Tournament of Losers
TOURNAMENT
OF LOSERS
MEGAN DERR
All Rath wants is a quiet, peaceful life. Unfortunately, his father brings him too much trouble—and too many debts to pay—for that to ever be possible. When the local crime lord drags Rath out of bed and tells him he has three days to pay his father's latest debt, Rath doesn't know what to do. There's no way to come up with so much money in so little time.
Then a friend poses an idea just ridiculous enough to work: enter the Tournament of Losers, where every seventy-five years, peasants compete for the chance to marry into the noble and royal houses. All competitors are given a stipend to live on for the duration of the tournament—funds enough to cover his father's debt.
All he has to do is win the first few rounds, collect his stipend, and then it's back to trying to live a quiet life…
Tournament of Losers
By Megan Derr
Published by Less Than Three Press LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.
Edited by Samantha M. Derr
Cover designed by Julie Wright
This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.
First Edition February 2016
Copyright © 2016 by Megan Derr
Printed in the United States of America
Digital ISBN 9781620046692
Print ISBN 9781620046708
For Piper, of course <3
Over the course of thirty-three years, Rath had been woken up in a number of unpleasant ways.
Being dragged out of bed by angry people out for his blood was his least favorite. That included the time someone had thrown boiling water on him and left him with burns that had taken ages to heal.
He grunted as his head was slammed against the floor again, kicking out wildly, somewhat mollified by the pained cry of the goon he managed to hit. Getting to his feet, Rath started swinging, and he was big enough and swung hard enough that the overeager assailants finally backed off.
Then someone bigger got a good knock in, and Rath dropped to his knees, disoriented, pissed off, and entirely too hungover to do much about it.
"Good morning, Rat."
Well, that narrowed down
who
was after him.
Why
was still unclear, though he could make a damned good guess. Rath dragged his eyes up, keeping his roiling stomach under control only from long years of practice, and glared through bleary eyes at the large-ish man looming over him like a gilded manor.
A gilded manor soaked in enough perfume to drown a whorehouse, but nobody said that to the Friar of East End if they wanted to keep their teeth. "Good morning, Friar."
Friar smiled bitingly. "Not such a good morning for you and yours."
"If you've bothered my mother about this—"
"I do not bother ladies unless absolutely necessary," Friar cut in, scoffing as though he'd never committed an act of violence in his life, let alone against a woman.
Rath rolled his eyes. "I'll believe that never. How much does my worthless father owe you this time?"
"Fifteen marks, in three days."
That was enough to knock the last dregs of sleep and alcohol right out of Rath's system. "Why the buggering
fuck
does my shit father owe you fifteen slick?" Even if Rath earned a steady income every working day of the year, which he definitely didn't, he wouldn't make more than just over two slick. What had his father
done?
Rath was going to kill him for real this time.
"Oh, I don't want to ruin the fun he'll have explaining." Friar patted his cheek. "You should have agreed to work for me back when you were worth something, Rat. You know where to find me when you have the money. You have today, plus three, because I'm feeling just the slightest bit sorry for you. Have it to me by final bells." He signaled sharply to the other figures in the room.
The massive figure who'd knocked Rath to his knees gave him a parting shove to the floor. He glared at her. "Always a pleasure, Jen."
Jen gave him a smile full of malice and silver teeth, then was gone with the slamming of the door.
As morning wake-ups from Friar went, that could have gone worse.
"What in the world was that all about?"
Oh, right. Between the rude wake-up and being told his days were numbered
again
if he didn't come up with an alarming sum of money
again
…
"Nothing," Rath replied and gingerly picked himself up off the floor, holding fast to the rickety bedpost, swaying slightly, but managing not to fall.
He looked at the handsome man still in bed, all dark skin, long, dark, braided hair, and eyes green enough to make an emerald mad with jealousy.
"Who was that?" the man asked.
Rath wished he could remember the man's name, but right then, he was lucky to remember his own. Oh, what he wouldn't give for a mug of ale or six. But he was about to be a little too busy for that. "If you don't know, then count your blessings and keep stupid questions to yourself. I'm sorry to go, beautiful, but there's much to be done and very little time to do it."
The man waved a hand dismissively. "I hope you're able to come up with the money." He flopped back down on the bed, which creaked under his weight and careless treatment. "Be a shame for the world to lose a man of your talents."
"Hopefully, the Fates agree with you.
Ta, darling,
" Rath replied, mimicking the man's High City accent. He found his clothes and pulled on his stockings, breeches, and boots. Snatching up his shirt and jacket as he clambered to his feet, Rath checked that the coins hidden in the jacket were still there. "I hope you find your way back to High City without trouble. Hide your purse."
The man laughed and gave a lazy wave, clearly more interested in going back to sleep.
Fun while it lasted. Pity it couldn't last most of the morning. Ah, well. Best to put away distracting thoughts. Rath pulled his shirt on as he stepped into the hall, then shrugged into his jacket. It was going to need a patch on the left elbow soon; he could feel the fabric about to give out.
Out in the street, the smell of cheap food from various carts lining the street and in front of the bridges turned his stomach. He started out going north, bound for the common bridge, one of three that spanned the channel that cut the city roughly in two. The top third, north of the bridges, was reserved for the hoity-toity, called High City. The other two-thirds, south of the bridges, was for everyone else, called Low City. The three bridges were formally called after the women who had been in charge of their building: Sherenda, Herth, and Martiana. But they were generally called the guard bridge, the common bridge, and the private bridge, which was also called the holy bridge, because the lords and ladies certainly acted like they were holier than everyone, up to and including the gods.
By the time Rath had hauled through the city to the common bridge, his stomach had calmed down, but his headache had tripled in agony. Thankfully, the food vendors by the bridge always had food they were willing to sell cheap to the locals; it cost him only a farthing for a bit of cheese and bread with honey. Foreigners would be conned out of at least a whole penny, and some of the really good vendors could get as much as two.
"Hale, Rath!"
He looked up at the cheerful voice and smiled at the man who came running toward him, shirt unlaced, breasts unbound, hair tumbling about his shoulders. "Did you get thrown out of some lady's room, to be running around half-dressed?" Rath asked and offered half of the honey-slathered bread he'd bought.
"Maybe," the man muttered and wolfed down the food. "Worth it, though. You should have seen her."
"Proper folk are nothing but trouble."
"Nobody this side of the channel is proper," the man replied with a leer.
"Toph!" a voice bellowed. "You get your ass back here now!"
Toph laughed. "Whoops, gotta go. See you later at the Blue?"
"Only if I don't have to pay your bail," Rath replied and handed over the hunk of cheese he'd bought before shoving Toph on his way. "Get going. The constable's wife,
honestly,
Toph."
Laughing, Toph darted in to kiss his cheek, then ran off just as a cluster of guards, led by a red-faced man with an enormous black mustache, drew close. The man bellowed and gave Rath a shove hard enough to send him sprawling on the muddy cobblestones, and then took off after Toph.
Picking himself up for the second time that morning, Rath brushed off what dirt he could as he once more headed for the bridge.
It was crowded, far more than was typical for the middle of the week, but the preliminary round of the Tournament of Losers was beginning soon. Hopefully Friar and the rest of the city's slush would be so busy terrorizing tourists that they'd leave the locals alone for a few months.
Rath pushed his way through a flock of fat swans who were bejeweled to the teeth: one quite literally; Rath did not understand noble fashion. He deftly relieved two of them of coin purses they were stupid enough to leave accessible. He shoved them away where he wouldn't lose them himself—and where a sharp-eyed guard wouldn't notice he had too many purses.
Across the bridge, he fell into the throng of an even greater crowd, mostly comprised of young, overeager fools who thought the Tournament of Losers offered a real chance at something better than their half-penny lives. Even walking as quickly as he could through the mess, Rath caught snatches of eagerly-spouted hopes and dreams.
When I marry the prince, I'll buy my parents a proper house. Once I win the tournament, I'll see the whole village gets what it needs! I'll never have to worry about food and shelter again.
He went tumbling when a particularly rowdy group accidentally knocked into him. "Sorry!" one of the young women exclaimed, shoving back a strand of limp, red-brown hair that had fallen from her cap.
Rath grunted an acknowledgment, but didn't slow, though he did catch the eye of their tolerant, exhausted parents and share a look of commiseration. He could still remember being a boy excited that he would be of an age to participate in the Tournament, indignant at the way all the adults scathingly called it the Tournament of Losers when it deserved its proper name: the Tournament of Charlet.
So-called for Regent Charlet, who had saved the kingdom several centuries ago in the first years of Queen Bardol II. Between plague and civil war, the whole country had been falling apart. It had taken a stray peasant to rise up and set all to rights. A woman with whom the queen had fallen madly in love. Tradition had been established that every seventy-five years, at least one immediate member of the royal and noble families must marry a peasant to bring in fresh blood and new perspective that would keep them from falling into the same patterns and arrogance that had once nearly destroyed the kingdom.
The nobles had protested that simply letting anyone marry into their families would do more harm than good, and that certain traits and skills were necessary to properly fulfill the duties expected of them. The solution had been a tournament where candidates could prove their suitability. It had been named for Regent Charlet, who was responsible for the law and the devising of the tournament.
Over time, the tournament had devolved into a mess of fools competing in challenges for no damned reason, since the nobles had rapidly mastered the art of manipulating, bribing, and otherwise cheating. It was well known that the vast majority of the winners were always 'peasants' only in the barest, most laughable sense. From the stories Rath did remember, they were often extremely young children of merchants or shopkeeps, or more often, orphans then given to said merchants and shopkeeps, and trained up to the exact specifications of the nobles in question. No
real
commoner had won the past five tournaments, and there had only been nine tournaments total so far. This would be the tenth, and some said the last, that the nobles were pushing harder and harder to do away with the idiotic matter for the 'good of everyone'.
Thank the Fates he'd left all that nonsense behind and knew to avoid the whole bloody thing. Rath might not possess much sense, but he had enough.