The blood seemed to hesitate for a second, then to blossom, an eructation of it, bursting out from the fissure like boiling water, pouring out of him in great gouts, as if the pressure in his veins was immeasurably greater than in Bellis’. It raced across the man’s skin in a macabre slick, and he turned his arm expertly this way and that, channeling his own blood according to some design Bellis could not see. She watched, waiting for a cascade of gore to foul the stage, which did not happen, and her breath stopped in her throat as she saw that the blood was setting.

It poured in great oozing washes from the man’s wounds, the substance of the blood crawling over itself to reach higher, and she saw that the edges of the wound were crusted with embankments of clotting blood, vast accretions of the stuff, the red turning swiftly brown and blue and black, and freezing in crystalline jags that jutted inches from his skin.

The blood that ran down his arm was setting also, expanding at an impossible rate and changing color like vivid mold. Shards of scab matter frosted into place like salt or ice.

He dipped his knife again in the green liquid and continued to cut, as did his fellows behind him. He grimaced against the pain. Where he sliced the blood exploded, and coursed along the runnels in his anatomy, and set hard in an abstract armor.

"The liquid’s an infusion that slows coagulation. It allows them to shape the armor," Silas whispered to Bellis. "Each warrior perfects his own pattern of cuts. That’s part of their skill. Quick-moving men cut themselves and direct the blood so as to leave their joints free, and they pare off excess armor. Slow, powerful ones coat themselves in scab until they’re as clumsy and heavily armored as constructs."

Bellis did not want to speak.

The men’s grisly, careful preparations took time. Each of them sliced in turn at his face and chest and belly and thighs, and grew a unique integument of dried blood: hardened cuirasses and greaves and vambraces and helmets with irregular edges and coloration; random extrusions like lava flows, organic and mineral at once.

The laborious act of cutting turned Bellis’ stomach. The sight of that armor so carefully cultivated in pain astounded her.

After that cruel and beautiful preparation, the fight itself was as dull and unpleasant as Bellis had thought it would be.

The three scabmettlers circled each other, each wielding two fat scimitars. Encumbered by their bizarre armor, they looked like animals in outlandish plumage. But the armor was harder than wax-boiled leather, deflecting strokes from the weighted swords. After a long, sweaty battering, a clot of the stuff fell free from the forearm of one fighter, and the quickest man slashed out at him.