By one hour past noon, the narrow timber fighters’ nook beneath the western stairs of the Old Wrestling Lodge hummed with the low, percussive shaking of hundreds of boots stamping on the plank galleries overhead. Every time the outer gate swung open to admit another file of coopers, river-men, or town artisans, a wave of street noise rolled down the stone passageway into the dressing room. Inside the whitewashed nook, a single animal fat lamp burned beside Mina’s open apothecary box on a scarred oak rubbing-bench. Meanwhile, Ilyra stood by the barred window overlooking the alley with her ash spear grounded beside her boot.
Seyun sat on the bench in his sleeveless grey practice vest and coarse linen trousers, his straw sandals re-tied with double hemp knots around his ankles. On the floor beside his bench sat his canvas pack with the forty-pound bundle of marsh iron lashed securely to its frame. Master Uren’s stone tablet had already been carried up to the courtyard table under the joint eyes of Daro Kesh, Mother Renn. Lodge Master Brus to be sealed inside the hanging brass lantern-cage.
Through the small barred window above Ilyra’s shoulder, Seyun could hear two coopers’ apprentices arguing in the lane over the odds being chalked on a tavern slate across the street: eight to one in copper on Daro Kesh taking the cage before the thirtieth breath, and three to one against the Ash Reed clerk still standing on his feet at the fiftieth. Neither Seyun nor…
