Читать книгу Red Sister онлайн | страница 34

‘Raymel!’ The voices around her echoed the cries of the mob.

In the ring he looked a heavily-built man with thick blond hair, naked save for the white cloth bound around his groin, his skin gleaming with oil, the muscles of his stomach in sharp relief, showing each band divided from the next. Nona had glimpsed him wandering the hall earlier in the day and knew that he was enormous, taller even than Maya, and moving with none of her awkward blunder. Raymel prowled, a killer’s confidence in each motion. The man was a gerant prime. In the attic’s dimness Nona had learned the code that Partnis and Giljohn had used when selling her. The range ran from touch through half-blood and prime to full-blood. A touch could be thought of as quarter-blood and a prime as three-quarters. For gerants, primes often made the best fighters, full-bloods though rarer still and larger were too slow – though perhaps they just said that at the Caltess as they had none to show.

‘You’ll see something now!’ A girl’s voice, excited, at Nona’s left.

Marten had explained that any hopeful wishing to win a fight purse, or even to join the Caltess, could present themselves on all-comers’ night and for a crown they might pit themselves against Partnis’s stable.

‘Raymel will kill them,’ Saida said, awestruck.

‘He won’t.’ Even shouting above the roar Marten managed to sound scornful. ‘He’s paid to win. He’ll put on a show. Killing’s not good for business.’

‘Except when it is.’ Another voice close at hand.

‘Raymel does what he wants.’ The girl to Nona’s left. ‘He might kill someone.’ She sounded almost hungry for it.

A challenger entered the ring: a bald man, fat and powerful, the hair on his back so thick and black as to hide his skin. He had arms like slabs of meat – perhaps a smith given to swinging a hammer every day. Nona couldn’t see his face.

‘Doesn’t Partnis tell Raymel—’

‘No one tells Raymel.’ The girl cut Saida off. ‘He’s the only highborn to step into a ring in fifty years. Regol said so. You don’t tell the highborn what to do. The money’s nothing to him.’