The heat inside the abandoned railway roundhouse struck like a physical blow.
It was a huge underground tiered arena of blackened brick and rusted iron heavy beams, seventy feet from the packed dirt floor to the cracked glass skylights that opened into the canal under-road drains above. Built eighty years ago during the Great Heavy-duty Spreading to service massive forty-ton freight locomotives, the cavernous structure had been abandoned when underground ground subsidence cracked the drainage chimney pipes. Now, the railway roundhouse belonged entirely to the underworld.
In the center of the hall, where a massive railway turntable had once rotated steam engines, rose the fighting pit. An eighty-foot circular arena enclosed by ten-foot-high chain-link fencing heavy with rusted iron railway ties anchored deep into the stone bedrock. Overhead crane bridges still spanned the ceiling, their iron hooks dangling like executioners’ gallows above the pit.
Overhead, six heavy hardened carbon-iron floodlights hung from crane cables, glaring down into the sawdust ring with blinding, unshaded white light that threw harsh, razor-sharp shadows across the dirt.
The air was dense, greasy, and choking, thick with the reek of cheap corn whiskey, stale pipe tobacco, scorched petroleum grease, and the sharp, coppery stench of fresh animal blood. Three hundred spectators—canal dockers, scrap scavengers, grease-stained locomotive mechanics, bio-hackers, and heavily tattooed trade ring guards—crowded against the iron outer edge fence. It screamed wagers and waved fistfuls of grease-stained paper script.
Around the outer edge ran a maze of makeshift stalls where underworld vendors hawked counterfeit coagulant salves, recycled wired actuators, bottles of rotgut liquor, and fried skewers of gutter rat. Gamblers shoved each other along the raised narrow high walkways. He argued fiercely over bloodlines, jaw torque, and kill counts.
Above the entrance to the pit hung a massive chalkboard betting ledger, updated by a chalk-wielding bookmaker with a brass megaphone:
The odds were heavily stacked against any challenger. Iron-Jaws had torn through twenty-two in a row opponents. That left the sawdust soaked with the remains of battle-mastiffs, rift-jackals, and armored heavy cart boars. The underworld bookmakers viewed Arthur’s entry as free money.
Arthur strode into the arena. Then, a gray-haired canal docker with a missing ear tapped his shoulder from behind the barrier.
“Doctor Vance,” the man muttered in a low, urgent whisper. “Be careful in there. Sterling rigs the sawdust. They mix crushed sulfur ash and powdered glass into the dirt to blind tracking beasts when they roll. And the chain-link fence is wired to a storage tank battery behind the red corner. If your dog gets pinned against the wire, Fang flips the switch to stun him.”
“Thank you, friend,” Arthur said quietly. “My hound doesn’t roll, and he wears ground-plates.”
At the far end of the arena, seated on a raised wooden platform draped in greasy red velvet, sat Trade ring Boss Sterling.
Sterling was a massive, corpulent brute of fifty, wearing an expensive camel-hair greatcoat over a stitched silk waistcoat that strained against his huge gut. His puffy fingers were loaded with heavy brass signet rings. He puffed rhythmically on an imported black cigar, blowing thick rings of blue smoke into the iron rafters. Flanking his velvet armchair were four personal bodyguards armed with heavy double-barreled trench shotguns and lead-weighted shock-batons.
Standing below the platform on the sawdust floor was Debt Enforcer Fang.
Fang was a wiry, vicious young tamer of twenty-two, his face marked by three parallel claw scars across his left eye that pulled his sneer into a permanent grimace. He wore grease-splattered mechanic’s overalls over a heavy leather jerkin, and around his waist hung an air-powered wrench, a syringe holster. A heavy iron control baton wired to an external radio transmitter.
At Fang’s feet, resting on a flatbed luggage trolley, sat the prize. Four burlap sacks stamped with the crisp blue seal of the Western Rail Cooperative. Arthur’s stolen shipment of high-grade steamed bone meal.
“Vance!” Fang’s shrill voice cut through the arena clamor as he spotted Arthur entering the hall. “The little tea-room doctor actually showed up! And look at what he brought!”
The crowd parted, hundreds of bloodshot eyes turning toward the entrance.
An ear-splitting wave of derisive laughter swept through the spectators on the narrow high walkways.
“That’s the challenger?” a burly fire tender snorted, leaning over the iron rail and spitting a glob of tobacco juice onto the sawdust. “That black mutt barely weighs a hundred pounds! Iron-Jaws is gonna swallow his head like an apple!”
“Two thousand credits on the high-pressure warg in round one!” another voice roared, throwing a thick wad of brass tokens onto the bookmaker’s table. “Under sixty seconds! The stray won’t last one charge!”
“Look at the noble boy!” a scrap merchant jeered. “Did you bring a razor knife to scrape your dog off the wire fence, doctor?”
Arthur walked down the center aisle with measured, rhythmic steps. Beside him, Grimm trotted in total silence, his black claws making soft clicking sounds against the iron floor grating. Grimm didn’t bark, bristle, or growl. He moved with the calm, relaxed stride of an animal inspecting familiar hunting grounds. His single upright ear swiveled smoothly, cataloging the sound reflections from the brick walls. At the same time, his amber eyes remained locked on the opposing cage.
Toby marched a half-step behind Arthur, his lead-weighted cosh hidden beneath his duster, his knuckles white against his iron ledger.
“Arthur,” Toby muttered under his breath, his eyes scanning the narrow high walkways. “I count twenty armed guards along the iron walkway. If Fang loses, they might try to seal the turnstiles.”
“They won’t seal the turnstiles,” Arthur replied quietly. “Szabo’s shop apprentices are watching the street grates above. Keep your eyes on the bookmaker and ensure the wager is entered into the official house books.”
Arthur stopped ten paces from the fighting cage, looking up at Sterling’s velvet box.
“Sterling,” Arthur said, his voice flat, level, and carrying clearly beneath the vaulted ceiling despite the crowd’s clamor. “You have my property on that cart. Return the bone meal, pay fifty credits for the injuries your thugs inflicted on my courier boy. We leave without incident.”
Sterling paused with his cigar halfway to his lips. He blinked, stared down at Arthur. Then burst into a wheezing, phlegmy laugh that set his triple chin quivering like aspic.
“Listen to the little lordling!” Sterling roared, slapping his thigh with a meaty palm. “You think you’re still sitting in the Academy lecture halls, Vance? You’re in Under-City Nine! Down here, property belongs to whoever has the teeth to hold it! You cost me eight thousand credits in debt claim fees when you cured those heavy cart oxen in Ward 9. Those animals were supposed to default to my collection crews so we could auction their meat to the rendering vats!”
Sterling leaned forward over the brass railing, his small, piggish eyes gleaming with greedy malice.
“Gregory Vance offered five thousand credits for your mutt’s hide. But I’m a generous businessman. I’ll give you a sporting chance. You put that black cur into the ring against Fang’s Iron-Jaws. If your hound survives three minutes, you take the bone meal and two thousand credits from the house purse. If your hound dies, I take his carcass, your tamer insignia. The unending deed to your clinic.”
“And if Fang’s wolf dies?” Arthur asked quietly.
Fang sneered, stepping up to the chain-link gate with his control baton. She tapped the metal bars with a sharp clatter. “Iron-Jaws has twenty-two confirmed kills in this ring. He’s chewed through armored mastiffs, saber-toothed badland lynxes, and heavy battle boars. He doesn’t die. He renders scrap. Step into the cage, doctor, or I burn your bone meal right now!”
Fang gestured to a guard holding a sloshing bucket of kerosene beside the cart.
Toby stepped forward, past the snarling guards, and walked straight up to the luggage trolley. With practiced smooth speed, Toby drew a small brass penknife and slit a half-inch seam in the corner of the topmost burlap sack. He pinched a sample of the gray meal, rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. Then he smelled it under his glasses.
“Pure steamed spongy bone meal,” Toby called out to Arthur, his voice firm and defiant. “Zero moisture spoilage, zero lye adulteration. It’s our shipment.”
Toby turned on his heel and slammed his heavy iron ledger down on the bookmaker’s intake counter with a thunderous BANG.
“Record the wager, bookie!” Toby shouted, glaring through his glasses. “Two thousand credits cash purse and four sacks of Western Rail bone meal against Arthur Vance’s tamer credentials! Enter it in ink, or by the First Grand Marshal’s charter, I’ll have the Garrison Marshals impound your entire till for illegal gaming fraud!”
The bookmaker swallowed hard, glanced at Sterling. Then he quickly dipped his pen, scratching the terms onto the chalkboard ledger.
“Wager accepted!” the bookmaker bellowed through his brass megaphone. “Two thousand credits from the house till! Challenger enters the ring!”
Arthur looked down at Grimm.
The jet-black hound looked up at Arthur. Through their soul-sync channel, a faint pulse of warm, steady moving deep ring passed between them. It was clear, calm, and fully focused. Grimm was not afraid. His hunting beast mind had already begun analyzing the sound shaking of the iron cage and the smell of high-pressure oil leaking from the opposite gate.
“Open the cage,” Arthur said.