I’m on my feet and breaking my false promise before Buff can even finish telling me. My stool clatters to the floor, but I barely notice it. I get a bead on Coker, who’s between two of his stone cutting mates, laughing about something. Regardless of what it is, and even though they’ve probably moved on from discussing me and the witch already, I pretend it’s about me. About how I’m not good enough for someone in the White District. About how I’m lazy and good for nothing.
My fists clench and my jaw hardens as heat rises in my chest. Always aware of what’s happening in his pub, Yo says, “Now, Dazz, don’t start nuthin’, remember the last time…”
“Dazz, hold up,” Buff says, his feet scuffling along behind me.
I ignore them both.
When I reach Coker he’s already half-turned around, as if sensing me coming. I spin him the rest of the way and slam my fist right between his eyes. A two for one special, like down at the market. Two black eyes for the price of one. His head snaps back and thuds gruesomely off the bar, but, like any stonecutter, he’s tougher than dried goat meat, and rebounds with a heavy punch of his own, which glances off my shoulder, sending vibrations through my arm.
And his friends aren’t gonna sit back and watch things unfold either; they jump on me in less time than it took for the White District witch to cheat on me, swinging fists of iron at my head. One catches my chin and the other my cheek. I jerk backwards, seeing red, blue, and yellow stars against a black backdrop, and feel my tailbone slam into something hard and flat. The wooden table collapses, sending splinters and legs in every direction—both table legs and people legs. I’m still not seeing much, other than stars, but based on the tangle of limbs I’d say the table I crashed into was occupied by at least three Icers, maybe four.
I shake my head and furiously try to blink away the dark cloud obscuring my sight, feeling a dull ache spreading through the whole of my backside. When my vision returns, the first thing I see is Buff hammering rapid-fire rabbit punches into one of the stone cutter’s, sending him sprawling. The area’s clearing out, with patrons scampering for the door, which is a good thing, because Coker gets ahold of Buff and throws him into another table, which topples over and skids into the wall.
Me and Buff spring to our feet simultaneously, cocking our fists side by side like we’ve done so many times growing up in the rugged Brown District. Buff takes Coker’s friend and I take Coker. We circle each other a few times and then all chill breaks loose, as the fists start flying. After taking a hit in the ribs, I land a solid blow to Coker’s jaw that has him reeling, off balance and stunned. I follow it up with a hook that sends a jolt of pain through my hand, which is likely not even a quarter of the pain that I just sent through his face. He drops faster than a morning turd in the outhouse.
I whirl around to find Buff in a similar position, standing over his guy and shaking his hand like he’s just punched a wall. The guy he was fighting was so thick it probably was like hitting a wall. We stand over our fallen foes, grinning like the seventeen-year-old unemployed idiots that we are, enjoying the aliveness that always comes with winning a good, old-fashioned fair fight.
Yo’s glaring at us, one hand on his hip and the other holding an empty pitcher. I shrug just as his eyes flick to the side, looking past us. The last thing I hear is a well-muffled scuff.
Everything goes black when the wooden stool slams into the back of my head.
Chapter Two
I wake up to a slap in the face. Not a loving, caring slap when the doc smacks a newborn baby in the butt to get it to cry, but a stinging, full handed palm across the face that snaps my head to the side and will likely leave a fierce red handprint on my cheek. I’d be lying if I told you it didn’t conjure up memories of at least one ex-girlfriend.
“Yow!” I yelp. “What the chill?”
As I blink away the wave of dizziness that spins my vision in blurry swirls, I hear the sharp crack of palm flesh on cheek flesh. For a moment I’m left wondering whether it’s an echo from me getting slapped, but then I hear a similar outburst from someone close by.
I close my eyes, fighting back the urge to vomit as the spinning room gradually slows. “Buff, is that you?” I slur.
“Dazz?”
“Yah.”
“You breathin’?”
“Nay,” I say.
“What the freeze happened?” Buff asks.
Before I can answer, a third voice chimes in. “You two and your icin’ prideful stupidity tore up my pub, is what happened,” Yo bellows. Yo. The slapper. I’ve never seen a day when his hands were clean. I’ll have to wash my face a half-dozen times…just as soon as I can figure out the difference between up and down.