My thoughts come back to Oliver and the gaping hole that is his magic. The absence of the thing that is so much him. He paid such a terrible price, and for what? To somehow help his brother destroy us?
But … what if Oliver didn’t know, either? What if all that guilt I sensed is because of something he wishes he could have stopped? I know guilt, too. Wanting fire to dance and Shire’s scar, hounding Rudy until he died—even if I didn’t mean either of those to happen, I’ll never stop feeling bad about them. Just like however Oliver came to give up his magic, it would change him forever. His parents’ dying would have also altered his path.
My thoughts chase me forward, and soon I reach Paper. The sector is just east of Textile, and the changeover is like going from an oil painting to a watercolor. Bright hues turn into cream and grays. Bookstores replace fabric ones, and print shops replace tailor houses. Kiosks are on every corner, selling newspapers and magazines.
The location of tonight’s fighting ring is the sector’s—and therefore Lotusland’s—oldest library. It’s been shut down for years, a shadow of the past.
Whoever built the library was an admirer of ancient Xulaian architecture, and so the structure is a replica of the famous Vigo Baths halfway across the world in Xulai. It’s been scaled down a lot, but the library still takes up a whole city block. It’s a huge circular building with a roof that’s made up of a series of connected glass domes and painted archways. The ceilings inside are thirty feet high, and dozens of rooms all flow into one another. The original baths were sorted by water temperature, from sweltering to icy.
At a quarter to midnight, I cross the street to get to the main entrance. At the door, shoving my mask into my back pocket, I glance around to make sure I’m alone, and I am—this part of Paper is quiet at night anyway, made even more so with this whole block being dead for so long. No longer protected by the Guild’s magic, I brace myself as I cast with my key starter.
Heat stings, becomes an ache wrung into my bones just as water is wrung out of rags. The lock twists open with a click. Pain still swirling beneath my skin, I pull at the door and step inside.
A small foyer that is dark and empty, marble floors stretching out in front of me and leading to a pair of large inner doors.
I open them, and the sight I see is fast becoming a familiar one.
It’s the library’s main room, and a crowd fills it, all the way to the corners and spilling out into side corridors. Everyone is walking in all directions and talking in loud voices and yelling out to one another. Oversized bulbs bob in midair and fill the room with light.
All the books are gone now and all the shelves are thick with dust. The huge stone pillars inside that held up the roof are still there, though the roof’s glass domes shattered a long time ago. Signs of the quakes that have hit the area over the years show in the deep cracks across the frescoes that cover the walls, in the marble floor that lifts and dips.
The registration area’s set up on the left side of the room, and the starter counter is on the right. The library’s checkout area in the middle is now the bets counter. Hugo and Jack are calling for bets, both raising their voices to be heard over the noise of the crowd.
I can’t help but look for Oliver. To see his face and figure out what comes next. I can’t tell if he’s my enemy, or if I even want him to be my enemy. His height makes him hard to miss, though, so I know he’s not here yet. Or if he is, he’s somewhere else in the building, likely reliving this afternoon just like I am. Reliving losing his magic, too. The memory has never died out for him, but I’m pretty sure I just gave it new life, something that leaves me torn between guilt and satisfaction.
I also look for signs of Piper. I still haven’t seen her since I broke the rules last night, my plans to find her earlier today interrupted by my decision to go to the Salt Lick instead. Oliver ended up answering a lot of the questions I might have asked her, but I still need to find out if she means to keep backing me. If she does, then I need marks to buy starters. And if she doesn’t—well, then that’s two disadvantages I’ll have to fight with.
But I can’t see her yet, so I head over to the registration area. As I weave through the mass of casters, my ears pick out my name—pick out Rudy’s—and I get snippets of what it might be like to be in the audience instead of in the fighting ring:
I’ve got five hundred marks on Rudy to survive, no way she’ll top the clone spell.
I still think Finch will win.
I still think she and her team should have been eliminated since she broke the rules.
I like how Rudy’s done something unique each time.
She doesn’t cast enough blood or bone spells and I bet it’s because she’s weak that way, less control over those—
I frown as I keep walking, trying not to be irritated and to remember that the spectators don’t know me outside of the tournament. They don’t know anything about what’s happened this past week, this past year, my entire lifetime.
Still, the word weak digs in like a splinter. The words less control. I don’t want to be that caster anymore, when once I wondered if I’d ever be anything but.
At the registration area, I get my name written on my face, and then make my way over to the starter counter. A headache threatens, the last of the pain from the spell I cast to get inside. I’m beginning to worry about not finding Piper in time when I finally spot her in the crowd. She’s also looking for me, and we both head toward each other.
Right before I reach her, my stomach drops. This really could be it for me. As far as I’ll ever get in the tournament. Without Piper’s support, I’ll have nothing working for me, only too much against.
But I want to show everyone she knows how to pick a winner.
“Piper, I’m really sorry about the clone stunt,” I blurt out before she can say anything. “Embry’s already given me hell for it, if that makes a difference. And even though I’m stuck having to fight without the Guild’s protection, I promise I’ll fight through the pain.”
Piper sighs. “Are you done?” She’s in a cream silk tuxedo, her purse a slip of black velvet. Her hair is a pile of red amassed on top of her head.
“Yes?”
“Good. I’m not dropping you as my fighter. You broke the rules, but for a good reason. Just don’t do it again.”
I release a deep breath, wholly relieved. “I won’t. I can’t, or I’m definitely out for good.”
She smiles. “You broke the rules with flair, at least.”
“I was lucky.”
“Luck is a part of a lot of things, some more than others.” She opens up her purse and gives me two hundred marks. She helps me tie on my silk armband, smoothing it out with enough care that for a second I want to tell her about Oliver’s magic. I want to ask her about the loss of such magic and if she could ever imagine it.
But the discovery feels too raw still. It’s not even my memory, but the sight of it lingers in my own mind, like I touched someone else’s wound and am now also stained with its blood. And I can’t explain why it feels nearly like a betrayal, telling anyone about Oliver without knowing the whole story. Maybe because it makes him look worse and that doesn’t feel right. Why couldn’t it have been Finch alone?
Then Piper is wishing me luck and leaving, saving me from having to think any more about Oliver at all.
I go over to the starters table and buy my ring starters, rashly deciding on a few extra red and white because I can’t stop hearing weak.
I follow dusty plaques bolted to the walls of one of the corridors leading out of the main room and find the washroom. Inside one of the stalls, I take out the key holder from my starter bag, slip on my new ring starters, and attach the whole thing to my belt loop.
Someone comes into the washroom. They go into the stall next to me.
I sigh and peek down.
Sunflower-printed sneakers.
I sigh again, get up, flush, and leave the stall. I pause outside Kylin’s stall, then knock.
She flushes and emerges. The letters of her name on her cheek seem exceptionally big tonight, as though she’s smaller than I remember or she asked for the guy to write it that way. I’m betting on the latter.
“It’s a public washroom,” she says, washing her hands in the sink beside me, then sitting up on the counter the way she always does. “But, yeah, I was following you. I didn’t see you after the second round. Are you okay?”
“Still in the tournament, no thanks to you.”
Her mouth drops open. “I helped you.”
“You drew attention to us is what you did. You made us look weak by helping. We never made a pact, Kylin. You have to stop imagining we’re in this together because we’re not, at all.”
She snaps her mouth shut, but she can’t hide how upset she is with what I said. It shows in the sheen in her eyes, the way she tugs at her braid the way a little kid does.
“Actually, I wanted to ask you again about making one,” she says. “We really should, now that there’s just six of us and we both have a good chance of making it to the final. It really could be me and you tomorrow, fighting for the championship.”
I dry my hands on my pants, almost envious of her ability to dare to believe so easily. To simply want and not worry about paying for that want. Or, at least, to not worry so much it keeps you from wanting at all.
I give her a look. “I can kill you tonight, you know, and you’re asking me to be in a pact with you?”
“Except you wouldn’t, because you’re not Finch. And with two fighters moving on, I say we have a better chance if we stick up for each other.”
“Kylin, even if we make a pact and it works and we do move on, it’ll just make fighting each other tomorrow harder. There’s only ever going to be one winner.” To be honest, I already think it’s too late for us to stay strangers. Having to fight Kylin would no longer be as easy as it once might have been. I shut the door on her, but somehow she snuck in anyhow. Or maybe I let her in and just told myself I didn’t. But I can’t tell her this. It’d be just like her to use it against me, to say since it’s already too late, we might as well make that pact. I know this because I would have said the same thing to Shire.
She scowls, then grins. “How about a pact to gang up on Finch together? That might be a good idea, too.”
Oh. Now I’m hesitating.
She leaps. “C’mon, how could it hurt? And he’s the champion—he’s going to be the hardest out of everyone. We might as well try. We cast invisibility spells last round to wait out the fighters teaming up on you. I didn’t want to see you eliminated with all the teams ganging up on you because it seemed unfair, and I told Finch that. So his idea was that we sit back by hiding to let the other teams cancel each other out. It worked really well!”
A chill runs along my arms. Kylin showed Finch a weakness and it’s me. “You can’t trust Finch. You can’t trust me. You can’t trust anyone but yourself, Kylin.”
She frowns. “I don’t trust him. And I do trust myself.”
Nothing about not trusting me, and I glare at the back of her head in the mirror. She’s nothing but a distraction, really. I look at her and see how I can fail out there in a fighting ring because I have to think of someone other than myself. Shire was thinking of our parents and me and everything the teahouse stands for, but all of that was in her head only, and still she died. I’ve already got revenge and ghosts and the weight of Saint Willow in mine—I don’t need a real live Kylin right in the fighting ring with me as something else to worry about.
“So what do you think?” she asks. “About a pact?”
“This tournament isn’t for pacts.” I stare at my reflection, at the letters on my cheek, and tell myself that’s all I can be right now. The ring name of a fighter.
Kylin sighs. “Okay, but maybe we can be friends after the tournament. I can come visit you, wherever you are in the city.”
I try to smile at her. “Okay, sure.”
Though I’m not certain at all. I think this tournament will never leave me entirely once it’s over, whether I win it or not. I think maybe seeing Kylin outside of a fighting ring will only make me think of Shire and how much I miss having a sister. Or of Rudy and what happened, of Oliver and Finch and secrets of lost magic and gathered spells.
Or … maybe seeing Kylin will help me stop missing having a sister so much.
A bell clangs.
Kylin hops off the counter. “Good luck, Rudy—but only until we have to fight each other.”
I have to laugh. “Now you’re learning.”
She’s nearly out the door before I call her back.
“My real name’s Aza, okay? Since you asked last time.”
“Cool.” She smiles like we made some kind of pact after all, and I follow her out of the washroom, down the corridor, and back into the main room of the library.
Spectators have pushed themselves out toward the walls. Kylin and I go to stand in the center where it’s clear. Wilson, Pav, and Nola are here, too.
And Finch, who’s already watching me by the time my eyes get to him. The blue-striped ribbon representing the Salt Lick is wrapped around his upper arm. His gaze is flat and direct and tells me I made a mistake in making him notice me. For a second, I think it’s because Oliver told him what happened, what I know. But then I remember his glare at the end of the last match, when I cast the clone spell.
Whichever the reason, he makes sure to let me know I’m the fighter he’ll be going after tonight. Whether I’m the sister of the fighter he killed who now wants revenge, or the fighter who put on a bigger display than he did last round, it makes no difference to him. I’m the fighter standing in his way of the championship, of the Guild. Of being a great.
A cold vise that’s shaped like a fist squeezes my heart and I look away. For all that Finch is a killer, he’s also a winner, and I long for my head and heart to be as clear as his. That they not be so crowded with faces and questions.
I keep myself from looking for Oliver, knowing he’s here.
Then Embry strolls in from one of the corridors. He’s in a suit of dark maroon silk this time, the shade so dark it’s nearly black. He’s paired it with a shirt and tie of the brightest poppy red, his tie a print of orchids. There’s little sign of the caster who talked to me about his glass bones and not being able to cast anymore. Again I think of Oliver and just wish tonight’s fight would start already.
Embry’s teal eyes are back to being more watchful than welcoming. The crowd shuffles and falls quiet.
He walks up to us in the middle of the room. Six of us left. It seems like so few, and at the same time, too many.
He flashes out six playing cards, front side down. “Pick a card, please.” His low rumble of a voice echoes off stone and marble.
I’m beginning to think I wouldn’t mind too much never seeing a deck of cards again.
Finch is first. He holds his card up. It has a single number on it. Number 1.
Nola’s next. Her card’s a 3.
Wilson chooses. It’s a 2.
I choose. 3.
Pav chooses. 1.
Kylin’s last. She’s a 2.
Embry walks over to one side so that he’s standing with the spectators.
“In ancient Xulai,” he says, “the most powerful didn’t go to pubs or bars to hang out, they went to the Vigo Baths. The greats were known to stay for days at a time, drinking and bathing and frolicking.”
Someone hollers, “Even the greats had to do it!”
Laughter is a ripple through the crowd.
Embry smiles. “Sometimes it’s easy to forget how the original seven greats were human, just like everyone else. They loved, they fought, and they hated. Eighteen hundred years ago, Max the Deceiver cast a love spell on Otta the Swift to win her from Valery the Bleeder. And so Valery challenged Max to a duel. Right here, in the famous Vigo Baths.”
The Guild of Now—
wherever and whatever they are in here, as specks of dust in the air, as winks of light in their bulbs—casts.
A millennium and a half winds back in time.
And we’re in baths across the sea.
The lower half of my body is on fire, and I peer down, terrified of what I’m going to see.
Steaming-hot water comes up to my chest. I’m standing in a sunken stone bath that’s bigger than any of the city public pools. And it’s much bigger than the main room of the library in the Paper Sector. I hadn’t realized just how much it’d been scaled down as a replica.
Only the fighters are in the water, and we’re all spaced out from one another, twenty feet apart. The spectators are crowded onto the marble platform that wraps around the entire rectangular bath. They’re already cheering, a reverberation of noise that bounces off ancient stone and washes back over us.
For a second, I think of Jihen, of Diego. Whether they’re watching me from the crowd right now, parts of another world bleeding into this one. But it’s impossible to try to make them out, and maybe it’s better that I can’t tell. I wasn’t bluffing about going to Saint Willow to blow Jihen’s secret if he didn’t leave me alone about the tournament, but it doesn’t mean I want to do it, either. The idea of purposely seeking out Saint Willow chills me.
I peer up at the glass dome that is this part of the ceiling. It’s the biggest one of the baths, and through it, the night sky is beautiful. The moon is full and silver, the kind of moon Lotusland will never see again. There are stars, too, a spill of diamonds onto velvet—the city will never see these, either. Pearly light floods down and into the bath and mixes with the flickering amber glow coming from the torches sticking out of the walls.
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