The Ladder of Rain

About

In Ninebridge it rains forty days a year and the Ladder runs for all of them: nine rungs, one bout each, on a floating platform in the Ash Channel with the city watching from the bridges. Fighting is done in pairs. A striker can do nothing a body cannot do until a drummer is playing for her; then she can do a great deal more, and the difference is deducted from the drummer — hearing first, heart after. Nobody with forty bouts behind them sees fifty. Rukhaya Dane has eleven street bouts and no patron. Ilm Sarratt has been her drummer since she was seventeen and in her bed for four years, has thirty-one bouts on the frame, and has not mentioned the ringing, the stairs, or the letter from the Ladder's physician. The ninth-rung champion comes out alone and still fights like a woman with a drummer, and the city calls that genius. A tournament story built as a hub: nine bouts, and between them a night in the city where you choose who gets your hours — your drummer, your rival, your patron, or the physician who will tell you the truth if you ask a direct question. The choreography is concrete and rhythmic, the power system has a stated price paid by someone you love, and the pension clause everyone quotes is only payable if the drummer dies on the platform. Desire is frank and closes the door. Five endings; the ninth rung is reachable in two of them, and one of those is worse.

Cast

• Rukhaya Dane protagonist; striker, no patron
• Ilm Sarratt drummer; thirty-one bouts
• Coele Vane ninth-rung champion; fights alone
• Yeshe Ostrand patron; owns four strikers and a stretch of the betting book
• Physician Anouk Sarre the Ladder's physician; signs drummers fit
• Toben Vane Coele's younger brother; drummer, retired at twenty-four