Sarah Snakearm's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Sarah had been sitting on the stone for an hour when the laughter started. A noodle cart had rolled into the clearing below the red and gold castle gate, and a woman in fight wraps climbed onto its counter to point at her. Sarah knew the voice before she saw the face. A middle-rank challenger she had beaten twice on the circuit, now standing over a pot of broth with a wooden ladle in her fist. "That's Snakearm," the woman called. "Number eleven. Sitting on a rock because she's too proud for the gift wall." She swept the ladle toward the rack of cards and combs. "The rest of us bought him dinner. She brought him a rock." The crowd at the bath pool across the path turned to look. It was a wide white-stone hot spring trimmed in gold, and the off-duty fighters lounging in it sat up on their elbows to watch. More people drifted over from the line at the gate. A boy laughed. An old man pointed. Sarah felt her face go hot. She had planned for silence. She had not planned for an audience. If she stayed on the stone, the story would travel down the mountain by nightfall. Snakearm shamed off Dragon Mountain by a ladle. She would never get a second look from the gate. She stood up. She crossed the path at a walk. The woman on the cart grinned and raised the ladle like a sword. Sarah did not climb up. She kicked the cart's front wheel out from under it. The cart pitched. The woman went down into her own broth pot, and the pot went sideways, and the clearing filled with the smell of pork bones and steam. Sarah caught her by the wrap as she fell and set her on the dirt without breaking anything. "On the circuit," Sarah said, "you lost on points. Here you can lose on points or you can lose on the ground. Pick." The woman picked the ground. She stayed there. The crowd went quiet. Then the gate behind Sarah opened. Kevintor stood in the doorway in his red headband and gold shinguards, the throwing star in his hand. He looked at the cart on its side, at the woman in the dirt, at Sarah. He held up the star so the crowd could see it. "This one made this," he said. "Anyone else here forge their gift?" No hand went up. He looked at Sarah. "Come in. Leave the rest at the wall." Sarah walked through the gate. The boy at the post closed it behind her. Inside the castle yard the noise of the crowd cut off like a door shutting on a hallway. Kevintor was already walking ahead of her toward the inner steps. He had not said her name. He had not asked her to fight. He had only opened the door.