Chapter 12: They Come In Quiet
Nik dusted his hands, then turned to the bloodied victim behind the table. "Up you get," he said.
The young man, still shivering with adrenaline, stared up at Nik with the dawning awe of a man who has just glimpsed the operating logic of the universe and found it both meaner and simpler than he’d ever guessed.
His mouth worked, but the only sound that came out was a wet, babbling gratitude.
Nik ignored it, brushing the blood from his knuckles. "Next time, pick a better place to hide," he muttered, and with a flick of his boot, nudged the young man toward the exit.
Apollo stood at the edge of the fray, feeling the heat of a dozen stares on his skin. The crowd had already started to close in, the way wounds do: eager to heal, but just as eager to leave a scar as a reminder.
A burly woman in a sea-soaked cloak began gathering bets, her ledger already half-filled with the names of victors and victims.
A few patrons eyed Nik with the speculative interest owed to either a future leader or a future corpse.
Before the mood could swing back to violence, a knot of militia in city blue pushed through the entrance, the iron studs of their tunics catching the lamplight in tiny, malignant flashes.
The tallest among them, a woman with a face like a knife and a nose split twice across its bridge, surveyed the damage with an expression of profound boredom.
"Which one of you started it?" she said, more to the room than to anyone in particular.
A babble of denials and finger-pointing ensued. The woman produced a small, notched baton and rapped it once on the bar, the sound as crisp and final as a death sentence.