Chương 92: Chapter 91 – She Fights

Rowan had Striata's front leg between both hands, pressing along the joint with two fingers while she held dead still and let him, ears back, watching him work the way she watched everything — patient, unbothered, faintly insulted by the fuss.

"Bruised through," Rowan said, not looking up.

"Deep bruise, not a break, but deep enough it'll want more than a night." He said it the way he said everything difficult — soft first, the hard part folded in after.

"I'm not going to tell you she can't fight tomorrow, Ray. I'm going to tell you she shouldn't." Ray crouched at Striata's shoulder, one hand working slow through the fur there, and didn't answer straight away.

"There's a difference, though, isn't there. Shouldn't and can't."

"There is. And it's yours to weigh, not mine." Rowan finally looked up, and whatever softness was in his voice stayed there even now.

"I'll tell you what I'd tell anyone. Her body's not ready. Doesn't mean her body gets the final word." Striata didn't so much as glance at either of them. She pushed her head against Ray's hand instead, hard enough that he had to brace to keep his balance, and held it there — the kind of thing Ant had learned to read as her whole answer, delivered without a sound.

"She's telling you something," Ant said, from where he'd been standing quiet by the tent flap, not sure until he spoke that he meant to say anything at all.

"She's telling me she's stubborn." Ray didn't sound annoyed by it. He sounded like a man who already knew how this went and was only delaying the part where he had to agree to it.

"Which I already knew. Doesn't tell me whether it's wise." Tell him I won't hurt her, Mahkir said, somewhere behind Ant's ribs, low and certain in a way that had nothing performed about it. Whatever she brings tomorrow, I'll match it without taking more from her than the match needs. He should know that before he decides. Ant turned it over once before he said it, choosing his own words rather than trying to hand across Mahkir's exactly — that never worked right, and Ray couldn't hear it anyway.

"Mahkir says he won't hurt her more than the fight needs to. Whatever she's got left in her tomorrow, he'll match it. Nothing extra." Ray looked at him a second too long, attention clearly gone past Ant entirely — to Mahkir, maybe, the way it sometimes did.

"That's a kind thing for a cat to promise," Ray said finally.

"'Course, easy to promise mercy when you're the one holding all the cards."

"He means it." Ant didn't dress it up further than that.

"I believe you." Ray straightened, hands going to his hips, looking down at Striata like a man doing sums he already knew the answer to.

"It's your call," Ant added, before Ray could ask it outright.

"Not mine. Not Rowan's either, whatever he tells you about her leg."

"I know whose call it is." Ray crouched back down, forehead nearly against Striata's, voice dropped low enough that Ant only caught fragments of it, not the actual words. Whatever passed between them there, it wasn't for anyone else in the tent. He straightened again a long moment later.

"Right, then. She fights." Rowan didn't argue it. He'd known, Ant thought, from the second he'd delivered the verdict soft instead of flat, that this was exactly where it would land.

"Then we do this properly," he said instead, already reaching for the roll of bandage at his hip.

"Full night's work on that leg, best wrap I've got, and she rests every hour between now and the horn that I can make her rest." The evening ran long. Rowan worked by lamplight after the tent's own light gave out, the smell of the antiseptic wash thick enough that Ant's eyes stung from three feet back, and underneath it the sharper, hot-metal tang of the little brazier Rowan kept the cauterizing iron warm over, just in case, though he never once reached for it.

Ray sat through the whole of it with Striata's head in his lap again, same as the night before, quieter than Ant had ever seen him go for this long.

"You don't have to sit up for all of it," Rowan told him, past midnight, not unkindly.

"I know I don't." Ray didn't move.

"Doing it anyway." Ant left them to it eventually, walked back through the lane between the tannery and the bakery with the ovens still running somewhere behind their shutters, and found Mahkir already awake and waiting when he lay down. You're thinking about tomorrow, Mahkir said. A little. Don't. A pause, long enough Ant thought that might be all of it. I gave my word. I intend to keep it. That's not the part you should be turning over tonight. What's the part I should be turning over?

Whether you'll actually manage to fall asleep, or whether I'll have to listen to you not-sleep at me for another three hours. His tail thumped once against the floor, somewhere in the dark. Go to bed, Ant. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. He went to bed. He slept better than he expected to.

The morning came in bright and already too warm, the arena's sand raked smooth from the night before, and the board lit early — COMMON, ROUND 3, the letters resolving one at a time the way they always did, OATH OF DEFIANCE, MAHKIR against OATH OF DEFIANCE, STRIATA, printed plain as if it were any other match in the whole bracket. There was no shared strip for this one.

The arena had set two, opposite sides of the sand, close enough that Ant could see Ray clearly across the width of it, plain enough to shout if either of them needed to — an accommodation Ant hadn't expected and didn't fully understand the reasoning behind, though nobody offered to explain it and he didn't ask.

"Strange, this," Ray called across, loud enough to carry over the crowd noise building in the stands.

"Standing opposite you instead of beside you."

"Strange for me too," Ant called back.

"Complete and utter confidence, mind." Ray's grin didn't quite reach as far as it usually did.

"In both of them." Up in the stands, close enough that Ant caught pieces of it over the horn's first note, Duncan was already leaning half over the rail.

"Two of our own! Never seen that before — how's a man meant to know who to shout for?"

"Shout for both," Rebekah told him, not looking away from the sand.

"Idiot."

"Money's on Mahkir," Kalsar said, flat, arms crossed.

"Not because I doubt her. Because I've seen what he does when he actually has to try." Andy said nothing at all, which from Andy meant he expected to be watching something worth the silence. The horn sounded, and Striata came off her mark faster than Ant had ever seen her move — no testing circle first, no reading the pace of it the way she had with Ninetail and Cinder both.

She came in low and hard, favoring the sound leg entirely, and Mahkir barely had time to register the difference before she was already past his first attempt to meet her and raking claws along his flank in a line that opened dark almost at once. That's new, Mahkir said, more interested than alarmed. You said you'd match her.

Ant felt his own pulse going faster than he expected it to, watching blood — real blood, not the token scratch Redmoor's boar-cub or Ripple's slick hide had managed — well up along Mahkir's side. I intend to. Give me a moment to work out what she's actually brought. She'd brought everything.

Ant watched her circle back around before Mahkir had fully turned to face her, faster than the injury should have let her move, and she caught him again — a glancing blow across the shoulder this time, enough that he staggered a full step sideways before he recovered his footing.

"She's not holding a thing back," Rebekah said, somewhere behind him, and there wasn't any teasing left in it now. Mahkir met the next pass properly, catching her mid-leap with a shoulder that sent her rolling clear rather than through him, and came up fast enough that she barely had time to reset before he was on her — a real exchange this time, claws meeting claws, both of them giving ground and taking it back in turns, none of it looking like the one-sided fights the bracket had handed him so far.

This is harder than I expected, Mahkir admitted, somewhere under the sound of it, and Ant heard real attention in it, the kind Mahkir usually spent only on things that actually mattered.

"Come on," Ray shouted across the sand, and Ant couldn't tell anymore whether it was aimed at Striata or at both of them.

"Come on, love, show him what you've got left." She showed him. She went for the same low, sideways angle that had worked against Ninetail and Cinder both, and for one long stretch of the fight it looked like it might actually work again — Mahkir chasing an angle she kept denying him, taking two more shallow cuts before he found any real rhythm of his own. Then he found it.

Ant watched it happen the way he'd watched Mahkir fight a hundred times before and never quite like this — a shift in how he moved, not faster exactly, just surer, reading her feints just before they landed and closing the gap she'd been using all fight. He caught her mid-turn, weight driving into her rather than past her, and rolled the both of them once across the sand before he came up on top and stayed there. He didn't press the advantage the way he could have.

Ant saw the restraint in it plainly — claws that could have opened her throat instead just holding, weight enough to keep her down without adding to what she'd already taken, a hold built to end the fight rather than to punish it. Striata fought it for three full seconds, then stopped, breathing hard beneath him, and went still. Ray's hand came up almost before Ant registered it — the forfeit signal, thumb and two fingers lifted toward the judges' box, no hesitation in it at all. Forfeit called.

Round 3 — Oath of Defiance, Mahkir. The crowd noise came up all at once, and underneath it Ant heard Duncan bellowing something that might have been either of their names, and Rebekah laughing, sharp and relieved. Mahkir stepped off her the second the bell confirmed it, nosing once at her ear before she rolled upright under her own power — favoring the leg badly now, but on her feet, tail high, nothing in her carriage that read like defeat. [Common bout concluded. Experience gained: 250.] Ant felt the number land and, for the first time all tournament, didn't feel a single flicker of disappointment behind it.

"Two hundred and fifty," he said, out loud, mostly to himself. Told you it wouldn't be easy, Mahkir said, still breathing hard, blood drying along a flank that would want Rowan's attention soon. She's better than anyone's given her credit for. You should tell Ray that. He already knows it, but it's worth saying anyway. Ray was already crossing the sand toward them both, and whatever Ant expected on his face, it wasn't the grin actually sitting there — wide, unguarded, nothing performed about it at all.

"Would you look at that," Ray said, crouching to press his forehead against Striata's the same way he had the night before.

"Went the whole distance. Every last inch of it." He looked up at Ant, and for once there wasn't a single fancy word anywhere near what he said next.

"She did that. All of it. Nobody gave her that fight — she took it."

"She did," Ant agreed. Mahkir padded over slow, favoring nothing, and settled beside Striata like the fight had never happened at all — except for the blood still drying dark along his own side, proof enough that it had. Impressive, Mahkir said, quiet, meant only for Ant. Genuinely. I'll be thinking about that fight longer than the ones that were easy.

Ant looked at both of them — his own Kithren unbothered and bleeding, Ray's tiger favoring a leg and standing tall anyway — and found he didn't have anything clever left to say about it at all.