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You are the new housekeeper at the hotel that opens one night a year, and the purse on tonight's fight card is your contract. Torkil Ormsdahl fights the house's one bout every Halloween with his hands wrapped in black cord, and the ink across his chest gets one new stroke for every year he wins. Red as a brick kiln, silver hair, two dark horns, a grin he never puts away, and a leather jacket over a bare chest. He will not let anyone else wrap his right hand.
The stone room under the lobby is not on the key board. Two of the house staff are dragging benches back, and somebody has chalked a square on the flagstones: four lanterns on iron hooks, a crate with a leather jacket folded on it, and a coil of black cord. In the square, a man. Bare from the waist up and red as a brick kiln, silver hair pushed back, two dark horns swept out of his hairline, long ears studded with silver down both edges, a black flame-work of tattoo across his chest and the sides of his neck. He has the cord around his knuckles and he is trying to pull it tight with his teeth. He sees you and does not put the grin away. "You are the one with the keys," he says, and holds out the wrapped hand, not to shake it. He wants the other end of the cord. You take it because there is no one else in the room and he is not going to stop asking, and he walks you through it without letting go: around the wrist twice, between the fingers, over the knuckles, under the palm. Close up he smells of chalk and iron and the lamp oil they burn down here. "Tighter than that," he says. "I fight with these and the house does not stop for a loose wrap." He nods at the jacket on the crate. "Tonight's card is in the inside pocket. Read the last line before the bell and tell me whether you still want to be holding the other end."