KING'S TABLE — Chapter 1
The fighting pit was dimly lit and hazy with tobacco smoke. Around the rim, day laborers and street thugs and dockhands milled and pressed and crowded to get better vantage points for the next match. The air was hot and thick, as if sweat had formed a warm mist that swirled with the smoke and settled in the lungs.
From where Jinjinin stood, on the balcony above the worst of the crowd, the whole of the pit was visible. The perfectly round floor was flat and clean, marred only by a damp patch where the pit boys had raked away bloody sand from the last match. The contestants, shirtless and glistening under the low torches spaced around the pit, stood waiting.
“See how he stands,” Jinjinin said, leaning close to the woman standing next to him. “See the balance. The poise. You can tell much from the way a man stands.”
“I hope your recommendation was based on more than the way he stands,” said Aln. Her tone was dry, but there was an edge to it. An edge that Jinjinin was not used to. An edge that made him feel cold even in the sweltering, sweat-saturated stink of the death-house.
“Of course,” said Jinjinin, ducking his head. “Of course I have seen him fight.”
Aln was silent. Waiting.
“He was one of mine,” Jinjinin found himself explaining. “It was me that first put him in the pits. He had killed four of the emperor’s soldiers. Four. I had to pay dearly to save him from the headsman.”
Aln was not comforted. “Yours?” she said, turning to give Jinjinin a sharp look. “He was your Thrall, and you sold him? Do you mean to tell me that my money is placed on the leavings of Jinjinin the border dog?”
Once, Jinjinin would have bristled at Aln’s tone. Once, he might have become violent at being called a border dog to his face. If he made his meager living buying, selling, smuggling and gambling on Thralls stolen across the Botani border, that was no one’s business but his own. Aln did not pay him well enough to endure scorn and insults.
Once, Jinjinin would have said so. But now, he was becoming more certain by the minute, there was more than money at stake.
She was a shrewd woman, Aln was. A merchant who had built an empire of wealth by trading out of the frozen north-eastern docks of the Huctan Empire, she had scores of men and seemingly limitless coin at her disposal. And if the whispers Jinjinin had heard were correct, she was ruthless with those that displeased her.
Their business relationship had begun almost a decade ago. Most of Aln’s money was put to work in low-risk, moderate-return business prospects that yielded consistent results, but she kept a small portion reserved for high-risk, high-return investments. Gambling, for instance.
Thus Jinjinin’s involvement. Aln had money to put on the betting table, and Jinjinin knew who to bet it on. When he came north, he always went to see Aln, who always accompanied him to the death-houses, from which they almost always emerged richer than they had entered.
It was a profitable arrangement for both of them. For many years it had continued without complication.
Until now. Jinjinin, in the past year, had begun to slip in his recommendations. Four of the last five had been wrong. Four of the last five times Aln had come to the death-houses, she had lost money. Each time Jinjinin had apologized profusely, begged her forgiveness, and sworn to himself more adamantly that he was done, that he would not test her patience again, that his life was worth more than the chance for an easy profit.
But this chance, Jinjinin had not been able to pass up. This fight, if he was right, would pay for Aln’s last four losses many times over. This night would make him a rich man.
Or, if he was wrong, it would make him a dead man. He was becoming more certain of that by the minute.
“My leavings?” Jinjinin said. “I would not call him that. You know I never hold onto a Thrall for long, no matter how good he is. If I never sold a good Thrall, my purse would have shriveled up and starved to death years ago. Thralls cost money, and then they die, and dead slaves earn no coin.”
“Indeed,” said Aln, narrowing her eyes. “And yet living slaves earn double and double again with every passing fight. I have always wondered, Jinjinin, how you decide when to sell your slaves. How do you balance the risk against the potential gain?”
Jinjinin was not sure if Aln wanted an answer. After a pause, she turned to look back at the pit, but continued speaking.
“I had always assumed that you only sell men you believe to have few good fights left. Four-fight men, for example, that you believe will die as six-fight men. Men that appear, to the buyers, to have great potential, but who possess some fatal flaw that only you, with your vast experience and trained eye, can see.”
Jinjinin swallowed. She could not know that he had sold the Botaño as a four-fight slave. She was guessing, making a reasonable assumption based on the fact that it would take a Thrall at least two or three fights to work his way this far north of the border. She was not having him watched. She was not already planning his demise.
“Usually, you would be right,” Jinjinin said, lowering his head and trying to pass off his nervousness as concern for his reputation. “In this case, I made a mistake. The Botaño won his last fight—his last fight before I sold him, that is—so quickly and completely that buyers were tripping over each other trying to make me an offer for him. I got carried away. I said to myself, ‘Jinjinin,’ I said, ‘That quick fight was a fluke. The Botaño was lucky. He will not last. Take the money while you can.’ I said that to myself, and I took the money from the highest bidder. It was only when I happened to see his fifth fight that I realized what a fool I had been.”
“A shining commendation for the man who directed my last bet,” Aln noted, turning back to face Jinjinin. Her gaze was colder than the winter wind. Jinjinin swallowed again.
Thankfully, the pit master chose that moment to begin beating his gong, and Aln turned her attention away from Jinjinin to the pit below.
The Botaño was still standing on his side of the circular sand floor, eyes still closed, hands still at his sides. He looked small below the slightly sloped walls of the fighting pit. Compared to his opponent, a stocky man who had the advantage of two inches and nearly sixty pounds, the Botaño looked almost a boy.
“His past three fights have been with the sword,” Jinjinin said in a low voice. “This is why the odds are stacked so highly against him for this fight. For his size too, yes, but that would not be enough for the money men to give ten to one. They know not to underestimate a six-fight slave because of his size alone. But because he is small, and because his last three fights were with the sword, they assume that he has made it this far on blade-skill alone. They have not seen him fight hand-to-hand, as I…”
“I think you should know, Jinjinin,” Aln interrupted mildly, “that this will be the last time we do business together. I only put money on this last folly of yours because of those odds you speak of. The risk—following your recommendation—is high, but the potential gain is even higher.”
She turned and smiled at him.
“And what’s the fun in gambling,” she said, “if you’re not willing to stick out your neck once in a while?”
Jinjinin swallowed a third time, and nearly put his hand to his own neck. She was not threatening him. She was not putting all their years of working together on a scale against this single fight. He was not going to die tonight.
No. The Botaño would win.
The pit master was shouting the obvious, that both slaves had been condemned to the pits for crimes against the empire, that this was a seventh death-match for both slaves, that the owners had agreed on weaponless combat, that the money tables were now closed, that no one was to throw anything into the pit, that any fighting done outside of the pit would result in immediate expulsion from the premises.
“Yes!” the sweating, smoking, churning crowd around the pit shouted. “Get on with it!”
The Botaño’s eyes were still closed. Always, at the beginning of a match, his eyes were closed. Why? Jinjinin had always wondered, and suddenly he found his curiosity almost uncontainable. Was the Botaño playing some kind of psychological game with his opponent? Planning his strategy? Reliving some memory that gave him strength? Jinjinin felt an insane urge to call out to the Botaño, to beg him to tell his secret now, before it was too late for either of them.
The gong sounded again, a single brassy, rippling note, and the crowds pushed forward to watch. Even on the balcony, where only the wealthier patrons were allowed, Jinjinin had to plant himself against the guard rail and throw a vicious elbow to maintain a space for Aln at the railing.
The burly Thrall—a one-time sailor condemned for smuggling and murder—tried to close quickly with the Botaño. This was expected. It was obvious to all that if the sailor once managed to wrap his brawny arms around the Botaño’s leg or chest or neck, the match would be all but over. The Botaño would struggle, perhaps land a few blows, but the sailor would pull him down and crush the life from him like a bulldog with an alley cat.
The Botaño would know this. He would avoid closing with the sailor at all costs. He would dance away and circle the pit, throwing punches or kicks to disorient or slow or blind his attacker. But always he would continue moving, continue circling, continue avoiding.
This was obvious. This was expected.
Only the Botaño did not back away from the sailor’s advance. He stood, for a moment, as if his eyes were still closed. Then, when the sailor crossed the center of the pit, he charged.
One step, two steps, three, in quick succession, and then the Botaño was directly in front of the sailor, right arm cocked back, fist flying forward like a flung hammer.
The sailor had been approaching quickly, but cautiously. His weight was balanced, elbows in, chin tucked tight against his chest. Even so, it looked for a moment like the Botaño’s blow might actually connect. The sheer audacity of the attack startled the sailor just as much as anyone else, and he barely managed to roll his shoulder up to absorb the blow that would have broken his jaw or nose and sent him to the floor.
The Botaño withdrew his fist quickly, trying to wriggle out of the sailor’s deadly reach, but he had overcommitted himself. He was too far off balance, too far forward, and while the sailor had been caught off guard, he was also a six-fight Thrall, and he was not slow.
The sailor’s hairy knuckles closed on the still-extended forearm of the Botaño. Time seemed to slow for Jinjinin. He felt his own heartbeat, once as the Botaño planted his feet at last and pulled, twice as his forearm began to slip through the sailor’s vice-like hand, thrice as the sailor’s hand caught at the wrist and held.
Jinjinin wanted to close his eyes, wanted to look away, wanted to push through the crowd and make for the door and get out of the city before Aln could set her men to hunting him down and cutting him to pieces.
But he stayed. He watched. He could not look away.
The Botaño pulled against the sailor’s hand, hard, and the corners of the sailor’s mouth turned up. His grip was solid.
The Botaño was frantic now. He gathered himself and flung his body backward, yanking his captured wrist with all the strength and frenzy of a man who knows he is going to die. The sailor stumbled forward a little, but he did not lose his grip.
It was over.
Only the Botaño was moving again, quick as a flashing sea-hawk, all the hysteria gone from his movements like paint wiped from a canvas. While the sailor was stumbling forward with a grin on his broad face—while men who had placed money on the sailor were beginning to nudge each other and nod knowingly—the Botaño had stopped tugging and instead rolled into the sailor’s reach.
A moment, a second, half a second before, the Botaño had appeared frenzied, off-balance, and desperate. Now his face was smooth, his movements crisp and clean, his balance centered. He was clamping his own hand to reinforce the sailor’s grip on his forearm. He was spinning his back and shoulder into position under the sailor’s outstretched armpit. He was pulling.
The over-shoulder throw was perfection. The angle of the Botaño’s back, the body-check to destroy the sailor’s last semblance of balance, the extension of the arm over the shoulder and powerful upward thrust of the hip—every movement was flawless, as if the Botaño had thrown dozens of men in his lifetime, scores, hundreds. Jinjinin felt a lump form in his throat at the beauty of it, and wondered if this was how some men felt about the sunset, or the great forests, or the sea. If this was what a blacksmith felt when he saw a truly flawless sword.
The rest of the fight was ugly and brutal, but Jinjinin watched in fascination, unable to breathe as the Botaño expertly dislocated the falling sailor’s shoulder and ended him with kicks to the head and body. This one is going to Taras Abor, he thought, and I sold him for the price of a horse.
But Jinjinin could not bring himself to care about that, just now. He could not even bring himself to rejoice over the fact that Aln would not be having him butchered in his bed tonight, or that he would earn more coin from his small share of her winnings than he had earned in the past two years. In that moment, all Jinjinin could feel was a hollowness in his gut and a certainty that he would never see another fighter like the Botaño.
The roar in the death-house, when the sailor’s head snapped sideways on his shoulders and his hands dropped limp to the sand, was deafening. The press of bodies below the balcony had grown riotous. There was shouting, and fighting, and Jinjinin knew that men would be trampled tonight, that he would be trampled, if he could not keep his footing.
Aln was saying something to him, shouting something to him. Jinjinin leaned so close that the air from her mouth tickled his ear, but still he could barely hear her.
“You were right!” she said, her previous coldness replaced with the contagious delirium of the death-house. “You were a fool to sell him!”
Jinjinin nodded, and showed his teeth in what he hoped would pass for a grin, and tried to swallow the lump in his throat.
“What is his name?” Aln shouted.
His name? If only Jinjinin knew that. If only he had a name to put to the memory that would be with him for the rest of his days. But the Botaño had only ever given him a false name, a name he had forgotten to answer to at first, a name that had made him jump and look over his shoulder and clench his fist every time Jinjinin had spoken it.
“He calls himself Jesher,” Jinjinin shouted back.
“Jesher.” Aln mouthed the word, and seemed satisfied.
Then, together, the two of them turned back to the railing and the chaos below. They watched the crowd roil and fight and spill out into the street. They watched the pit boys help the Botaño up to his master and drag the sailor’s body to be winched out and disposed of. They watched, and waited, and when the noise had faded and it was safe to descend the stairs, Aln and Jinjinin went down to the money tables to collect their winnings.
From where Jinjinin stood, on the balcony above the worst of the crowd, the whole of the pit was visible. The perfectly round floor was flat and clean, marred only by a damp patch where the pit boys had raked away bloody sand from the last match. The contestants, shirtless and glistening under the low torches spaced around the pit, stood waiting.
“See how he stands,” Jinjinin said, leaning close to the woman standing next to him. “See the balance. The poise. You can tell much from the way a man stands.”
“I hope your recommendation was based on more than the way he stands,” said Aln. Her tone was dry, but there was an edge to it. An edge that Jinjinin was not used to. An edge that made him feel cold even in the sweltering, sweat-saturated stink of the death-house.
“Of course,” said Jinjinin, ducking his head. “Of course I have seen him fight.”
Aln was silent. Waiting.
“He was one of mine,” Jinjinin found himself explaining. “It was me that first put him in the pits. He had killed four of the emperor’s soldiers. Four. I had to pay dearly to save him from the headsman.”
Aln was not comforted. “Yours?” she said, turning to give Jinjinin a sharp look. “He was your Thrall, and you sold him? Do you mean to tell me that my money is placed on the leavings of Jinjinin the border dog?”
Once, Jinjinin would have bristled at Aln’s tone. Once, he might have become violent at being called a border dog to his face. If he made his meager living buying, selling, smuggling and gambling on Thralls stolen across the Botani border, that was no one’s business but his own. Aln did not pay him well enough to endure scorn and insults.
Once, Jinjinin would have said so. But now, he was becoming more certain by the minute, there was more than money at stake.
She was a shrewd woman, Aln was. A merchant who had built an empire of wealth by trading out of the frozen north-eastern docks of the Huctan Empire, she had scores of men and seemingly limitless coin at her disposal. And if the whispers Jinjinin had heard were correct, she was ruthless with those that displeased her.
Their business relationship had begun almost a decade ago. Most of Aln’s money was put to work in low-risk, moderate-return business prospects that yielded consistent results, but she kept a small portion reserved for high-risk, high-return investments. Gambling, for instance.
Thus Jinjinin’s involvement. Aln had money to put on the betting table, and Jinjinin knew who to bet it on. When he came north, he always went to see Aln, who always accompanied him to the death-houses, from which they almost always emerged richer than they had entered.
It was a profitable arrangement for both of them. For many years it had continued without complication.
Until now. Jinjinin, in the past year, had begun to slip in his recommendations. Four of the last five had been wrong. Four of the last five times Aln had come to the death-houses, she had lost money. Each time Jinjinin had apologized profusely, begged her forgiveness, and sworn to himself more adamantly that he was done, that he would not test her patience again, that his life was worth more than the chance for an easy profit.
But this chance, Jinjinin had not been able to pass up. This fight, if he was right, would pay for Aln’s last four losses many times over. This night would make him a rich man.
Or, if he was wrong, it would make him a dead man. He was becoming more certain of that by the minute.
“My leavings?” Jinjinin said. “I would not call him that. You know I never hold onto a Thrall for long, no matter how good he is. If I never sold a good Thrall, my purse would have shriveled up and starved to death years ago. Thralls cost money, and then they die, and dead slaves earn no coin.”
“Indeed,” said Aln, narrowing her eyes. “And yet living slaves earn double and double again with every passing fight. I have always wondered, Jinjinin, how you decide when to sell your slaves. How do you balance the risk against the potential gain?”
Jinjinin was not sure if Aln wanted an answer. After a pause, she turned to look back at the pit, but continued speaking.
“I had always assumed that you only sell men you believe to have few good fights left. Four-fight men, for example, that you believe will die as six-fight men. Men that appear, to the buyers, to have great potential, but who possess some fatal flaw that only you, with your vast experience and trained eye, can see.”
Jinjinin swallowed. She could not know that he had sold the Botaño as a four-fight slave. She was guessing, making a reasonable assumption based on the fact that it would take a Thrall at least two or three fights to work his way this far north of the border. She was not having him watched. She was not already planning his demise.
“Usually, you would be right,” Jinjinin said, lowering his head and trying to pass off his nervousness as concern for his reputation. “In this case, I made a mistake. The Botaño won his last fight—his last fight before I sold him, that is—so quickly and completely that buyers were tripping over each other trying to make me an offer for him. I got carried away. I said to myself, ‘Jinjinin,’ I said, ‘That quick fight was a fluke. The Botaño was lucky. He will not last. Take the money while you can.’ I said that to myself, and I took the money from the highest bidder. It was only when I happened to see his fifth fight that I realized what a fool I had been.”
“A shining commendation for the man who directed my last bet,” Aln noted, turning back to face Jinjinin. Her gaze was colder than the winter wind. Jinjinin swallowed again.
Thankfully, the pit master chose that moment to begin beating his gong, and Aln turned her attention away from Jinjinin to the pit below.
The Botaño was still standing on his side of the circular sand floor, eyes still closed, hands still at his sides. He looked small below the slightly sloped walls of the fighting pit. Compared to his opponent, a stocky man who had the advantage of two inches and nearly sixty pounds, the Botaño looked almost a boy.
“His past three fights have been with the sword,” Jinjinin said in a low voice. “This is why the odds are stacked so highly against him for this fight. For his size too, yes, but that would not be enough for the money men to give ten to one. They know not to underestimate a six-fight slave because of his size alone. But because he is small, and because his last three fights were with the sword, they assume that he has made it this far on blade-skill alone. They have not seen him fight hand-to-hand, as I…”
“I think you should know, Jinjinin,” Aln interrupted mildly, “that this will be the last time we do business together. I only put money on this last folly of yours because of those odds you speak of. The risk—following your recommendation—is high, but the potential gain is even higher.”
She turned and smiled at him.
“And what’s the fun in gambling,” she said, “if you’re not willing to stick out your neck once in a while?”
Jinjinin swallowed a third time, and nearly put his hand to his own neck. She was not threatening him. She was not putting all their years of working together on a scale against this single fight. He was not going to die tonight.
No. The Botaño would win.
The pit master was shouting the obvious, that both slaves had been condemned to the pits for crimes against the empire, that this was a seventh death-match for both slaves, that the owners had agreed on weaponless combat, that the money tables were now closed, that no one was to throw anything into the pit, that any fighting done outside of the pit would result in immediate expulsion from the premises.
“Yes!” the sweating, smoking, churning crowd around the pit shouted. “Get on with it!”
The Botaño’s eyes were still closed. Always, at the beginning of a match, his eyes were closed. Why? Jinjinin had always wondered, and suddenly he found his curiosity almost uncontainable. Was the Botaño playing some kind of psychological game with his opponent? Planning his strategy? Reliving some memory that gave him strength? Jinjinin felt an insane urge to call out to the Botaño, to beg him to tell his secret now, before it was too late for either of them.
The gong sounded again, a single brassy, rippling note, and the crowds pushed forward to watch. Even on the balcony, where only the wealthier patrons were allowed, Jinjinin had to plant himself against the guard rail and throw a vicious elbow to maintain a space for Aln at the railing.
The burly Thrall—a one-time sailor condemned for smuggling and murder—tried to close quickly with the Botaño. This was expected. It was obvious to all that if the sailor once managed to wrap his brawny arms around the Botaño’s leg or chest or neck, the match would be all but over. The Botaño would struggle, perhaps land a few blows, but the sailor would pull him down and crush the life from him like a bulldog with an alley cat.
The Botaño would know this. He would avoid closing with the sailor at all costs. He would dance away and circle the pit, throwing punches or kicks to disorient or slow or blind his attacker. But always he would continue moving, continue circling, continue avoiding.
This was obvious. This was expected.
Only the Botaño did not back away from the sailor’s advance. He stood, for a moment, as if his eyes were still closed. Then, when the sailor crossed the center of the pit, he charged.
One step, two steps, three, in quick succession, and then the Botaño was directly in front of the sailor, right arm cocked back, fist flying forward like a flung hammer.
The sailor had been approaching quickly, but cautiously. His weight was balanced, elbows in, chin tucked tight against his chest. Even so, it looked for a moment like the Botaño’s blow might actually connect. The sheer audacity of the attack startled the sailor just as much as anyone else, and he barely managed to roll his shoulder up to absorb the blow that would have broken his jaw or nose and sent him to the floor.
The Botaño withdrew his fist quickly, trying to wriggle out of the sailor’s deadly reach, but he had overcommitted himself. He was too far off balance, too far forward, and while the sailor had been caught off guard, he was also a six-fight Thrall, and he was not slow.
The sailor’s hairy knuckles closed on the still-extended forearm of the Botaño. Time seemed to slow for Jinjinin. He felt his own heartbeat, once as the Botaño planted his feet at last and pulled, twice as his forearm began to slip through the sailor’s vice-like hand, thrice as the sailor’s hand caught at the wrist and held.
Jinjinin wanted to close his eyes, wanted to look away, wanted to push through the crowd and make for the door and get out of the city before Aln could set her men to hunting him down and cutting him to pieces.
But he stayed. He watched. He could not look away.
The Botaño pulled against the sailor’s hand, hard, and the corners of the sailor’s mouth turned up. His grip was solid.
The Botaño was frantic now. He gathered himself and flung his body backward, yanking his captured wrist with all the strength and frenzy of a man who knows he is going to die. The sailor stumbled forward a little, but he did not lose his grip.
It was over.
Only the Botaño was moving again, quick as a flashing sea-hawk, all the hysteria gone from his movements like paint wiped from a canvas. While the sailor was stumbling forward with a grin on his broad face—while men who had placed money on the sailor were beginning to nudge each other and nod knowingly—the Botaño had stopped tugging and instead rolled into the sailor’s reach.
A moment, a second, half a second before, the Botaño had appeared frenzied, off-balance, and desperate. Now his face was smooth, his movements crisp and clean, his balance centered. He was clamping his own hand to reinforce the sailor’s grip on his forearm. He was spinning his back and shoulder into position under the sailor’s outstretched armpit. He was pulling.
The over-shoulder throw was perfection. The angle of the Botaño’s back, the body-check to destroy the sailor’s last semblance of balance, the extension of the arm over the shoulder and powerful upward thrust of the hip—every movement was flawless, as if the Botaño had thrown dozens of men in his lifetime, scores, hundreds. Jinjinin felt a lump form in his throat at the beauty of it, and wondered if this was how some men felt about the sunset, or the great forests, or the sea. If this was what a blacksmith felt when he saw a truly flawless sword.
The rest of the fight was ugly and brutal, but Jinjinin watched in fascination, unable to breathe as the Botaño expertly dislocated the falling sailor’s shoulder and ended him with kicks to the head and body. This one is going to Taras Abor, he thought, and I sold him for the price of a horse.
But Jinjinin could not bring himself to care about that, just now. He could not even bring himself to rejoice over the fact that Aln would not be having him butchered in his bed tonight, or that he would earn more coin from his small share of her winnings than he had earned in the past two years. In that moment, all Jinjinin could feel was a hollowness in his gut and a certainty that he would never see another fighter like the Botaño.
The roar in the death-house, when the sailor’s head snapped sideways on his shoulders and his hands dropped limp to the sand, was deafening. The press of bodies below the balcony had grown riotous. There was shouting, and fighting, and Jinjinin knew that men would be trampled tonight, that he would be trampled, if he could not keep his footing.
Aln was saying something to him, shouting something to him. Jinjinin leaned so close that the air from her mouth tickled his ear, but still he could barely hear her.
“You were right!” she said, her previous coldness replaced with the contagious delirium of the death-house. “You were a fool to sell him!”
Jinjinin nodded, and showed his teeth in what he hoped would pass for a grin, and tried to swallow the lump in his throat.
“What is his name?” Aln shouted.
His name? If only Jinjinin knew that. If only he had a name to put to the memory that would be with him for the rest of his days. But the Botaño had only ever given him a false name, a name he had forgotten to answer to at first, a name that had made him jump and look over his shoulder and clench his fist every time Jinjinin had spoken it.
“He calls himself Jesher,” Jinjinin shouted back.
“Jesher.” Aln mouthed the word, and seemed satisfied.
Then, together, the two of them turned back to the railing and the chaos below. They watched the crowd roil and fight and spill out into the street. They watched the pit boys help the Botaño up to his master and drag the sailor’s body to be winched out and disposed of. They watched, and waited, and when the noise had faded and it was safe to descend the stairs, Aln and Jinjinin went down to the money tables to collect their winnings.