Tournament of Losers Page 2

  Of course, that hope rested entirely on the reason Friar was demanding fifteen slick right now, and Rath had yet to hear that reason.

  He bought bread and pickles from another vendor, then started working his way back through Low City. Fates, his legs were going to be falling off by the end of the day.

  The Low City was divided into four rough, unevenly-sized districts: docks, shops, propers, and guards. The docks and shops were the largest districts, where most everyone worked and lived. The propers were those merchants and a few others wealthy enough to live close to the bridges, so near to being on the other side of them that reaching that goal was a constant torment. The last section, the guards, was comprised of the city guard, some of the royal military who stayed there for the sake of convenience, and various mercenary bands as they came and went. They were the only ones permitted use of the guard bridge.

  Rath walked steadily through the mazelike warrens of the shop district until he reached Honey Street, where all the brothels were located. Colorful, often garish signs hung from most of the buildings on the road, the colors indicating the flavors of the establishment.

  He stopped in front of one that was painted with seven vertical bands of different colors crossed along the bottom by white, black, and gray bands. It signaled the house was willing to do pretty much anything and everything. There were other, informal indicators that it wouldn't do anything illegal—children, unwilling people, to name two. Houses that catered to such despicable clientele usually didn't last long, and the ones determined to stick around were extremely discreet and usually operated elsewhere in the city. But usually didn't mean always, so brothels were constantly forced to make it clear some lines would not be crossed.

  His rap on the door was quickly answered, and by the lady of the house herself. By night, Mistress Trinira was beautiful enough to rival the Fates themselves, but by day, she preferred to keep to plain and simple, more interested in the bookkeeping and the cleaning than in looking decadent enough to make people loose with their coin.

  She wore plain brown breeches and a blue tunic over a linen shirt, her long, long hair loosely piled atop her head, and spectacles perched on her nose. Her dark skin was smattered with freckles she'd never tolerate a customer seeing, and she had a cigarillo clenched in her teeth. "Good morning there, love. Didn't expect you to be coming around today. Thought you'd be picking up extra work at the docks." She leaned again the door frame and crossed her arms over her flat chest. "What are you doing all the way over here?"

  "My plans for today were changed." Rath made a face.

  She quirked one delicate, brown-red brow. "By who?"

  "You don't want to know."

  "You should dump your father's body in the harbor, or sell it to those cadaver lovers on Tanning Row. You'd make enough money to cover his debts with plenty to spare to spoil yourself. It's not like anyone would miss him."

  "One of these days I might just, but right now it's still not worth the risk of being hauled to jail. I hate to bother you—"

  She cut him off with a flap of her hand. "There's always work for a man of your skills, Rath. Especially with all these out-of-towners. Can you start early?"

  "That shouldn't be a problem. I've got to track down my father and beat some answers out of him, but after that, my day is wide open. Anything special I should prepare for?"

  "You up for group work?" she asked.

  Rath shrugged. "Why not? Though don't they usually prefer the younger ones for that? I'm a bit long in the tooth to be the toy of a half-drunk group of horny nobles."

  "No, this is a bit more refined group, and they want someone who knows what they're doing. I had Stripling in mind, but I haven't seen him in three days. Probably floating in cloud powder and bad gin by now, the stupid fool. Come around about four. We'll get you warmed up and then off to the noble lot around eight. Even taking the house percentage, that should square you away."

  "Let's hope," Rath muttered, then leaned down to kiss her cheek. "Thanks, Trini. I'd be lost without you."

  "Get along, then," she said, but smiled before sticking the cigarillo back in her mouth and closing the door.

  Rath was already exhausted thinking about the night in front of him. At least three hours of letting a group of people fuck him. He hadn't done that in at least four years. The last adventurous night he'd had was a pair of twins who'd paid him well both for his talents and his ability to keep his mouth shut.

  Anything was better than dead. And speaking of dead, it was time to go find his damned father.

  It took another hour and a half of walking and asking questions, but he did finally locate the worthless pisspot, holed up in a moldy, rank-smelling tavern at the ass end of the docks known as the Old Gates, since it was once where all people entering from ships passed into the city. The sea gates had long ago been moved to the north end of the harbor district, and over the decades, the old location had turned into the sort of place even rats were loath to go.

  He stepped into the tavern, grimacing at the smell, and skimmed the dingy, smoky place for a familiar face. He and his father saw each other at just the same time. His father stood, tried to bolt, and Rath stormed across the room and lunged at him.

  "You scum-licking bastard!" Rath snarled, grabbing him by the back of his tunic. He yanked him close and then slammed the bastard's face into the bar. Leaving a penny to cover the tab, not bothering to give a damn about adding scratches and dents to a pub that was already covered in them, Rath hauled his father outside and threw him to the ground.

  Planting a boot on his chest and pressing firmly, Rath said, "Tell me why the fuck I owe Friar fifteen slick, or I swear to the Fates, I will earn the money by selling your corpse."

  "Get your boot—"

  "Talk and I won't break your ribs."

  Face turning red, his father snarled, "I'm your father. This isn't how you treat—"

  "Do you really want to have this discussion, you putrid pile of dog puke?" Rath asked. "Because I bet my list about how people should treat their spouses and children is a lot longer than yours on how a child should treat their parents. Now tell me, or I will kick you in your balls and leave you wailing in the street like a drunk heretic." He pressed his boot down harder when it looked like a protest was forthcoming.

  When his father started flapping his arms to signal a need to breathe, Rath finally eased some of the pressure. "Talk."

  "I accidentally killed his best griffon."

  "Fates—" Rath drew his boot back before he gave in to an urge to break the damned fool's ribs after all. "How in the names of the Fates do you accidentally kill a griffon?"

  "It looked like it could use a drink," his father mumbled. "I gave it some gin."

  "Spirits are poison to griffons, you hole-ridden sack of spoiled grain!" Rath wanted to scream. The dirty pit fights were where Friar made a goodly amount of his money, mostly from the brat nobles who liked nothing better than to slink into Low City and act like they were living dangerously by betting on which animal would kill the other first while gorging themselves on liquor and food that everyone in Low City could only dream about.

  And his idiot fucking father had killed one of Friar's most lucrative assets, and no matter how much time passed, everybody still expected Rath to clean up his father's messes. "If I wind up floating in the harbor because of this, I swear to the Fates you'll fall first."

  Spinning away, he made his way quickly back to the shop district and through the busy streets all the way to Butcher Street, where he rented a little attic room from Robert and Anta, a married couple who made and sold sausages. He waved to Anta as he passed by the yard and up the backstairs into the house, climbing the creaky old steps up to his hovel of a room.

  It wasn't much, but he'd gotten it after twenty years of living in other people's spaces and occasionally on the street. No leaking roof, no other people he had to share with. All he had to deal with was the noise and the smell, and who cared about that?

  Not
him, not really.

  He closed up the only window in the place to muffle some of the din, pulled off his boots and set them by the door, and hid his money in a secret cubby in the wall. Then, stripping off his clothes and hanging them up on hooks in the far corner, he crawled into his little bed to get some rest before he faced the long night ahead.

  Desperate Measures

  Rath woke up sore and still exhausted. He could hear the cry of vendors and shopkeeps outside, the bustle of shoppers, which meant it was well into morning. He groaned as he sat up, wincing at every ache and pain that made itself known.

  Last night hadn't been bad as such things went, but he was in no hurry to repeat the venture. At least the group of five lords and ladies had been so pleased they'd left him a full mark tip in addition to the two marks they paid to the house for his services. That was two marks in total for him—a year's worth of wages in one night.

  Whoring didn't usually bring in money that good, but between the group service and the fact they were from out of town... Well, one of the reasons he'd become a whore was the money. If not for his father, he'd have been living a lot better than he did.

  So two marks down, thirteen to go. If he got another couple of good nights in the brothel, he'd be sure to pull in another mark, possibly two if the Fates would just once show him favor. Add in some purse lifting and turning a few tricks in the streets, and he might be able to pull together five marks. That would hopefully be enough to convince Friar to feel like being generous and give him more time to come up with the rest.

  He finally climbed out of bed and walked stiffly across the room to the wash tub someone had been kind enough to leave. The water was warm, not hot, but he wasn't picky. Scrubbing away the mess left by his night, he rubbed a salve into the worst of his bruises and other sore spots. Pulling open the wardrobe, he pulled out the clothes he'd stowed there. He paused as he pulled on his jacket, took it off again, and looked at the worn elbow. Smiled when he saw someone had patched it for him. Looking again, he saw that someone in the brothel had, in fact, cleaned and repaired all his clothes. Probably the cleaning staff, they'd always been kind to him when he'd worked there.

  Somewhat cheered about the day ahead, he pulled his jacket back on, ran a comb through his hair, and tucked away the mark his clients had left him as he hastened down to the kitchen by way of the back stairs. "Good morning!" he greeted Bettina, the house cook.

  She didn't leave the pot she was stirring, but did look up briefly to smile at him. "There's food on the table for ye."

  "You're the best." He sat at the nearest bench and quickly wolfed down the plate of bread with butter and honey, left over bits of cheese, even some slices of tart apple. Someone thunked a mug of ale down in front of him, and he looked up at a smiling Trinira. "Morning."

  "Morning, handsome. You must have done a lot right because I rarely get personal thanks from that sort. They paid their balance without even a breath of hesitation." She slid his earnings across the table. He picked them up and tucked them away with his other mark. "You ever want steady work here again, you know it's yours. Coming back tonight?"

  He nodded, gulped down the ale. "Yes, since you're so willing. I appreciate it, Trin."

  She scoffed at him and drank her own ale. "So I think I might know a way you could earn ten marks, either today or tomorrow, depending."

  "I doubt I'm physically capable of something that would earn that much money in two days. I barely made it through all of last night."

  Laughing, Trinira playfully slapped his arm. "I think you're underestimating yourself. Lucky for you, though, I wasn't talking about sex when I said I had an idea. I was talking about the Tournament of Losers."

  He paused with a last bit of apple halfway to his mouth. "Fates, no. You can't be serious. I want no part of that stupid thing."

  "Serious as a priest on prayer day," Trin drawled. "Think about it, darling. You could get through the elimination round easy enough, which puts you in the second round. Everyone who makes it to the second round is given ten marks to cover living expenses while they're competing and unable to work."

  Rath opened his mouth, closed it again, then finally ate the bit of apple. "I think you're overestimating my skills, and the first bout of the elimination round is a melee, which is as much luck as skill. I could get my head caved in and come away with nothing but more debts I can't cover."

  She shrugged. "If you don't try, you'll never get the money in time, and word on the street is that Friar is out for blood and not feeling terribly inclined toward mercy."

  "I see," Rath said and swore softly before finishing off the last few bites of his meal. There went any hope of convincing Friar to give him more time. Ugh, he was going to kill his father three times over for forcing him to get involved in something as stupid as the tournament. "Guess I'd better get to work, then."

  Trin stood up with him, caught his arm. "Rath, I don't want you to come to a bad end, especially at Friar's hand, because your father is a fool. Try the tournament; I still think you'd be fine. That's ten slick, and I'll see to it you've got the remaining balance. You can pay me back at easier length. I know you're good for it."

  Good to repay three slick, but not thirteen. But Rath couldn't really resent that, given how quickly he lost money because of his father. "I'll do my best not to need that. Guess I'd better give that stupid tournament a try." He groaned at the thought. "I think I'd rather just do group work for a week straight. I swear that would be less exhausting and painful. Not to mention less humiliating."

  "Only you would think being a fuck toy is less humiliating than trying to marry into a better life." Trin shook her head. "Get the money and get out. It won't cost you more than a day, two at the most."

  Rath sighed, but nodded. "Thanks for all your help, Trin." He kissed her cheek, then left out the back door, slipping through various rank-smelling alleyways until he came out on Baker's Row, where he could cut more easily up to the bridges, taking smaller roads that wouldn't be congested with visitors.

  All the while, he tried to come up with some other means—any other means—that did not entail entering the stupid Tournament of Losers. Not that it really mattered in the end, because as Trin had said, it would only cost him an afternoon or two.

  But it was the principle of the matter. The tournament was a bard's song, fool's gold. Rath might not have much sense, but he had enough to avoid participating in a spectacle put on for the masses to abide by the letter of the law. Like every other time before, the nobles had probably long ago selected and groomed suitable candidates. If the nobles hadn't already started cheating, they would soon, beginning with bribing tournament officials to ensure their pre-selected candidates made it through the preliminaries, or to learn ahead of time what the challenges would be. If their candidates failed anyway, there would also be bribes to fix that. Cheating wasn't hard, merely expensive.

  He was going to be harangued endlessly by everyone who knew him, but there was no help for it. His only other option for getting that kind of money that fast was providing cadavers to the strange trio that was always happy to pay generously for bodies and ask no questions about where they came from. What they did with the bodies, nobody had ever been brave enough to ask.

  Rath had once helped a friend take his father's body to them after the man had dropped from too much booze and fighting. One of the most miserable nights of his life, though not as bad as it had been for his friend, who'd actually liked his father, but needed the money and was doing only what his father had ordered.

  The horrible evening had earned Rath fifteen shillings, though. He hadn't needed to worry about money for three whole weeks. Then his father had turned up and ruined everything, but three weeks of peace was more than he usually got.

  Giving up on finding alternate means of earning money fast, Rath tried to dredge up what he knew about the tournament. People had told him countless stories when he'd been young and stupid enough to be excited, to think he might be one of the
lucky few to marry into a noble house, or maybe, mama, I'll get to marry a prince or princess!

  He winced at the memory, tried to think of something to banish it again. Like all the stories people had told him when he was older about how stupid and pointless the tournament truly was. Or the rules. Those would be useful to remember if he was actually going to do this.

  Rules, rules, rules. Thousands always showed up to compete, and it would take far too long to give that many the full gauntlet of challenges. So over the course of a couple of days, five back when the tournament had been more popular, competitors were whittled down in two rounds.

  The first round was the melee, a mad free-for-all dash across a specially built 'battlefield'. All competitors were given flags before the melee started, and the goal was to keep those flags while stealing them from everyone else. The more flags captured, the more likely a competitor was to go on to the next round. There was a record set, for some ridiculous amount, but Rath no longer remembered it.

  The second round was dueling, something like best of five or whatnot. He didn't remember that, either. Once, he'd had everything memorized. The number of marriage slots, all the titles, the different kinds of challenges and the keys to success for each, the records set for all of them, on and on and on he'd gone. So much energy wasted on something so stupid.

  All he remembered now was that there were seventy-seven noble houses, plus the royal family, which meant seventy-eight marriage slots. Six duchies, seventeen earldoms, and fifty-four baronies. Approximately five thousand people, give or take a grand, would be showing up to compete for a chance. All but five hundred of them would be whittled out in the first two days, and that wasn't counting the ones who weren't approved for competition.

  Because to participate at all, the competitor must be: Between the ages of twenty and forty. Have no trace of noble lineage for at least seven generations. Must not have family that won the previous tournament. No arrests within the last three years and absolutely no convictions of major crimes, which were rape, murder, grand theft, and arson.