Marga and Vaxxa looked at one another knowingly. They’d seen this before.
“Don’t go thinking with your nethers, girl,” Marga said with a good-natured chuckle. “No good ever comes from that.”
“Not that you’ll have much of a choice now,” Vaxxa added. “If what you said was true, after what happened I doubt he’s even in the city anymore.”
Maureen’s cheeks flushed and her stomach knotted up. “Why would they do that? We only talked. It’s not like we did anything wrong.”
Vaxxa shook her head. “You said you dropped the mistresses parcels.”
“But picked them right up again. Nothing was damaged. It happens.”
“Not to Mistress Tormik, it doesn’t.”
Maureen felt a horrible welling up of distress in her gut. “You’re saying that this is my fault? Bodok wouldn’t have been sent away if not for me.”
One of the cooks who was gathering up ingredients from the new produce stopped and looked at them. “Did you say Bodok?” he asked. “Big blue man with damaged runes?”
Maureen’s pulse spiked with a surge of adrenaline. “You know him?”
“Not personally. But we all bet on the tournaments. He’s scheduled to fight in tomorrow’s bouts.”
Her Infala flared to life, burning with worry. She’d been to the tournament with the Tormiks. Seen how brutally violent it was. Bodok was going to be maimed or worse.
“How do you know this?” she demanded. “Have you spoken with him?”
“What? Spoken to a prisoner? No, nothing like that. We just have a little betting pool, is all.”
“Explain yourself,” Marga said, flexing her seniority in the household a little. “Tell her how you came by this information.”
“Like I said, we have a group who like to bet on the tournaments. We’re not allowed to go to them, of course, but you can get a good idea who’s going to win or lose by their statistics.”
“Statistics?” Maureen wondered aloud. “What do you mean?”
The man sighed. “Training. Wins, losses, their overall placement in the rankings. All of that determines who they fight and when. Your guy? He’s new, and from what we hear he doesn’t participate in the training fights in the camp.”
“But he’s not in the camp.”
“Not the main prison camp, no. Clearly you didn’t know, the people who are scheduled for the tournament are locked away in a separate training area. It’s a little walk from the main prisoner camp, but it has its own staff and all that.”
“The high-walled area near the animal pens?” Vaxxa asked.
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“A nasty place. No wonder we didn’t know about it. Nobody goes there. The smell is horrible.”
“Yeah, but it sure keeps the fighters nicely segregated.”
Marga looked at him questioningly. “And you are privy to all of this how, exactly?”
“Simple. I know someone who delivers them produce. He gets me inside details on the fighters. For a price, of course. But the guards are always happy for a little bribe, if you know what I mean.”
Maureen felt a flare of hope spark to life in her heart. “And Bodok is there?”
“That’s what I’ve been told. But you should know, we’re all betting against him. No offense, but from all I’ve heard, the guy sounds like a pacifist. He’s not going to last long at all.”
“Arxis, where are you with those horvan roots?” a voice bellowed from across the kitchen.
“Coming, chef!” he called out, quickly scooping up what he’d come for. “Sorry, gotta go.”
