Chapter Twenty
Despite Clay’s assurances that they’d take care of me, I was unceremoniously dragged through the back of the arena, and into what they called the fighters’ preparation area. It felt more like a tiny dungeon. It smelled like one, too, dank and humid. Dark walls surrounded a small bench, or what I suppose could pass as a bed with no mattress.
They dragged me in there with my broken ankle. I bit down the screams of pain that threatened to explode straight from my ankle and out of my throat. As if I’d give them that satisfaction. The guard on my left, an angry man with only one arm and eagle eyes, kept a close eye on me. But not close enough to see me swipe a switchblade from the guard on my left, the one with two arms and no eagle eyes. I slipped it up my sleeve.
They dropped me in the tiny room, not even on the bench. Ian slipped past them.
“Stupid dog,” the two-armed jailer scowled and tried to kick him. Ian growled and bit the guy’s leg. The guard yelped and his partner rolled his eyes at him.
“Let’s go,” he said, dragging his friend out and closing the door behind them.
Closed and locked.
This was getting to be a pattern. One that I wasn’t overly fond of.
I pushed myself back towards the wall, straightened my legs, gritted my teeth, and examined my ankle. I almost passed out from the pain. Stars exploded in front of my eyes. I lowered my head, trying really hard not to puke, because I’d just be puking on myself, and it wouldn’t help the smell of this place.
I gulped in deep breaths, let the ankle lay where it was. It didn’t look too bad, when I opened my eyes again. Either my boot held the bone in place, or it had only been fractured and maybe not completely broken.
I’d felt it snap, though. I’d heard it snap.
As I looked at my ankle and debated unzipping my boot, it wasn’t the broken bone that I thought of, but the dead eyes of the woman, the fighter who’d just wanted a chance in the ring. Who had been killed by the greed of others.
The nausea began to pass. Ian sat and leaned against me, as though to comfort me. My head in my hands, I leaned on him, taking deep breaths, closing my eyes to focus on nothing but his warmth, and my breath.
“I don’t think I like this place,” I mumbled. Ian gave a low whine and moved me gently off him. I opened my eyes. The dog body beside me began to shift and change. I looked away, not wanting to embarrass him.
“It’s okay,” he said. I looked his way, and he was wearing the same dark clothes he’d been wearing before.
I frowned.
“There are some clothes that will shift with me,” he said, “it’s just all so black and depressing.”
“Oh,” I answered, not quite sure what else to say.
“I think I can help with your ankle,” he offered.
I was too tired to ask how, but he offered the information, out of what I assumed was kindness.
“I have the ability to shift the bones in my skin,” he said, looking at my ankle. He crouched at my feet, didn’t remove my boot. Then he looked into my eyes. “This is probably going to hurt.”
I nodded. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth.
His hands circled my ankle. It didn’t hurt, so much as felt warm.
“So you think you can fix it?” I asked. “Maybe splint it?”
“I can do better than that,” he whispered. “If I concentrate hard enough, sometimes I can get other people’s bones to shift, just a little bit.”
“Shift?” I barely got the word out before the pain exploded in my ankle. I think I screamed. I might have thrown up. I definitely passed out. I most definitely slumped to the ground.
It took me a few moments to come back to my senses. Definitely more than a few breaths. My stomach was tied in knots, but I was pleased to see that I hadn’t puked on myself.
Ian removed his hands from my ankle. He looked pale himself, like he might throw up.
“Don’t throw up on me,” I said, my voice hoarse in my own ears.
“You okay?” he asked. I wasn’t sure how to answer that. I felt like I’d gotten hit by a truck - and that had happened once, so I knew what that felt like. This felt a little bit worse, in fact. Like something had reached inside me and changed a piece of me. I knew exactly what that piece was, too, and would walk on it for the rest of my life.
I pushed myself back up, leaning against the wall. My two legs were still stretched out in front of me, the dark leather boots clinging to them. I took a deep breath, and then rotated the ankle. It moved without complaint. Maybe a little bit of discomfort and stiffness that hadn’t been there before, but it definitely wasn’t the pain that I’d had moments ago.
“You healed it!” I said, surprised. “You managed to fix my bone!”
He gave me a tired smile. “I wasn’t sure I could,” he said, “but I’m glad it worked.”
“What am I, a guinea pig?” I said jokingly.
“No, but I could be one!”
I laughed. I hadn’t heard him make a joke before. It suited him. He stopped smiling, and I noticed how exhausted he looked, his features gaunt and pale, even his brown hair limp.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry for dragging you into this.”
“It’s okay,” he answered. He seemed to ponder his answer for a moment longer. I left him the space he needed to consider it, now starting to understand his beats and pauses. “You didn’t drag me into anything,” he continued, “I offered to come, remember?”
“Did you?” I retorted, remembering Clay’s words. “Did you come here because you wanted to help, or did you come here because you had an ulterior motive?”
His eyes widened a bit in surprise, then he sighed. He moved slowly, practically crawling toward me, and leaned on the wall right beside me, extending his legs like mine.
I leaned back, staring forward, and waited for him to answer.
“The Guild of Shadows is not a terrible place to be,” he said. His voice was strong and soft all at once. He had the voice of someone who could tell you stories into the night, and you’d listen to them. It didn’t even matter what he spoke of. He could read a recipe, and you’d still be interested in listening to him.
I closed my eyes and I listened, losing myself in the words.
“We try to keep the balance between the guilds and the leagues, between the Traded and the humans and, yes, some people pay with their lives for that. But it’s rewarding work. Or it can be, at least.”
“Do you kill a lot of people?” I asked, keeping my eyes closed, focusing on his words.
“I’ve killed some,” he said, not hiding the fact, “but I don’t regret killing any of them,” he continued.
“You’ll kill more?” I said.
“I imagine I will,” he offered. “Does that bother you?”
“Not really,” I said, slightly surprised at my own words. “At least you’re not in denial about what you do.” I paused, haunted by the dead fighter’s eyes. “That girl in the arena died in front of me. I didn’t want her to die.”
I didn’t know how to explain what I wanted to ask, but thankfully, Ian seemed to follow what I was saying.
“I don’t think she deserved to die,” he said. “She was just trying to survive, follow the rules of her league. The fact that they allowed her to die, well…that’s the kind of place this is, I suppose.”
“Clay will end up dying here,” I said, feeling the certainty in my chest. Tears welled in my eyes and streamed down my cheeks, and I let them. Clay was my friend - my best friend. I didn’t want him to die here.
Ian didn’t say anything, letting the silence stretch comfortably around us.
“I have to get him out of here,” I said. “I have to help him find another way.”
A pause.
“He really wants to belong here,” Ian said.
“He wants to belong to a fighter’s league,” I said. “Surely they can’t all be this deadly.”
“No, there are different ones,” he said, h
is voice soothing. “But this is the biggest one. The one where the most glory is to be found, where the best fighters go.”
That’s what Clay would want. I didn’t say it out loud, though. I didn’t want Ian to know that part, because knowing that made me question everything.
I’d have to wonder if Clay had meant it when he said he’d be willing to go to another fighter’s league. If Clay cared enough about his own life, and mine, to try his hand at something different. Or if Clay had just decided he’d fight here until he could fight no more, and he’d get killed, sure, but at least he’d go down in some twisted form of glory.
I just wasn’t sure. My tears stopped running down my cheeks. I opened my eyes and looked at the locked door. I needed to find Clay. I needed to get answers from him. And I needed to get us both out of here.
“I know that the Guild of Shadows has its issues,” Ian said, “and I’m not one to lie to myself about the black and white nature of some of the decisions we take, but don’t fool yourself, Tira. This fighter’s league? It’s powerful, and they’ve got their eyes on Clay. They’re not going to let him go that easily.”
“Maybe,” I whispered, “but neither will I.”
Chapter Twenty-One
I’m pretty sure I fell asleep for a bit, leaning against the wall. I was pretty sore by the time I woke up.
Ian was still there, knees brought up under his chin. He didn’t look like he’d slept at all. It reminded me of Clay making sure I could sleep during our last night at the school. I really had to stop getting thrown into jails so my friends could sleep more.
Once Ian noticed that I was awake, he looked my way.
“I should go,” he said.
“I get that,” I offered. “You should get out while you can.”
“That’s not quite what I meant,” he said. “I should go and get the keys, maybe help you get out. I think I’m ready to shift again.”
“You really can’t shift sometimes?” I asked. He shook his head.
“No, and I’m not sure exactly what it depends on. Sometimes, it’s more tiring than other times. Sometimes I can shift five times in one night no problem, and other times I can barely shift once. A few years ago I got stuck in animal form for a week because I just couldn’t shift out of it for some reason.”
“Oh?” I asked. “What was the animal form?”
“A snail,” he said. I stifled a laugh. He frowned.
“Hey, it wasn’t all that bad. You just sort of go around when you’re a snail. There’s not that many expectations of you. You’ve got a home, you can hide in there in comfort for almost a week. It wasn’t that bad at all. Kind of restful, kind of quiet and peaceful. I might do that again now in fact! I could use some peace and quiet!”
“Well, there’s an easy solution for that!” I muttered. “Just get away from me. I seem to just be attracting trouble lately.”
“It’s not you,” he said. “It’s being Traded in this world. You’ve been sheltered for too long in the school. You’ve forgotten what it’s like out here.”
“I don’t think you can call that sheltered,” I said. “I mean, they didn’t exactly treat us well. They put us in modified cells to sleep. If we got out of line, things got painful. I mean, sometimes we managed to get out for a bit, but even then if they’d have found out, that would have hurt too.”
I looked his way, and he looked at me skeptically. He seemed to do that a lot.
“What?” I asked.
“You really think they didn’t know?” he said. “You really think that they didn’t know that you were sneaking out?”
“Well, no,” my turn to be skeptical. “Of course they didn’t. We’d have gotten in even more trouble if they had.”
“Tira.” I don’t think I’d ever heard my name said in such an exasperated manner, and lots of people had said it exasperatedly before. “Of course they knew! They probably followed in some way and found out what you were doing! I mean, that’s the whole point of the schools! It’s a training ground for the leagues and the guilds, so they have to know what you’re capable of before placing you!”
I cocked my head a little bit, thinking about what he’d said.
“Is that why we had so many fighting classes?”
His eyes grew even wider.
“Of course that’s why you had fighting classes and you learned how to handle weapons. Why else do you think you had that? That’s not exactly normal high school material!”
I shrugged. “I don’t know what normal high school looks like. This is all I know! So what you’re saying is that they pretty much know everything we’ve been up to since being at that school.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Okay,” I said, “so we have to try something different, then. Wait. If they know everything about us from school, if they’ve been studying us that closely, wouldn’t they know that Clay is my best friend? Wouldn’t they know that we’d do anything for one another?”
I didn’t look at Ian, and he remained quiet, letting me work through it. “That means there’s a reason that they’re doing this. There’s a reason that he received the guild invitation, and I didn’t.” It hit me like the boulder from the battlefield would have. “They’re testing him, and his loyalty to the fighter’s league.”
“Everyone receives a guild invitation,” Ian said quietly. I ignored him. I hadn’t, but now wasn’t the time to argue about it.
What would they do to test Clay’s loyalty now? They’d kept me alive, so that was a good sign. Or was it? Just as I pondered the possibilities, the door unlatched.
“I won’t be far,” Ian said, and he shifted down into a mouse, scampering away just as the door creaked open. Thank goodness the door was sticky.
I wasn’t overly thrilled to see Blake step in.
“Hey, Tira,” he said.
“Hey, Blake.” I stood up. He looked surprised.
“Ankle all better?”
I shrugged. “Maybe she just didn’t do that much damage.”
“Probably best that she’s gone then,” he said.
Before I could think better of it, I pulled out the switchblade that I’d stolen from the guard, flipped it out and flung it in the air. I caught him by surprise, and he didn’t have the time to activate his power before the blade struck the side of his cheek and cut deep.
I followed it and managed to knee him in the gut. He doubled over. I brought my elbow down to strike him in the back of the head. But my elbow stopped an inch from his skull, in his perfectly coiffed blond hair, and I was flung back against the wall, unable to move.
He stood back up and caught his breath. His cheek was badly cut. A definite scar. Good, I thought, wishing I could voice it. He brought his hand to his cheek and pulled it away, fingers covered in blood. He gave me a look that made it very clear he hoped that I would soon die.
He held out his hand, moved his fingers as though beckoning me, pulling me to him, until I could smell his hot breath on my face.
“I’m going to enjoy this next part,” he said. Then he slammed his hand down. I fell to my knees. My ankle hurt but didn’t break again. I was about to get up and try to punch him, but my two original captors showed up, pulled me up, and forced me to follow them. The guard picked up his switchblade, looking annoyed and embarrassed.
Eagle eyes gave him a fierce look. This time, they made sure to shackle my hands behind my back.
“Don’t do anything that stupid again,” Blake said, and then he got an evil grin. “I doubt that it’ll matter much, anyways.” He sighed as though a great burden had been placed on him. “I fear that I’m leaving today, so we won’t meet again.”
“The loss isn’t mine,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Bye, Tira,” he said and vanished from my sight, headed to wherever snakes like him lived.
I was dragged down the hall unceremoniously, part of me wishing that I’d kept the switchblade to use at a more opportune moment, but a bigger part of me gla
d that I’d made that bastard bleed.
#
By the time I’d found my bearings again, I realized that I was being dragged into the arena, but not ceremoniously or heroically. No fighter’s walk for me.
They unshackled me and threw me through the gates, where I stood on uneven ground. In more ways than one.
They’d changed the battlefield - to keep fighters on their toes, I supposed. A few sandy patches and some grass had popped up, and the hills had shifted. Some of the ground was muddy and looked slippery as hell. There were no boulders, though, so that was nice.
I looked up towards where the boss sat. From her seat, she could see down into the arena from every angle. I glared at her and she smiled, holding up her drink like a toast. It was the same damn drink, too.
I held up my hands in a gesture that made it clear what I thought of her.
“Are you ready for the battle, Tira Misu?” The cry came down, and a cheer exploded from all around. I could see a few participants against the railings, but I figured that most of the screams came from video feeds. The thought proved terrifying, since it sounded like a rather big audience. Which meant a lot of money. Which probably meant death would be on the table.
This really wasn’t as fun as Clay had made it sound.
I looked down to the spot where the last fighter had died. There was no sign of her blood, no trace that she’d ever existed, or that she’d expired here.
The cheering died down. I didn’t bother answering the question. If they wanted a show? Screw them. All that they’d have would be me hurting somebody else. My stomach turned. I didn’t exactly want to do that either. I didn’t mind beating on people, but only if they were bad. That four-armed, really tall fighter hadn’t been bad. She’d just been doing what she was meant to do, and that had cost her her life.
Another door opened at the other end of the arena, maybe thirty feet away.
The figure stepped from the light into the darkness, backlit, and I felt my extremities grow cold. I would recognize that shape anywhere. That form, that walk…even before he meandered into the light where I could see him, I knew who it was. I knew who I would be facing.
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