Champion Kevintor Neverloss's Arc

Chapter 33 of 42

Kevintor came back to the camp before first light. The bags hung still on their chain. The sand was cool under his feet. He set his hands on the nearest bag and felt the sixth circle waiting inside his shins, loose, ready, a step from out. He threw a low kick. The bag swallowed the strike and gave nothing back. He threw it harder. The chain swung but the bag absorbed too soft, the way wet rope absorbs a pull. The art lifted halfway and settled again. He could not draw it through padding that would not push back. Roxy came down the boards with a kit bag on her shoulder. She set it on the step and watched him work three more kicks. "You're not landing on anything," she said. "The bags are stuffed for my weight. You'll be here a week." Behind her, the bonfire from the night before had burned down to coals. A row of bottles stood by the logs where her crew had left them. She nudged one with her foot. "I leave tonight. You sleep here, the next people in are mine, and they don't know your face." He stopped with his hand on the bag. "One more dawn and it sets back inside me," he said. "Half out is worse than not started." She unzipped the kit bag and pulled out a folded table with rounded legs and a face cradle. She set it on the sand and locked the joints. Then a small glass vial of amber oil, which she set on the corner. "My coach used this on me before fights," she said. "Not for the kick. For after. You hit a body. Soft tissue. The shape comes through bone into bone. Pads won't take it. A person will." She tapped her left forearm, where two faded initials sat among the ink. "He showed me on this table. Then I showed him." "Same rule as before," Kevintor said. "Not you. Not before your bout." "Not me," she said. She poured a thumb of oil into her palm and worked it into his shins where the bruises had stacked. Her thumbs found the line under the bone. The sixth shape lifted again, closer this time, the heat of her hand drawing it where the bags had not. She stepped back. "Scarlet Violet's down the beach at the inn," she said. "She came in last night asking after you. She'll take it on the pads if you tell her plain. She owes you a clean answer and she knows it." He found Scarlet Violet on the porch with her sleeves tied back. She listened without moving. "I will hold," she said. "Once. Then I go back to my house." She walked with him to the camp. She set her feet in the sand, raised the pads, and braced. Kevintor threw the kick. The pad gave back through her arms into her shoulders into the boards. The sixth circle tore loose under his ribs and was gone. He stood empty of it. Five left in the world. None left in him.