CHAPTER 4

Fire and Ice

A Grievar should always keep their gaze wide. Undue focus on any single detail will prevent one from seeing the full range of opportunity.

Passage Two, One Hundred Eleventh Precept of the Combat Codes

Can’t get any hotter than this,” Dozer said.

The big kid was shirtless again, with his sweat-soaked uniform wrapped around his head as the crew walked the sandstone Venturian street.

“This be nothing,” Knees said from beside him. “Just wait until we’re in the Can.”

They passed tan buildings with blasted-out windows and lime-green vines crawling along the façades. Murray eyed the crowd set alongside the thoroughfare, hawkers peddling desert fruits, water-diggers wrapped in linens to shield from the high sun, and toothless kids begging for bits.

Murray wiped a sleeve across his brow, wishing he had some of Dozer’s brashness and could remove his clothing on a whim. Other Pilgrims packed the thoroughfare alongside them, their closeness only exacerbating the sweltering desert heat.

Murray knew Knees was right, though; it would only get worse when they entered the Can.

A bearded Myrkonian, sweating even worse than Murray, shouldered Dozer to move ahead of him in the informal procession.

“Hey!” Dozer barked, about to grab the Northman from behind until Murray held him back.

“Focus on your own game,” Murray said, hoping Dozer would be able to contain himself in the Fire Can.

“Hope I see that ice-skidder inside,” Dozer growled.

The fight always begins before the fight.

Something Farmer used to say. Murray had never fully understood it until he started coaching. He saw how Grievar sized each other up, played mental games to gain an edge before stepping in the Circle. Such games were especially apparent here, when an opponent knew that any imbalance carried into a fight could be a potential path to victory.

Murray looked ahead to the Can looming from the desert floor like some tin cactus. Long-necked carrion birds circled above, screeching as they passed through the mists that jetted from the steam valves set on the roof. The entire building throbbed as more people squeezed in, as if it might burst at any moment.

The Pilgrims came to a halt about twenty meters outside the Can, where a line had formed. As they approached the tiny entryway, Murray took another deep breath, knowing he’d need to savor the outside air.

“What’s that smell?” Dozer scrunched his face. Though Dozer wasn’t known for his hygiene, even he could detect the wafting odor of hot sweat, piss, and shit pushed out the few ventilation shafts set at the building’s side.

The crew entered the Can and were overwhelmed by both the unbearable menagerie of odors and the ear-splitting clamor. Each sound was intensified within the copper building, from the tread of boots on the spiral metal stairs running the height of the structure, to the amplified screams of onlookers, to the thud of ongoing violence on each level.

Murray could already feel the rubellium pulsing through the throngs pressed up against the cages, grasping and screaming vitriol as they soaked in the rage.

Frayed boards blared from the walls, and acrid burner smoke mixed with the scent of sweat and blood. Murray watched Brynn gag, holding a hand to her mouth as they trudged forward in line.

Bars were set along the far walls and drinks poured freely. Murray felt the familiar tug of want and produced a vial of beelbub ichor from his vest pocket. He downed it, savoring the punishing burn.

A strange creature stood at the top of the first-level stair, looking half rusted mech and half man, a buzzing red light on top of his dented helmet.

“Pilgrim or spectator?” the man said through an implanted audio box. “Step up for a scan.”

Knees stepped forward and the red light flashed in his eyes. “Next,” the man monotoned, to have Dozer and the rest of the crew do the same.

Murray marveled at how scans had become such a normal part of the fight trade. Grievar voluntarily letting the light pull their history, fight record, who knows what else, all so that the Daimyo could know where they fit in this world.

Processing us like every other product they hawk.

Dozer had drifted along to a free spot at the edge of one of the cages. He watched an empire cadet up against a tall Desovian warrior, trading blows at a frenetic pace.

“Toss him on his ass!” Dozer yelled, joining in the palpable fervor alongside the cage.

“Come on; we got to go up two more floors.” Murray guided his crew, spiraling past ongoing fights in all directions. Finally, they carved out a small space in the crowd and huddled together.

“I can’t coach you all, and you’ll be divided across different cages.” Sweat sheened Murray’s face in the stifling air. “Dozer, you do better without much coaching. Even against Shimo, you know what you need to do. Overwhelm him. Don’t let this become a battle of strategy or speed. You need to blitz that darkin’ zombie.”

Dozer nodded. “Got it, Coach.”

“I’ll be near, though,” Murray added. He didn’t want the kid to think he’d be on his own.

“Knees, I’ll coach you against Firebird; ten minutes until go time,” Murray said. “Brynn, you’ll stick with me while you warm up for your match.”

“Yes, Ku,” Knees and Brynn said in unison, though their eyes were on the action elsewhere.

“All right, now, come on in,” Murray said. He gathered the Whelps together, their four sweaty brows pressed close at the center of their ring of arms.

Murray knew these kids were brave, that they’d fight to the end for what they believed in. But he could still smell the fear on them, feel it in their tensed shoulders.

“It’s places like this, in the heat and stink and chaos, when we realize what we fight for,” Murray growled. “We might not be in those cages together, but we’ve worked hard over the last months. We’ve walked the long road in darkness and fear, and we’ve bled and broken ourselves more times than anyone else in this tin shitcan. We’ve earned our place here, together. Now I want you each to go and take it!”

Murray bellowed and his crew responded, their voices melding into the thrum of violence.

Knees pushed through the throng of sweaty spectators to the cage door, stepping in as his name reverberated on the overhead audio box. He could feel the crimson spectrals circling and fomenting a seething rage deep in his gut.

Knees suddenly hated the folk that surrounded him.

The buttoned-up empire kids, purelights from the surrounding schools ready to claim their place on Pilgrimage, Knees wanted to watch them bleed. The mercs and hawkers and Grunts, a seething mass of leeches getting roiled up and ready for blood to spill that was not theirs.

Most of all, though, Knees hated his own people, the many hometown Venturians that surrounded the cage, faces pressed against the wire frame. Some of those faces were familiar, though he knew they shouldn’t be.

Knees had gone to the slums a night ago, visited his old home.

Knees had dreamed that he’d find his uncle, meet the man so that he could exact his vengeance and make him pay for all he’d done. He’d found him, but his uncle had been a husk of what he’d been, a shriveled old man who could barely feed himself, barely shit in the pot.

Knees had left the house, left his uncle alone to die.

He didn’t even remember how he’d gotten in the fight with the street thugs on the way back to the barracks. All Knees could remember was the empty home with the empty man inside it.

But now, in the Fire Can, Knees finally saw his family.

His little sis pressed up against the cage, looking exactly as Knees remembered her from years ago, with that sly grin and auburn mane of hair. Seeing his sister’s face in the crowd didn’t bring Knees any comfort, though. Even though she knew Knees would feel the emptiness, the sorrow upon seeing her, she still dared to show her face.

And his da was there too, looking at Knees with those wide, fearful eyes. Always scared and never standing up for them when they needed him most. He’d let that monster do his worst to them.

A spear of pressure pressed against the base of Knees’s skull as he clenched his teeth.

He saw his uncle again, the man staring back at Knees with his broken-toothed face and manic eyes. There was the man that had sold him as a slave to the Deep, the man that had taken his little sis from this world. The man that had tormented his mind every night.

Knees screamed. He bit his tongue and tasted the blood. He raised his hands to the air as the rage engulfed him like a demonic presence.

Another Grievar stepped into the cage, and Knees’s fire became focused. His diffuse anger, swirling at the multitude of faces around him, homed in on the opponent across from him.

Firebird.

Firebird wasn’t formidable-looking, not broad-shouldered or rippled with muscle like some of the other fighters within the Can. In fact, Firebird was wiry. Knees had expected otherwise after hearing so many stories over the past few months.

His opponent wore the traditional Tanri mask: ruffled crimson feathers pointing skyward and a black hooked beak curving toward the floor. Two yellow eyes peered out from the mask, meeting Knees’s hateful gaze.

The two combatants stood frozen, waiting for the sounding bell that would send all the fighters up and down the Can’s seven floors into action. Dozer was somewhere above, likely flexing to intimidate the stoic Kōri Shimo. And below, Brynn would be readying herself against some polished empire brat.

Knees’s anger coiled, ready to lash out like a whip. He’d charge straight ahead and take Firebird’s head off in a blitz. Not many could match Knees’s speed and precision.

Knees took his eyes off his opponent for a split second, glancing cage-side, where he expected to see the rubellium-conjured mirages of his family again, taunting him. Instead, he saw Murray, right up against the chains, meeting his eyes with a measured gaze.

Coach mouthed the familiar words: You are not the rage.

Knees attempted to steady himself. The rage was within him, a festering bubble ready to burst. But it was like all else within him: a perception. It was not him.

Knees breathed deeply, realizing he’d been lost. He tried to recoup a real strategy, but the bell screeched and his opponent came at him.

Firebird moved forward deliberately, like a raptor edging toward Knees with that hooked beak ready to lash out. Knees had expected an all-out onslaught after the stories he’d heard of the fighter, not having a single strike scored on him through the entirety of Pilgrimage, finishing each opponent in a decisive fashion.

He noticed Firebird’s left leg forward, right leg light. Prepping the high kick.

Knees circled to his left, baiting the kick. He had a loaded cross in response to a parried right high kick. But the kick did not come.

The rage bubbled up within Knees again, urging him forward. Who was this Tanri with the arrogant, curved beak? Did he think he was better than Knees? All these tribesfolk, people with no homes, no real allegiances or loyalty. What use were they to anyone?

Knees barely restrained himself from throwing his cross, despite not having any opening. Only catching Murray’s steady stare held back the misplaced strike.

Firebird again shuffled forward, hands up, those yellow eyes peering out at him. Knees met those bird eyes and they seemed familiar, another face from his past. Another mirage to enrage him.

Knees couldn’t hold his strike back this time. The redlight coursed through his body, pulling him forward like a marionette. He threw a leading front kick followed by a barrage of winging punches.

Firebird moved as if unrestrained by a viscosity that slowed Knees. The fighter dodged the strikes with ease, weaving his head, turning his body at just the right angles without having to use his raised hands to parry.

But the Tanri did not counter. He stared back at Knees with those familiar yellow eyes, taunting him.

Knees knew he needed to be more calculated. He could see Firebird’s technical skill now, the way the fighter left no movement unaccounted for. The Tanri was waiting for the right opening. A split second was all he would need to land a finishing strike on Knees.

A roar, like some unrestrained beast, dropped from the cage above. Dozer.

The rubellium was doing its work, and Knees guessed it wasn’t giving Dozer any advantage against the stoic Kōri Shimo.

Knees met Firebird’s eyes again.

They were the eyes of Weep, the slave Circle boy who had been too weak to defend himself against the jackal. They were the eyes of Joba, who had selfishly sacrificed himself, who’d left his crew behind. They were the eyes of Cego, who had abandoned his team, gotten himself arrested and taken to Arklight.

Firebird launched forward in a blur, the right high kick that had been cocked anchored to the ground, and instead, the left foot rose swiftly to catch Knees directly at the crown of his skull.

He dropped like an anchor, the Can spinning around him before his head bounced against the plate-metal floor.

Knees breathed, waited for the bell, but it did not come. The rage still pulsed within him, though he was barely conscious. Knees’s anger kept his biometrics elevated, kept the fight going.

This was why Murray had said high levels of rubellium could be so dangerous. Knees’s rage wouldn’t let him be finished, not until he was dead, not until his brain function shut off like a switch.

He listened to the screeching crowd calling for the crushing blow, an end to his torment, the only way to extinguish the fire within him.

But through the chaos and the thudding pulse of blood in his skull, Knees heard something else. A whisper in his ear.

“Stay down.”

“What’d Firebird say to you?” Dozer asked from beside Knees.

Murray looked down at the Venturian kid shivering on the dirty tin floor of the Can.

“I caught the end of your fight…” Dozer trailed off. “Shimo got me pretty quick with the strangle, so I had the time. The freak, took my back like a cat on a Deep rat.”

“Really cold.” Knees’s teeth chattered as he shivered against the wall, though the room was still nauseatingly hot as the challenges were ongoing.

“Rage will do that,” Murray said as he threw his heavy cloak over Knees. “Runs red hot while you’re in the rubellium, but when you’re back out, it’s like your body has nothing left.”

“You need some of this ice?” Brynn asked. The Jadean girl was wielding two ice packs, one to Dozer’s forehead and the other to her own knee. “Funny how I was the only one of us who got past round one.”

“Ha-ha.” Knees shook his head. Murray admired the girl’s tenacity to hold a grudge after her and Knees’s exchange back at the barracks.

“So, what did Firebird say to you?” Brynn asked. “I’d already finished my empire cadet, so I got to catch the end of your match too.”

“Stay down,” Knees whispered. “He said, stay down.”

“Huh, that’s strange,” Dozer said as he stood up to get a look at the fight in the cage across from them. “Why would he not put you out?”

“Not sure.” Knees’s teeth chattered again.

Murray had seen the end and also thought it strange that Knees’s opponent had let the light fade instead of putting a quick end to the bout. Perhaps Firebird thought Knees unworthy of any more effort.

“Darkin’ Shimo…” Dozer muttered, still upset over his loss. “Don’t know how he got me so fast.”

“We’re lucky the way he finished both of us,” Brynn said. “Bet his round-three opponent wished he’d been strangled unconscious.”

“Shimo got you too, Brynn?” Knees asked as he wrapped Murray’s cloak tighter to himself.

“Yeah, I had him second round after Dozer,” Brynn said. “Same thing, quick back take to a strangle.”

“How long was I out?” Knees asked.

“About an hour,” Murray said. “As I said, though you didn’t throw more than a few strikes in there, rubellium takes its toll.”

“Sorry.” Knees looked down at the floor.

Murray knew what the kid was feeling right now. Shame. The emotion always came on strong after the anger.

“I let the rage win in there,” Knees said, looking up at Murray.

“No,” Murray said. “You didn’t. You fought the demons and you won. You didn’t overcommit; you waited long enough for an opening. I’m proud of you. Firebird was better today and caught you with the switch kick.”

Knees looked like he was about to disagree, but the central audio box rang out from above them with the announcer’s gravelly voice.

“We’ve narrowed down today’s matches to our two final fighters!”

Murray knew who they would be.

“Kōri Shimo and Firebird!”

“We’ve got to stay and watch this one,” Dozer said as he pushed his way through the growing throng of spectators to the edge of the cage. The rest of the crew followed the path the big kid cleared, with Murray at the rear.

The room became even hotter, more stifling, as the lower floors crowded up to watch the final match.

A group of spectators screeched on one side of the cage, the Firebird stoic among them, readying himself for entry.

Shimo stood alone on the other end, staring off into some unseen world. He was uncoached and with no supporters. If the strange kid had come with a team on Pilgrimage, he must have left them behind long since.

“Who you got now?” Dozer asked.

“Firebird,” Knees said. “It was like he didn’t even feel the rubellium. He waited for me to make a mistake and then I was out.”

“Same with Shimo, though,” Dozer said. “I mean, I always knew the kid was a freak, but I at least expected the rubellium to have some play. But the redlight went through him like two-day-old porridge from the dining hall. Meanwhile, I was seeing visions of Shiar all over again, wanting to put his jackal head through the floor from the bell.”

The finalists stepped into the cage, both cast in the rubellium’s crimson glow as they stared each other down. Firebird was undaunted by Shimo’s blood-spattered second skin, the Tanri staring out from behind his hooked bird mask.

The sounding bell rang, and the two combatants stood completely stationary. The crowd quieted, surprised at the lack of aggression after seeing multiple rage-fueled bouts. Neither Firebird nor Shimo appeared to be affected by the pure rubellium Circle they stood within.

It was as if the two fighters were in a standoff to see who would flinch first, as if a single movement would dictate the rest of the fight.

The quiet was soon interrupted by an impatient Myrkonian screaming, “Get after it!” which prompted the rest of the crowd to begin their raucous bellows again.

Finally, it was Firebird who made the first move: a single step toward the center of the ring. Shimo replied with an equivalent stride forward. The two stopped again, staring at each other.

“What the dark is wrong with you two?” another impatient spectator screamed. “Let’s see some blood!”

Unmoved by the crowd or the light, Firebird took another step, this time diagonally to cut off an angle of attack. Shimo paused and crouched low, turning toward the Tanri fighter but not advancing this time.

Firebird mirrored the crouch and edged toward Shimo until he was within a front kick’s reach.

The two remained coiled like springs, waiting for a reaction.

It was Firebird again who made the first move, diving forward into a low single-leg and latching on to Shimo’s knee. Kōri calmly hopped around the ring to defend the takedown. Murray noticed Shimo didn’t even attempt to waste energy to drop an elbow against Firebird’s exposed head.

Shimo freed his elevated leg to the outside and wrapped a hand around Firebird’s back, quickly shifting his hips and tossing the Tanri fighter to the ground.

Darkin’ smooth tai otoshi.

Firebird reacted instantaneously, entangling his legs around Shimo’s from the bottom to bring him to the floor as well.

“That was nice,” Dozer exclaimed. “Feel like I’ve seen that one somewhere before.”

Firebird twisted his body around Shimo’s leg and wrapped up a heel in the crook of his elbow. The Tanri started to apply breaking pressure.

Still, Shimo was unfazed, turning with the heel hook and pointing his toe to alleviate the pressure on his knee. He ripped his leg free and pressured back into Firebird’s guard.

“Um… why aren’t they hitting each other?” Dozer asked.

It was a good question that Murray had considered already. The two combatants had opportunities to throw strikes, but it was almost as if they’d made a pact to not do so.

Firebird threw his legs high to attempt a triangle choke, but Shimo sensed the trap and defended.

“They’re not wasting anything with strikes,” Murray replied. He’d seen it before. Grapplers so confident in their skills that they’d rather not waste energy throwing punches, always snaking one step forward for a finish. Cego had that ability. So had Farmer.

“Guess I don’t feel so bad anymore that Shimo put me out,” Dozer said sheepishly.

Firebird rapidly sat up and wrapped an arm around Shimo’s neck before dropping back for a guillotine choke, but Shimo threw his legs over and passed into side control, rendering the choke ineffective.

Shimo was getting the edge in the exchange. He had passed Firebird’s guard again and moved into a solid side control on top. He slid his knee over into mount and pressed his weight down on the Tanri’s chest.

Firebird attempted to buck his hips to escape, but Shimo’s mount from top was too strong. He pressured downward, pushing his shoulder into Firebird’s chin, slowly ratcheting an arm up to set up a strangle.

“Think Shimo’s got him,” Dozer commented, wide-eyed at the prospect of either combatant being finished.

Firebird’s tucked chin was the only thing preventing the finish. Shimo wedged his hand under the Tanri’s hooked beak and drove his shoulder forward, popping the feathered mask off.

The entire crowd gasped, but not for the same reason the Whelps did. The crowd’s surprise was in finding out the Firebird was female. A girl with high cheekbones, piercing yellow eyes, and an auburn braid of hair.

But the crew gasped because they knew this female warrior, this unmasked Firebird.

“Sol?” Dozer yelled in confusion as Shimo tightened the choke and their friend in the cage went out.