Chapter 5: Aoife (part 2 of 4)

  The food and drinks helped to bring some of Aoife's heat back. It wasn't much but was enough for her to burn some of it now to ease the pain in her ribs, better to compose herself before her meeting with Mr Carmichael. She tried again to convert the heat to that soothing warmth, but the calm from the earlier fight did not return. Instead, she found herself pestered by apprehension toward the man she was about to face.

  The door to Mr Carmichael's office was ajar and she let herself in without knocking. It was an unassuming room with nearly none of the trappings of the Paddock downstairs. An oil-lamp sitting on a simple wooden desk was the only direct source of light, casting halos of dim orange over bare stones. Much to Aoife's chagrin, her boss wasn't in the room, but she knew where to find him.

  The back of the office opened onto a mezzanine where, on most nights, Art Carmichael was the only occupant. Sure enough, he presently had his back turned to her, leaning over a set of balustrades to observe the proceedings below. He was exceedingly tall and impossibly thin. With his fitted tailcoat and a top-hat that seemed to stay on permanently, even indoors, he gave Aoife the impression of an exceptionally well-dressed skeleton.

  She started walking toward him, intending to announce herself once she got closer. But she had barely stepped out of the office when Mr Carmichael spun in place without warning, fully turning himself toward her. Aoife froze, stricken by the sudden movement and the beady dark eyes that now fixed on her. The lower half of his face then broke into an expansive smile.

  "Aoife, my dear!" Mr Carmichae's voice was shrill, much higher-pitched than any sound produced by such a large body had any business to be. It made Aoife jump without fail at the start of every conversation. "Come to join me for our last match of the day?"

  When she didn't answer straight away, her boss raised a long arm and beckoned to her like a child eager to share a secret. She resumed her walk, now more slowly and reluctantly, a reaction she knew to be absurd yet completely justifiable.

  Up close, Art Carmichael was a dark-haired and disturbingly pale man; the torchlight that washed over the mezzanine managed only to pronounce the gauntness of his features. The wrists and hands that poked out of his coat sleeves were bony with freakishly long fingers. It was a wonder to Aoife that he didn't simply topple over every time he stood up. Yet the man exuded an air of insouciant confidence, as though he had all of the answers at all times but chose to revel in the chaos of pretending not to know them. And his eyes... those impenetrable dark eyes betrayed nothing yet seemed to see everything, even things that should have been hidden from his view. Aoife was certain that this was the strangest person she had ever met, both in appearance and mannerism, and she had long decided that she would never be comfortable in his presence.

  "You know why I'm here, Mr Carmichael," she had also learned that it was best to be direct and persistent with him, lest she give him a chance to drag her into one of his riddles. "Just my pay, then I'll be on my way."

  "Ah, but couldn't it wait? Look, the fight's about to—"

  The bell sounded. Aoife's heart sank and she suppressed a mighty sigh. She began to regret spending so much time fuelling up in the Paddock.

  No longer paying her any mind, Mr Carmichael turned back around and leaned forward, hungrily eyeing the ring below them. Aoife knew that it would be difficult to get much out of him in this state, so she resigned to hoping that Marlowe would be quick about his fight. A quick glance over the balustrades told her that her towheaded sparring partner had already gotten into his boxer's stance and was gleefully circling his larger opponent, a bald man that was built like a brick outhouse. Marlowe made the first move, closing in and throwing a couple of quick jabs, which the opponent blocked with his enormous arm, not looking any worse for wear afterwards. The crowd was much quicker to get into this fight than they had been for Aoife's. It might be a longer fight than she hoped for.

  "Just my pay, Mr Carmichael, and I'll be out of your hair," she pressed on. The crowd gave another roar of approval but her eyes weren't on the fight anymore.

  "Are you quite sure you don't want to watch the fight with me? I think you'll find that Seth might be up against it tonight," her boss deigned to reply, though his gaze was still fixed on the ring.

  "I'm quite sure. Just my pay, Mr Carmichael," she repeated for a third time. His eyes flicked toward her for just a moment before going back to the fight. As she watched, his thin and colourless lips curled into a lopsided smile.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  "You were up against it too, Aoife. I take it you weren't in the best of conditions tonight? Or am I reading too much into it?"

  Aoife stopped talking and leaned against the balustrades, resigned to watching the fight. She knew better than to be drawn into an extraneous discussion with Art Carmichael, especially one that concerned a sensitive topic such as this. As he was wont to do, he had hit upon a truth, though she assumed he had no reasons to suspect Magic.

  Downstairs, Marlowe had taken his vest off and his shirt was now fully unbuttoned. It did appear that he was having a tougher time of it than usual. He circled around his opponent again, this time with a more cautious posture.

  "Granted, that Gallic fellow seemed to know what he was doing," Mr Carmichael continued on his own, utterly unaffected by one of his favourite fighters ignoring a direct question. "But I would have thought you didn't perform up to your usual standards, at least at the start. You did seem to... regain form toward the end. How's that rib of yours, by the way? You took quite a nasty hit."

  With this, he glanced at her again, eyes lingering somewhat longer and seeming to look her up and down. Aoife shuddered slightly but persisted with her silence, trying to appear calm and unbothered by the ache under her chest.

  "Still, I suppose it wasn't nearly as nasty as the hit you landed on your counterpart, the poor lad. You did have me worried for a minute, Aoife, but... it's a good thing for both us that you still had enough left in your reserve, wouldn't you say?"

  Mr Carmichael turned and watched her again as he said the last part, smile broadening. Aoife looked back at him and concentrated on keeping her posture still and her face impassive. Had she been wrong about her boss not suspecting her to have used Magic? Was he waiting to see more proof before he outright accused her? She tried to stare into those black eyes that didn't even seem to let torchlight in, and came away with nothing.

  The crowd's cheering swelled. Inside the ring, Marlowe was now pummelling away at his opponent, who had fallen to his knees and could only helplessly cover his own head. The fight was all but finished. Marlowe alternated between body blows and aiming for the gap between the giant's arms. Finally, the man put both hands in the air and mouthed something Aoife couldn't hear over the din of the crowd. She did hear the three bells that swiftly followed, however.

  Marlowe, his clothes half torn and hanging off his shoulder, raised both arms and let out an animalistic cry that could be heard over the crowd. In a display of unbridled emotion that Aoife had rarely seen from Marlowe, he began pacing around the ring, breathing heavily and occasionally letting out more triumphant roars.

  Eventually, his eyes drifted up to the mezzanine and first met Mr Carmichael's, to whom he raised a fist. He then saw Aoife and grinned at her, which came out more like a grimace, teeth clenched in his heightened state. She in turn felt relief, felt embarrassment, but above all, she felt kinship; it was the conviction that both of their victories tonight were borne by their struggle against a common enemy, their collaboration toward a common goal. For a moment, she forgot about the terrifying man standing next to her and saw only Seth Marlowe. She couldn't see her own expression with which she greeted him, but she wasn't smiling—of that, she was sure.

  "Who do you think will win if you two fought?"

  Aoife looked sharply toward Mr Carmichael, who kept his eyes on Marlowe while clapping and smiling genially. She stared up at him, her feeling of shared exaltation gone in an instant. The thought of being placed on the same card as Marlowe had never occurred to her, though she now recognized it as a distinct possibility—perhaps an inevitability—were she to continue with the job for long enough. She stood stewing on the implications of this eventuality, her mood darkening by the second. Then the man who held sole agency over its prospects laughed, in a piercing treble that made her hairs stand on end.

  "Ah, Aoife, you do like to keep your thoughts to yourself. I can respect that. And I was only joking, of course. I would never pit two of my best fighters against each other. As much as I enjoy a good fight, I'm a businessman first."

  He then turned abruptly and started to walk away. At full height, his skeletal appearance was more pronounced. His gait was askew, though Aoife somehow couldn't say to which side he leaned or indeed that he looked unsteady in anyway. Something about the way his limbs moved looked utterly unfamiliar to her, and her discomfort only grew with each sighting. After a few contorted steps, Mr Carmichael beckoned without turning his head. "Come, Aoife. We'll get you sorted. You've been patient long enough."

  Her payment at last. Over time, she had begun to anticipate and dread this weekly occurrence in equal measure. Art Carmichael the racketeer was timely and exacting with his financial obligations, and her rewards for winning fist-fights at St Marcus were considerable and sorely needed. On the other hand, she had to meet and speak to Art Carmichael to receive them.

  Aoife looked upon the back of her boss's gangling figure for a moment longer, reminding herself that the worst was over; she had scraped through another rickety week, and could turn her thoughts to rest and recovery. Then she thought once more of Mr Carmichael's 'joke' about putting her and Marlowe on the same card. She wondered then what would be worse for his business, his two best fighters going at it or one of them being found out for a fraud. Resolving never to let herself discover the answer, Aoife followed Art Carmichael into his dimly lit office.