After the first week of the tournament, Lorenzo Legidus decided to go for a walk along the market street in Volos.
Unlike most members of his caste, who seldom ventured into the public without their retinue, Lorenzo paraded modesty, preferring to be accompanied by only a servant. He enjoyed taking his walks through the narrow streets crosshatching the marketplaces. Between trestle stalls and pavilions, he strolled with his hands behind him. His eyes quietly imbibed the haggles, the scuffles, and the swindles, which rammed home an intuitive understanding of the populace no amount of reading would account for. Whenever he had to decide on a pressing matter, Lorenzo always took his walk.
As he wandered from a plexus of alleys and was about to return, his feet brought him to a halt at an intersection between two cobbled boulevards. A wall of men had circled by a cockpit. Some were threadbare, others silk-clad. Despite their different classes and births, they hurled creative epithets with all the same verve, their arms pumping.
Lorenzo's brows quirked with curiosity. Other than sending the servant, he gave a sign for him to wait and went to experience the commotion firsthand. Raising his chin, he craned his neck. In the center of the pit, a man stood astride. Grizzled but of a heavy build, he stuck a notched spear in the dirt darkened with blood. Next to the spear, a much younger man convulsed in a fetal position.
"What's going on?" Lorenzo patted the shoulder of an onlooker.
He surveyed Lorenzo up and down, "Oh, just a sore loser. You aren't from here, are you?" he asked.
Lorenzo shook his head.
"You see the lad on the floor?" The man swung his eyes to the cockpit. "He's the goldsmith's apprentice, said to be a prodigy. It got into his head. Supercilious and bold as he grew every day, he found some matchmaker, declaring that he'd marry his master's daughter and overtake his business. The old man didn't budge, of course. He challenged his apprentice to a cockfight and won. But like I've said, the lad was a sore loser. After he lost, he flung scurrilous remarks to taint the daughter's maidenhood. It enraged the old man, and the rest is what you see now."
Parting his lips, Lorenzo nodded. He looked to the cockpit.
In the center, the grizzled goldsmith thumped a fist on his hirsute chest. Regarding the crowd at large, he boomed, "No one takes away what's mine!"
Lorenzo cocked his head. "But why are the people so pumped?" he asked the onlooker while glancing around. "What does it have to do with them?"
"They bet their gold on the apprentice. Why else?" The man glanced at him sidelong. "Since you aren't from here, you wouldn't know. The apprentice is quite good at what he does and popular, too, given his good looks. More patrons have turned up asking for his works. I suppose that has posed a greater threat than his foul mouth. And if you ask me," the man paused for a snigger, "chances are the old man has staged everything from the start, eh?" He nudged Lorenzo with an elbow.
"What a story," Lorenzo observed in a flat tone, then turned on his heels. Padding down the cobbled boulevard with his servant in tow, he brooded over the uncanny resemblance between the story he had just heard and recent events. With the Gaius' rampant popularity, Marcus Uranus must not have slept easy of late. But could they really be that stupid they killed Domitian when Marcus suspected them the most? Regardless, Lorenzo knew the clouds had thickened in the sky not too far ahead.
Hissing with a sigh, he rolled his shoulders.
Besides the tournament, his sojourn in Volos had another purpose: a covert meeting with a Turisian ambassador who sought a loan from the Legidus. Luke had always opposed lending to foreign interests. But since Lorenzo took charge, he felt no such haste in turning down the request. He wanted to hear from the ambassador and see what the Turisians could offer. It enticed him to ponder whether their choice of timing only coincided with the Pyrrhic Battles.
He had called in the Underdog to attend the meeting with him as his bodyguard. Being a man who himself valued and practiced strategic patience, Lorenzo had a hunch that much could be said about the young man who said little. He needed to see more of this Moon Xeator to decide if the lad was up to scratch for the risk yet to take.