by Kate Elliott
“Spider!” A baton whacks my rear end hard enough to jerk my attention back to the training court. The other trainer, Tana, wags the stump of her missing left hand in my face. “Keep your mind on the court.”
I wrench my thoughts back to the pavement on which I’m standing. We have finished the menageries while my mind wandered. All the other adversaries have gone to take a mug of water while I stand here staring at nothing.
“I’m ready,” I say.
“Are you?” Tana is Efean, and although Darios is Patron-born and thus her social superior, she runs Garon Stable because she trained Lord Thynos from fledgling to Illustrious. In the Fives all that matters is skill and victory. Not even a prince can defeat a lowly person with no legal standing, one like me, if he isn’t actually better. “You may think it an honor to jump from Novice to Challenger so quickly, but in truth you’ve just made things harder for yourself.”
“I understand.”
“I’m not sure you do.” The disapproving angle of her mouth reproaches me.
I go to the dining shelter, drink chicken broth for strength, and afterward take my place beside Lord Thynos on the training ground. The four Challengers with us are all Efean men, but I know only Inarsis, a strong, confident man of my father’s age who used to be a soldier. He is Lord Thynos’s closest friend, as odd as it may seem to see a highborn Patron lord and a Commoner act as equals.
Tana trots over to us. “Lord Thynos, if you would, please pace the six of you through several warm-up runs on the Fives court. After I’ve run the fledglings through drills I’ll be doing specific exercises with Spider.” She pauses to frown at me, making sure I am listening. “She’s not ready to compete at Challenger level. She won yesterday only because the Royal Fives Court was configured in a way that emphasized her skills and gave her an advantage.”
Lord Thynos and Inarsis glance at each other as people do who know each other well. Neither looks surprised. The other three Challengers, listening in, don’t look surprised either.
“I’m ready to run at Challenger rank,” I blurt out, because it infuriates me they think I’m not. Because I’m pretty sure Lord Gargaron did illegally interfere with the trial, and the idea that I was given an unfair advantage makes me even angrier.
“We shall see.” Lord Thynos leads us to the practice court as if we are a squad of soldiers following him into a skirmish. “Spider, you start at Trees. Nar, on Pillars. Pythias, you start at Traps. I’ll begin at Rivers. Gelos, give the start signal. Sotades, you turn the water clock.”
In the game of Fives, four competitors called adversaries race through a Fives court, made up of five obstacles called Pillars, Traps, Trees, Rivers, and Rings. The first to climb the victory tower and snatch the victor’s ribbon at the top becomes the winner.
I trot around the exterior fence of the practice area and chalk my hands at the gate. The court is divided into four quarters, each with its mandated obstacle: the maze of Pillars, the balance skills combined with the pitfalls of Traps, the climbing posts of Trees, and the moving steps of Rivers. In the center Rings awaits, a cunning and complicated mesh of the other four. The configuration of each obstacle changes with every trial, so you can never learn an obstacle by rote. Each time, you have to figure out what kind of variation has been set up, and what will work best to complete it quickly. I’m strongest on Rings and Traps and weakest on Trees, which is why Thynos has started me here: to rub in my face that I’ve jumped up the adversaries’ ladder too quickly.
I’ll show them I’ve not been given something I don’t deserve.
Yet as I stand before the entry gate with its canvas flap hiding the obstacle beyond, I remember how Kal would glance at me during training and smile invitingly.…
The shweet! shweet! of a whistle jolts me.
This is where I belong now, not wallowing in wishful thinking about a boy I can never have.
I push past the flap and immediately see that the posts in Trees have been configured into jumping ladders, rope climbs, and a sloped wall with movable pegs, tests that emphasize upper body strength. Most experienced male adversaries will beat me on Trees, but the Fives court includes such a blend of obstacles that physical strength alone won’t give you victory, much less move you from Novice rank to Challenger. The best adversaries need strength, speed, explosiveness, balance, acrobatic ability, intelligence, pattern-marking, and a sense of rhythm, as well as a head for tactics and an absolute willingness to take chances in a decisive manner.
By the time I complete Trees by reaching the resting platform, I see that Thynos, Inarsis, and Pythias are already on to their second obstacle. After they complete their first obstacle, adversaries decide in which direction to continue. Now that I’m done with Trees, I can head into Traps or Rivers next. All I need to do is defeat one of my competitors to prove myself worthy of being called Challenger. I can’t defeat Thynos, not yet, and Pythias has entered Trees behind me, so I run to the entrance to Traps and go after Inarsis because he’s older, and as far as I know he’s not competed since he left the army.
Traps includes balance beams, rope walks, tipping rope bridges, gaps to leap across, and always one “trap” that you have to figure out and negotiate properly or you’ll lose time going back to the beginning. There are two paths you can choose between: the longer “low road” is straightforward but takes time, while the “high road” offers a shorter but riskier route because you’ll fall farther and thus hurt or even kill yourself. When taking the high road in practice, everyone trains with pads and spotters beneath to catch falls.
Because we are running a warm-up Inarsis takes the low road, as I should. The trainers haven’t yet laid out the pads for advanced training, and there is no one to spot me. But I climb straight up to the high beams and ropes. I relax my way across the slack rope, sinking into my center, the wide strip of cloth pressed hard against the soles of my feet. I’m way up here with nothing to catch me if I fall, and it feels like flying, sun on my hair and the heavens wide above. My smile is as big as the sky because the thrill of challenge chases all heavy thoughts out of my head.
I step easily off the slack rope and spring up to the highest beam. From way up here, three times my height to the ground, I can look all around the Fives court: Thynos has already finished Pillars and is entering Traps behind me. Pythias is almost done with Trees. Over on the basic equipment where Tana is working with the fledglings, she has stopped to stare.
At me.
Keep your head in the court, I remind myself.
When I glance down, I see Inarsis below me, clambering upside down along a fisherman’s net. He can see right up to where I stand poised on a beam no wider than my hand. There’s a gap between the end of this beam and a landing platform. It’s a dangerous jump, the thing I’m best at.
I wait for him to finish the net because his next test is crossing on a tensioned rope. Catching his eye, I grin an assertive challenge. Then I swiftly calculate distance and arc, take six steps for impetus, and launch as I pick a focus point on a stationary object. This is the moment: the vertical leap, the tuck into an airborne somersault, the moment I open up and hit one foot in front of the other, eyes still on my targeting spot. My landing comes unbalanced, tipping into a slightly off-kilter crouch. I have to touch fingers to the platform to brace myself, but it’s not bad for the first spin of the morning, a trick many Challengers would never try at this height even in competition.
Best of all, my leap disturbs Inarsis’s concentration. He wobbles on the rope, loses his balance, and drops the arm’s-length distance to the ground. Cursing, he turns to head back to the gate to start over.
I call down the traditional Fives taunt. “Kiss off, Adversary.”
He flashes the kiss-off hand-sign over his shoulder and adds an even ruder flourish.
No time to rest. I get out of Traps before Thynos passes me, but he is gaining. In a real competition the losing adversaries stop as soon as the victor grabs the ribbon but in training we keep goi
ng to measure ourselves against the lines on the water clock. After scrambling through Pillars, Rivers, and Rings I arrive to the victory tower third, after Thynos and Pythias, and lean panting against the rungs as Inarsis trots up behind me in last place.
“Well played.” He eyes me with the look of a soldier checking out an opponent’s weapon. “You rattled me. It won’t happen again.”
Just as I open my mouth to reply, Lord Thynos rests a fist on my shoulder. “That was idiotic, Spider. Don’t ever take the high path in warm-ups.”
Tana One-Hand stalks up, looking ready to spit. “Spider! Haven’t Darios and I made it clear we only train on the high equipment when the ground is fitted out with padding, nets, and spotters?”
“I don’t like to lose.”
“If you stupidly injure yourself in practice, you can’t win. I’m pulling you out to work with Talon on the horizontal ladder.”
“Let Inarsis supervise the two girls,” commands Thynos.
Tana nods agreement. She may be head trainer, but Thynos is a highborn Patron lord so she has to obey.
I follow Inarsis out on one of the covered trails that cut between the obstacles. In a low voice he says, “I hear you barged into the festival pavilion last night. Don’t try anything like that again. Do you understand?”
If he were my father I would accept the rebuke, but he isn’t. “I thought Princess Berenise hired you to protect Lord Kalliarkos. Why didn’t you sail with him and my father to the Eastern Reach?”
He doesn’t even blink. “Because the Royal Army does not allow Efeans to serve as officers.”
“You hold the rank of general.”
“Yes, but as I explained to you before, it was only a battlefield promotion they had to give me after I personally killed the king of Saro-Urok and led the army to victory when all the Patron officers were dead or disabled. Never forget how quickly I was discharged and replaced by inexperienced Patrons. The Royal Army includes but a single regiment of Efean men allowed to serve only as lowly foot soldiers, little better than servants. We Efeans will always be nothing more than Commoners to the Patrons who rule us. You’d do well to remember that instead of having stars in your eyes about certain young men.”
Does everyone feel obliged to admonish me about Kalliarkos? I push back.
“You’re awfully good friends with Lord Thynos considering he is as nobly born a Patron as anyone. And you’re more of a Commoner than I am!”
He yanks me around to face him. He has a hatch-work of scars along the right side of his face, although I’m not sure if the injury is a legacy of battle or a whipping.
“You may be the daughter of the lauded General Esladas, you may have charmed the crowd with your victory yesterday, but when the Patrons whose speech you parrot look at you they do not see the daughter of an honorable Saroese man but rather a bastard daughter of Efea.”
How dare he scold me! He’s not better than me. “I can become an Illustrious, if I win.”
“Your presence on the Fives court proves my point exactly. No proper Patron girl would ever run the Fives, and certainly never compete.”
Off to one side, Talon works hand over hand on the horizontal training ladder, building up arm and back and grip strength while allowing her injured ankle to rest.
I tilt my head toward her. “Why is she here then?”
“That’s none of your business. Now, listen closely. Stay out of Lord Gargaron’s way. If he hears even a whisper of rumor that your family escaped the tomb, he will not rest until he finds your mother and kills her. After that he will hunt down whoever rescued them and turn all of us—you, me, Lord Thynos, and even Lord Kalliarkos—over to the High Priest, who will execute us.”
“I know that!”
“No, you do not. Had you known it, you would not have entered Garon Palace last night in pursuit of a prince who stands far out of your reach. He’s not for the likes of you, Spider.” He pauses to let the jab sink in. From the court a whistle blows to begin a new practice trial for Thynos and the other Challengers. “You and I are going to have a little race to remind you that you’re not as good as you think you are. Now!” He barks his order like an officer. “Five circuits of the horizontal ladder!”
Before I realize I mean to respond I slap my chest twice in the signal our father taught his girls, the same signal he teaches his soldiers to indicate “I hear and obey.”
Inarsis’s gaze softens with a glimmer of amusement.
By the time I finish five circuits up and back along the horizontal rungs, the sideways rungs, the twisting rungs, the tipping rungs, and the walking poles, Inarsis has passed me twice simply by climbing around me. He’s so strong he makes it look easy while I sweat and grunt. All the while Talon sits on a bench with her injured ankle elevated, watching us with an unreadable look on her beautiful face as one of Darios’s assistants applies moist seaweed wraps.
When I finally drop down, huffing and puffing, Inarsis taps my shoulder. “Go again, Spider. Five more circuits. Don’t touch the ground.”
I make it to three before I have to pause on the rungs and hang by my knees to rest while pounding on my spasming forearms with my fists. My knuckles throb, and I can barely open and close my hands.
Upside down to my eyes, Thynos and Inarsis walk up to me, standing one on either side as I flip down to the ground between them. I brace myself for criticism that I’ve earned for not finishing the second round of circuits. But that’s not what I hear.
“By the way, I saw your mother last night. She’s weak but improving,” says Inarsis in a low voice.
A wave of relief crashes through me, succeeded immediately by a burst of frantic energy. “I’ll sneak out to see her this coming Rest Day.”
“No, you won’t,” says Thynos. “Because of your rash behavior last night, Gar has assigned stewards to watch your every move out of the compound. You must stay away from your family.”
“I can’t! I have to give my prize money to Mother.”
Thynos shakes his head. “Didn’t you understand what Princess Berenise said? The gold will be delivered this afternoon to Darios as a courtesy, but in fact it will be placed in a holding account for you. That way the princess and Lord Gargaron will be able to keep track of exactly how much of your winnings you are spending. If you draw out too much they’ll know something suspicious is going on.”
“Of course I won’t take it to my mother all at once! I’ll pretend I’m spending money on myself and slip a small amount to her every week.”
“Impossible.” Thynos makes a gesture toward the horizontal ladder so that anyone watching us will think we’re discussing the Fives. “We simply cannot risk you going to see them until after Gar leaves town to make his usual yearly circuit of the Garon estates.”
“When will that be?”
“In three months.”
“I can’t wait three months. What if she needs money now? Besides that, the Garon stewards took my twin sister, Bettany, together with the household servants. I have to find her.”
“No, you don’t.” Thynos’s tone makes me uneasy. “I forbid you from visiting your family, Spider. We can’t risk Gar finding out, because we will all die if he does. Inarsis and I will deal with your family and household. You will stay put here. Do you understand?”
I want to clench my hands in frustration but they’re so stiff and painful. “Yes.”
Thynos nods and says, more loudly than he needs to, “Don’t start at a dead hang. Keep your arms bent.”
“But I did!” I protest.
“Did I give you permission to speak, Spider?”
He breaks off as a steward dressed in the gold and purple of Princess Berenise’s personal household approaches. The woman hands him a folded and sealed square of papyrus, which Thynos opens and reads. His brow wrinkles. His eyes crease as his mouth turns down in a frown.
“What’s wrong?” Inarsis rests a hand on Thynos’s forearm.
Thynos scratches an eyebrow. “I don’t know if anyt
hing is wrong. It’s just odd. Princess Berenise wants to see me immediately. She never summons me this urgently.”
He strides away with the steward, leaving Inarsis and me behind in a harsh reminder that palace business has nothing to do with the likes of us.
“Finish the set, Spider,” Inarsis says.
By the time I stagger into the dining shelter for the midday meal my body might as well be a bag of wheat punched so many times the seams have begun to split and the grain to spill. I gulp down water, then grab my tray of food and drop on the bench beside Mis and opposite Gira and Shorty. Talon sits at the other end of the table, with us but apart from us. I’m so exhausted I can’t decide whether I’m starving or no longer hungry, but the stewed chicken, millet, and greens taste better and better with each bite.
“They forgot to tell you that Challengers have to train twice as hard as Novices,” says Shorty with a laugh.
When the bell rings for the afternoon break, I wash with the other women, go to my cubicle, and lie down on my cot. After all that time gripping bars my hands feel like they’ve been pulled apart and sewn back together.
But pain has never bothered me. I can work through pain to get to the victory tower. Every way I turn these Rings I see the same thing. Feigning obedience is the only strategy that will allow a person as powerless as I am to build a base from which I can eventually launch my own attack against the man who destroyed my family. As long as he can harm us, we’ll never live in peace.
The canvas curtain that separates my cubicle from the corridor ripples.
Mis sits on the end of my cot and pats my knees. “Is Lord Thynos riding you? I thought Garon Palace would be happy to have someone win the glory you did yesterday, but sometimes people get envious if they feel their toes are being stepped on.”
“They just want me to do well. I don’t mind. I want to train hard.”
She chuckles. “I’ve never met anyone so fixed on one thing as you, Jes. Have you told your family yet? I guess your father already knows. Are you going to see your mother and tell her the news?”
Lord Gargaron has torn from me even the simplest act of trust. None of my new friends know that my mother is supposed to be dead in a tomb, and they can never know. But I can’t talk about her being alive either. My mouth is stopped up with all the words I dare not say, like I’m choking on pebbles.