Storm Grit's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Storm Grit took the belt from the third fighter with a cross that broke his jaw, and the pit went quiet the way rooms do when money changes hands wrong. She spat blood on the chalk. The powder was still holding. She could feel the storm above the tannery like a hand pressing down on the crown of her skull, but her bones stayed her bones. She was walking toward the rope when the pit boss caught her elbow. His grip was apologetic. A bookmaker stood behind him in a wet coat, flanked by two men she recognized from the door. The bookmaker said her name like it tasted bad. He said he'd heard she was cursed. He said the title fight next week would not happen with her in it, and if the pit boss argued, no book in the low city would take his line again. The pit boss would not look at her. He said she was done. He said to leave the belt on the barrel by the stairs. She should have known. There was nothing in this universe that could stop her from changing. Storms rolled in and she turned, powder or no powder, favor or no favor, and every room that let her stand in it eventually learned. She looked at the bookmaker's wet coat and understood the storm had already told on her at the door. She thought about breaking his teeth. She thought about the two men and the stairs and the belt she had bled three fights for. Then she walked to the barrel, picked the belt up, and buckled it around her waist under her shirt. The pit boss opened his mouth. She said, loud enough for the front row, that she was the champion of this pit until someone knocked her down in it, and no man in a dry coat had done that yet. She walked up the stairs past the two men. They did not move. Outside, the rain hit her face and the pressure behind her eyes broke open like a bloom of cloud and lightning inside her skull. She had maybe twenty minutes before the beast came from her. She had a belt no house would honor, a title fight she was barred from, and a debt to a woman in a gold hoop she had not yet paid. She ducked into the alley and started running for the drains before the shift found her standing in the street.