After Transmigrating, My Husband Is an Octopus novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Maw

"Say it plainly," Lorcan said. "You came across the flats before the sun was up."

The champion turned his cap again.

"My sister's boy is in the Regent's kitchens," he said. "Eleven years old. He broke a dish."

"I fight for the Regent, and he washes pots."

"And if you lose?"

"The boy goes into the stew." He said it flatly, as a man says the price of fish. "I cannot lose, Your Highness. And I cannot make myself be the one who takes your arms."

"Then fight me," Lorcan said. "As well as you can."

"I will."

"And I'll do the same."

They looked at each other, two very big men on a walkway at dawn, and then the champion put his cap on and went away.

Lorcan stood at the rail a long time.

"He's a good man," I said.

"Yes," said Lorcan. "That is the trouble."

Five days later, the Maw was full.

The sunken pit in the Pearl Hall courtyard was ringed with tiers of stone, and every seat was taken.

I sat in the front row with Bess on one side and the baker's son on the other, her hand gripped in his, and I did not read anyone.

All around me the numbers flickered in the air, pale and low and high and tangled, over lords and cooks and wives.

I kept my mouth shut and my hands in my lap.

It was the hardest thing I had ever done.

Ottoline sat on the high stand under a silver canopy, alone.

There was no one at her right hand.

Lorcan walked down the stone stairs into the pit in his shirtsleeves.

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