“Justice,” he finally managed to say, “I know you love me.”
CHAPTER NINE
Venture barely heard Justice knock on the wall next to his curtained-off nook and call, “You up, buddy?” as he did every weekday before leaving for work.
Venture answered with his usual, “Yup,” but then slipped right back into slumber.
He felt a jolt, realized Justice had whacked the back of his head with the flat of his hand. His eyes snapped open. Justice tugged him by the twisted blankets, which Venture had fitfully thrown off and pulled back on countless times, owing to the conflict between the growing heat of the summer morning and his habitual inability to sleep without being at least partially wrapped up. Justice’s yank on the tangled mess of quilt and sweaty feet and rumpled hair sent him tumbling in a heap onto the groaning, dusty wood plank floor.
“Justice!” Grace said. “What are you doing to him?”
“Up now?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m up, all right?” He moaned, pushed himself up, and unwound the bedclothes from his sluggish limbs.
“It’s an hour past sunrise! I have to go, and you’re going to get a thrashing.”
“Oh, no.”
He’d overslept more than half an hour. He’d tossed and turned all night thinking about Jade, and then fallen asleep just before dawn. He would have to do without breakfast now, and still he’d be late. He rushed to put his clothes on, grab the worn bag Grace shoved at him, and run, rather than walk, the mile-and-a-half down the hillside to training.
Venture reached Beamer’s in record speed, sweating and clutching his side. Warm-ups were well underway. He shouldered the door to the training room open, keeping his eyes down. He set his bag down as quickly and quietly as possible, stuffed his pendant inside it, and brushed the dirt off his bare feet, then rubbed hurriedly with a towel at the stubborn bits clinging to the moisture under his toes.
Venture knew what was required of him. He began doing push-ups, all the way down and all the way up, his back perfectly straight. Fifty push-ups for every exercise he’d missed. Altogether, two hundred. Few men could even claim to be able to do two hundred push-ups without stopping; fewer could actually perform the task to Beamer’s standards. As Venture pushed up, his eyes locked with Colt’s. Colt smirked and nudged Border, who was doing leg-lifts next to him. Venture was going to have to do those too, along with all the other exercises he’d missed, once he had the push-ups out of the way. And the longer he took to do his push-ups, the more exercises he’d miss . . . and the more push-ups he’d have to do. It didn’t pay to be late to Beamer’s.
Venture did another push-up, and felt his blisters burst open, then the raw skin underneath rub off with the friction against the canvas. No matter how much care they took, grit found a way to be tracked onto the mat, and now it was grinding into his broken skin. He tried not to think about the pain, about Border and Colt. He focused on counting.
One hundred-seven, one hundred eight . . .
“Goodview! What’s the matter with your boy?”
“I don’t know, Coach.”
Beamer and Earnest approached, while he continued doing his push-ups, praying to be ordered to stop.
“Up, Delving. You’re bleeding all over my mat.”
“I’m Sorry, sir,” he said, although there were already plenty of old red-brown stains on the mat. New, bright red smears streaked the dingy canvas under and around where his hands had been. Blood stained the front of his shirt where his chest had met the mat as well.
Beamer nodded at Earnest, who returned the gesture.
“Let’s see your hands, Vent,” Earnest said.
Venture held them out, his arms trembling with exertion and pain.
“How did you get mat burns like that just from doing push-ups?”
“I had some blisters before I started.”
“From what?” Beamer said.
“From working this weekend, sir.” Venture felt the heat of embarrassment in his cheeks. He’d brought his status to the attention of the whole center again; everyone was watching. A soft ripple of laughter came from Border and Colt’s direction.
Beamer raised his bushy eyebrows, then said to Earnest, “Get him fixed up and get this mat cleaned up. I want to see him in my office in five minutes.”
Earnest glowered at Venture. His tardiness, coupled with the bloody hands, which made Earnest appear neglectful, reflected poorly on his trainer. Heavy-hearted, Venture followed him to the little alcove where the healing supplies were kept.
“Why didn’t you have me wrap you before you started? Now I have to clean up you and the mat.” Earnest poured a stinging, vinegary concoction the boys called
liquid punishment
over his palms and rubbed it in roughly with a towel.
Venture fought back a gasp and forced himself to hold his hands open. “I’m sorry.”
He knew better than to complain or to point out the trouble he would’ve invited had he taken the time to wrap his hands. Earnest was mad enough already; the excruciating absence of his usual care in treating his wounds made that clear.
“The gods only know what Beamer’s got planned for you. Better start praying to Felsan for mercy.”
Earnest capped the bottle and tossed it aside, and Venture, who had no intention of calling on the god of pain and death for leniency, let out a breath of relief—until Earnest began to pull a long strip of cotton wrapping around his hands, tightly, mercilessly.
Earnest moved to tie off the second hand, but Venture couldn’t take it anymore. He pulled it back. “I got it.” He took the end of the wrap in his teeth and pulled it tight. “I’ll clean up the mat.” He wiped the sweat from his face with the back of a bandaged hand.
“No, you’ll go in there and find out what the blazes Beamer wants you to do, and whatever it is, you’ll do it right or I’m the one who’s going to hear about it. He’s waiting for you.”
Beamer leaned back in his office chair and folded his long, muscular arms behind his close-cropped, graying head. “Why were you late this morning?”
“Sir, I’m sorry. I overslept.”
“You overslept? Why?” Beamer leaned forward. His pale blue eyes probed Venture sharply.
“Why, sir?”
“Yes, why? You’ve never been late before. Have you just now decided to become lazy?”
“No, sir. It won’t happen again.”
Beamer nodded. Venture wondered what that meant, but remained silent.
“How many boys do you think are in that room right now?” Beamer gestured in the direction of the main training room.
“About a hundred, sir?”
“One hundred-eight. How many boys do you think I recruited to come here?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“One. You. And when you were just eleven years old. About the same age as your master’s daughter at that time, right?”
“Sir?”
“Grant Fieldstone brought his little daughter to me. Wanted to enroll her in self-defense classes immediately. An unusual request coming from the father of such a young, such a privileged girl.” Beamer spread his palms on the desk, then said quietly, gravely, “He told me what happened. It’s hard to imagine such a young boy trying to defend her, not even stopping for a broken arm or broken ribs.”
Venture stared at Beamer, stunned, sick at the memory. For a long time, he couldn’t speak. When he did, he looked down at his whitened, tightly wrapped hands. “I didn’t know you knew about all that.”
“‘All that’ is why you’re here. They were all what—three years older than you? And when help arrived, you were standing on your feet, with a broken arm and a broken nose, and cracked ribs, not begging them to leave you alone, no. Screaming at them that you were going to kill them all.”
“Sir, I wasn’t trying to be brave. I just really did want to kill them. At the time, I mean—”
“I think rage was well-placed and downright useful, just the right thing in that particular situation, don’t you?”
Venture couldn’t answer. Rage. Rage was exactly what he felt, every time he thought of them. It mattered little that they’d been punished severely. He couldn’t help thinking that it would have gone much differently if they’d tried to attack Jade now. Sometimes that reassured him, knowing what he could do, and sometimes it scared him, wondering what he would do. For a part of him still wanted to kill them all. He hated them, and he hated himself for that, for hatred was a foul thing, too. His mother had taught him that.
“I told Mr. Fieldstone his servant boy had an uncommon fighting spirit that would benefit from training. He agreed. I offered to have you trained free of charge, so long as you demonstrated enough potential, but he wouldn’t have it. Said he’d like nothing better than to pay your way.”
“Thank you, sir. I’m grateful for all Master Fieldstone has done for me, and to everyone here who teaches me. I’ve been working hard all this time to show it. I promise you, sir, I won’t let you down again. I’ll work even harder—”
“Do you really think you can work harder, Delving?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I hope so. And I hope you’ll be able to fight with those hands, because you’re going to be spending the day with the elite class. Tell Earnest I said he should go with you. Harper will take care of his boys.”
CHAPTER TEN
“He said to do what? Are you sure?”
“He said for me to get over there and get my butt kicked and for you to come clean up the damage. Earnest, I haven’t even eaten today. What am I going to do?”
Earnest crossed his arms and stared Venture down for the second time that morning. “You are not going in there with an attitude like that. That’s not who you are. You’re Venture Delving. I’m going to wrap your hands a little tighter, and you’re going to do whatever those boys do in there, and you’re going to make it look easy, no matter how hard it is. You’re going to hang in there until someone tells you to stop, because—” Earnest took Venture’s head between his palms, forcing him to look at him. “Because I know you can do this Vent, and I want Beamer to know it too.”
Venture paused at the door to the elites’ training room. How many times had he stood there and watched through the little window in the door, wishing he could be one of them? Even the youngest among those boys had nearly a year of elite training and tournament competition that he’d missed out on, that he’d never have. He’d thought he might still have a chance against them, but—this might be his only opportunity to face them, and he had to do it in such a pitiable condition. If he couldn’t pull this off, he’d never hear the end of it.
“So it’s not the best day for this.” Earnest thunked him on the back. “You’re starving, you’re tired, your hands are a mess. Forget about all that and be a fighter again. Just for today, let me see you be a fighter again.”
Earnest opened the door and Venture followed him into the elites’ training room. The air was even thicker, hotter, inside than it was in the rest of the center; this room was much smaller and the eighteen elite fighters grappling all around him had more energy between them than the hundred others he had just left behind in the main training room.
Beamer nodded to him expectantly as he came in. He blew his whistle and called out, “Everybody line up, smallest to tallest.”
“Beamer finally have the sense to realize you’ll never be a guard?” Colt, now fifteen and all muscle, bumped Venture’s shoulder, hard. “You don’t belong here either, except to get a nice beating before you say good-bye to this center for good.”
Venture tensed. He kept his mouth clenched shut. He’d get his chance to fight Colt, and he’d show him exactly what Venture Delving could be.
“Listen up!” Beamer said. “We’re going to do twelve three-minute rounds. Throwing and grappling only. Delving, you get to start with the first boy here. Everybody else choose whichever partner you like. The next round, Delving, you’ll take the next tallest boy, and then the next. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Beamer gave a nod to one of the trainers, who turned over the three-minute sand timer in his hand. Then he gave the whistle a short, sharp blow.
The first boy, slightly smaller and lighter than Venture, he grabbed at the wrist and around the waist. He flung him over his own head, to the mat. There Venture choked him once, twice, and the third time the boy passed out just as he raised his hand to tap.
The next two boys he threw with no problem. He pinned one down for the duration of the match. The other, he armlocked. The tap-out took a while, but it came. His hands were on fire, but with that accomplishment, his mood rose. None of the other fourteen-year-olds had managed to do more than make him stumble. His fourth, fifth, and sixth opponents were tough, but he rode on the high of his success over the other boys, and he handled them well, too, besting them three times for every one time they bested him.
“Three minute break!” called Beamer, and he went to correct another boy’s technique.
Venture slumped against the wall with some of the other boys. His chest heaved. The others were tired, but, accustomed to so many demanding rounds of sparring, not so worn out and short of breath as he was. Being in shape wasn’t the same as being in fighting shape. That was what Earnest always said.
“Vent!” Earnest called to him from the edge of the mat.
“Yeah?” Venture jogged over to him.
“Stop holding that wall up,” he whispered as he began to rewrap Venture’s hands.
“Huh?” Venture winced at the tightening of his wraps.
“Don’t make that face at me. That’s the face of an injured man, not the face of a champion. See Nick?”
Nick stood up straight, arms folded calmly across his chest, patiently waiting for the break to end.
Venture nodded wearily.
“He looks like a champion. Those other guys, slouching around, do they look like champions?”
“No.”
“You’re doing great.” Earnest smacked him on the back. “Now get over there and look like a champion. And keep the pressure on those bigger guys. Make them work. Don’t let them make you into a rag doll.”
Venture nodded and held his head up. That much he could manage, for now.
“Everybody ready,” Beamer called. “Face your partners.”