“Thirty-three,” the tally clerk called out, his boxwood knife rasping through the fourth group of ten notches as the red water drops fell with unrushed care. “Thirty-four. Thirty-five.”
Now that the first surprise of the swinging cage had passed, noisy anger swelled along the upper benches of the southern and eastern tiers. Men who had paid two coppers at the gate to watch a consolidated Bronze swordmaster flatten a one-day Flame student felt cheated of the simple, decisive violence they had come to see.
“Stand and take a cut, Ash Reed!” someone yelled from the third row beneath the eastern gallery. “Are you defending a sect stone or drying laundry on a line?”
“Examiner Vael!” called a young charter student in a clean blue sash. That turned toward the four registry clerks leaning over the eastern box rail. “Surely the Court’s contest regulations forbid tampering with the mid-air tackle once the gong has sounded!”
Up in the eastern box, Examiner Vael scowled down at the pit and flipped rapidly through his stamped wax-tablet summary of the town contest statutes. Behind him, the three junior clerks whispered urgently, their brass styluses poised. For ten breaths Vael searched the clauses. It looked for any pretext he could shout down to Mother Renn to halt the bout or force Brus to pin the chain stationary.
