“Oooh,” she groaned, a blood-string swinging between her lip and the ruined shards of her Timekey on the floor.

I am stranded here.

“No fair.”

“Golgoth! Golgoth!” chanted the Rams, stamping their boots to set the floorboards a-jumping.

Chevie raised herself to all fours, wondering if her skull was fractured, thinking, Where is this Golgoth guy? Can Victorians do invisible?

She struggled to her feet, shaking her head to extinguish the stars in her vision, casting around for her attacker. There was no one in the fighting arena but Otto Malarkey.

“Where is he?” Chevie asked blearily. “Point me toward Golgoth.”

Malarkey touched two fingers to his lips, a gesture of guilt. “I am afraid, princess, that I am Golgoth. My old circus strongman name.”

Oh, crud, thought Chevie. “But I’m fighting for you!”

Malarkey removed the fingers from his lips, wagging them at the assembled Rams. “I said they could pick any Ram, and the clever bleeders picked me. After all, who better? Now I must choose between purse and pride.”

Let me guess, thought Chevie. Pride wins.

“And in that tussle, pride wins every time. I must sacrifice my wager to save my position.”

Chevie adopted a boxer’s stance, dipping her chin low behind raised fists.

Not that it matters much. With those hands, Malarkey could punch straight through my guard. I will have to rely on my speed.

The crowd’s attitude shifted from raucous encouragement to quiet, feral anticipation. There was much at stake here. Both combatants were being tested, but while Chevron was fighting for her life, Malarkey fought to prove himself loyal to his men, and he knew that there would be more than one Ram praying for him to fall and leave a vacancy for the top position.

The contestants circled each other with wary respect. Chevie’s ear was ringing with what she couldn’t help feeling was the Star Trek theme tune, which was extremely distracting. Malarkey rolled his shoulders and danced light-footed back and forth in a complicated jiglike routine that was almost as distracting as the ringing.

After a minute or so of sizing each other up, both fighters attacked at the same moment, to a tumultuous roar from the Rams. Malarkey’s swiftness was limited by his sheer bulk, and only his eyeballs could move with sufficient quickness to capture Chevie darting under his ham-fist to punch him twice in the solar plexus. Which had about as much effect as throwing a snowball at Mount Everest.

Punches not working, Chevie realized, straightening her fingers and jabbing them into Malarkey’s kidney. It does not matter if a man is as big as a house and made from red brick: if he gets a solid poke in the kidneys, it is going to hurt.

Malarkey roared and reflexively jerked his torso, which bumped Chevie into the human cordon around the fighting arena.

Rough hands tousled her hair and one cheeky so-and-so even patted her bottom.