Making a decision, she put her hand flat on the concierge’s desk to show her silic sigil. “You can tell him Kizzie is here to see him.”
“Ah.” The porter’s eyes tightened ever so slightly. “Miss Vorcien. Of course. Master Demir left word to accommodate you in any way.”
“He did?” Kizzie asked in surprise. So she hadn’t been fired? Father Vorcien really had smoothed things over?
“You can find Master Montego in the hotel gymnasium. I trust you know the way?”
Kizzie almost did punch him, though she didn’t think he meant it sarcastically. “Thanks.” She headed up the main stairs, feeling off-kilter. Demir attacked Capric in the street just two days ago. He had every reason for a blood feud, even a guild-family war, and yet all that bad blood was gone just like that? What the piss could possibly cause them to bury the hatchet so quickly? She tried to shake it off. She should be ecstatic! No one had died, no war had started. She didn’t have to feel guilty about sending that missive anymore.
Kizzie navigated to the top floor of the hotel. She paused briefly in the hallway, gazing at the sign in front of the gymnasium door that called it OCCUPIED. Her heart was hammering in her chest, her palms were sweaty; a moment she’d made every arrangement for and yet still avoided was about to come true.
“Whatever you do, Baby,” she whispered to herself, “don’t send me away.”
The Hyacinth gymnasium was a massive room taking up a full quarter of the floor, with high ceilings topped with massive windows to keep it well-lit during the day. At night, it was a dim room lit only by gas lanterns, casting long shadows across the padded floor and tapestries of men and women accomplishing feats of strength in various states of undress.
Kizzie closed the door to the gymnasium slowly behind her, peering around the room until her eyes landed upon the massive figure of Baby Montego. He was even bigger than she remembered, both fat and muscular, light glistening off the mixture of sweat and oil rubbed into his skin, wearing nothing but a cudgeling girdle. She was off to one side of him, though he did not seem to notice her presence as he was focused on something immediately in front of him. Kizzie was raising her hand, his name on her lips, when he suddenly ran forward.
He leapt into the air, snagging a thick rope suspended from one of the massive hooks overhead. He swung on the rope, rocking back and forth, using himself as a counterweight to move his arc higher and higher, until he was almost able to touch the ceiling. Suddenly his right hand darted out, snagging the end of another rope positioned for that purpose. He swung down, up to the top of the next arc, and grabbed another rope. Two more he did, all the way to the other end of the gymnasium, swinging like one of the monkeys in the Ossan zoo.
It was proper aerobatics, of the type one might see in a circus. It felt unreal to watch so much girth accomplish something that required so much agility. She couldn’t imagine the dexterity of those fingers to snatch a rope thirty feet up in low light, or the strength needed to hold so much weight aloft. At the bottom of the final swing, Montego threw himself into a roll, tumbling across the padded floor and coming up onto his feet, planting both palms on the opposite wall to stop himself. He heaved and trembled from the effort, stretching his arms out to either side of him.
Kizzie shook her head. She’d read the papers these last few weeks. She knew what they said about him letting himself go, and growing fat and lazy. She hadn’t believed them. Not Montego. Not her Montego. She now felt vindicated in that belief.
“Bravo,” she said, clapping quietly.
Montego leapt nearly a foot into the air, his whole body twisting in the maneuver, and landed with both fists held up in a ready position. Even from across the long room, she could see his eyes go wide. “Kizzie?” Her name echoed.
“Hi, Baby.”
Montego’s arms fell to his sides. Slowly, he walked in her direction, angling toward the wall, where he fetched a dressing gown big enough for a tent and threw it over his shoulders. The lighting made him appear even more massive – the world champion killer that had grown out of the hulking boy she once knew. Despite herself, Kizzie felt something long forgotten stir in her chest.
Montego pulled his long brown hair back, tying it into a bun behind his head in one smooth motion while he padded silently toward her. His head tilted to one side, his eyes growing small as his whole face seemed to wrinkle as he peered at her.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said.
“I wasn’t sure I was ready to see you.”
“After all this time?” he asked.
She couldn’t tell if his furrowed brow was due to anger or confusion. “After all this time,” she confirmed. “It still hurts.”
“You’re not the one whose neck broke Sibrial’s cane.” Montego pulled away his dressing gown enough to show her a prominent scar just above where his shoulder met his neck. He grunted and hid it again, his eyes looking suddenly downcast as if he was ashamed of it. “I’m sorry for what I did to your brother.”
Kizzie stared back at Montego. Really stared, her thoughts suddenly fallen into a confused jumble and trying to work themselves out again. Did he think she was mad at him? “Baby,” she said, “that’s not what hurts. What hurts is the fact that I couldn’t look you in the eye. That I never came back for you, or said goodbye, or even sent you a letter. What hurts is that I was so scared of what my family would think if they found out, that I did everything Sibrial told me to do to cover it all up and then never saw you again. That’s what hurts.”
“Oh,” Montego responded, his mouth hanging open. The silence between them stretched on, his face rippling and contorting as he seemed to try to find the right words. Finally he said, “I never blamed you for any of that. I was just a glassdamned kid with a good amateur cudgeling record. You did what you had to do. Is that why you’ve never come to see me again? Once we were both adults, I mean. Because you thought I was angry?”
Kizzie’s guts were so tight she thought they were going to suck her whole body into them, twisting her into a little lump of intestine. She nodded.
He continued, “I was never angry. Heartbroken, yes. But not angry. You were my Kiz. I was your Baby. And then one day I broke your brother right in front of your eyes. That must have traumatized you something fierce.”
“A little,” Kizzie admitted.
“It’s me who should apologize. I should never have put you through that. You know, I’ve heard rumors. About the way Sibrial has treated you over the years. It’s taken all my self-control not to crush him into a pulp. I only didn’t because I knew you’d want to do it yourself.”
Kizzie couldn’t stop staring. This was not at all how she’d imagined this meeting. She’d shadowboxed with recriminations and swearing and Montego’s quiet but terrifying anger. She had not expected this. She wiped tears out of the corners of her eyes and took a steadying breath. Hesitantly, she ventured a small smile. “You never came to see me, either.”
“Because I was a coward. Even after I got famous, even after the rest of the world knew me by Baby, I couldn’t bear the thought of you rejecting me. Not as a lover, mind, but as a friend. If you’d turned your back on me it would have broken me as surely as Holikan broke Demir.” Montego’s head was up, his stance tall and powerful as if he was owning his own admission of cowardice. Why wouldn’t he? He’d conquered everything else in the world. Why not shame as well?
“Glassdamn, Baby,” Kizzie managed. “All these years, scared of each other, like idiot children.”
Baby’s round face suddenly split into a massive grin, and he lurched forward, pulling her into a hug. She found herself squeezing him back, breathing in that scent of sweat mixed with jasmine oil that brought a thousand memories to the front of her mind. “You even still smell the same.”