Champion Kevintor Neverloss's Arc

Chapter 32 of 42

Kevintor lifted the fifth circle out clean before noon. The jiu-jitsu went the way the others had gone, a quiet tearing under the ribs, then absence. He sat on the mat with his hands flat on the wood and waited for the sixth shape to rise. It did. Muay Thai answered from his shins and elbows and the line of his hips. It did not want to be drilled into a corner of a low room. It wanted distance, weight on a bag, a target that gave back. The grappling room had none of that. The ceiling was too low to throw a full kick. The posts were padded for takedowns. He could feel the art in him and no way to move it. He climbed the ladder. The braided woman stood at the dojo door with a folded letter held flat between her palms. A striped courier cat sat by her foot, the seal still wet where it had pulled the paper free. She handed him the letter without a word. The hand on the page was Roxy Fisk's. Three lines. She had a beach camp two days east. Open platform, hung bags, sand floor. He could use it before her bout if he came now. She had written his name twice and crossed it out once. He rode east through the afternoon and the next morning. The camp sat above the tideline on stilts. A canvas roof sagged between four posts. Four heavy bags hung from a crossbeam strung with lanterns. A flag was nailed to the back board, red and blue stripes, a skull inside a wheel of flame. Roxy was wrapping her hands on the step. She did not stand when he came up the boards. "Two days," she said. "Then I leave for the bout. You hit the bags. I hold pads when you need a target. You don't touch me hard. Same rule as before." She tied off the wrap with her teeth. "What's the art doing." "Sitting in my shins," he said. "It needs to land on something before it'll come out." She pointed at the nearest bag. He stepped to it and threw a low round kick. The bag jumped on its chain. The shin sang. He threw the kick again, then the cross, then the elbow that had won him the belt years ago. The shape under his ribs lifted toward the surface, the way the others had. He worked through the afternoon. Roxy fed him pads when he asked and sat when he didn't. By dusk the sixth circle was loose in him, ready, not yet out. He stopped with his hands on his knees and his breath coming in clean pulls. The bags swung above the sand. Roxy passed him a water skin. "Tomorrow," she said. He nodded. The last art had a place to die now. He only had to come back at dawn and finish it.