Venture Unleashed (The Venture Books) Read online

  She sniffed. “That’s what Master said. Oh, he can’t wait to see you either. You’d better hurry in and say hello to him.”

  Venture was barely through the kitchen when Grant came to him and grasped his hand in a firm shake, clapping his other hand onto his shoulder. They sat in the den and talked like they used to, and it was good and strange to be home again.

  “Venture,” Grant said, rubbing his hands over the padded arms of his chair and taking on a serious tone, “there are new rumors about Wisecarver. About Longlake.”

  Venture frowned at the mention of Wisecarver, Representative of Springriver County, and Prowess Longlake, his Crested friend and former High Judge. “I know they’re back at it. What have they told to you, sir?” he said protectively.

  Nothing had been made public yet; the rumors were circulating only among a few at the top of the fighting world. Venture doubted he would’ve known anything about them himself if he weren’t training with Richland’s current champion. Grant wouldn’t be aware of Longlake’s plan unless Longlake or Wisecarver had contacted him themselves.

  “Don’t worry about me. I can handle things here.”

  “What about business?” The luxury resorts Grant owned catered to people of Society, many of them friends of Cresteds, some of them Crested themselves.

  “I provide services for my clientele like no one else does. This hasn’t changed that.”

  Venture wasn’t so sure about that. Cresteds enjoyed special privileges as the descendants of the greatest warriors of the old Wartimes—privileges based on that history as well as the popular belief that this highest class, who trained only among themselves and closely guarded the secrets of their knowledge, could protect the rest of Richland in a way that they never could themselves. The increasing skill of Uncrested fighters and the growing popular adoration for the Uncrested champions threatened that belief.

  “But they’re still pressuring you, sir. Maybe pressuring your patrons, too.”

  “I only brought it up so I could assure you that you still have my full support. When your mother came to work for me, I promised to have you trained for a suitable career. And this seems to be the career that suits you, whether it flies in the face of Society’s expectations or not. But it’s only right to let you know the risk for you, before you decide how to proceed. You’ve heard that they want to do away with the Championship?”

  “They’ll never do it. It’s too popular. What does everyone have an opinion about, aside from who’s the best fighter, who’ll win the next Championship?”

  “But the people only vote directly on local legislation. For national matters, we have to rely on our representatives. Only time will tell how many of them care more for silver than for being reelected. The Cresteds may not like to involve themselves publicly in such debates, and they might prefer to say that these are Uncrested ideas, not theirs, but they have deep pockets.”

  Venture got up from his cushion and started to pace. “Once they get rid of the Championship—”

  “And disband the fighting Commission and every competition it oversees.”

  “They’ll have crippled the sport, beyond . . .” Venture lifted his hands, then let them drop to his sides. If that happened, there would be no career for Venture. No hope for a Champion’s prize. No hope of ever being a man with the means to court a lady like Jade.

  “They’d find it easier then, to outlaw competition, as it would be unregulated, more dangerous. But—it may never happen, any of it,” Grant said. “There are men among the Cresteds, wiser men, who have no desire to enflame the public against them. Perhaps the others will listen to them.”

  Thunder roared and lightning cracked, followed by a fierce pelting of rain against the roof. The dog, Lightning, cowered in a corner and bared her teeth at the storm, fur standing on end. The horses snorted and stamped their feet and Venture gently shushed and patted them. He was glad for the sturdy walls and the well-maintained roof of the stable. The cattle barn was probably leaking now; Grant had already told him he’d be working on its roof this week.

  He was also glad for the storm, which suited his mood. He couldn’t get his worries about the Crested opposition out of his mind. And then there was Jade. It was afternoon already, and there hadn’t been a mention of her name, not a glimpse of her, and he hadn’t had the nerve to ask after her. They’d both promised to have nothing to do with each other beyond what was proper between a lady and her father’s servant, in exchange for Justice’s consent to let Venture be a fighter. But everyone else had been eager to see him, to talk to him. It wouldn’t have been difficult for her to do the same, promise or no promise.

  Venture carried on with cleaning the tack—until the stable door flew open. The giddy shrieks and giggles of girls blew in with the wet wind. He straightened up abruptly, hung the bridle on the wall, and stepped out of the tack room to have a look. There, backs pressed against the stable door they had just pushed shut—as though it took a great effort to keep it there—were two very wet girls, shivering and shaking with laughter. The taller redhead took a deep breath, then looked over at the other girl, whose long, dripping locks hung over her entire face like the head of a mop, and shrieked again with uncontrollable laughter.

  “I think my dress is actually melted,” the mop-headed girl heaved between giddy near-sobs.

  At the sound of her voice, Lightning barked and Venture stopped mid-breath. Jade flipped her head down and then back, shaking the tangled web of sopping hair over her shoulders. She raked the remaining strands off her face with her fingers. Her eyes danced out over the bales of hay, and came to rest on him.

  “Venture!” Jade clapped one hand to her chest, the other over her gaping mouth.

  “Hello, Miss.” He gave her a little bow, and surprised himself by having the presence of mind to give another to the other young lady.

  “Jade, who’s this?” the redhead asked, a little calmer, but giggling still.

  “Venture Delving, Miss. I’m a servant in this house.” Though he dared not step nearer, with his pants stained and his boots caked with manure, he introduced himself, for Jade seemed unable to speak.

  Lightning nudged at Jade’s skirt, and Jade patted her head distractedly, but her eyes never left Venture.

  “I haven’t seen you before. Are you new?” The other girl eyed him with interest.

  “No, Miss, I’ve just been away for a while.”

  “I’m Jade’s cousin, Tempest. Visiting from Mossy Knoll.”

  Venture remembered her now, though she seemed not to remember him. She’d visited twice before, once when he was about six, and again when he was ten. She was about a year older than Jade, if he remembered right.

  “Pleased to meet you Miss,” Venture said politely, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off Jade.

  Her fine, tailored gown, in its wetness, clung all the more tightly to her body. Drenched as it was, she was right; it did seem to be practically melting into her figure—a figure he found familiar, but at the same time strikingly, captivatingly new. She was still slender, but her once skinny parts were now rounded, firmer, stronger.

  He knew he had to stop staring at her, so he turned his back to the girls. “I’ll go get you ladies some towels or something. Maybe some dry cloaks?”

  “No, wait.”

  Jade reached out for his arm, and he had no choice but to face her. The imploring of her eyes and the spark of her touch dove into him, rousing once again that brand of recklessness only she seemed able to incite.

  “Don’t do that. Just stay here.”

  “Yes, if you go after our cloaks we’ll be found out!” said Tempest.

  “Found out?”

  “We’re on the run. From an incredibly boring party.”

  “We’re supposed to be at the Fords’,” Jade said sheepishly.

  “We told Herald it was canceled, and sent him to town on an errand instead,” Tempest snickered.

  “Grandmother will kill us when she finds out we didn’t go. S
he’s in the house, fighting a cold.”

  Tempest rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. What can she really do to us?”

  “It’s not that,” Jade said softly. She didn’t bother to continue. Tempest wasn’t listening anyway.

  Venture caught Jade’s eye. I know, he told her with his look. As much as she wanted to rebel against her role as a young lady of Society, she loved her father and her grandmother, Rose, who’d done her best to fill in when Jade’s mother passed away. Such a bold, public defiance of their wishes was very unlike Jade.

  Jade’s already flushed cheeks blushed pinker below her lowered eyes, so Venture turned to Tempest.

  “Where have you girls been, then?” he said. Then, remembering his place, he silently cursed himself for asking such a question at all, and for not even calling them ladies.

  Tempest seemed to enjoy his curiosity too much to notice, though. “Lurking around in the woods, getting into mischief,” she said.

  “We saw the clouds, and started heading this way.”

  “But you saw them too late, I see.” Venture nodded at their drenched clothes.

  Tempest laughed, and Jade smiled at him, regaining her usual confidence. “How have you been, Vent?”

  “I’ve been training hard, but doing very well, thank you, Miss.”

  “Oh, you’re the fighter! The one who trains with Starson, the Champion! I’ve heard Uncle Grant talk about you.”

  “You have, Miss?”

  “Oh, yes. Come, sit down and let’s talk.” She plopped down on a bale of hay, pulled Jade with her, and patted the spot next to them.

  “Tempest—” Jade protested.

  “Oh, come on. I’m sure Venture won’t mind taking a break from his work to tell us a story or two.”

  He hesitated, then took a seat across from the girls instead of beside them. “All right, Miss. But there isn’t much to tell. Not much that young ladies would be interested in anyway.”

  “Oh, but I find it so fascinating, you practicing with all the best fighters, traveling all over the nation. Tell us about the places you’ve been.”

  “Tempest, we’re going to get Venture into trouble.”

  But Venture, now getting over the shock of this new, nearly-woman Jade, and seeing that Tempest was more intrigued than repulsed by him, was in better command of himself, and couldn’t resist the opportunity to sit for awhile and look at Jade.

  “It’s all right, Miss, I can handle a little trouble.” At the moment he didn’t care one bit about being the man of honor his mother, a devout follower of the Atranian faith, had taught him to be, or about keeping his word to Justice.

  He noted the flush in Jade’s cheeks at his remark. As he entertained the girls with the story of where he’d been and what he’d done, starting with his unexpected experiences at Champions Center, he tried to catch her eye. He told them about his stay in the capital, Founders Rock, a city neither had been to since they were small girls.

  “One morning, I woke up, and even though Dasher saw to it that we had a good room at Regal’s—”

  “Regal’s Respite House?” Tempest interrupted, preparing to be impressed.

  “Yes, Miss. We sleep on floors or bunks most of the time, but in Founders Rock Dasher wanted to be comfortable before the biggest competition of the year. It was a real treat, but even at Regal’s, it was so suffocatingly hot and smelly, I jumped out of bed in the morning and ran to the window, and stuck my head outside, I was so desperate for some fresh air. But you wouldn’t believe what I smelled when I stuck my head out the window.”

  “What?”

  “Sheep. A whole flock of sheep bumping up against the buildings and baa-ing, even more confused than sheep usually are, looking like they were even more desperate for a breath of fresh air than I was.”

  Both of the girls laughed. When Tempest laughed, her eyes scrunched closed, and Jade looked right at him for that wonderful instant. Tempest’s laughter died down and Jade looked away again. It was a good thing she did, for he didn’t have the will to do it himself.

  He told them how Dasher had explained that the sheep were on their way to the City Green. The green in Founders Rock was much like city greens all over the nation, but only the City Green at Founders Rock underwent a dramatic transformation every Summer’s Second Month—the erecting of the All-Richland Absolute Fighting Championship arena.

  This happened in a series of processions, starting with a local shepherd, who brought his sheep in, through the narrow stone-paved streets to the Green, for the sole purpose of getting the grass under control. Then, from the massive city storage house several blocks away, came wagons loaded with logs carved to fit together to form the arena’s walls, various poles and ropes, and more canvas than he had ever seen, to form the tent-like roof.

  Then there came stacks of flooring—carefully hewn wood planks nailed together over a sort of shallow box-like base, just the right size to be carted through the streets, so that they were like many pieces of a puzzle. When all fitted together, they formed what looked like any permanent wood floor. Next came wooden bleachers and stairs—enough for twenty thousand. Wooden partitions were brought in, to separate spaces on the ends of the rectangular structure into rooms for the fighters to be processed and to rest.

  The mats were like those in every fighting center, made of straw, neatly and tightly woven into rectangular slabs, half a palm’s breadth thick, each piece about as long as a man, their width half their length. These, however, were not stained, worn, or dingy like those Venture was accustomed to fighting on. Each slab was covered with a clean new piece of white canvas, stretched taut over the front and stitched securely to the back. There were three competition areas in the arena, and these were formed when the mats were laid into three wooden frames on the floor, just deep enough to hold the mats and keep them from shifting around on impact. All this, he described to the girls in great detail.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it—all those perfect, white mats. I kept thinking how I’d like to be out there one day, to be one of the first matches of the Championship and leave my mark on it with somebody else’s blood.”

  Tempest let out a little gasp.

  “I’m sorry, Miss,” he said quickly, “I shouldn’t say such things.”

  He was an idiot. He’d been so absorbed in the memory of it, he’d just spoken his mind, as though they weren’t young ladies. Now he’d given Jade the impression that he liked to beat people to a bloody pulp. He preferred chokes precisely because they were swift and clean and they caused little damage. He struck his opponents only to the extent that it helped him get into position to win the way he liked to, or, if given the situation, it was the only practical thing to do. It was only those perfect white mats, and the knowledge that they wouldn’t stay white for long, that made him think of it. He was just opening his mouth to apologize again when Jade spoke up.

  “We don’t mind. Tell us about the fights, Vent, please.”

  That was the Jade he knew. The Jade who wanted to be a part of the world of fighting. His world. The desperation he’d felt to be near her again, all those long months, came flooding back, even though she was so close. Because she was so close.

  “I’d like to, Miss, but I’d go on and on, and I really have to get back to work now. Ladies, if you’ll excuse me.”

  He hadn’t even gotten to telling them about all the tents and booths set up around the arena, the vendors selling all sorts of delights, but it wasn’t fun anymore to sit here and talk with her, not when all he could think was that he couldn’t have her.

  “Will you get our cloaks for us now, so we can go in and confess?” Tempest said. “It’s still pouring out there.”

  “Sure.” Remembering his place, Venture added, “Of course, Miss.”

  He fetched cloaks for the girls and darted back to the stable. He was standing in the shelter of the eaves, his hand ready at the door handle, when Tempest’s words, from the other side, stopped him.

  “Has that boy
always looked so tempting?”

  “He’s always been handsome, yes,” Jade answered tentatively, “but he’s—grown since I saw him last.”

  “How old is he?”

  “What does it matter? He’s just a simple servant boy, not worth thinking about at all.”

  “Oh, well, I suppose you’re right.”

  Tempest said something else then that was such a mixture of a whisper and a giggle that he didn’t catch her words. Jade’s reply, though, was clear.

  “I doubt it. He’s not very bright at all.”

  Jade’s words came crashing at him hard, heavy, and sharp. Not very bright? Simple? A servant boy, yes. And dismissing her cousin’s remarks for the sake of propriety, that he could understand. But simple, that was unnecessary. Was that what she really thought of him now?

  He ought to have waited for a moment, just long enough for the ladies not to suspect he’d been there listening, and gone in and given them their cloaks, as though nothing had happened; it was what a good servant would do. But the fighter in him roared with wounded pride and he wheeled around, ran back into the house, put the cloaks away, and ran back out, not to the stable, but to the chopping block, where he viciously hacked firewood in the rain, leaving the girls to wait and to wonder where he’d gone.

  Venture slid out the sturdy iron pins, releasing the end gate of the wagon with a clatter.

  “Come on, Bounty, can’t you lift it up a little?” he said as the younger servant boy struggled with the heavy sack of flour, fresh from the miller. “Stop! Stop! You’ll bust it all over the place!”

  A pale cloud billowed up from the wagon floor.

  “Who do you think I am, Mightyman?”

  Venture laughed at the image of Bounty as the legendary hero of Atran. “Sorry.” He scrambled up into the wagon.

  Venture went down on one knee and put his shoulder into it, hoisting the bag up lengthwise over that shoulder. He rose, carried it to the end gate, and then, with the imagined screams of Earnest in his head—Great gods, you’ll blow out your knees!—he jumped. He stumbled back and had to lower his knee down, but soon he was standing steady again.