Arnica Osten sat on the edge of a bench and picked at a large platter covered in various fried and blackened objects cut into small, bite-sized portions and surrounded by a ring of ramekins and sauces. Omni, the not-son and not-assistant, sat in the center and drank his second Gincho Blitz while Arnica drank her first. At the other end of the bench, Dunne Volkov sipped his own drink, picked at the other side of the tray, and watched the floor below them where a team of young teenager mopped the blood from it. When they were done, they sprinkled the polished flooring with white flakes of soft woel bark.
There was one more fight before the headliner, and Arnica realized she would be there for longer than a few minutes. She finished one drink, and tried to relax. It all seemed safe enough, at least for her. The drinks weren’t spiked, Volkov didn’t seem hostile, and the Miskan boy wouldn’t stop talking.
In the center of the floor, some ten feet below the alcove in which she sat, two men—one quite pale and muscled from dehydration and the other much darker and more evenly proportioned, and incredibly handsome from twenty feet away—grappled with far greater skill than the ones that she had walked in on. The darker man fought like a student of a quarter-Iskan martial artist and the pale one fought like the student of a drunken ex-commander from Cerala. Neither were spectacular, but they both showed some level of training and dedication
"I bet the Arenas in Violl are insane. Remember when that dude from Violl--the dude who fought in the wolf mask--remember?
Omni smiled as he spoke on his third drink and elbowed Volkov as if he were a friend. Maybe he was. Though they both denied it.
"Remember the dude in the wolf mask from Violl that Gowri fucked up in the tournament a few years back?"
Finally, Volkov nodded.
"He was from Violl, right?"
"Maybe."
Volkov shrugged.
"I didn't talk to him."
"Anyway--he was really good, wasn't he? You said he was trained in some fancy-ass ancient northern style, right?"
Omni got louder with every passing drink.
"So, if he was that good and he lost in Violl and came down here—you gotta figure everyone else there is probably even better. I bet the Arena matches there are insane.”
And you’d be making a smart bet, m’boy."
A large, square man who may or may not have been Iskan stood over the table in a Castian style civil suit made of shimmering Iskan wherm.
"Just say y'er sister down there in the pits. Asked me to check on you."
"Really?"
"Well, more or less."
The large man smiled to reveal a mouth the size of a small child's head and fat, square teeth.
"Bell's ringing in a few. I noticed you got a friend here..."
The man looked at Volkov and then to her.
"How d'ya do, madam?"
He didn't wait for a response.
"I just wanted to make sure you're still keeping the move count for the freaks that put bets down on that nonsense and that you've got the ledger to count out with me later."
“I’ll take down the move count, but you can run the payouts yourself, or I’ll run them tomorrow. I’ve got something to do after this.”
Dunne Volkov spoke to the man like an employer. An employer he respected very, very little, and who he knew to be largely dependent on him, but an employer, nonetheless. Arnica wasn’t sure what she expected, for the government didn’t pay out salaries to exiles, but she couldn’t say that she had imagined Dunne Volkov, the United General, the King’s brother, the great traitor, to be an annoyed employee.
"I'll run 'em, I'll run 'em."
The large man smiled.
"Calm down, would'ya? I don't mind. Was just asking. I'm'a send Thallia over with a smoker. On the house tonight, how's that?"
He didn't wait for an answer that time, and turned with the confidence of the King of Misk, a position that had never existed but in his aura, and yet, like everyone else in that room on that night in Misk, Arnica found him strangely benign.
Half an hour later, she was two hits of whiskal smoke in from a well-used smoker shaped like a demi-human tortoise, Volkov was greener, but holding himself together well, and in the pit at the base of the arena, a woman who was undeniably Omni’s sister, much taller and stronger than he, fought with a somewhat pudgy, but not quite weak man of her same height. She moved like a raptor, in large, sweeping gestures that ought to have overpowered the slightly pudgy man, and that sometimes seemed to, but before she returned to center, she lingered, a bit too long, too awkwardly, and took a blow to the gut, or the face, or the shoulder, or tripped until eventually, time was called and the pudgy man was named the technical winner. Volkov seemed to find it amusing, Omni cringed at every blow his sister took, and Arnica found the performance lacking. She wondered if all thrown fights were that obvious and if so, how the giant man that seemed to run them kept himself from being killed by a mob of debtors