Stacia Sotar had endured her fair share of bad smells, but the Pirate Republic of Saldonica was a new winner. It beat all the various spots in Lovats: Hawk’s Way where boats dumped trash; the Skulks where too many people had been forced into squalid, single-room homes; and even the Cisterns that were literally filled with the capital’s shit.

Saldonica smelled worse.

Maybe because the sailors and raiders and gamblers who made up this makeshift port thought baths were for cowards, or maybe because sulfur seeped up from the swamps all around, leaving even the cleanest person unable to escape the stink of rotten eggs. Or maybe it was because all those smells were compounded when one entered Baile’s Slaughter Ring. Built in the ruins of some forgotten fortress, the base of the arena was ancient stone, the rest wooden scaffolding that stretched upward. Eight towers. Thousands of seats, and so very little breeze to sweep away the stench.

Ryber held a bundle of dried lavender beneath her nose. Stix regretted not buying one of her own when they’d set off for the Ring that morning. In her defense, it hadn’t smelled this badly in the Baedyed district where they were staying. In fact, their little inn was surprisingly immaculate for a port run by pirates.

Except for the rotten eggs, of course.

The wooden bench beneath Stix rattled. A rat scuttled over her boot—the fourteenth of that day—disturbed by the stochastic drumroll of feet as viewers watched the day’s winner depart. Once a year, a massive, violent fight filled the ring, drawing people from across the continent. Baile’s Slaughter Ring, it was called, with hundreds of prisoners pitted against each other.

Stix was glad she’d missed that event, and she was glad that today’s more standard fight featured a willing participant who entered the Ring for coin and glory. Not that it changed the fact that hundreds of prisoners were currently trapped beneath the Ring, waiting for next year’s Slaughter and guilty only of working on a ship when raiders had come.

The day’s winner, a Stonewitch called the Hammer, pumped his arms in victory as he strode off the dusty Ring floor. One of his arms was made of stone, though he didn’t always wear the stone limb outside the Ring. Sometimes he didn’t wear it inside either, for whatever the Hammer fought, the Hammer clobbered. He was the Ring’s reigning champion, and the money that changed hands over his fights was enough to feed Stix’s old crew for a month. Ten of Stix’s old crews.

Today, he had destroyed a horde of crocodiles, each as long as a galley and almost as wide too.