crowd for johns. But Maura had not been at one of Christian’s fights in months, and he suddenly found that he did not want her here, did not want her to see what was about to happen. But he waved to her, smiling, ignoring the men who crowded around her, hemming her in.
“Christian! Here!”
She was holding something out to him. Reluctantly—for he knew that many eyes watched and marked such things—he moved toward her, crossing the ring.
“What is it?”
“I made it for you. For luck.”
She dropped something into his open palm, and Christian stared at it stupidly for a moment before he realized that it was a bracelet of some kind, woven of many different-colored threads. The design showed a bright orange circle that Christian recognized as the sun, sitting over a blue line: water.
“Thank you,” he told her. “It’s a pretty thing.”
“Do you want me to help you tie it on?”
“No. I can’t wear it in the ring.”
Maura’s smile dimmed for a moment. She was older than Christian, by perhaps a year, but he often felt that he topped her by five years, or ten. She retained a strange innocence that this place had barely touched, and he hated to puncture it, to watch her smile fade. But after a moment, she cheered.
“Well, put it in your pocket, then. For luck.”
Christian tucked the bracelet deep into the pocket of the short trousers he wore in the ring. It would likely get ruined in there, stained with blood and sweat, but somehow he could not ask Maura to take it back, or even to hold it for him until the fight was done. Either request, he knew, would hurt her. He put a light hand on her shoulder.
“Let’s go, boy!” Wigan shouted behind him. “Time enough for that later!”
Christian turned and saw the promoter waiting on the sidelines. Someone offered Wigan a shot of whiskey, and he downed it, then gave Christian a quick grin, a comradely grin, as though they were partners. Christian closed his eyes, feeling a wintry chill descend upon him. He took his hand from Maura’s shoulder and moved back toward his corner.
“A perfect fighter!” Wigan cried over the din, nodding this way and that, his face gleaming with drink. “He cannot be bested!”
He waited a beat, until the crowd quieted down, and Christian felt an unwilling twinge of admiration; drunk or sober, Wigan was a solid showman. He always knew how to play a crowd.
“I give you . . . LAZARUS!”
Ignoring their howls, Christian waded in. A circle, quiet and cool, seemed to close around him, sealing him off from the world. Only when the opponent lay dead would there be anything else. Christian lashed out with his right fist and broke Maartens’s nose, sending him toppling backward against the ropes. He had already forgotten everything: Maura, Wigan, even the well-dressed Prince and his leering guardian. But Christian never forgot anything, not really, and years later, when he saw Thomas Raleigh again, he would recognize those hungry green eyes with no trouble at all. The Prince had aged, yes, but that was only chronology. Whatever he sought, it still eluded him.
But now there was only the ring, another fight that was over before really beginning. Brendan Maartens had begun to sob now, but Christian was beyond caring. Deep cold had descended upon him, for he already knew that there would be nothing for him but this ring. There was a different life elsewhere, he knew, high above the stinking tunnels of the Creche, but that life was not for him, and as Christian lunged forward and began to kick his opponent to death, he never thought of the world above, not even once.
Book I
CHAPTER 1
THUNDERCLOUDS ON THE HORIZON
In retrospect, the seeds of rebellion in the pre-Glynn Tearling are easy to see. The divide between rich and poor was monstrous. More than one million tenant farmers labored in subsistence for the pleasure of some thousand noble families. The Tear had an entrepreneurial class, but it was only a tiny fraction of the population. Economic mobility was almost a myth. The Raleigh ruling family was chronically disengaged, making no move to check the deepening progression of social ills in the kingdom. God’s Church was widespread, but the Church kept its wealth carefully hoarded; Arvath priests offered only salvation in the hereafter, not material assistance in the here and now. In the cities, the unemployed begged; in the country, tenants starved. Looking at the entire map, one sees