Just One Knight

by Bridget Essex

The crowd roars awake, yelling and jeering and shouting at the top of their lungs, though everyone seems to be shouting something different, and it’s impossible to make out exactly what it is they’re saying.

  Fire begins to lick along the creature’s skin, fire born of embers. His whole skin, all of his scales, every part of him, appears to be one gigantic ember now.

  The creature opens his mouth slowly, almost lazily, as if he’s yawning.

  And fire comes shooting straight toward us, out of his mouth.

  “Out of the way!” Talis shouts, and she grabs me around my shoulders and one moment, I’m standing there like a silly stone, my mouth open, and the next moment, Talis has squirreled me away to safety, out of the range of the fire—for the moment. The creature keeps breathing fire, the flames licking along the ground where we stood.

  Lellie stares in astonishment at the creature.

  “Oh, no,” she breathes, and then she groans. “I know what this is.”

  “That…doesn’t sound good,” Talis manages, panting, crouching beside me. I stare in shock at the fact that steam seems to be rising from her armor, and her red hair—adorably sticking in all sorts of directions, usually—is a little singed at the ends. One lock is actually smoking. I lick my fingers, and—watching the creature all the while—reach out and put out Talis’s hair.

  “Thanks,” she manages to me, then glances at Lellie again as she rises to her feet. “Lellie, what is it?”

  “It’s a Cherufe,” says Lellie, and we all begin to walk in a circular motion around the creature, keeping our backs to the wall. He’s yawning again, slowly turning, his tail making the sawdust beneath him burst into flames. “The queen, the original queen of Bright Coast, Queen Verlit, defeated the original Cherufe a long time ago…they’re a sort of fire lizard monster…thing. They’re literally fire itself. They eat coal.” She shrugs, paling a little. “They’re actual fire…how are we going to defeat actual fire?”

  “What do you mean ‘actual fire?’” asks Talis, lifting her sword again. It’s hard to hear each other over the roaring of the crowd, so she has to shout. “He has skin, doesn’t he? You can pierce skin.”

  Lellie shakes her head, and then she races at the creature. She holds her sword aloft, leaps into the air, and brings the sword slicing down toward the creature’s leg.

  The Cherufe, up until this moment, moved as slowly and as lazily as a kitchen cat. But when Lellie’s sword nears him, he turns, and it’s so sudden, so quick, that I gasp. His tail comes sweeping around, and the very tip of it—enormous, just like the rest of him—slams into Lellie’s belly. She’s wearing her armor, of course, but the impact was intense. She sails through the air, past us, and thuds into the wall of the arena with a sickening sound I’ll probably spend the rest of my life (short as it may be) trying to forget.

  Talis makes a strangled sound and she crosses the space between us and Lellie in a heartbeat, crouching down beside the knight. Lellie groans, holding tightly to her stomach, and I gasp as I realize that part of her armor…

  It’s actually melted.

  “That’s gonna leave a mark,” sighs Lellie, standing. She undoes the leather thongs along the sides of her torso, and the chest piece falls to the ground, smoking. “I’m fine, Talis, just bruised—the leather saved me.” She winces, crossing her arm over her leather-covered stomach. She’s wearing a leather shirt over the dress beneath it. “Gods…that…was unexpected.”

  “Looks like our boy is full of surprises,” says Tahlia, lifting her sword. “Just…everyone try to keep one step ahead of him.”

  “Try talking to him again,” urges Lellie. “Both of you.”

  Talis steps forward, holding her sword aloft, the blade unwavering. She takes a deep breath. “We don’t want to cause you any harm. I’m sorry Lellie rushed you.” Her voice is soft, soothing, pitched so that only the Cherufe can hear her, not the rest of the crowd. “Are you all right?”

  The Cherufe opens his mouth again, rolling it lazily open, like he’s giving another yawn.

  But this time, it’s not a yawn, and he’s not breathing fire.

  This time, he roars.

  It’s a sound…well. It’s a sound you never want to hear. It makes the ground shake beneath our feet, it makes the stands around us in the Circ’s arena tremble and shudder.

  It makes the bones in our bodies wobble, just a little.

  “Do you even need to translate that?” asks Lellie dryly. And though her voice shakes, just a little, her sword does not as she raises it to the level of her heart, pointing it toward the creature.

  “He’s very angry,” says Talis, swallowing, taking a step backward. “And very hungry. And he wants to eat us. Though he says…no hard feelings.”

  “Well, that’s comforting.” Lellie grimaces. “Can you tell him that we won’t much enjoy being eaten?”

  “He’s aware, but he said something about the circle of life, no hard feelings, but we can either go nice and calmly, or he’s going to chase us around the arena eating us up until he’s full.” Talis is pale as she glances over her shoulder. “I…don’t think there’s any swaying him.”

  “But…but we don’t want to get eaten,” I announce the very obvious. Tahlia gives me a bit of a withering look, and I take a step forward, brandishing my rolling pin. “Hello, mister…guy…” I trail off. I shouted the words, and they sounded fairly laughable, and a large portion of the arena is already chuckling at them, but I don’t give two figs. I square my shoulders back, pointing the rolling pin at his nose. “I’m sorry you’re hungry, but you’ve got to understand—we don’t want to be eaten.”

  The Cherufe looks down his very, very long nose at me, cocking his head to the side. He looks a bit like a dog you’d just asked a question to, and—out of context, and out of this situation, certainly—it might even be described as slightly cute. But there’s nothing cute about the creature as he lifts his nose, opens his mouth, readying to breathe more fire.

  “Get out of the way!” yells Talis, and then she’s rushing at me, but she’s not fast enough. The Cherufe breathes fire…

  But I stepped neatly out of the way myself, this time.

  Talis stops dead in her tracks, for now there’s an enormous stream of fire between her and me. And the sawdust beneath our feet is starting to burn. I bounce around on one foot—I’m really only wearing dancing slippers, after all—and try to move outside of the circumference of fire.

  “Look out!” Tahlia calls, and I look up just in time to see the Cherufe turning his head—and the stream of fire—toward me. I manage to back up, but then my back is against the arena’s wall.

  I have nowhere else to go.

  Tahlia takes matters into her own hands, and though Talis and I are still separated, Tahlia is outside of the fire’s reach. So she races toward the Cherufe, and then she jabs her sword into his leg.

  This is not an action the creature was expecting, obviously, but then I don’t think Tahlia was expecting how the stabbing would go. Because though she puts her entire body weight behind the sword, the metal of the blade simply scrapes down his skin, glancing off of him.

  “He’s…he’s fully armored,” Tahlia breathes, backing up to stand beside her sister. “It didn’t even leave a dent.”

  And then the Cherufe stops breathing fire and glances at me through sly, half-closed eyes.

  He looks practically smug.

  “Cinda…” calls Talis in a warning tone, as she glances my way. My expression must have changed.

  Because honestly?

  I can’t abide smug.

  So I stalk over to the creature.

  I don’t get close, not really, anyway. The Cherufe is tall—about as tall as my bakery, even though he’s on all fours—so it seems like I’m closer to him than I really am.

  But his fire-breathing face is still much closer than I’d like it to be.

  I don’t think about it at all.

  I just start talking.

  “You listen to
me,” I demand to the Cherufe, holding the rolling pin pointed at his snout. “I understand that you’re hungry. I get it. And these people want a show.” I brandish my rolling pin at the people in the seats in the arena, the people who have—shockingly—fallen silent as they try to listen to what we’re on about. “But you have to understand—we don’t want to die. You don’t want to die—”

  But the creature shakes his head, almost adamantly and makes a little noise…

  But he’s not making the noise, I realize, as I stare at him, eyes wide.

  It’s his stomach.

  This slightly terrifying beast…is his stomach actually growling?

  “Look out!” cries Talis, and I do, sidestepping another blast of flame that comes from the creature’s mouth. For half a heartbeat, I actually felt sorry for him—how many of us have turned into beasts because we were famished?—but then he tries to kill me again, and everything else flies out the window, except for trying to save myself.

  Which I manage to do. I backpedal enough that my back slams up against the far wall of the arena, and I’m standing there, brandishing my rolling pin, and the Cherufe has me pinned in his sights. He’s slithering forward, his belly dragging on the ground, his squat legs—squat in proportion of him, of course, he’s quite large—moving quickly.

  This is it.

  This is how I’m going to sail out of this world and into the next.

  As a meal for a very hungry beasty.

  I suppose it’s poetic justice, really. I’ve baked my entire life. I’ve made a lot of people happy with sugary concoctions, and that’s all well and good and ironic and nice that I’m going to end up one myself, but I don’t want to die. I want to live. I want to live with Talis, and I want to fall into deeper love with her, and I want to make love to her damnit, and I want to make her a million pies and cakes, and I want to bake for her every day of my life, for the rest of my life.

  I want to love her.

  “Pies!” I hear a voice. It’s an almost goddess-like voice, considering the predicament I’m in, and I wonder if actually is a goddess, calling to me from the other side, trying to make me feel a little better about how I’m about to be some creature’s dinner.

  But it is not a goddess, promising me baked goods in the afterlife.

  It’s the pie seller, the pie seller that I first saw when we entered the arena. Quite a lot has happened since we entered the arena, so, of course, I forgot about her. But when I look up, I realize I’m right beneath the pie seller’s booth.

  Perhaps it was a goddess, calling out about pies, because as I look up, as I get a waft of delicousness on the wind…something strikes me.

  The creature is hungry.

  Is there anything more delicious than a baked good, when you’re famished?

  A plan forms in my head almost instantaneously. It’s not going to work—it’s too ridiculous to work.

  But we’ve got to try something.

  “Tahlia?” I shout at the top of my lungs.

  “Yes?” she shouts back. She’s staring at me in anguish, probably realizing that I’m about to become someone’s dinner right in front of her eyes.

  “Do you still have that hook and rope on your person?”

  “I’m a thief, I always have it—” she starts, then considers the circumstances, and stops talking. “Yes! Yes, I do!”

  “Can you get up there?” I ask, pointing straight up at the pie seller’s booth.

  Tahlia glances up and narrows her eyes. In an instant, the hook has materialized in her hands, secreted out from some compartment on her belt, and she’s swinging the hook and rope in the air, trying to get some momentum going.

  “Today, please?” I ask, my voice a little high-pitched as the Cherufe slithers closer.

  “I’m not near enough to it!” yells Tahlia, and then she looks to Talis. “Catch it, yeah?”

  “Yeah!” Talis’s voice is tight, and when Tahlia shoots the hook across the space between them, she grabs it in her hand, and then glances up at the pie seller’s booth.

  Everyone in the arena has bated breath at this point. They want to see me get eaten, or they want to see a good show…either way, it’s nothing personal to them, I know.

  So we’ll have to give them a good show, now won’t we?

  The hook lands on the railing around the pie seller’s shop. Talis doesn’t even test if it can hold her weight. She races across the space between her and the arena wall, and then she starts to climb the thin rope.

  I know the circumstances aren’t very good for acknowledging how attractive Talis is, but if I’m going to die, the sight of her arm muscles tensing, and her lithe, muscular body ascending a rope is really a nice, high note to go out on.

  Talis gets up and into the booth, and she peers down at me.

  “The pies!” I shout, my gaze focused on the Cherufe, who’s opening his mouth now, ready to eat me up in a single bite. “Just…feed him!”

  Talis’s mouth forms a round “o” of astonishment, but she understands immediately.

  And she picks up an enormous, wooden crate of pies, as the pie seller stares at her in astonishment, a bit too shocked to move…

  And Talis tosses the wooden box of pies into the Cherufe’s mouth.

  The Cherufe bites down, probably on reflex, but then the creature…stops. He stands perfectly still, and his jaw works, as he mashes the box of pies and the box itself, chewing almost thoughtfully.

  Tahlia comes around beside me, gripping her sword tightly, pointed at the Cherufe, and Lellie limps along beside me on the other side, holding her sword aloft.

  When the Cherufe stops chewing, he looks at me, something like an “ah-ha” moment crossing his scaly face.

  And then he looks up at Talis, who’s waiting, holding her breath as she gazes down at him from the pie seller’s stall.

  And the Cherufe opens his mouth, a little like an overly-large dog, waiting for you to drop a treat in.

  And he waits, his mouth open wide.

  “Oh, my goddess,” Lellie breathes. “Is this…is this going to work?”

  “Depends on how many pies are up there,” Tahlia remarks wryly.

  Box after box of pies, Tahlia throws down into the Cherufe’s maw. Box after box, he crunches merrily, and we stare at him, astounded and holding our breath. He crunches away at the boxes, the delicious aroma of pie wafting around us all, until there are no more boxes left.

  He’s chewing on the last box as Talis slides down the rope to land beside us. She sighs out, and she puts her arm around my shoulders.

  And, together…we wait.

  The people in the arena haven’t made a single sound while Talis threw the pies into the Cherufe. The pie seller was about to say something, but someone pulled her aside. We were allowed to do it, we were allowed to feed the Cherufe pies, and as we stand there, waiting for him to finish his rather tasty meal and swallow, we stand together, waiting to see what he might do next.

  I wonder if this will work.

  Talis squeezes me tightly, and I thread an arm around her waist. I place my head on her shoulder, and I breathe out.

  “No matter what happens,” I tell her, screwing my eyes up tight and shutting them against the Cherufe, “I’m so glad I met you. I love you, Talis.”

  “I love you, too,” she murmurs, her low voice tight with emotion.

  There’s the heavy, beasty chewing sound of the Cherufe. And then a very loud swallow.

  And then…

  “Enough!”

  Up and up and up in the crowd, we look, startled, until our gazes reach a dais set in the middle of the far wall of the arena. A dais that’s obviously meant for someone important—maybe even royalty.

  Someone’s standing there, panting, like she’d just run from somewhere far away. A crown is slipping off the back of her head as she stands there, and even though she’s slightly distant, I still think I can make her out.

  “…Fane?” I murmur.

  Chapter 19

 
; TALIS

  “Enough!” Fane repeats, and there must be some sort of magic on that dais, because the sound of her voice reverberates down here, even to us, standing in the arena.

  The far portcullis that the creature slithered out of clicks open—much quicker this time—and the aroma of something delicious wafts out of it. The Cherufe turns on his heels and starts back, toward the portcullis.

  “Sorry!” he mumbles over his shoulder. “I was really quite hungry!”

  I hold Cinda so tightly that it probably hurts a little, I realize, but I don’t let go of her (though I do loosen my grip) until the portcullis drops, and the Cherufe is on the other side.

  And we’re safe.

  “Get them up here. Go get them,” Fane is telling someone, and then she stands tall, pushing the circlet forward on her head.

  “Good people of Bright Coast. They have defeated the Cherufe! Three cheers for Talis, Lellie, Tahlia and Cinda!”

  The crowd erupts into cheers, stamping their feet on the bleachers and clapping rhythmically. A little while ago, that sound was terrifying, but now it signals that we have done it. We defeated the beast.

  It simply involved more pies than I might have assumed, heading into this.

  I glance sidelong at my sister, and she sags against the arena wall, letting the tip of her sword drop to the sawdust at her feet.

  “We got out of that by the skin of our teeth.” She grins tiredly at me, and then she “toasts” me with her sword blade, bringing the pommel of the sword up to her forehead, and sweeping it to the side before re-sheathing it. “Good job, pie thief.” Her grin widens. “You might find it of interest, Cinda, that stealing pies was one of the first thievings that Talis ever did.”

  “And was she good at it?” asks Cinda—also very tiredly—as she squeezes my waist.

  “Only the best, of course.”

  Lellie winces as she wraps an arm around her stomach. I can tell that she’s bruised—perhaps she even has some cracked ribs—but she doesn’t want to draw attention away from the victory. “You did well, Talis,” she murmurs to me, patting me gingerly on the shoulder and wincing. “Very well. I’m proud, truly.”