Chương 81: Pell's Freedom

Domrek started early, before the city had fully decided it was morning. The fighter's district in Velhen ran along the south outer ring — the same general quarter where the trading house stood, where the ring ran two levels down. He knew how these districts worked. He'd worked them, in various cities, for fifteen years.

They had their own infrastructure: the moneylenders who specialized in debt contracts, the underground vaults that held prize winnings and didn't ask questions, the network of people who owed each other things and kept rough track. He had a name for the moneylender. Garth.

A stocky man in his fifties who operated out of a supply room behind a legitimate equipment shop, and who owed Domrek something specific: Domrek had been in a circuit bout against his son eight years ago, in a different city, and had won it without breaking anything that couldn't heal. That was the kind of thing you remembered. That was the kind of thing you paid for. He found the shop at the seventh bell. Garth recognized him immediately, which was the point.

'I need a sum,' Domrek said.

'Today. I'll have most of it — I need the gap filled.'

'How much gap.' Domrek told him. Garth didn't flinch. He looked at Domrek for a moment, doing the math on what was owed against what was being asked, and then he nodded and went into the back room and came out with a coin case.

'We're square after this,' Garth said.

'Square,' Domrek agreed. He had the coin case and most of an hour before the ring's management office opened. He spent part of it at the circuit vault two streets over — a fortified room behind an unmarked door that fighters used to store winnings they couldn't risk keeping on them. He'd used it twice himself, years ago, passing through Velhen on a traveling circuit. The vault keeper was different but the system was the same.

He gave the registration number he'd memorized, which still worked because nobody at the vault administration had ever invalidated it, and collected what was there.

'You left this twelve years ago,' the vault keeper said.

'I know,' Domrek said.

'There's accrued interest,' the keeper said.

'Not much. The rate on fighter accounts is lower than the standard.'

'Keep it,' Domrek said.

'I don't need the interest.' He walked out with what he needed. The last piece came from their shared operating funds — money Kaito had set aside for emergencies and hadn't spent. He'd tell Kaito tonight and it wouldn't be a problem. If it was a problem, it would be the kind of problem he was fine having. He got to the ring's management office a few minutes after it opened.

The manager was a thin man named Orin who handled the administrative side of the ring and had, by the look of him, been having a bad three days. He had the specific tension of someone who'd been expecting a knock on the door from above and wasn't sure when it was coming. Domrek put the coin case on his desk.

'Pell's debt,' he said.

'I want to buy it out. Today. Whatever the current contract value is.' Orin looked at the case. Then at Domrek.

'The contract is held by —''I know who's holding it,' Domrek said.

'I also know the money behind this operation changed three months ago, and I know what's been happening to that money this week.' He said it without inflection.

'The institutional backing is going to pull. When it does, you're holding contracts you can't service and paper that's worth less than the contracts say it is.' He opened the case slightly.

'I'm offering you the face value, right now, in coin. Today.' Orin looked at the coin. The specific look of a man who'd already made the decision and was just waiting long enough to feel like he'd considered it.

'The man isn't much of a fighter,' Orin said.

'I don't know why you'd —' You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

'That's not your concern,' Domrek said. Orin took the money.

Pell was in the fighters' prep area, which was the room below the ring where combatants waited and equipment was stored and maintained. He was doing what Domrek had seen him doing the last time: keeping busy. He was cleaning a set of bracers that weren't his, methodically, because there was nothing else to do and standing still in a room like that was worse than having a task. He looked up when Domrek came in.

'You came back,' Pell said. He said it like a fact, not a sentiment.

'I said I'd look into it,' Domrek said.

'I looked into it.' He didn't draw it out.

'The debt's cleared. You're done here.' Pell set the bracers down slowly. He had the expression Domrek had seen on men after a long fight — not the elation, not the relief, but the moment right before those hit, when the body hadn't caught up yet. He looked at Domrek. Then at the bracers in his hands. Then at the door.

'What do you want for it,' Pell said.

'Nothing.'

'That's not how it works.'

'Usually not,' Domrek said.

'This time it is.' He held Pell's eyes and kept his voice level.

'I was in a system like this one for fifteen years. I bought my own way out. It took too long because I didn't have anyone who could move faster.' He paused.

'You've been in three years. I had the means to move faster. So I did.' Pell looked at him for a long moment.

'Three years,' he said, quietly, like he was counting it.

'Yes,' Domrek said.

'I don't — ' Pell stopped. Tried again.

'I don't know what I'm doing next.'

'You don't have to know that yet,' Domrek said.

'Come on.'

They came out into the afternoon. The city was doing what cities did in the middle of the day — moving, selling, arguing, ignoring them both completely. Domrek found a low wall along the side of a merchant's yard and sat on it. Pell sat beside him. There was a bread vendor at the end of the street, selling flat loaves from a cart, and Domrek got two of them and came back and handed one to Pell and sat back down. Pell held his without eating it for a moment.

'I had a cart,' he said eventually.

'Routes. Four regular customers who always paid on time. I thought I was doing well.' He looked at the bread.

'Three years ago I took on a short-term loan to cover a bad season. Wrong terms. The kind where you pay it back fine if nothing goes wrong and you lose everything if anything goes wrong.' He turned the bread over in his hands.

'Something went wrong.'

'It happens,' Domrek said.

'I know it happens. I grew up watching it happen to other people and I thought I knew what to watch for.' He shook his head.

'The man who wrote the terms was very good at making it look like the safe option.' Domrek had heard some version of this story before. Not Pell's version. Many people's version.

'You still know your routes,' Domrek said.

'You still know bread.'

'I do,' Pell said.

'Then that's still there.' They sat for a while. The vendor at the end of the street did steady business. A dog investigated a pile of sacking near the wall and found nothing in it and left. The sun moved without any particular concern for either of them. Pell ate the bread eventually. Slow, the way someone ate when they were actually tasting it rather than just fueling.

'You're leaving the city soon,' Pell said. He wasn't asking.

'Tomorrow or the day after,' Domrek said.

'You're mixed up in whatever happened at the palace.'

'Somewhat.' Pell thought about that. He looked down the street at nothing specific. His expression had settled into something calmer than it had been in the prep room — still careful, still not letting hope run ahead of him, but less held-in than before.

'Three years,' he said again, differently this time.

'You can say it as many times as it needs,' Domrek said. Pell almost laughed. Not quite. The muscle moved without the sound following. He finished the bread. He set the end of the crust on the wall beside him, and then picked it up again and ate that too, because it was there and it was his to eat if he wanted it.

'I heard something,' Pell said, after a while.

'Couple of days ago. Before all the summit business.' He kept his eyes on the street.

'The men managing the ring — they had a meeting with whoever the money behind them is now. I was in the storage corridor waiting for an equipment check. They didn't know anyone was there.' He paused.

'I caught one name. Veth. They said it three times, like it was important. Like the answer to most of their questions was just: ask Veth.' Domrek went still. He kept his posture the same. He didn't react beyond that, because showing that a name meant something was how you told people that names meant things.

'That mean something to you,' Pell said. He had eyes that didn't miss much. He'd said so himself.

'It might,' Domrek said.

'I'll tell you later whether it does.' Pell nodded. He wasn't going to push. That was the other thing about Pell — he knew when not to push. Domrek looked at the street and thought about what Kaito had said: that the institutional money changed three months ago, when the succession crisis escalated. He thought about a Compact Grand Commander with a field extraction order for his friend, and about a fighting ring that had taken on Compact backing without the fighters inside it knowing.

'Come with us when we leave,' he said.

'Not as a fighter. We don't need a fighter.' He looked at Pell.

'We need someone who knows roads and people and how to move things without it being obvious. And you already know the man I work with — you gave him bread once, a long time ago, when he didn't have the price of it.' Pell was quiet for a moment.

'The outsider,' he said.

'The one from nowhere, who came through Ashfen.'

'That one,' Domrek said. Pell looked at the bread cart down the street. Then at his hands. Then at the wall they were sitting on.

'All right,' he said.