Chapter 5: The Tournament Announcement
The crier's voice cut through the morning chaos of the docks like a knife.
"Hear ye! By order of His Grace King Viserys, First of His Name!"
Work stopped. Fifty dockworkers, myself included, turned to watch a man in royal livery climb onto a crate. His voice carried across the water, trained and clear.
"To celebrate the return of Princess Rhaenyra from her wedding tour, His Grace announces a grand melee! Open to all—commoner and knight alike! The champion shall receive twenty gold dragons and, should he desire it, a position in the City Watch!"
The docks exploded in noise. Men shouting, laughing, already boasting about what they'd do with twenty gold dragons. Twenty. That was four months of dock wages. A fortune.
I stood still, calculating.
A melee. Live combat, albeit with blunted weapons. Fifty men, maybe more, all trying to beat each other unconscious for a prize. Knights who'd trained since childhood. Soldiers who'd seen real war. And me, two weeks into this body, still learning how to use powers I barely understood.
Stupid. Suicidal. Exactly the kind of opportunity I need.
"You thinking about entering?" Gavrel appeared at my shoulder, arms crossed, grinning like he'd heard the funniest joke of his life.
"Yes."
The grin died. "You're serious."
"Yes."
He stared at me, then barked a laugh. "Ulf, you've been hauling crates for ten days. You think that makes you a fighter?"
"I was a fighter before the crates." Not a lie. Marcus Cole had been an MMA fighter. Different body, same skills buried somewhere in muscle memory.
"Right. And I'm the fucking Sea Snake." He spat into the water. "Listen, bastard. I've seen you work. You're stronger than you look, I'll give you that. But a melee? Knights will kill you for sport. They'll break your legs just to hear you scream."
I met his eyes. "Then they'll have to catch me first."
Silence. Around us, the other workers had stopped to listen. Maron was shaking his head. Boros looked like he wanted to say something but couldn't find the words.
Gavrel's expression shifted. Not quite respect, but close. "You're either brave or brain-damaged."
"Maybe both."
He snorted. "Fine. Get yourself killed. But if you somehow don't die, I'll rehire you when it's done."
"Generous."
"I'm a kind man." He turned away, shouting at the crew to get back to work.
I grabbed my water skin and moved to the edge of the pier, staring out at Blackwater Bay. The tournament was in three days. Three days to prepare for something that would either launch me into visibility or get me crippled, and no amount of telling myself it would be worth it made the odds any better.
I'd been training in secret for two weeks, burns healing overnight, poison building tolerance drop by drop, Rokushiki techniques improving in stolen hours. But all of it was theory. I hadn't fought anyone. Hadn't tested myself against real opposition.
The melee would change that.
If I survived.
That evening, I found Maron and Jeyne at the Pissing Goat. Pate was there too, nursing a cup of something that smelled like death.
"You're really doing this," Jeyne said when I sat down. Not a question.
"Yes."
"You'll die."
"Maybe."
Pate coughed, a wet rattling sound. "Why? What's the point?"
How to explain? I couldn't tell them the truth, that I needed recognition, needed people to see me as something other than a drunk bastard, needed to position myself for a war that hadn't started yet.
"Money," I said. Simple. Believable. "Twenty gold dragons changes everything."
Maron leaned back, studying me. "You've changed. Really changed. The old Ulf would've spent his last copper on ale and pissed himself in a gutter. Now you're talking about fighting knights."
"People change."
"Not like this." He shook his head. "But good luck. You'll need it."
They didn't try to stop me. Didn't offer help either. Just accepted that I'd made a decision and would live or die by it.
I left after one cup of water, still wouldn't touch the ale, even though my poison resistance probably made me immune to its effects by now, and headed back to my hovel.
Three days. I needed every hour.
I stopped working the docks.
Gavrel wasn't happy, but he didn't argue. Just told me to come back when I was "done being stupid."
Instead, I trained.
The training folded into a brutal routine. Dawn was running, two miles now without vomiting, the body slowly remembering how to carry itself, muscles building, lungs expanding, still nowhere near my old form but better. Mornings went to Soru in an abandoned alley near Flea Bottom, five meters reliably now, seven on a good attempt, though I still couldn't turn mid-burst without slamming into something or stumbling. Afternoons were Shigan, stiffened fingers punched into wooden posts and fence boards until my knuckles split and bruised, the wood starting to show finger-sized dents for it. Evenings went to fire resistance, my hands graduating from holding flame to gripping heated metal bars stolen off a smith's scrap pile, five seconds, ten, fifteen, the burns healing overnight into faint scars. By night it was poison, twelve drops of arsenic diluted in water now, the nausea barely registering anymore, my body processing it like bad food.
But Tekkai was the one I could actually prove. I paid Maron two coppers to swing a practice sword at my hardened forearm as hard as he dared, and the blade bounced off without cutting, the impact jarring his wrist worse than mine. Fifteen seconds was still my ceiling before the cramps turned unbearable, better than the three I'd started with, but nowhere near what a real fight would demand.
Four hours of sleep. Then repeat.
My body screamed at me constantly. Muscles ached. Joints throbbed. I was burning through calories faster than I could replace them, dropping weight I didn't have to lose.
But I was getting stronger.
Faster.
Harder to kill.
Three days before the tournament, I took my fifty copper stars—everything I'd earned—and walked to a used armor dealer on the Street of Steel.
The shop stank of old leather and rust. Racks of battered equipment lined the walls: dented helms, cracked shields, swords with chips in the blades. The owner, a grizzled man missing two fingers, looked me up and down.
"You got coin?"
I dropped the copper stars on his counter.
He counted them. "Fifty. That'll buy you shit, but it's better than nothing."
"Show me."
He led me to the back. Pulled out a leather cuirass, cracked in places, stained dark with what was probably blood, but intact. A helm, dented on one side, visor bent. Greaves that didn't quite match.
"This is garbage," I said.
"This is fifty coppers worth of garbage. Take it or leave it."
I took it.
He threw in a blunted tourney sword, nicked blade, loose grip, but serviceable, for free. "You'll die anyway. Might as well have a weapon."
I carried the armor back to my hovel as the sun set. Put it on piece by piece. The cuirass was too loose in the chest, too tight in the shoulders. The helm sat crooked. The greaves chafed.
But it covered the vitals.
I caught my reflection in a cracked window. Barely recognized myself. Two weeks ago, I'd been a hungover wreck. Now: leaner, harder, scars on my hands and forearms from fire and training. Eyes sharper. Jaw set.
Ulf the Drunk had died somewhere in the gutters of Flea Bottom.
I didn't know what I was now.
But tomorrow, I'd find out.