Venture Unleashed (The Venture Books) (20 page)

“That’s right,” Dasher said.

 
Summer took the boy, Drake, by the hand and pulled him back around the corner. But Venture leaned his head around the side of the building. “Hey, you two, you forgot to say hello. I might have to take you upstairs and give you a thrashing.”

“Hello, Mr. Delving,” Summer said dutifully.

But Drake twisted his fingers free of his sister’s grasp and ducked under her arm to get closer to him. “Are you a fighter, Mr. Delving?” His smile revealed a gap where his top front teeth hadn’t yet come in.

“Drake! Don’t ask questions,” his sister scolded him half fearfully, half self-importantly.

“It’s all right. I don’t mind questions. Yes, I’m a fighter.” To Summer he said, “You’re a good sister to look out for your brother and try to make sure he behaves himself.”

“He doesn’t like it, sir, but I’m just trying to spare him a spanking.”

Venture tried not to laugh at this too-honest revelation. “I understand. But either one of you can ask me a question any time you like, and you can say ‘hello’ to me anytime you want, even if I don’t say it to you first.”

“Yes, sir,” they both answered. Drake smiled, but Summer looked skeptical.

“Harder, Vent,” Earnest said.

Venture nodded. He blinked against the sting of sweat in his eyes, locked up tighter, stepped in faster, drove off his rear foot, threw Dash harder.

“Still not enough.”

Earnest shook his head, but Venture hid a half-grin. Chance, sitting in the corner, out of the way, narrowed his eyes at Earnest on Venture’s behalf, but Venture had caught the gleam in Earnest’s eye. It was one of his best. He knew that look. Earnest wanted to see how much better he could make it, wanted to see if perfection itself was possible.
I’ll do it for you, Earnest. I’ll make him fly, and the floor crack when he comes down, and you’ll only be able to say, “Beautiful.”

Venture gave Dasher a hand up and settled back into starting position. But then Dasher jolted, pulled back. “Drake, what are you doing?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the little servant boy lisped toothlessly from the space by the shoe shelves, in front of the mat. “I know I’m not supposed to be watching. I was only waiting, to tell you lunch is ready, sir.”

“Let’s go. I’m starving!” said Earnest, forgetting the perfect throw promised by its predecessor, probably at the thought of a bit more of that perfect wine.

Well, Dash can probably use a break anyway, Vent consoled himself as they filed down the stairs. He could have asked them to wait for one more, but the concentration, the momentum, the moment itself, was already interrupted, already lost. Venture hung back in the barn as his friends walked out into the sunshine. Drake had seated himself on a crate. Swinging his feet and scratching the ears of a favorite gray barn cat, he watched the men pass by.
 

“She have a name?” said Venture.

“Smoky.” Drake ran his hand along the cat’s back to the tip of her tail. “Do you like it, sir, being a fighter?”

“There’s nothing I’d rather do.” Seeing the fascination on the boy’s face, he asked, “Would you like to be a fighter?”

“Me? I’m a bonded servant.”

Venture pulled up a crate and sat down next to him. “So am I.”

“But you can’t.” Drake shook his head. “Bonded servants can’t—“

“That’ll be enough, Drake.” Dash stood in the doorway, regarding the boy sternly.

Drake scrambled to his feet. “Yes, sir.”

Dash nodded toward the open doorway, and Drake obediently ran out, in a scuffle of straw and bits of dust.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Dasher tossed his bag down onto the tile floor of their room.

Venture rubbed his temples. His brain felt just as rattled as his bones from all the travel. “Where are we again?”

“Brown’s Bend,” Earnest said, cracking his neck.

“Right.” He was pretty sure he’d already asked Earnest the name of the village they’d stopped in several times since they’d arrived. It was their last night on the road together, before they went their separate ways.

Dasher plopped himself into a chair and let out an exasperated sigh. “I should just go to Twin Rivers with you three. We never should have left Earthsong.”

“What about your sister?”

He waved his hand. “You don’t know my mother. She’s been trying to get me home for months. Message after message. You just wait. I’ll get there and Heather will have a sniffle.”

“You don’t want to take a chance on something like that, Dash,” Venture said.

“I guess not.”

Through cool spring rains and through the ever-longer sunny days they had trained at Earthsong. The strawberries were red and shining sweetly in the sun, and the raspberries and blackberries dangled in hard green clusters on the sprawling brambles, when Dasher received word that his sister was gravely ill. Venture had urged him to go and see his family, while he and Earnest headed back to Twin Rivers to complete his training for the Championship. So they’d tossed their bags into the carriage and Venture had tossed Drake into the air, and talked of stowing him under the seat. It had been hard to say good-bye to him and all of Earthsong.

Earnest thought that, given the threat, if they had to be without Dasher, and if they couldn’t keep their location secret, it was better to be in Twin Rivers than anywhere else. It would be easier, in a private training room at Beamer’s, to hide the intensity of Venture’s training, to hide the fact that he was uninjured and preparing to fight in the Championship. And if Venture were to be attacked, it was preferable that it be in his hometown, where many of the town guards were former students of Beamer’s. They would be eager to defend the up-and-coming local fighter, the one who brought the reigning champion to their town and their fighting center.
 

The strawberries were just beginning to turn pink and the blackberries and raspberries were blooming when they’d tossed their bags into the carriage and said good-bye to all of Earthsong.

“After I win the Championship maybe I can meet your family, once I’m more worthy of their class,” Venture joked.

“My class?” Dasher glanced at Earnest out of the corner of his eye.

“Come on. You’ve had a good upbringing. Even with your scruffy hair, it still shows.”

Dasher didn’t jump to defend himself against the playful insult to his hair, as Venture had expected. Instead, he looked down at his hands. “It doesn’t all show,” he said quietly. “but I guess it’s time you knew. What do you think, Earnest?”

“I think it was time a long time ago.” Earnest sat down on one of the beds and crossed his arms, his tone sharpening beyond the usual fatigue-induced crankiness.

“What are you guys talking about?”

Dasher let out a long breath. “Earthsong is mine. It’s my inheritance.”

Venture shook his head. “Earthsong belongs to the Glens.”

“Star of the Glen is my father.”

“Dauntless Dasher Starson, of the Glen,” pronounced Earnest dourly. “Quite a name, isn’t it?”

Venture sank into a chair by the window. Chance, who’d been leaning on a pile of their bags near the door, stood up straight, looking from one of them to another as though he didn’t know what to make of this.

“Earnest,” Venture demanded, “you knew?”

“Not until we went to Earthsong. Dasher had all the servants there call him Mr. Starson just for our benefit, but I figured it out.”

Dasher gave Earnest a furious glare, and Venture put his face in his hands. His head was spinning. He didn’t know what to think or feel first. He lowered his hands and gazed out the open window. He turned back sharply to Dasher and said, “Who are you?”

“I’m Dash, Champ. I just want to be Dash. Please.”

“You’re a Crested man?”

Dasher came and sat on the edge of the windowsill next to Venture. “I’ve been taught the traditional fighting ways of my family since I could walk. I just wanted to put it into practice.”

“The Cresteds fight each other all the time,” Venture pointed out, looking not at him, but at the hot street below.

“Only in our private training rooms, with our brothers and cousins. The same old grudges with the same old partners hashed out day after day.”

Venture thought of the crowds at the Championship. The audience that Dasher loved, that he craved. Strangers who knew him only as a fighter they adored, as their champion.

“I wanted to see how far I could go, how I’d fare against all men, against the best men.”

“I thought the Cresteds were the best men,” Venture said bitterly.

Dasher scoffed at that. “I wanted to learn as much as I could about fighting from every kind of fighter, and to see if I really had what it took to be one of the greatest. I wanted it so bad I left home when I was sixteen, against my parents’ wishes. I gave up my first and last names. I actually ran away, though they knew exactly what I was doing—going to Champions Center. I fought in the Youth Quarter Championship with no coach, with forged documents. I won, and I got into Champions Center. I was a phenomenon, the kid who came out of nowhere. My parents were too embarrassed of the spectacle it would make if they tried to take me home by force.”

“They not take you, Mr. Starson,” Chance said intensely. He looked ready to fight off anyone who dared to try, all by himself.

“Don’t worry. They won’t. It’s only just now getting out among many of the Glens who Dasher Starson the fighter is. Cresteds don’t watch tournaments, so there’s hardly been a chance for anyone to match my face to my true name. As for the ones who know, I’m their dark family secret.” He laughed dryly. “They hoped and expected I’d give up and come running back home.”

“So you pretended to be just an ordinary fighter so people would teach you and fight you.”

“I didn’t want to be deceptive. I just wanted to be a fighter like everyone else.”

“No, you didn’t. You wanted to stand out. But as the best one, not as the Crested one.”

“You’re right there, Champ.”

“I would’ve kept your secret.”

“Can you honestly tell me you would have seen me the same way, acted toward me in the same way, if you’d known? Even now I’m afraid of how this will change things, especially with what’s going on.”

Venture thought of the men who’d threatened his life, trying to reconcile his impression of them with who he knew his friend, Dasher Starson to be. “You took me under your wing, Dash. Do you think this changes that? Or the way you’ve handled yourself as Champion? How can I not admire you for that?”

“Ha. With you guys, I’m Dasher Starson the fighter, the man, but when I’m with my family and their friends, I’m Dauntless, the miserable wayward boy who wanted to be a fighter. I don’t balance two lives as well as you do.” He didn’t try to hide the admiration in the look he gave Venture.

How could Dasher think he had everything together? Dasher, whose poise he could never emulate?

“So tell the world who you are,” Venture said. “Earnest and I will still be here, whatever anyone else thinks. Tell the public you’re a Glen, tell everyone who knows you’re a Glen that you’re Dasher Starson, the fighter, the Champion.”

“I don’t know. I’m afraid then I won’t feel like myself even with my fighting friends. And it could make things worse for you, too, Champ.”

“How?”

“How do you think?” Earnest burst in. “You’re already controversial.”

“Those Cresteds—the ones who’ve been threatening me—it’s partly because you’ve been teaching me, isn’t it?” A hundred years ago, those masked Crested men wouldn’t have bothered with masks; if they’d known any Uncrested, especially a bondsman, was training with a Crested, they would’ve killed him on the spot and been congratulated for it.

“I’m sorry, Champ. I thought things had changed. If I’d known training with you was going to put you in danger—”

“Then you should’ve done it anyway,” Earnest said. “We’ve been through this, Dash. Stop beating yourself up about it. It’s not your fault they think you’re sharing your Crested secrets with a bonded man.”

“Are you?” Venture said. “Sharing Crested secrets?”

Dasher shrugged. “Maybe. That would serve them right, wouldn’t it? Knowledge isn’t meant to be hoarded, kept from people just because they aren’t born into the right family.”

“But are you?” Venture persisted.

“Everything I learned when I was younger is part of me, part of my style, how I fight. But there’s no mystery, no real secret. I never set out to expose Crested ways. But I guess in some ways, I have.”

“A lot of people are angry with you because of me.” Crested people. His people.

“I’m not interested in keeping those people happy with me. In fact,” Dasher said with a gleam in his eye Venture hadn’t seen since his days as a competitor, “I’ve been thinking of running for office one of these days, with a platform that will really tick them off. If I do decide to go public, if we’re going to have all this controversy, especially if you do as well as I expect you to, then I might as well get myself in a position where I can do some good. What do you think about that?”

“I think you’d make a better National Overseer than any we’ve had in my lifetime,” Earnest said.

“Who said anything about National Overseer?” Dasher laughed. “I was thinking of County Representative.”

“Well, that’s a start, I guess,” Venture said. “But Earnest is right. You can do more.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Secretly, Venture was glad to be back in Twin Rivers, out of a sense of defiance and a dangerous hope that his enemies would come for him again. He was hungering for a fight. Still, it was painful and exhausting, training with the combined longing and dread that each time the training room door swung open, it would be his enemies come back for him, death come to find him.

It was also painful, when Jade returned from a trip with her grandmother, and he had to endure the ache of hearing Jade’s voice in the air, her footsteps in the hall. There was some small comfort in seeing that no child swelled her belly, for he’d feared that was the reason for her long absence. At least he wouldn’t see Jade wedded to Hunter Longlake. But part of him thought it might have been easier to have her married off to the unknown Crested man Grant had mentioned, and whisked away to a gleaming mansion in the far reaches of the country.