The musclehead’s empty eyes showed no feelings. Ma Ju Ro recalled the dossier that Hector had provided on this man: A merciless reaper. Strikes fear into all with his supposed invulnerability. Takes everything he wants. Has no close ones, but needs no-one. Even Ignatius is wary of him, seeing in him a likely rival.
“I’m the one who challenges you, y’hear me, you piece of pig shit?!” Kerkion sounded off, tossing his knife from hand to hand, throwing it up and spinning it. “Come ‘ere, I’m gonna wrap yer guts around my fist! Or maybe I should spit in yer face first?”
“Go ahead!” Luca spat, baring his teeth and throwing away the sword. “I’ll tear you apart barehanded!”
Kerkion stopped and really did start hawking, getting ready to spit. He looked into Ma Ju Ro’s eyes as he walked toward him, and lost track of his arms. That was a mistake. Without slowing his pace, the emperor threw a lightning-fast punch with a fist strengthened with short steel spines. He barely swung his fist, only slightly bent his knees. He struck his foe right on his twisted mouth. The thug’s lips split like squashed corpse maggots.
Ma Ju Ro hit him again in the same spot, this time pulling his arm back a little and feeling his fury pour out behind the strength and inertia of the strike. Just as his fist collided with the killer’s skull, he lengthened the spines and they pierced the enemy’s bone with a crunch, half a dozen inches in, willing them to form more spines at their tips similar to fishing hooks. The force pushed back Kerkion’s head, leaving shards of shattered jaw on the spines along with crushed brain, flesh and torn skin. A scarlet mist hung in the air.
The bandit turned on one foot in the mud, spat blood and fell backwards into the puddle. His face sank beneath the water, releasing black bubbles into the torchlight, and his huge body twitched in its final agony. In the thick sepulchral silence of the cave, its twitching slowed and finally stilled.
Luca heard an amazed whisper and frightened exclamations all around him. He stopped and slowly turned. The spines in his fist had already retracted, the crowd hadn’t seen them. He started licking Kerkion’s blood off his fist.
“Well?!” he said, his voice shaking in fury. “Come on! Who’s next?”
Ignatius urged on the other two captains, pushing them into the Circle. Otolik, the chief of the capital’s thieves and pickpockets, with no qualms about controlling the local brothels, and Khudoyar, the leader of roaming bands that lived off robberies in the capital’s outskirts and beyond. Every boy from the slums dreams of getting into Khudoyar’s gang, Hector had said.
Both captains were silent and hesitated to step forward.
“Otolik! Go!” Ignatius shouted. “Show him the school of your dirty street fights!”
Otolik gulped. “I think I’ll give up my right to challenge without fighting,” Otolik said. Panic flashed in his eyes. “I’m an honest thief, I don’t want to get my hands dirty! Ma Ju Ro! My right to challenge Ignatius is yours!”
“Disgusting coward,” Ignatius spat. “You always were a coward, pickpocket! Can’t do nothin’ but shank people in the kidneys in back alleys! Filthy stinking rat!”
Otolik rose his head in anger, but said nothing. He backed off, left the Circle and disappeared into the crowd of onlookers.
“Khudoyar!” the chief of the criminal underworld cried to his final captain. “At least you won’t piss on the honor of the free brigades!”
“Damn right I won’t!” Khudoyar shouted back impassively. “I used to think our emperor was a shit-filled worm, but now I see he’s a glorious descendent of his great ancestor!”
The bandit took a step forward, bowed his head and dropped down to one knee.
“Ma Ju Ro the Magnanimous, you are my emperor!” he said simply. “With a pure heart, I give you my right to duel Ignatius. You may challenge him if you wish!”
“What the hell are you sayin’, captain?” Ignatius roared. “How’s he your emperor? The true, the real emperor is Rezsinius! You’re betting on a lame horse, idiot!”
“Rezsinius is a traitor,” Khudoyar declared, still as calm as before. “I don’t intend to follow your orders any more, Ignatius, not until you prove you have the right. The emperor could have set up a raid, sent his hounds to bring him your head. Instead he came himself, without a guard, unarmed! He offered you an honest challenge, and you can no longer refuse!
Ignatius was more furious than ever. His face darkened. Roaring, he jumped into the Circle and sent the cowardly captain out of it with two precise strikes. Paying no attention to the frozen Ma Ju Ro, he walked around him, staring in frenzy at those present, and shouted, spitting in fury:
“Who else thinks this pig is worthy of challenging me in the Circle?” Huh? I’m asking you a question, you crowd of inbreds! Look at your chiefs. You piss-soaked cowards chose your captains and chiefs yourselves! Look at them!” Ignatius spat on Kerkion’s lifeless body. “None of them is worthy of leadership! From now on, you take all your orders from me alone! Until someone among you appears who deserves more!”
While Ignatius was catching his breath, Weasel’s mocking voice rang out from the crowd.
“Your majesty! Now’s just the time to challenge Ignatius the Furious! You earned the right!”
Quiet whisperings grew into reverberating cries in support of the emperor, although in a somewhat vulgar and familiar style.
“He’s worthy! Challenge him, Ma Ju Ro!”
“The Magnanimous against the Furious! Ha-ha-ha, it’s happening!”
“Y’majesty!” the crooked old man Law said, crawling into the first row of spectators. “Go on! Challenge ‘Natius!”
Luca looked at his system logs. His lifesigns were all normal, the wound on his stomach had already closed, and he’d suffered no consequences from his two duels. He could kill the man who murdered his father Severus Dezisimu right now, and this rampaging and corrupt horde would have supported him. And if not, then all the better for the Empire!”
He could have killed most of those present in moments, giving them no chance to escape. But the wisdom of Esk’Onegut’s legacy told him that such a deed, though certainly useful for the country, would drop his Tsoui points so low that he could forget about having a positive balance again for his next several lives.
And that it would be far more useful to fight Ignatius elsewhere. Not in this bedraggled hole. Ready for anything, Ma Ju Ro raised his hand for silence, and was obeyed. The people quietened and even the Furious froze in expectation, furrowing his brows.
“Ignatius!” the emperor’s voice echoed endlessly off the cavern walls. “I summon you to the Circle for the right to lead these people! Tomorrow night! At a place you know well... the Arena!”
Ma Ju Ro fell silent, and the crowd exploded. They never expected such a show! The damn emperor himself against Ignatius the Furious! In the Arena! Before the entire capital!
When the elation subsided, hysterical laughter sounded out in the total silence and turned into an even more insane chuckle.
“You bitch! These are Two-horns’ tricks! Sacred Mother, ha-ha-ha, I’ve learned my lesson!” Ignatius fell to one knee and pounded the water with his fist. “Three years ago I had my last duel there! And in front of you, Ma Ju Ro!” I swore then that I would never set foot on the sands of the Arena again! But now it seems I have no other choice. Is that so, good people?”
“Fight! Fight!” the public chanted.
“I accept your challenge, Ma Ju Ro,” Ignatius said, growing calmer. “Tomorrow at dusk, before the people’s very eyes, I will rip your thick head from your shoulders!”
Chapter 41. New Boss
THE DAY WAS BRIGHT and warm, so unbearably beautiful and sonorous that Weasel felt something magical and inspiring spreading through his chest. It didn’t burn his insides like a glass of strong brandy thrown back on an empty stomach; it was gentle, friendly, whispering of a better future and impending change.
And even in this damp cave with its smoke-fouled walls, amid the stench of unwashed bodies, amid the
smell of musk that spoke to the arousal and suppressed fear among the crowd, Weasel’s sense of inspiration and excitement never left him.
The hoarse voice of Brosco, one of Ignatius’s hounds, snapped him out of his lyrical mood.
“The boss said everyone has to be ready. We’re movin’ out soon.”
Orkh, the head of a small gang, grumbled. “What’re we gonna do, split up through the stands like cockroaches?”
Brosco was in front of him in a second, grabbing the man’s throat in his huge hand and pinned him against the wall.
“Ignatius’s orders are not subject to discussion!” he hissed. “And neither are mine! Got a problem with that, Orkh?”
“Let me go, Brosco...” Orkh wheezed. “I’m just sayin’, ain’t it safer if ours stick together?”
He raised his hands in peace and Brosco let him go. Orkh coughed.
“Together?” the hound asked venomously. “You plannin’ on fightin’ bare-handed? Or with that little penknife you tied to your ankle?”
“I still don’t get it...” Zaram announced thoughtfully, a cowardly but perfectly psychopathic thief and robber. “Why do we gotta show up there at all, Brosco? We know Ignatius is gonna tear the emperor apart, then that’ll be that. What’s next?”
“Next ain’t for you to think about!” Brosco snapped. “Each group will get orders from its commander!”
Weasel knew what those orders would be. Immediately after his victory in the Arena, the boss planned to take control of the city and hand it over to Rezsinius. The conspiracy would lift up all the captains and chiefs to high-society positions, and Ignatius himself would become an imperial advisor, and would rule the city watch alongside his hounds. The mere thought made Weasel feel sick. He had no doubt that Ignatius would bring order, but he knew too well what kind of ‘order’ it would be.
The hounds had formed a chain of power in Ignatius’s underground empire, and each of them was once a strong gladiator in their day. Ignatius continued to suspect that this challenge was nothing more than a treacherous trap, and he worked out a plan of action just in case. If the watch blocked the exits from the Arena, then practically the entire criminal world, all its most prominent figures, would be locked in and completely helpless, since you couldn’t get in with weapons. Not to mention the smaller fish, the ‘fodder-boys’ that stole sacks from farmers at the market, the ‘fishermen’ who cut baggage from coaches, the attic-dwelling pigeoners, the crowd cutpurses, pickpockets and brothel thieves. The last category worked alongside prostitutes, stealing from their clientele as they sweated and panted, and Weasel felt nothing toward them but disgust and disdain.
But that was the trouble; those types would slip away without much difficulty, since nobody knew their faces. The leaders were another matter, the captains and chieftains and foremen like Weasel himself, or that ‘hound’ Brosco. Uncle Kolot, more widely known as Imperial Advisor Hector, had a dossier on every one of them. And Kane, who was known by the nickname Weasel even in his youth for his agility, shrewdness and wild fury in street fights, valued the fact that Hector never demanded that the son of his dead friend give up all he knew. They both knew that Kane wouldn’t live long if he did. He wouldn’t have said anything anyway, and if the former captain of the palace guard had nosed around, he’d have lost the trust of his ward.
Thieves, robbers and murderers will always be there, no matter the ruler, Hector had said. Such is human nature. But I want every criminal in the empire to know that they’re making a choice and taking a risk, to know that punishment will catch up to them sooner or later.
Weasel was entirely in agreement with him. Weak authorities corrupted not only those who ate from the palace trough, but the common folk too. Why would a laborer slog his guts out for a whole week from sunup to sundown for a couple of silver coins when he could take a couple of well-built friends out into the streets at night and steal just as much from another laborer? The law in the Empire was strict, but its enforcement had been pitiful since Ma Ju Ro the Fourth took the throne.
Anarchy had taken hold, not right away, but steadily over years as people began to realize that they could get away with whatever crimes they wished. It turned out that there wasn’t even much risk. Even if you got caught red-handed, you could always come to an agreement with the watch, or you ended up in jail, then with the judge. All the market traders to a man began, at first carefully, and then with ever greater courage, to cheat their scales and short-change their customers. The shopkeepers sold rotting fruit under fresh, the owners of drinking establishments watered down their fortified wine and beer. It was as if Two-horns had emerged from the depths and brought in his own laws. It quickly became unsafe in the capital even in the daytime.
The merchants and traders learned to assemble huge caravans, banding together to hire no less than a hundred guards. Even the common folk no longer dared to travel the Empire alone.
Then Ignatius appeared, irate over the failure of his gladiator school. Along with a few friends, former gladiators like him, he put together a gang.
After the witching hour, after dealing with the guards, they crept into the houses of rich men and threatened them, forced them with a waking nightmare to tell them where their valuables were hidden. They got drunk on their first successes, and the bandits went even further. Instead of just making threats, they realized them; they raped daughters and wives, cut throats and struck fear into the whole city, leaving behind their mark written in blood — an eight-sided shield with an eight-sided star at its center.
The spoils were generously wasted at the capital’s most expensive establishments, and legends formed around the band’s revelries. Ignatius got full of himself. He started handing out gold left and right, giving him the reputation of a noble thief, a defender of the poor. But there was more imagination in it than truth. Weasel knew that first-hand. He himself had witnessed Ignatius ordering a round for a whole inn. Then he refused to pay the tab.
“What about my money?” the innkeeper had asked him, catching up the bandits at the threshold.
Ignatius said nothing, pinning the sweat-soaked innkeeper with a heavy gaze, then asked:
“Who’s that gorgeous piece behind the bar? Your daughter?”
The innkeeper gulped and fiddled with the edge of his apron. He nodded.
“Her name?”
“Ariadne...” the innkeeper muttered.
“Keep an eye on Ariadne, innkeep,” Ignatius said coldly. “Do you understand me?”
Ariadne’s father nodded so much that his cap fell off, but his understanding didn’t save him or his daughter. For a few nights in a row, the bandits took advantage of the man’s hospitality, and then, in a drunken frenzy, raped the girl before her father’s eyes. In righteous anger, the innkeep took up a fire poker and got a dagger in the ribs for it. In the end, the inn was burned to the ground.
The fury of Ignatius and his gang engulfed the entire criminal underworld. The captains summoned the hell-raiser to give them an answer. In front of the assembled gang leaders, Ignatius defeated each, one after another. And by their own laws, he took control of the criminal underworld. Weasel, who was then already gaining a reputation as a lucky, brave and fearless thief, saw it all with his own eyes.
Ma Ju Ro’s nighttime duels might impress some, but not Ignatius and his hounds. The defeated captains let their arrogance get the better of them. They’d forgotten that the emperor had been forced to train in the martial arts since childhood: boxing, fencing, battle. He may have gotten fat, he may be out of shape, but he hadn’t lost his ten years of daily training. And Ma Ju Ro had proved it.
Now a battle awaited the pampered emperor, and not a battle for life, but to the death with Ignatius himself, the winner of the Games and the ultimate champion of the Arena. He had no chance at all, and that thought annoyed Weasel somehow. He liked Ma Ju Ro; he didn’t boast of his lineage, he was easy to talk to, and he had no fear of entering the viper’s nest alone.
A couple of days befo
re, when Kane heard the endless praise for Ma Ju Ro the Magnanimous that spread throughout the city from the singers and artists fed by Reyk Lee Vensiro, he just sneered derisively. But he had to admit, after he woke up that morning, or if he was honest about it — that day, he thought about it and his thoughts surprised him. As he’d idly played with the small breasts of a lady of the evening he’d hired in Big Bo’s inn the night before while she slept, he realized in shock that he admired Ma Ju Ro! And Uncle Hector had completely changed his opinion of the emperor... Whether his promotion to advisor played a role in this or not, Kolot’s tone when he spoke of Ma Ju Ro in their rare meetings had switched to one of approval.
“It’s time!” Brosco declared. “Let’s split up into pairs. We’ll approach the Arena by different entrances and different streets, as we discussed.”
“Ain’t it too early?” Zaram asked.
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