I’m still filling out the membership form for the beastling when my office door opens and the trusting face of Hundolin appears. A bookie has to have a trusting face or people will never hand him their money. He does his two-finger wave as if hailing for a servant in a tavern.

  “How much did you get?” I ask.

  “Five hundred, give or take a scale,” he says and hands me the money pouch.

  I heft it. “That’s more than I expected. What? They bet two years of savings on this fight?”

  “Apparently so, my friend,” Hundolin says with a smile that would make a banker open his vault doors wide.

  I count ten coins out of the pouch and hand him his payment for the day. I know he hid some of it, the rascal. He’s been skimming the earnings off me since forever. But what can I do? How many people are willing to work as bookies in a dump like this?

  Hundolin leaves. I finish the enrollment form and return downstairs with the daily payment for the beastling. I place the coins on the big paw it holds out.

  “You will come back tomorrow, right?” I ask as it makes to leave. The beastling walks away without looking at me. “I sure hope you can understand me,” I murmur to its broad back. The beast slowly walks out of the Barracks and vanishes from sight.

  “What in the name of Duron was that, Luggo?”

  I turn around. The Wolf Team is gathered in full force and Haddo, their captain, stands at the front. Some of them glare daggers at me, others sulk.

  I can feel the prickling at the back of my neck. They act like a mob, ready to pounce.

  “Care to elaborate?” I say, my tone charged with a threat placed so that even a stupid man would sense it.

  “You brought a cat-face into the game,” Haddo says, a tinge less hostile.

  “And one that can fight of all things,” another adds.

  “I didn’t know it could fight,” I say with confidence that vouches for the truth. “I picked it up on the street like all the others. How was I supposed to know it would tear you to pieces? Maybe if you didn’t underestimate it just for being a cat-face, you would be collecting a different sum.”

  “Underestimate?” Haddo’s voice holds more surprise than anger.

  “You broke formation. That’s why it was able to fight you one at a time. You underestimated it, boys.” I underestimated it myself. How could I expect a beastling to be able to do something like that? Its actions looked entirely invented on the fly. On the other hand, it looked absolutely masterful.

  Haddo knows he’s lost the argument, the others will not support him now. All he can do now is bark. “If you hope that people will find this interesting, you have another thing coming,” he snaps. “When people hear you hired a cat-face, they will close you down.”

  He turns and storms out of the Barracks. Whether he’s right or not about the people’s reaction, he might not come back. Haddo’s the type that would stay away just to prove a point, even if his work here provides for his family.

  I look into the faces of Wolf Team. They are truly and deeply offended. They were thwarted on their home turf by a cat-face of all things.

  I was so busy finding the people to fight today I haven’t thought about long-term consequences. All I cared about was getting more fighters for my Arena. Was it wrong of me to hire that beastling?

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  I can’t think here, not with these wounded looks boring at me.

  “Ysa will handle your pay,” I inform them quietly. I turn and return to my office, trying hard not to look as crestfallen as I feel.

  I sit in silence for a while, stewing in my own juices. Eventually I hear footsteps. Door opens, Ysa walks in. She appears nonchalant but she can read me like an open book.

  Without speaking, we count today’s winnings. Doesn’t take long.

  “This is barely enough to cover the weekly cost of running the place,” she says.

  I sigh. “We bought ourselves time. Now we have to be clever.”

  “Clever?” She nudges with her chin. “I heard the yelling down there. By using the beastling, you pissed off half the performers.”

  “I enlisted it in the Arena as a permanent member as well. If it comes back tomorrow.”

  Ysa sighs, shakes her head. “We need Asterion back. It’s only way of salvaging this mess.”

  “I agree,” I say. “Which pocket do you intend to pull him from?”

  She gives me a nasty look but says nothing.

  I shrug. “You can wish him back all you want, it doesn’t make it so.”

  It’s well into the afternoon when I finally leave the Arena grounds and head home. I’m exhausted to the point I have to keep an eye on the ground so I don’t slip on a smooth stone. My leg is acting up again, pins and needles from groin to knee.

  I reach my home and open the windows to get some fresh air. I used to get sunlight through the windows, morning and evening, until shanties sprung up all around my lair and took the sky from me. I sleep with the windows closed now, otherwise the wailing of children and shouting of adults would keep me up all night.

  Alone in my hovel, I let fear ooze out of me.

  What is being discussed in the taverns and alleyways of Koriantal right now will determine the fate of the Arena and all that depend on it. The entire city’s sentiment can be an outcome of a single person’s accidental comment that would spread like wildfire.

  The crux of the matter is the inclusion of the beastling. Most people mistrust the beast folk, some resent them openly. I wasn’t too happy about them myself but it wasn’t a sentiment I needed to say out loud to feel good about myself.

  How can I salvage the situation? Should I turn the beastling away? I can always hope it doesn’t show up tomorrow but that would only solve half of my problems.

  The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced the situation is beyond my control. I feel as if I were hanging by a single finger off a precipice. The thought of letting go almost feels liberating. For a few moments, anyway.

  If I fail, I will spend the last decade of my life in a gutter, begging for scraps. Frankly, I would prefer actual death.

  Or would I?

  I shut the windows of my house while it’s still my house and go to bed. My leg is making overtures again as I knew it would. I have nothing to dull the pain this time. If I manage to sleep at all, it will undoubtedly be a nightmare.

  I go to sleep bitter and afraid.

  I wake up in the middle on the night, gasping. The dream dissolves fast but I’m just able to catch the last glimpses before it slips away.

  I’m in the middle of a forest, the night all around me. An animal carcass hangs from a rope, tied somewhere above. Small creatures snap at it, biting off tiny bits. Their yapping attracts larger beasts though still small. They come to feed on the carcass but it’s the noise of the smaller ones that lures them in.

  While the beasts proceed to tear chunks off the carcass, something even larger growls in the darkness beyond my site. Great hulking beasts of the woods arrive, drive the smaller ones away and they too proceed to feast. They too make noise that can be heard far into the darkness.

  And then, from the surrounding gloom, there is a growl that shakes the trees to its roots. That’s where I woke up.

  I untangle myself from the blanket, find a piece of parchment and start scribbling. My fingers burn by the time I have the outline of the plan written down.

  This could actually work. Or it might turn into a fiasco. I could very well waste what little cash Ysa and I saved up. If my plan fails, we would be left with absolutely nothing. Now I just have to convince Ysa to see things my way and accept a gamble with our final hoard.

  Might as well attempt to swallow a mountain. Yet I’m willing to try.