Champion Kevintor Neverloss's Arc

Chapter 31 of 42

Kevintor came back at dawn with the bath house steam still on his skin. The braided woman was not in the yard yet. Sarah was. She sat on the dojo step with a heavy linked restraint across her lap, polishing the cuffs with a rag. She did not look up when he passed. She had not gone home. The mat where he had swept her leg was still rolled against the wall, and beside it lay a split floor board, jagged down the middle where her shoulder had driven through it on the fall. No one had replaced it. She had not let them. He went inside. The hatch was open. He climbed down to the low room and tried to find the fifth circle again. He could feel it under his ribs, ready. He needed quiet. He needed the next two arts mapped in his head while the jiu-jitsu was still loose enough to lift out. A drill board leaned against the post by the ladder, painted with a man in a white gi, knees bent, hands locked at the collar. Muay Thai and the last grappling shape. Two left. He stared at the board and could not hold the shapes. Footsteps came down the ladder. Sarah sat against the wall with the cuffs in her hands. She turned one loop, then the other. She did not speak. She watched him breathe. He tried a solo drill and lost the thread at the third movement. He tried again. He felt her eyes on his hips, his shoulders, the place where the circle sat. The fifth art slid back down into the rest of him like a fish going under. "You need to leave," he said. "No." "I can't work with you watching." "Then learn." She lifted the shackle. "I sat upstairs three hours. Crowd's gone. Board says I'm eleventh. I don't go back up those stairs as eleventh." She set the cuffs down on the mat between them. "Fight me again. Win again. In private. No crowd. No mat at the door. Then I leave." He understood. She did not want the loss undone. She wanted it witnessed by no one but herself, so she could carry it instead of wear it. He stepped onto the mat. She stood. He took her down in four seconds with the same sweep, set the same hold, and stopped short of the finish. He offered his hand. She took it. She picked up the shackle and climbed the ladder without looking back. The hatch shut. He heard the dojo door open and close above. The split board upstairs stayed where it was. The room went quiet enough to work in. He turned to the drill board and found the fifth circle waiting where he had left it, and behind it, the shape of the sixth.