Chapter 8: Aoife (part 1 of 3)

  The fight started much in the same way as her last one, with Aoife's opponent content to wait for her first move. Unlike the Galliard—who had immediately broken into a boxer's stance—the Dragoon of Valor Company stood utterly still, arms down by his sides and legs spread shoulder width apart. Somehow, this made him more threatening in Aoife's eyes.

  Mr Carmichael's words echoed in her mind. Wouldn't want it to drag on for too long. Despite her wariness of her boss, on this point, they could agree. The Dragoon had been trained in the toughest profession known to man then forged in the flames of deadly battle. Letting the fight go on for long would give him more chances to use that experience against her.

  Her only chance would be to take the initiative and finish the fight in one move, putting all of her guile—and heat—behind it. Defaulting to a technique she had perfected against Marlowe, Aoife put her arms up in front of her in an imitation of the boxer's stance and approached her opponent with winding, deliberate steps. Still, the Dragoon did not move; only his sunken lifeless eyes followed her.

  As she moved in, Aoife kept her heat at a steady smolder, just enough to be ready to react to any sudden action. The moment she got within range, she feinted right then made to jab with her left. This second motion was another feint; mid-punch, she summoned a concentrated surge of heat and put it behind her legs as she ducked low, intending to spring forth with all of her strength and tackle the Dragoon.

  Aoife burst forward and caught hold of his midsection, unimpeded. She pushed, and felt him give way. Something was wrong. This was too easy. The next instant, she suddenly felt the upper half of her body shift downward as she was lifted into the air, now face to face with the Dragoon who leaned back, nearly parallel with the floor. He had grabbed hold of her shirt during her attempted tackle and was now in the process of throwing her overhead, using her own momentum against her.

  Aoife somersaulted in the air—passing over the Dragoon—but her opponent didn't let her go. She felt a forceful, downward tug on her body and realized that the Dragoon intended to maintain contact throughout the rotation; at this rate, she would be slammed into the pavement at the end of the move.

  It was too late to extricate herself. Her instincts told her to hold onto something—anything—to slow down and break the fall. She shifted her heat into her arms and hands and clawed frantically as her grasp on the Dragoon slipped from the midriff, to the chest, then down his arms. Whether it was her clinging on for dear life or perhaps the discomfort caused by her scratching, Aoife seemed to do just enough to alter the force of the downward drive. She landed heavily and was momentarily stunned by the impact, but she managed to let her shoulders and feet take the brunt of the landing.

  Compelled by a primal fear, Aoife burned more heat to twist free from the Dragoon's grasp and scrambled away to a safe distance. Her respiration was already rapid and heavy, and her chest was full to bursting. She was sure she had injured something again but couldn't spare the attention to pinpoint the pain. As she watched, her opponent regained his footing with a lithe hop from a lying position. Instead of paying her any heed, he seemed more interested in the fresh red rashes that had appeared on his chest and arms where she had clutched. Patches of blood seeped from the rashes, though Aoife wasn't sure if they were his or her own.

  Desperation drove her to the next move. With the Dragoon's eyes apparently focused on his own body, Aoife lunged again. As she did, however, she became aware that she had no plan this time, only the impulse to attack—to end the fight. She swung with an outstretched fist, a wild and flimsy attempt at best, and the Dragoon coolly—almost lazily—looked up in time to parry the strike. In the same motion, he managed to sidestep her, and Aoife once more found her own momentum carrying her past her intended target. She was now off-balance, falling onto her face, and her opponent was out of her sight. But he had a clear view of her back and plenty of time to take advantage. She had opened herself up completely, and she sensed that this was the end.

  Suddenly, Aoife heard an object whizz past above her head, then a slap of something firm hitting against skin. What should have been the Dragoon's finishing blow to her undefended back did not come. Instead, Aoife found herself stumbling forward and managed to roll away to safety, just as she heard the shattering of glass behind her.

  She spun around and looked up. The Dragoon hadn't moved from where Aoife had lunged at him. His eyes were turned away from her and slightly upward, scanning the crowd. At his feet were shards of what looked to be one of the goblets that had been supplied to guests.

  The hall buzzed with barely contained unrest and anger. The bloodbath promised to the crowd had been interrupted at its decisive moment. Aoife allowed herself a brief glance toward the section of the crowd where the goblet had flown in from. It had already devolved into a mess of shouting men, with no real indication of what had transpired. Was the goblet launched from an idle slip of the hands or at the deranged whims of a drunken idiot? Or was there purpose behind it, one to tamper with the fight—to save Aoife?

  She tore her eyes away from the crowd and her mind away from secondary thoughts. She still had a job to do, an adversary to subdue. But in her struggle for dear life on two failed attacks, she had expended nearly everything she had at the start of the fight. The goblet—by design or not—had stayed her defeated but it had only delayed the inevitable.

  She looked toward the Dragoon with bleary eyes, her shoulders heaving with every troubled breath, the heat draining rapidly from her blood, and her mind empty of ideas. He, on the other hand, stood in his relaxed posture, breathing just as easily as when the fight had begun.

  Aoife's hopes perished with the last drop of her heat. Eyes welling with shameful tears, she opened her mouth, ready to say the words that had never before crossed her mind in all her time at St Marcus.

  "I yield."

  She frowned and leaned forward, not trusting herself to have heard correctly. They were her words, but she wasn't the one who spoke them. Judging from the unchanged timbre of the noise around them, at least no one in the crowd had heard the hoarse and barely enunciated declaration the Dragoon had just emitted. As if in answer to her doubts, he cocked his head and looked toward the mezzanine. Mr Carmichael stood by the balustrades, tonight accompanied by one of his attendants. His expression was unreadable as he returned the Dragoon's gaze.

  "I yield," Aoife's opponent rasped again, barely audible above the din. "This isn't what we agreed to."

  Some members of the crowd caught the words and started waves of incredulous exclamations. Before long, the hall was awash with the resounding clamour of anger, confusion, and dismay. Colourful phrases streamed into Aoife's ears, none of them friendly and some more than a little threatening. Then something wet splashed against the back of her neck. Before she realized it had been a crushed fruit of some kind, more objects flew into the ring—plates, cups, half-eaten food; soon the floor was littered with them. As she ducked and put her arms out to shield herself, Aoife saw that the Dragoon remained standing, completely still. He paid no heed to the rubbish pelting and sliding down his body and clothes, and continued to stare up at the mezzanine.

  "Gentlemen, gentlemen," Art Carmichael's voice—impossibly shrill yet clear as a whistle—rang out and filled the basement. His gangly frame leaned over the railings as he scanned the crowd. Somehow, his solitary call had cut through the collective noise of the hundred odd voices below, and a tense hush now fell over the hall. Aoife wondered if others had felt the same chill that had just shot through her. In his demeanor, Mr Carmichael sounded no different to how he had spoken to her in his office, yet it felt to her as though the volume of his voice had been amplified tenfold. He presently put on a satisfied smile as his eyes eventually settled on and met the Dragoon's. "I believe one of our contestants had something to say. Mr Souness, you truly wish to yield? I have to say I'm rather confused. It looked to me that you had the upper hand."

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  Once again, Aoife was forced to agree wholeheartedly with the racketeer. The man called Souness had twice swept aside her attacks with ease and turned them into finishing moves against her. The first time, it had taken Aoife a liberal dose of heat and a heap of luck to come away on her feet. The second time, she required the unseen and timely assistance of someone in the crowd. Judging by the overwhelming thirst and fatigue she felt now, a third attempt would have been even more disastrous. By all measures, she had been soundly and thoroughly beaten. She found that she wasn't even curious about why her opponent had decided to yield when victory had been certain. Instead, she felt only relief that she didn't have to fight him any longer.

  "I do not yield in anticipation of loss," the Dragoon replied with what sounded like the husk of a human voice. Even in the quieted hall, it was difficult to make out his every word. "The conditions are not what we agreed to. I fear I may be compelled to use more force than necessary. I yield to avoid causing mortal injury to this girl."

  Scattered whispers and a few angry outbursts broke out again, and died down quickly as Mr Carmichael spoke over them. "What conditions might those be, Mr Souness? As far as I know, we've only banned two things here: weapons and Magic. Pray tell, which of those contrabands were present in this fight?"

  "Both," the reply was swift and frank, without fanfare. Aoife's breath caught in her throat. "Thrown objects, originating from an accomplice in the crowd and targeted at me. As for the second condition," he then shifted his gaze and looked at Aoife for the first time since they disengaged, eyes sunken and betraying no emotion or thought, "the girl is clearly a Magicker."

  The effect of these words was not immediate. It was a testament to how well Aoife had camouflaged her blood tricks from laymen that none in the crowd jumped up to proclaim vindicated suspicions. Stunned silence ruled the hall for a few seconds before it was replaced with an uproar, louder and more all-consuming than ever before. Voices of various sentiments sang out in cacophony, but one emotion was louder and clearer than the rest: fury. The contract between racketeer and gamblers, always tenuous at best, had nevertheless been betrayed. The paying customers now wanted their money back or a head on a spike—or better yet, both.

  Heart thumping, Aoife glanced up at the mezzanine and saw Mr Carmichael lean toward his henchman and whisper something in the brute's ears before shooting a look in her direction. On ground level, she could sense the masses edging toward the centre of the room, some of them already climbing onto the ropes that separated them from the combatants. From the hallway that led to the Kennel emerged several more of her boss's retinue of brawny attendants, undoubtedly headed for her. Her mind flashed to the one boy who had magicked by accident, dragged away by these same brutes, never to be seen again.

  Where could she go? What could she do? She was trapped, at the mercy of the wrathful crowd and whatever punishment Mr Carmichael had in mind for her. Aoife began to subconsciously back away, toward the Paddock side of the ring. Suddenly, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She jumped, twisted, and put her arms up to shield herself, not knowing whether she needed to fight or to run. Then she gasped as she saw who had confronted her.

  "Follow me. I think we'd better leave."

  It was Lucy.

  She had draped over her foreign dress a hooded shawl that covered much of her face. But those keen dark eyes, that dignified posture, and the strange accent were unmistakable. For whatever reason, she was carrying a flaming torch in her hand, which blazed brightly and cast an orange glow over the exposed parts of her face. Aoife stared, too dumbfounded to move. "What... how?"

  "Yes, yes, I'm sure you have ten thousand questions for me. We can get to all that once we get out of here in one piece. Now follow me, please, and quickly."

  Lucy tugged at her arm forcefully, and Aoife allowed herself to be dragged into motion. They turned and headed down the hallway leading back to the Paddock. Aoife saw again that her great-aunt had a limp favouring her left leg, but the older woman's movement was swift and purposeful, and she broke into a light jog to keep pace.

  A few steps ahead of them, the door to the Paddock swung open. From within emerged another of Carmichael's henchmen that Aoife hadn't bothered to learn the names of. She made to step in front of Lucy to confront him, though she was unsure what she could manage in her current state of exhaustion. However, Lucy put a hand out to stop her, then took step toward the brute herself.

  "I'm sorry," she yelled cheerfully in her accented Anglish. "I seem to have gotten lost. Would you be a dear and show me out?"

  "Out of the way, I'm here for her," the attendant growled and pushed past Lucy without a second look. He reached out a thick arm toward Aoife, and she searched within her depleted blood for any trace of heat, knowing it was a futile effort.

  There was a bright red flash behind the brute as the torch in Lucy's hand flared. The next moment, the attendant yelped in pain and dropped to the floor, writhing and tearing at his own clothes. Lucy stood over him, her free hand outstretched and emitting smoke. Aoife widened her eyes.

  "Come on, let's keep moving," Lucy snapped and beckoned, and Aoife hastened to follow, stepping over the attendant who still rolled about on the pavement, screaming in pain and alarm. Add that to the list of ten thousand questions.

  Aoife followed her great-aunt into the Paddock, where she found that the entrance here was also ajar. It occurred to her then that Lucy wouldn't have had the key to come through this way. As she approached the door, however, the mystery was answered with more questions. A hole had appeared on the door, just above the handle and just large enough for someone to stick a hand through and undo the latch from the other side. The uneven edges of the hole had a blackened, charred appearance. Aoife suspected that Lucy's torch by itself wouldn't have burned hot enough to produce this effect.

  Lucy did not give Aoife time to vocalize her curiosities as she limped past the open door without pause. Aoife tucked away the thoughts and questions for a more opportune time, along with everything else she needed to say to her great-aunt.

  The two of them rounded onto the main hallway that led back to the staircase at the back entrance to St Marcus. Thankfully, they had beaten the crowd whom Aoife expected to come streaming out of the hall at any moment. As they hurried toward the stairs, another set of footsteps joined theirs and a gruff voice bellowed from behind. "STOP!"

  Aoife turned to look, not slowing her steps. It was the man who had stood beside Art Carmichael on the mezzanine, one of his more favoured henchmen, though Aoife didn't know his name either. He sprinted toward them now with powerful strides, and she felt the sinking certainty that he would catch them in no time. From the corner of her eyes, she saw Lucy take something out of the leather satchel slung over her shoulder, the same one from which she had produced the vial of Ma's blood on her last visit. It looked to be a small glass bottle, which Lucy hastily uncapped and began to shake its contents out onto the floor, repeating the motion several times in a wide arc from wall to wall. She then dropped her torch, letting it fall onto the puddle she had created.

  A burst of flames shot up from the floor, blinding Aoife with its fierce blaze. The attendant chasing after them stopped short in his tracks, shielding his face and backing away from the flames. Lucy then reached out both hands toward the fire, her face a picture of utmost concentration. The flames rose even higher, forming a veritable wall between them and their would-be pursuer.

  "This is why it's always good to be prepared," Lucy quipped as she turned back toward Aoife. Her face had relaxed into a smile. "Come on. That should buy us a couple of minutes at least."

  They turned back toward the stairs, leaving the attendant to yell obscenities from behind the fire.

  At the top of the stairs—both women panting from their efforts on the steep uneven steps—they rounded a corner to find their final obstacle barring the way to the outside. Skinny old Dignan, likely reacting to the commotion below and having gathered all the wits and courage he could muster, stood facing them. In one trembling hand, he held out a short poker he normally used on a brazier beside his chair.

  "Uh, miss... are you... are you sure you're meant to be here right now?" he managed to croak in a shaking voice. Lucy made to step toward him, eyes shooting a purposeful glance at the still-lit brazier, but this time, Aoife put out her hand to stop her great-aunt. She calmly approached Dignan, who tensed and backed up a step, holding the poker out farther from his body. With no sense of urgency or caution, Aoife walked up to within an arm's length of him and grabbed hold of the hand that held the makeshift weapon. He made no attempt to use it, and only squirmed under her gaze. "Dignan, we're going to walk out now, and you're going to let us through. I suggest you put down the poker, take a seat, and if Mr Carmichael asks, tell him you heard nothing from down below and had no idea you were meant to stop us."

  She let go and walked past him without waiting for a reply. Lucy quietly limped after her in short order. And they both breathed in the chill night air, free from musk, wine, and malice.