been a mistake. She had practiced it more than once.

“I was discharged.”

“Yes.”

“Eleven years. Two commendations.”

He waited.

She could hear the wooden weapons again, faintly through the window. Whoever was practicing below had begun counting something. The count stopped at four, followed by an argument neither participant sounded much troubled by.

“There was a crowd outside the grain stores,” she said. “In the eastern district. During the spring.”

Lumix kept his hands on the table. She looked at them while she told him about the people waiting, the order to clear them, the permission to use whatever force was necessary. There had been no weapon in the hands immediately before her. She had looked beyond those hands for one.

“I put my shield down.”

“On the ground?”

“On the cobbles. I said no.”

She could still feel how awkward it had been to set the shield down. It was made to be carried, leaned, dropped in an emergency, not placed carefully in a street while everyone watched.

“No one was struck,” she added.

Then came the tribunal, which had been quieter than she expected, and the discharge without honors. They had been almost kind when they gave her the papers. Since then she had carried the same account to people who seemed willing to employ her until they reached the second sheet.

She stopped. Lumix did not tell her what she ought to have done. For a while he did not speak at all.

“And what do you want?” he asked.

“Work.”

“Here?”

“If it's fighting work. If I'm paid for it.”

“You would be.”

“I know what people say about the place.”

“You may have to be more specific.”

That nearly made her smile. “That you take the ones nobody else wants.”

“I take the ones who want to come here. There is some overlap.”

She looked toward the window. The people below had started again.

“I still like it,” she said. “The work. I'm good at it.”

“Then hear how we arrange it.”

He took a contract from the stack beside him and turned it so she could read. There was no name in the space at the top.

“You own your contract. All of it. No patron holds your name, and no debt rides your card. You'll be asked before every bout. You may refuse any bout, any opponent, any day. You don't have to give a reason.”

She read the first part of the page, then the part concerning pay.

“If I refuse, how much do I lose?”

“Nothing.”

She looked up.

“Not one copper docked,” he said. “Not one match withheld.”

“Suppose my name is on the card.”

“Yes.”

“Suppose it's the last fight, and the house is full.”

“Yes.”

“And I say it just before I'm meant to go out.”

“Then you don't go out.”

She looked at the door. “Someone will have to tell them.”

“Someone will.”

“And then find someone else.”

“If someone else wants the bout.”

The answers were so simple she mistrusted them more than she would have mistrusted a qualification. She read the relevant passage again. He let her finish.

“No debt,” she said. “What about the guild fee?”

“Waived.”

“Taken out of my first purse?”

“Waived. I know the difference.”

“Why?”

He touched the discharge papers with one broad finger.

“Because you do.”

Her face grew hot. She moved the contract slightly away from the papers.

“Those aren't kindnesses, soldier,” he said. “The refusal and the pay. They apply to everybody on the rolls. And if anyone in this house so much as raises an eyebrow at your no, you bring me the eyebrow.”

She looked at him then. He was quite serious, except for his mouth.

“Attached?”

“I prefer it. There may be a useful person under it.”

The laugh came out of her before she had decided whether she wanted him to hear it.

“Everything on that sand is chosen,” he said. “Danger that's chosen is a craft. Danger that's ordered is just the world, wearing a crowd. I've spent enough time in both to know which I want to run.”

She put her hand flat on the contract. There were rates for work she understood, provisions she could find again, a place for her name. She read down to the bottom and back to the paragraph about refusal.

“You can take it away,” he said. “Come back with questions. Sign or don't. The door works from your side.”

She thought about carrying another paper out into the street. She could do that. She could take this one somewhere quiet and read it a third time. She could come back tomorrow.

Below the window, the counting reached five. Somebody cheered, and somebody else loudly denied that the fifth ought to count.

“When is the assessment?” she asked.

“The quartermaster will find you someone with time.”

She reached for the pen, held the paper still, and wrote her name.

Downstairs, the quartermaster gave her a place to put her coat and introduced her to a woman who was loosening the straps on a practice shield.

“Have you finished?” he asked the woman.

“Nearly.”

“Will you take a look at our new fighter?”

The woman looked at Gunnhild. “Now, or after you've had a rest?”

“Now.”

They went out onto the sand and began with wooden swords. Gunnhild knew the weight was different as soon as she lifted hers. On the first exchange she nevertheless drove forward as though there were people at either shoulder and another rank behind. The woman's blade came around her shield and tapped her ribs.

“There's nobody holding your other side,” the woman said.

“I noticed.”

“A little late.”

Gunnhild reset her feet. This time she stopped the forward movement sooner. The woman tried the same opening, found it closed, and changed the attack. Gunnhild caught the next blow on her shield. The shock ran pleasingly up her arm. There was an instant in which she could see the woman deciding where to go, and she put her sword into that space before the decision was finished.

They stopped with the wooden point against the woman's coat.

“Again,” the woman said.

Gunnhild had been about to ask.

*   *   *

By autumn she knew where the shed roof dripped, which practice shields had straps she liked, and how much of the crowd she could hear while she was fighting. Less than she had expected. Between exchanges the sound came back in a rush, bringing individual voices with it, sometimes advice so bad she wanted to turn and answer.

She had begun helping the quartermaster with the rolls on two mornings when she was not training. He paid her for the hours. The writing mattered to him in an exact way she found restful. If two people disputed an entry, he wanted the entry checked before either of them began explaining the other person's character.

The night the headline fighter refused, her own bout had finished early. She was sitting just inside the equipment shed, working a stiff finger free of its wrapping. Beyond the open door, the tunnel led to a bright slice of sand. The house was full. They had been listening to it fill all evening.

The young fighter waiting in the tunnel had checked their weapon twice. Gunnhild had watched them fight before. She knew the small movement they made with their shoulders before an entrance, settling everything into place.

This time the movement did not end. Their shoulders rose, dropped, rose again.

The attendant looked toward the sand for the signal.

“Ready?”

“No.”

The attendant turned back. The young fighter had gone gray around the mouth.

“I'm not going out.”

Gunnhild stopped unwinding the cloth.

The attendant raised a hand to the person at the tunnel mouth. The entrance signal stopped. Then he stepped aside, leaving the way back to the sheds clear.

“There's a bench in here,” Gunnhild said.

The fighter came in and sat at the far end of it. She moved her loose equipment off the space between them. The attendant went to find the quartermaster.

Out on the floor, the crowd began clapping in expectation. The clapping found a rhythm. It went on after the person it was calling had sat down.

Gunnhild braced for footsteps in the passage, a raised voice, the argument that would begin with all those people waiting.

The quartermaster came through with his book under his arm. He put it down on the equipment chest.

“Do you want to stay here a while?” he asked.

The fighter shook their head.

“The back passage is clear.”

“My pay?”

“Same as booked.” He opened the book. “I can have it brought here.”

“Please.”

He sent the attendant to fetch it and turned to the person waiting at the door. The original opponent was ready on the other side of the tunnel. The announcement had been held. Someone needed to speak to the musicians before they packed up.

The woman who had first practiced with Gunnhild came to the doorway, carrying a sword belt she had been mending.

“If you're looking,” she said, “I'd take it.”

The quartermaster beckoned her into the adjoining part of the shed. Gunnhild could still see them through the open equipment racks when the waiting opponent joined them. He was carrying his shield, with the sword resting flat along its rim.

“Sword and shield?” the woman asked.

“As booked,” he said.

She tested a movement with her right shoulder.

“I want a full warm-up. I haven't done any since this afternoon.”

“You'll have it,” the quartermaster said. “The headline rate, paid tonight.” He turned to the opponent. “Are you willing?”

The man looked at the woman. She looked back, still rolling her shoulder.

“Yes,” he said. “If she is.”

“I am. Where can I warm up?”

They cleared a practice space. A worker who had put on her outdoor coat took it off again to help with the equipment. The quartermaster told her to enter the extra time. He sent word to the musicians that another set would be paid for, then went to find Lumix.

The young fighter's money arrived before the replacement had put on her shield. They checked it, closed the purse and left by the back passage. Nobody followed them to ask what had happened.

Gunnhild finished unwinding the cloth from her finger. The joint had swollen. She had been pulling at it much too hard.

Lumix's voice reached the shed a few moments later. He announced the withdrawal, named the two people who had agreed to the new bout, and said there would be a delay while they prepared. No explanation of the first fighter's face or breathing followed. A section of the crowd complained loudly. Another section cheered the replacement's name. The musicians started again, and the woman warming up swore at a buckle.

“Can you hold that?” she asked Gunnhild.

Gunnhild held the loose end while she drew the strap through.

“Too tight?”

The woman lifted the shield, turned her wrist and gave it a hard shake.

“No. That's good.”

When they finally went out, Gunnhild stood by the entrance to watch.

The first attack was fast enough to bring the crowd up short. The man threatened high, checked the blow when the woman's shield rose, and brought the sword toward her thigh. She stepped in instead of away. His blade passed behind her; the front of her shield struck his chest with a sound Gunnhild felt in her own ribs. He gave ground, recovered and made her retreat in turn.

The blades were steel. Even from the tunnel she could hear the weight in the contact. The woman had stopped smiling.

Gunnhild shifted her feet without noticing. The man was leaving an opening on his shield side, then shutting it when she approached. She had seen him do it before. Twice the woman drew back before the trap closed. The third time she seemed to commit.

“Don't,” Gunnhild said.

The woman checked herself on a bent knee. His return stroke passed in front of her. She came up behind it, shoulder low, and made him turn so sharply that his back foot dragged a furrow in the sand.

Gunnhild shouted. She had meant to shout something useful, but no word reached the front of it.

They separated. The man nodded once, breathing through his open mouth. The woman shook the shock out of her sword hand. Then they approached again, more carefully, each trying to make the other spend the little advantage just gained.

Near the end, the man's blade caught the upper edge of her shield and drove it down. She got clear of the following stroke, but not clear enough to make her own attack. He stayed with her. Her heels bit into churned sand. For a moment both weapons disappeared behind the shields.

She yielded.

He broke away at once. The sound from the seats came rolling over them. The woman rested the bottom of her shield in the sand. After a moment she straightened, brought her sword across to her shield hand and offered him her forearm. He took it. She said something Gunnhild could not hear, and he laughed so hard he had to put the end of his shield on the ground.

Back in the tunnel the woman leaned against the wall and shut her eyes.

“I thought you had him,” Gunnhild said.

“So did I.” She opened one eye. “Don't start explaining it yet. I want to be wrong for another minute.”

Gunnhild laughed, then caught her breath. Her own tired shoulder hurt from all the blows she had followed without striking.

The equipment worker was still there when the fighters came off. She took what they handed her, told the winner to stop resting his shield on her foot, and finished the work for which she had stayed. The quartermaster paid the changed bout. There was a great deal to put away.

*   *   *

A month later, Gunnhild copied the young fighter's name onto another evening card. The final bout again. No gap had been left after it for a condition, no note sent her to a different page of the book.

She looked over the entry long enough that the quartermaster asked whether he had spelled the name wrong.

“No.”

“Then you can move on. I've another card for you.”

She moved on.

That night, the applause began when the fighter appeared and kept growing while they crossed the sand. They glanced up, startled by its size. Gunnhild could see them waiting for it to finish. Their opponent waited too.

At last the fighter lifted their weapon. The house quieted. The first exchange drove them sideways; they caught themselves, changed the angle and made the opponent work to follow.

Gunnhild watched their feet. There was something there she wanted to try in practice.

Late that year, Elly died.

At the funeral Gunnhild stood among people she mostly did not know. One woman introduced herself as a former pupil of Elly's. Two people beside her had worked with them. They talked quietly at first, then one remembered something that made the other laugh, and both fell silent too abruptly.

Lumix looked toward them. The woman began to apologize.

“No,” he said. “Please.”

They told him what they had been remembering. Gunnhild was too far away to hear. She saw his mouth move in recognition, and the brief lift of his face. Then he lowered his head. One of the speakers put a hand on his arm and stayed there.

The quartermaster had arranged cover for the hours they were away. When Gunnhild met him by the door, he asked whether she could take the afternoon roll as well as her own. She said she could. He nodded toward Lumix, who had accepted a chair but was still holding his coat.

“I'll stay a little longer.”

Gunnhild went to say goodbye. Lumix rose when he saw her coming, and she wished he had not felt he needed to.

“You don't have to—”

He sat back down. She stood beside the chair, unable to decide whether to offer her hand. He held out the coat.

“Would you put that over there?”

She laid it on the back of the empty chair he indicated. When she turned, he was looking at the place from which the other mourners were leaving. She waited.

“Thank you,” he said.

“I'm glad I came,” she said. It sounded insufficient, but he nodded. She left him with the quartermaster and the people who were staying.

At the Arena, the afternoon work had begun. Somebody had moved a practice session to make room. Gunnhild took the roll from the person covering it, asked what still needed doing, and sat down.

*   *   *

In the early winter of 48, her name came out of a cup.

The quartermaster's came out next. He looked at the slip as though he suspected someone had arranged for him to do another evening's work.

“Two witnesses from the rolls,” Lumix said. “So nobody ever claims a lawyer built this.”

The drafts had been going about for months. Gunnhild had heard passages read in the sheds when the evenings were still warm. Now the pages lay on the upstairs table, corrected and recopied, with one clean sheet beside them.

Lumix had moved a lamp so the light fell across his writing hand. Gunnhild and the quartermaster stood at the other side of the table. She had helped with enough copies to know how long a line could take when it mattered that nobody should have to guess at a letter.

He began.

“Fighters own their contracts.”

The pen moved slowly. She watched the line grow, then the space he left below it.

“A bout may be refused without penalty.”

The words were familiar. She had read them before she put her own name on anything here. Now she watched him form each one.

“Nobody fights who has not been made aware that their refusal was valid.”

The quartermaster leaned forward to follow the end of the line. His own hand was stained from the day's entries. Gunnhild put her hands behind her back to keep from touching the table.

Lumix continued. When a draft lay too far from him, she moved it closer. Once he stopped to trim the pen. The scrape sounded loud in the room. Then he went on, through the remaining provisions, until the twelve lines were complete.

He read the last as carefully as the first.

“Nobody leaves this floor an enemy who came in an opponent.”

His hand rested beside the page.

“That one's the whole charter,” he said. “The other eleven are just how you get it.”

He went back to the beginning and read the fair copy through. Gunnhild followed where she could from her side of the table. At the refusal clause his attention stopped moving down the page.

She waited for him to notice an error. Nothing appeared to be wrong with the line. He remained still. The quartermaster had stopped looking at the draft.

After a while Lumix took up the pen. In the wide margin he made a short addition, small enough that Gunnhild could not read it. It looked like a name, with a mark above. She stayed where she was.

He looked up and saw them watching.

“The printed text won't carry that. That's between me and the margin.”

The quartermaster nodded.

Lumix sanded the page and waited for the ink to be ready. Before he lifted it, he folded the marked edge underneath, leaving the twelve lines clear.

“Right,” he said. “Wake the sheds.”

Gunnhild glanced toward the window. It was well past dark.

“Tonight?”

“A charter signed in the morning is a law. A charter signed at night, by everybody, with drink, is a family. We'll do it the second way.”

The quartermaster looked at the ink, the drafts, and the one small pen.

“We'll need a table.”

“We have tables.”

“A clear table.”

“Then it will be a novelty as well.”

Gunnhild picked up the sand and the spare pens. The quartermaster took the roll. Lumix carried the charter downstairs.

*   *   *

The first person through the shed door had put a coat on over a sleeping shirt and wanted to know whether anything was on fire.

The next three brought cups.

Someone found another lamp. Someone else began shifting equipment off the long table, complaining that they had put it there for a reason. The reason proved not to prevent its being moved to a bench. Lumix stood at the head of the table with the charter in front of him, calling people nearer while the quartermaster called them farther back so he could put the writing things down.

Gunnhild made a place for the roll. A cup immediately occupied it.

“Elsewhere,” she said.

Its owner moved it six inches.

“Farther elsewhere.”

The cup went to the floor.

They asked Lumix to read the charter. He read all twelve lines. People arriving late made him begin again. At the second reading, one of those who had already heard it demanded quiet from someone who had only come to ask where the drink was kept.

The signatures began slowly. Each person wanted the page at a different angle. Some read the clauses again before taking a pen. Some had been talking about the wording for months and went straight to the space awaiting them.

Lumix took his own turn, signed, and passed the pen on.

Gunnhild kept the roll beside the growing record of signatures. She checked each entry with the person who had made it. A fighter with an elaborate written name asked her to give the next one a moment; the last flourish was still wet. Another made a mark with great care, handed back the pen and waited until she had found the right place in the roll.

“There,” she said, showing them.

They nodded and went to get a drink.

Lumix kept trying to make room for everyone at once. He fetched a stool for a person who preferred to sit while writing, then had to remove it for the next. He answered a question about a clause by reading the clause again, this time with the questioner beside him. They pointed at a word, and he waited while they finished asking.

The first blood signature appeared while he was at the other end of the table.

“Absolutely not,” he said when he saw it. “There is ink. We have bought ink.”

The signer held up the offending fingertip, which had already stopped bleeding.

“I've finished.”

“An excellent reason to have used the ink.”

By the time the fourth had done it, his objections could be heard from the passage. People coming in asked what was happening, and were told to use the ink.

Gunnhild's practice partner stood beside her for a while, watching the entries accumulate. She had fought again that week; a yellowing bruise showed above her collar.

“You haven't signed,” Gunnhild said.

“I have.”

Gunnhild found the entry. The woman had signed while she was fetching fresh sand.

“You can stop looking at me now.”

“I wasn't.”

“You were deciding where to put a tick.”

Gunnhild looked at the bruise. “You're dropping that side when you're tired.”

“And you wait until this hour to tell me?”

“You asked for another minute.”

The woman laughed. “That was months ago.”

“You've had time, then.”

They arranged to try it when neither of them had been awake all night. The woman moved on, taking two empty cups with her.

The night thinned around the shed windows. People sat down between turns at the table and got up when someone they knew arrived. The drink diminished. A pair of fighters who had vanished for much of the night came back together, one rubbing a small piece of metal against a fold of cloth. From the direction they had gone, Gunnhild had heard hammering earlier and assumed something needed fixing.

When the last person had signed, she counted the entries with the quartermaster. Then they checked them against the roll. One hundred and eighteen. Eleven had made marks. Four had used blood in spite of the ample ink. No missing name emerged from the second count, and no one had been counted twice.

She set down the pen. Her fingers stayed bent around the shape of it for a moment.

Outside, somebody called that morning had come. People were already walking toward the sand. Gunnhild let the quartermaster gather the writing things and followed, rubbing the stiffness from her hand.

The Arena looked larger without the crowd. In the gray light she could see the tracks of yesterday's work on the floor. The fighters spread out over it in coats and unlaced boots, with empty cups and faces that badly needed sleep. Lumix came among them, his medals catching what little light there was.

The two who had been hammering gave him the little charter-seal they had struck in the night. He turned it over in his hands, then held it against his coat, looking for a place among the others.

There was advice from every direction.

“Higher.”

“There's room on the left.”

“That's his left.”

“I know whose left it is.”

Gunnhild stood close enough to see him fasten the pin. He had room to put it straight. He considered the medal, tipped it farther over, and fastened it again.

Her practice partner put out a hand as though to correct it. Lumix caught the hand and shook it instead.

The laughter traveled across the sand. Gunnhild was tired enough that once she began, she could not quite stop. Lumix let go of the woman's hand and looked around at them, the new medal crooked among the old ones, laughing with his whole great chest.