Emerging from the cool shadow of the western stairway into the open courtyard of the Old Wrestling Lodge was like stepping onto the floor of a dry river-lock while the water roared on all four sides above. Every foot of the four steeply tiered plank galleries was packed shoulder to shoulder. Barrel-makers in scorched leather aprons sat beside canal barge-masters, timber-yard sawyers, apothecary apprentices, and off-duty town watchmen. Even the rafters above the top tier held a dozen nimble rope-walk boys dangling their heels over the pit. In a city where the Aperture Court’s charter examinations were held behind closed stone gates on the upper ridge, the promise of an open contest between a veteran unchartered Bronze master and the expelled clerk who had exposed the winter coal fraud had drawn half the working wards of Oran.
Seyun stepped down onto the sunken flat stone slabs in his sleeveless grey vest and straw sandals. Then, the noise dropped half an octave into a low, appraising hum. Hundreds of working men’s eyes went right away to the thick white linen bandages wrapped around both of his palms and wrists, then across the thirty-foot white chalk square to where Daro Kesh stood calmly by the eastern steps with his heavy practice sword resting across his forearm.
