King of Lions

King of Lions

  Malcolm W. Keyes

  Copyright 2012 Malcolm W. Keyes

  Lamppost

  A Dream for Annie

  Fox and the Rest of Us

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Midpoint

  Author

  King of Lions

  by Malcolm W. Keyes

  ~

  Keaton put his hand to his heart, staggered dramatically in a circle, eyes rolling, sucking in desperate gasps of breath, and collapsed into the dirt.

  The little boy with the wooden sword stood mesmerized by his handiwork. When Keaton popped up and opened his eyes, the little boy laughed, looked at this parents, and said, “I beat the King of Lion Class.”

  “You sure did, sweetie,” his mother said, gently leading him away. “Come on. Master Keaton has many other people to see before his day is done.”

  The boy looked at Keaton sadly.

  “You, sir,” Keaton said, “are a fine swordsman.”

  The boy smiled bravely and saluted, the hilt of his sword pressed to his chest. Keaton returned the gesture, and watched as the boy allowed himself to be led away by his mother. The boy moved with a confidence he hadn’t possessed only a minute before, thoughtfully twirling his sword. This was something Keaton loved about the job—empowering the youth, turning the innate human drive to kill into a motivator to excel. One man in the ring meant one man who wasn’t out on the dunes, one man not putting the torch to oasis farms and cutting innocent throats for gold.

  Keaton continued toward Emerick’s table to congratulate him on his retirement. It was only a quarter mile across the floor of the Dome, but it took Keaton nearly a half hour to make the walk, maneuvering through merchant stalls and stopping every few steps to sign autographs for the fight fans who had gathered to celebrate Emerick’s achievements. A few people, representatives of the Speakers and the Parchments mostly, had charcoal sticks that could sketch his likeness in seconds, and Keaton found himself posing majestically with his sword drawn at least half a dozen times.

  When Keaton finally arrived at Emerick’s table, Emerick was already drunk and smiling his smile that made his eyes disappear. His beautiful wife Maya leaned against him, her head on his shoulder, dark hair spilling down his scarred brown arms.

  “King of Lions!” Emerick said. “Take a seat, brother.”

  Keaton and Emerick couldn’t have been more different— Emerick was a huge man with heavy, dark features that identified him a southerner from Oolauka, while Keaton was trim and fair with pink scars instead of brown—but despite their differing lineages, Emerick called Keaton “brother.”

  “You’re enjoying your party, I see,” Keaton said.

  “Oh, too much,” Emerick said, “but they tell me I’ve earned it.”

  Keaton shook Emerick’s massive hand. “That you have, my friend.”

  “Kicking people in the leg,” Emerick said. “That’s what this whole party is for. One strong right kick and the ability to keep my damn hands up.”

  “There’s more to your game than that, and you know it.”

  “Maybe,” Emerick said. “You done with all your hibbity-shit for the Parchments?”

  “Sadly, no,” Keaton said. “I just came by to congratulate you. I’ve still got the stare down with Mantis—”

  Emerick grumbled something that almost certainly ended in “prick.”

  “—and I’ve got an exhibition later against Rosetta. She’s an up and comer in the Fox Class. They just want us to dance around for a few rounds and get the crowd excited. She’s got a fight coming up in a few weeks that could put her in title contention against the Queen of Foxes.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen Rosetta fight. She’s an Orthodox stylist. Light blade and shield. Athletic and smoking easy on the eyes—if Maya will allow me to say so—but her technique is still coming along.”

  “It should be fun,” Keaton said, then added, “Maya, you’re looking beautiful today, as always.”

  Maya gave him a sleepy, half-intoxicated smile and touched his arm. “Charmer,” she said.

  “Where are the girls?” Keaton asked.

  “With the nursemaid,” Maya said. “Riding ponies and trying to net fish, if I had to guess.”

  Emerick leaned forward, exaggeratedly excited. “I almost forgot, Keats! I’ve been studying the Current with some stiffs from the Order.”

  Keaton stifled the urge to laugh. “You? The Current? First swordsmanship, then pit fighting, now this? Ancients in the sky, Emerick, why?”

  “I’ve got a fair amount of talent,” Emerick said. “It was a surprise to me, too. Last night, I manifested a Cloud Tether charm strong enough to float an apple across the table to my oldest. She nearly spit her corn across the room!”

  “Looking to tether your own ring, eh?” The transparent fighting ring in the Dome was suspended by the very charm Emerick had described—a much stronger one—so spectators could view the fight from all angles. “Planning to hang it from the ceiling in your den?”

  “No, no such thing,” Emerick said. “I’m done with fighting, and I don’t need reminders hanging in my home. The Current is just something to keep my hands and my head busy.”

  “Don’t play around with that stuff too much,” Keaton said. “It takes two to do the really powerful stuff. Without a Wellspring, you’re drawing on your own life.”

  “What’s a few minutes of life here and there?” Emerick said.

  “Tell that to your wife when you’re on your deathbed, and she’s saying, ‘Stay with me, Emerick!’ And you’ll have to say, ‘Sorry, Maya. I wanted to watch the apple float.’”

  “This from the guy who fights in death matches three times a year,” Emerick said.

  Keaton smiled. “I don’t have a family to consider.”

  “I use a Wellspring in practice, Keats. Don’t get your shorts in a wad.”

  “Why don’t you have family yet?” Maya asked. “If you put out the word, they’d line up for miles.”

  “Sweet of you to say, Maya,” Keaton said. “But I’m not interested in sleeping in a pile of lustful academy girls.”

  “Boys then?” Emerick said.

  Keaton pretended to draw his sword, and Emerick threateningly brandished his mug of hard cider. Maya rolled her eyes.

  Keaton wiped spilled cider on his pants. “Well, I better get my—what did you call it?”

  “Hibbity-shit, I believe.”

  “Yes, that—done for the Parchments. People must have their fight news.”

  “Happy politicking, brother,” Emerick said.

  “Congrats on making it out of the fight game alive,” Keaton said.

  “I did that the day I switched from swords to fists,” Emerick said. “I couldn’t do it now, Keaton. Undefeated or dead is no way to live.”

  “Sometimes you don’t have to kill to win,” Keaton said.

  “How did you win your last four fights again?” Emerick said.

  Keaton clenched his jaw. “Heart strike.”

  “There you go.”

  “At this level of competition, you have to be decisive. Any of the top ten guys are too dangerous to play around with. Once that door shuts and the ring lifts off the ground, it’s me or them.”

  “And the guy who comes for your crown is going to have the same mentality, brother. You’re the king of your weight class, and they’re going to want to make a statement. They won’t bleed you out and let the guys from the Order fix you up. They’re going to come in there looking for your heart or your head—if it’s Mantis, it’ll be the head.”

  Keaton nodded. “Thanks for trying to look out for me, Emerick.”

  “Always will,” Emerick said. “And that’s not just the cider talking.”

  ~
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  Keaton had been watching Mantis for a long time. He was a sculpted monster of a man who looked easily large enough to belong in Bear Class. His father had been a member of Angamor’s Academy Guard—just like Keaton had been—and had trained Mantis from a boy to fight in the Swordsman’s Circuit. Mantis was a master of cutting water weight before the weigh-ins, then re-hydrating before the fight. This allowed him to come into the ring noticeably larger than any other Lion Class swordsman. His sheer strength allowed him to do something no other swordsman had ever done: combine the dual weapon configuration with heavy blades. More impressive yet, he was a Riddance style swordsman, a lethal style that focused on aggressive offense and swift deathblows. The result was a perfect record of 13 wins, every last one a first round decapitation. Mantis was a storm in the ring, a brief lightning strike of power and ferocity, ending in a rain of blood.

  Mantis was also Keaton’s next opponent.

  The stare down was sure to be uncomfortable. Keaton liked to keep things professional, shake hands, exchange offers of goodwill which usually meant, in essence, “I won’t kill you if I don’t have to.” But from what Keaton knew of Mantis, this kind of civility was unlikely.

  Keaton arrived a few minutes early, taking time to sign more autographs and smile as people nervously said the things they had rehearsed to say to him. He always tried to put people at ease by making jokes or talking about the origins of their surnames. When amateurs offered to fight him, he would say, “I relent!” and back away, getting a laugh out of the crowd.

  When Mantis arrived, the mood changed. He wore his swords on his shoulders like steel wings. His bare chest was pale, sculpted like stone, and completely without scars. His black hair hung in a ponytail that struck Keaton as mournful somehow, like a weeping willow. Mantis’s eyes, however, were far from mournful—they were hungry.

  When they were both on the dais, they drew their swords and posed. Mantis leaned in until his cold, angular face filled Keaton’s vision. Keaton usually smiled inside when opponents did this—if this were a match, they’d be giving him every vulnerable part of their body—but Mantis's looming presence unsettled him in a way he hadn’t expected.

  “I have waited for this,” Mantis said. “All my life.”

  Keaton had never heard Mantis speak before. His voice was educated, young, and strangely likable. Keaton didn’t allow that to lower his guard. This was a part of the fight, the part that threatened to humanize his opponent, making them more than a body and a set of skills. For all Keaton knew, Mantis had practiced this measured way of speaking for just that purpose; to create doubt.

  Mantis’s hungry eyes took any such doubt away. This man was a killer, maybe even in a way Keaton was not.

  “It should be a good fight,” Keaton said politely. He didn’t break eye contact, not once, but neither did he scowl or threaten with his eyes.

  When the Parchment writers and the Speakers were done sketching and dictating and marveling, the stare down ended. Keaton put out his hand to shake, and Mantis moved to take it, then abruptly drew his swords and swung around as if to cut Keaton in half. The crowd cried out. Keaton’s sword was in his hand without a thought, raised to defend against the strike. Mantis’s swords stopped inches from his own. Keaton had felt the wind from them, seen the immense weight of them as they swung, and couldn’t imagine the strength it had taken to stop them so precisely.

  Mantis lightly touched his blades to Keaton’s sword as if making a toast, then smiled a white grin that reminded Keaton of a jackal. The ring of the steel slowly faded into silence. Then Mantis was gone, hopping down from the dais and striding away through the crowd.

  Keaton gathered his composure and smiled at the guards that were nervously gathering, standing between him and the departing Mantis.

  “It’s all right,” he told them. “He’s just trying to sell tickets.”

  Keaton sheathed his sword and noticed, with some surprise, that his hands were shaking.

  ~

  Keaton was so preoccupied trying to get his mind right after the stare down with Mantis that he came into the exhibition with Rosetta somewhat distracted. It was just an exhibition, after all, with training swords instead of steel ones, and should make for an easy evening warm-up.

  The crowd roared as Keaton made his way to the ring in the center of the Dome. Already standing across from him, Rosetta had her hair dyed red and pulled back in a short ponytail that stuck straight out, the muscles of her stomach working like a machine with each breath. The ornate leather around her chest and shoulders groaned as she stretched her limbs. Keaton saluted her, raising his sword to see if she wanted to touch blades before the bout, a show of respect. Rosetta’s gaze was fiery and hard. Her jaw clenched and she shook her head, once.

  Two women—elites from the Order of the Course—stood together at the ringside, the Wellspring funneling energy from the Current to the Conduit, who danced weightlessly, manipulating the flow with her body. In moments, a cloud formed over the ring, swirling like ink in water. Tendrils snaked down from the cloud and took hold of the ring’s supports, lifting it high into the center of the Dome where it would hang for the duration of the fight. As the floor of the ring became transparent—allowing spectators below to view the fight as clearly as those above—Keaton watched Rosetta begin to bounce on the balls of her feet, loosening up for the fight.

  She plans to come out swinging, Keaton thought. This isn’t an exhibition to her. It’s a chance to show how she matches up with a men’s division crown-holder.

  If she wanted to find out what she was made of, then Keaton would respect her enough to let her try. He felt his mind change, that peculiar switch that flipped before each of his fights. Distractions blew away like dust, and very little was left in his head. He was mostly his body now, and the things it knew.

  Keaton was known as a Riddance fighter—like Mantis—but he was well versed in all the major styles, one of the advantages of an academy education and service in the Guard. Riddance wouldn’t be of much use with a wooden sword, and neither really would Orthodox, Rosetta’s professed style. Mau Oolau’s hand-to-hand techniques would serve best, as would Atonement style’s use of disarms, trips, and limb-locks.

  The announcer went on and on, promoting he and Rosetta’s upcoming fights. Keaton watched the way Rosetta moved. She was good and loose with her shield, but she put a lot of weight on her front leg in an effort to keep low. That would be her weak point.

  When the bell sounded, Rosetta charged him, throwing a violent overhand swing with her sword. Keaton slipped it, faked a Riddance-style thrust, and threw his body into a kick. His shin collided with Rosetta’s thigh and she fell. Keaton made as though to pursue, and Rosetta spun back to her feet. The intensity hadn’t left her eyes, but it had changed from a brawler’s rage to a tactician’s calculated coldness.

  That mindset will serve her better, Keaton thought. She’s learning already.

  Her next set of strikes was more precise, feeling her opponent out. Keaton, though, was never where she seemed to expect him, and none of her shots landed clean. When he moved in with some strikes of his own, she tried to counter, and they ended up in a sword lock. Keaton smoothly transitioned into Atonement style, locked up her wrists with his free hand and delivering a light blow to her jaw with his elbow, a Mau Oolau tactic. He expected her to stumble back, but she was a game opponent. She recovered from the blow and put him in a very decent wrist lock of her own, using the shield to tie up his hands with surprising effectiveness. Keaton, though, easily countered and spun away.

  The rest of the first round passed liked this, with Rosetta showing potential, but Keaton clearly winning every exchange. He had an advantage in every area but speed. Rosetta was deadly fast, and if their technique and reach had been equal, Keaton would have found this a very interesting fight.

  The second round began with more back-and-forth Atonement locks. In one attempt to escape, Rosetta’s chest piece came unlaced and fell almost complete
ly open. Men in the crowd whistled at Rosetta as the white swell of her flesh rose and fell beneath loosening laces with each breath she took.

  Keaton politely stepped back to allow Rosetta to refasten her armor, and was surprised when she swung at him, almost catching him off guard.

  “You’re coming undone there,” he said, backing away to avoid another strike.

  “What’s the worst that could happen?” she said. “A few men get riled up and take it out on their wives when they get home. Everybody wins.”

  On the word “wins,” Rosetta spun and planted a spinning back-kick to Keaton’s abdomen that honestly hurt. He smiled through the pain, impressed with her power, and pressed the attack.

  The fight ended in the third round when Keaton managed to maneuver behind her during a grapple, and edged his wooden sword under her throat. She was forced to drop her sword and relinquish the fight.

  Rosetta walked over after doing a few angry laps around the ring, and with sweat dripping from her hair, raised Keaton’s hand. Keaton allowed the crowd to cheer, then raised her hand in return as the ring floated down from its place in the air. Keaton and Rosetta shared a brief embrace then, a sportsmanlike acknowledgment of a game well-played.

  “Thank you,” Rosetta said over the roar of the crowd.

  “For what?”

  “For having enough respect to actually hurt me.”

  “I pulled back a little on the elbow, sorry,” Keaton said with a smile.

  “But not on the leg kicks,” Rosetta said. “I’m going to limp for a week.”

  “Three days at most,” he said.

  The smile Rosetta gave him had a new color in it, a hint of something warm and not quite professional. She opened her mouth to speak, slowly and thoughtfully, as if trying to decide whether or not to actually say what she was thinking.

  Then the crowd was on them, cheering and raising them both up onto shoulders. They both laughed, and Keaton shrugged.

  “You want to have a drink when the Order is done checking us out?” Rosetta shouted over the noise.

  Caught up in the moment, Keaton nodded. “I don’t think their doctors will find anything wrong with me, but sure.”

  Rosetta pretended to kick at him, and he pretended to kick back. The crowd surged with laughter, and like always, Keaton fell into it.