Chapter 6: Chapter 6: Desperate Measures, Part 2
Rath sighed, but nodded. "Thanks for all your help, Trin." He kissed her cheek, then left out the back door, slipping through various rank-smelling alleyways until he came out on Baker's Row, where he could cut more easily up to the bridges, taking smaller roads that wouldn't be congested with visitors.
All the while, he tried to come up with some other meansany other meansthat did not entail entering the stupid Tournament of Losers. Not that it really mattered in the end, because as Trin had said, it would only cost him an afternoon or two.
But it was the principle of the matter. The tournament was a bard's song, fool's gold. Rath might not have much sense, but he had enough to avoid participating in a spectacle put on for the masses to abide by the letter of the law. Like every other time before, the nobles had probably long ago selected and groomed suitable candidates. If the nobles hadn't already started cheating, they would soon, beginning with bribing tournament officials to ensure their pre-selected candidates made it through the preliminaries, or to learn ahead of time what the challenges would be. If their candidates failed anyway, there would also be bribes to fix that. Cheating wasn't hard, merely expensive.
He was going to be harangued endlessly by everyone who knew him, but there was no help for it. His only other option for getting that kind of money that fast was providing cadavers to the strange trio that was always happy to pay generously for bodies and ask no questions about where they came from. What they did with the bodies, nobody had ever been brave enough to ask.
Rath had once helped a friend take his father's body to them after the man had dropped from too much booze and fighting. One of the most miserable nights of his life, though not as bad as it had been for his friend, who'd actually liked his father, but needed the money and was doing only what his father had ordered.
The horrible evening had earned Rath fifteen shillings, though. He hadn't needed to worry about money for three whole weeks. Then his father had turned up and ruined everything, but three weeks of peace was more than he usually got.
Giving up on finding alternate means of earning money fast, Rath tried to dredge up what he knew about the tournament. People had told him countless stories when he'd been young and stupid enough to be excited, to think he might be one of the lucky few to marry into a noble house, or maybe, mama, I'll get to marry a prince or princess!
He winced at the memory, tried to think of something to banish it again. Like all the stories people had told him when he was older about how stupid and pointless the tournament truly was. Or the rules. Those would be useful to remember if he was actually going to do this.
Rules, rules, rules. Thousands always showed up to compete, and it would take far too long to give that many the full gauntlet of challenges. So over the course of a couple of days, five back when the tournament had been more popular, competitors were whittled down in two rounds.
The first round was the melee, a mad free-for-all dash across a specially built 'battlefield'. All competitors were given flags before the melee started, and the goal was to keep those flags while stealing them from everyone else. The more flags captured, the more likely a competitor was to go on to the next round. There was a record set, for some ridiculous amount, but Rath no longer remembered it.
The second round was dueling, something like best of five or whatnot. He didn't remember that, either. Once, he'd had everything memorized. The number of marriage slots, all the titles, the different kinds of challenges and the keys to success for each, the records set for all of them, on and on and on he'd gone. So much energy wasted on something so stupid.
All he remembered now was that there were seventy-seven noble houses, plus the royal family, which meant seventy-eight marriage slots. Six duchies, seventeen earldoms, and fifty-four baronies. Approximately five thousand people, give or take a grand, would be showing up to compete for a chance. All but five hundred of them would be whittled out in the first two days, and that wasn't counting the ones who weren't approved for competition.
Because to participate at all, the competitor must be: Between the ages of twenty and forty. Have no trace of noble lineage for at least seven generations. Must not have family that won the previous tournament. No arrests within the last three years and absolutely no convictions of major crimes, which were rape, murder, grand theft, and arson.
That eliminated plenty, but still left a surplus of options.
What the melee didn't take care of, the duels did, reducing the final number of contestants to five hundred. After that came the sorting round, where the five hundred were sorted into who would compete to marry the royal family, the dukes, the earls, and the barons. After that came the final round, months of absurd, arbitrary challenges meant to prove that the pathetic little peasants were fit to become hoity-toities.
Rath would much rather do anything else, but he'd faced worse. He could endure the stupid tournament long enough to earn ten slick.
"Raaaaath!"
He stopped and turned around as Toph came barreling at him, because Toph had somehow never learned to simply walk anywhere. He oofed when Toph slammed into him and hugged him tight. "Morning, Toph."
"Where have you been? I waited at the pub for you to show! All night!"
Rath groaned. "I'm sorry, Toph. I've been busy cleaning up my father's latest mess. Spent the whole night working at Trin's. I totally forgot."
Toph wrinkled his nose. "Your dad again? Haven't you put him in the harbor or sold his body yet?"
"Everyone keeps suggesting that second one. I'm somewhat alarmed about the company I keep."
"Like you're company to be going on about," Toph retorted cheerfully, linking their arms as they resumed walking. "So where you headed now? Got time for a pint?"
"Maybe later. I'm, uh" Rath wrinkled his face, then sighed. "I'm still ten slick short."
"Holy Fates!" Toph said. "What in the name of Belna's balls did he do this time?"
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone