Venture Unleashed (The Venture Books) (7 page)

“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. She’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.

He grunted to Bounty, “Get the door for me, will you please?”

He was settling the bag into the pantry, where Connie was busy arranging smaller goods on the shelves, when Jade entered the kitchen. Venture hadn’t wanted to admit to himself how disappointed he was that Jade hadn’t come to find him, come to find out what had happened to him—or even known somehow that he was listening at the stable door and come to apologize, to explain herself, the day before. But now he felt it, undeniably, and he wanted to disappear before she read it on his face.

“Can I get something for you, Miss?” Connie said from the pantry door.

“No, thank you. I’m just going to fix myself a cup of coffee.”

Yes, please do. Then maybe I can slip out of here.

“Let me get it for you, Miss,” she insisted.

Jade opened her mouth to protest, but closed it when she noticed Venture.

Connie went to put the pot on, and Jade stepped into the pantry.

Blast it!

“Hello, Vent.”
 

His would-be reply caught in his throat.

“What happened to you yesterday?”

Venture forced himself to answer, “I’m sorry, Miss.”

She eyed him strangely at this incomplete answer, at the silence that followed in place of an explanation. But she let it go, not like a lady who deserved an answer from her servant, and one who’d failed to perform a task at that, but like a friend who knew that was the extent of what he chose to say. After what she’d said to Tempest, as much as he didn’t want to answer, he found Jade’s acceptance of his silence perplexing, even infuriating.

“It seems like you’ve been gone forever. We were all worried about you when we heard you were hurt.”

She traced a scar on his eyebrow with her fingertip, and he let his eyes shut, let his mind wander. He knew he should be angry that she thought she could just touch him like that, but he still craved the feel of her hand. Still wanted more. Her finger drifted to a new bruise on his jaw line, the result of a miscalculation in practice, a punch Dasher had thought he would dodge, that had found its mark with a little too much force.

In the kitchen, Connie slid a cupboard door shut noisily. Venture came back to his senses and jerked away.