Introductions

Brabeh Ludo. Armwrestling.

4010 A.C.

“Darn kids a’ it again.” A fishy, hoary face peeped in from the edge of the window of a low concrete schoolroom. It was late morning, and the children had not returned home from Temple Hill, but none of them were his. Makes you wonder who’s winnin’, he thought, crouching against the wall to watch.

“For the gang!” squealed Scotty the Slime Nose. His moist nails were being squeezed dry in the schoolroom, heaving against his opponent’s fist. Only eight years old, Slime Nose had vowed to win fame for his gang. His gang had laughed. Scotty’s opponent was ten years old, cleaner, fresh-smelling--and whoever beat him would be engraved into city legend, above the arm wrestling Boy and his mother. The Boy and his yellow-skinned mother, those were the two infamous villains of this city. Facing Scotty across the teacher’s wooden desk, the Boy smiled, two seconds from losing, unsettling Scotty with his quiet, dirt-brown gaze.

“Well hello, daisy.” Scotty couldn’t help but reveal his black and yellow teeth. Excited, his heart was throbbing and skipping, and the cheering children closed in on him. “Good gods, Slime Nose is beatin’ him! You seein’ this? Come over here!” Uproar erupted as the wood cracked beneath their elbows and Slime Nose’s dirty knuckles flew into raw wood. The gang was defeated -- again.

Slime Nose suddenly looked ill, dragging his free sleeve under his nose in one long wipe. While the Boy was surrounded, cheered, and pounded on the back, Slime Nose retreated to the older boys’ shadows, rubbing his arm and shrinking under their curses and glares. His gang leader imposed upon him the deadliest glower of all. Slime Nose wilted. Staring at his feet, he scratched at the curls behind his ears with smelly fingers.

As the chatter dwindled, the victor held out a hand to the gang leader. “You have my money.” For a deathly silent moment, the gang leader’s pale gray eyes lingered on Slime Nose. “Talkin’ to you Sledgehammer,” said the Boy. “You’ve got my money.”

Sledgehammer tore his gaze from Slime Nose and took a long, threatening look at this thorn in his side, this Boy he had seen and heard so much about before school. The Boy’s mother was the most feared character in the city, a rogueblood, a Yellow Skin. Word of mouth had it that seven years ago, she had appeared in Gullock’s tavern on Traveler’s Street. Carrying a toddler in one arm, she had forced thirteen men to armwrestle her with the other. Twelve men had lost their money. And now her boy wants to take mine, thought Sledge, pulling an old, moldy bag from his tunic and pitching hard it at Shara’s Boy.

There was a shocked and awkward silence as everyone watched Shara's Boy catch it. “Business must be good, gambler,” said Sledgehammer. His lips curled up at the surprise he had given them all, revealing a cavern of black cavities. “Heard your mama’s one of them gamblin’ pisses too. Yellow as piss.”

The Boy let the old bag of money dangle at his side. His face had darkened, and his dirt-brown eyes fixed on Sledge’s. Gang members exchanged snickers behind their leader, and Sledgehammer sneered at the sound--more yellow teeth and black cavities--tipped an imaginary hat, and stalked out of the classroom, followed by his grubby henchmen. The younger children dispersed from the classroom to play outside in the Temple fields. Between the older students, a few uneasy or satisfied shrugs were traded, and they also left for home.

The classroom around the Boy emptied, and while the last few girls slipped through the crude-cut doorway, a flustered boy with snow-blond hair pushed through them and skidded to a halt beside the victor, muttering, “Stupid privy line.” He paused to wink a pale blue eye at the girls and smartly bow his head.

Some girls blushed. “Mornin' Petrick,” they tweeted, delicately stepping out of sight.

Petrick Cessford, or Pete, boasted blue-gray eyes, pearly whites, a new thigh-long frock coat for the week and a pair of old, tattered tweed pants that had been altered and patched with scraps from expensive shops. Pete had worn the same pants since he was born, and he would die protecting them. Having known the Boy for four years--longer than any other boy—he recognized the flush in the Boy’s cheeks. “Hey, heard Scotty almost beat you.” His friend’s lips and jaws were taught. “Hey, low-glum. You won. Didn’t you?” Finally, the Boy blinked and nodded. Pete sighed, “Bloomin’ gods, what happened in there? Did they do something gang-ish, those little brats?”

The Boy shook his head and scratched it. “Nothin’. They wouldn’t wait,” he said, stuffing the moneybag in his pocket and wiping his wrestling hand on his trousers. “Sorry, Pete. I’ll make them wait next time. Gods, Slime Nose smeared all that cuck on me. And my bee stinger hurts.”

Once they left the low concrete room, the sunny, fishy smells of the sea enveloped Pete and the Boy tenfold. Temple Hill was one of the few places in Pomirus City without cobbled paths. Anyone getting anywhere on Temple Hill, in fact, had to pick through the palms and wheat plots that speckled its surface. Not at all in the mood for walking around the plants, the dusty gang led by Sledgehammer trudged straight down and off the grass of Temple Hill and onto Temple Street, which harbored green and brown-painted medicine shops, some with creaky porches and others sitting as low as the gray and jasper cobblestones. The Gods’ Incense Shop emitted ringlets of blue smoke from a thin tin straw of a chimney. Last-minute visitors before a Temple session lined the street, and two mage healers’ houses marked its end, which melted into the rest of the city.

Beyond that, the cobbles turned concrete. Children dared to fool around the streets and chase pigeons in their sooty, rusty clothes before following their dusty parents back to the ports, Farmland sector, or mill to which they belonged. Out here lived the clamor outside the Temple’s magic barrier. Out here, Pomirus City had inhaled and choked upon a new industrial age.

By the time the Boy had finished telling Pete about his match with Slime Nose, the gang had retreated to an alley at the end of Temple Street, and dusty students, separate from clean brats, had said their goodbyes and dashed off of the stone cobbles and into the noisy flow of foot and wheel traffic. “So Sledgehammer wasn’t afraid of you?” asked Pete. The two of them paused at the edge of Temple Street, where the mass of workers, doctors, and wagons swarmed on the other side. “I would have squeezed the oil out of his skin, if that pile of bones went at my mother like that. I'm surprised at you, Morin. You’re bigger than he is.”

“He’s still a gang leader.” The Boy smiled. “I think I’ll have enough trouble from our teacher when he sees his desk all wrecked--again.”

“Hey, who’s that?” Pete nodded at a tall, hoary fisherman in overalls leaning against the porch rails of a nearby shop. Morin took one look at the man’s stubbly chin and oily hair... and looked away. “Morin, let’s go. I think it’s Farlain.”

Morin nodded. “I saw hair just like while I was losin', in the window behind Slimy Nose.” Good thing he can’t hear from across the street. The fisherman looked up, raising a savage panic inside the Boy's heart. “Holy gods...”

“Oh gods, you’re a goner,” said Pete. “You’re a goner, bloomin’ gods...”

Facing his friend, Morin saw Pete was pale and breathing faster. “What do you mean?” he said. “Pete--” With one grab of Morin’s shirt collar, both of them were lurching forward into the crowd. “What’d he want with me? Pete!” Morin shouted as he was dragged through the masses.