“Gently,” she murmured, running the fingers of the hand not holding him through his hair, making little circles against his temples, then moving down the back of his head and along his neck to his back. It felt very good. “Gently, my beautiful one.”
Ril’s anger fumbled and crashed, his aura vanishing, and he heard calls of relief from outside his stall. Rashala just kept whispering to him, her mind calm, directing him to be calm as well, and to relax. She focused on him with all the strength of her will, overwhelming him, and before he knew it, he was asleep again, dozing with his head in her lap.
Rashala waited until the battle sylph was completely asleep before she slipped out from beneath him and stood, pulling her robe on again. Usually, soothing a battler resulted in them using her like a concubine, but this was good enough. She peered down at the battler impassively, sure to keep her thoughts and feelings steady. It had just been luck that she’d been checking on the stables this morning. If she found out he’d ever been this distressed before, she’d have the handlers here turned into feeders. Ten battlers he’d upset, as well as every servant, slave, and passing spectator. Possibly even the emperor or one of his staff! At least he wasn’t so damaged that he hadn’t responded.
She turned and looked at the three frightened feeders on the far side of the stall. She had no doubt they were what had upset the battler. She’d been doubtful about putting them here in the first place, but Seven-oh-three needed to feed after his fights and he could hardly fly to them. Yet feeders made battle sylphs angry. Keeping their contact limited made the battlers happy. Sending them to the harem right after they fed also did. She couldn’t get rid of the feeders, and she couldn’t send him to the harem after every single fight, so she’d use an alternate solution.
Rashala turned to the handlers who stood at the entrance to the stall, waiting on her patiently while she thought. “Go to the harem and pick a girl,” she told them. “One he’s had before. Bring her here for Seven-oh-three.”
The women bowed and ran off, and Rashala went to see if the other battle sylphs were calmed as well. She’d have to move the ones in the stalls beside Seven-oh-three, she decided. Otherwise, they’d see the girl and all of them would want one.
Silly creatures.
The harem was having a bad morning. Few of the women knew what had happened the night before, but all of the battlers were alert. Some guessed at what was going on, others only picked up on the projected distress. Uncertain and restless, these padded around, swiping at each other or trying to distract themselves with multitudes of women.
Those who knew exactly what was happening, the dozen of the circle, tried to act normal even as they shivered with chained intent. Tooie sat on a pillow, watching Lizzy and Eapha dance, the girls chiming little bells with their fingers as they moved their hips. Lizzy was really very terrible at it, but Tooie wouldn’t have noticed even were she expert. He only watched Eapha, imagining her as a queen. As his queen. He thought he’d go mad waiting for nightfall. He had half the paper in the letter to Lizzy’s father asking his question. The rest Lizzy had kept to write her own letter to Ril. Either her father or Seven-oh-three would give him his answer, and Eapha would be his queen.
Down at the other end of the corridor, the door opened and Melorta led in a trio of handlers. They looked around and started up the length of the harem, the heavy door closing behind them. Everyone tensed, as they always did when the handlers arrived. Since they weren’t escorting anyone, that meant someone was being removed. Except for Melorta, the handlers were edgy. It wasn’t unheard of for a battler to decide to drag one off into an alcove. It also wasn’t unheard of for Rashala to decide that woman would stay in the harem.
As the handlers approached, Eapha and Lizzy stopped dancing, looking up uncertainly. Tooie tensed, though there was nothing he could do to defend either of them. The handlers couldn’t know, he assured himself. The letters were written already and hidden until tonight, and they couldn’t know about them. They didn’t know anything. He laced his fingers together and then pressed his palms against the muscles of his crossed legs, trying desperately to relax.
The handlers approached, Melorta murmuring to her followers and pointing. One took Eapha by the arm.
“No!” Lizzy cried. “Where are you taking her?”
Eapha was in a panic, her eyes wild. Two handlers had her by the arms now and pulled her along. A third pushed Lizzy away when she tried to stop them. Melorta followed, one hand on her riding crop.
Eapha. They were taking Eapha! They knew. Somehow they knew, and they were going to turn her into a feeder for the elemental sylphs. They’d cut out her tongue and lock her in a cage in a section of the pens where he wasn’t allowed to go! Forgetting that he was supposed to pretend indifference, Tooie surged to his feet, his aura flashing out just as Ril’s had earlier that morning. The handlers all spun, their eyes wide, and Eapha nearly got away as Tooie lunged forward, his toe claws digging into the marble floor. His hands were outstretched to—
“Stop!” Melorta shouted.
It was as though he’d run to the end of a chain wrapped around his soul. Tooie stumbled to a halt, shaking. He couldn’t move. The handlers had limited abilities to order the battlers, just so they could protect themselves from an attack like this or order a battler away from a woman to whom he’d become too attached. A battler could take a handler for sex if he managed to overwhelm her enough with lust that she didn’t give an order to stop, but there were too many and no desire for any of them in his heart. He could see the look in the handlers’ eyes and feel their sudden certainty as they glanced at each other: he was in love with her, the one great sin. Tooie looked at Eapha and saw the horror in her face as well. Whatever reason they’d come for her, whether it was because they knew the circle’s plans or something else, he’d given them both away.
Tooie clasped his hands together, wanting to beg, but he couldn’t. He shook, though, dropping to his knees as they dragged Eapha, ignoring her screams, across and out of the harem. The door thudded closed behind them. Lizzie dropped down beside him, sobbing, and he clutched her to him, wailing in silence for what he’d lost.
Chapter Twenty-two
Ril woke again as the door to his stall opened. Blinking sleepily, he looked up to find a trio of handlers bringing with them a woman in a translucent blue dress. She had a collar around her neck, and he watched cautiously as they chained her to the foot of his bed. It was Eapha, he saw. Lizzy’s friend.
“She’s all yours, sweetheart,” one of the handlers said, smiling. She went to stroke his hair but he bared his teeth at her. She yanked back her hand with sudden fright and straightened. When the other two women laughed, she flushed in anger.
“H-how long do I stay here?” Eapha asked. She was holding her chain with both hands and trembling.
“You better hope forever,” snapped the woman Ril had frightened. “The way that battler reacted when we picked you, if Seven-oh-three doesn’t want you, you’re going straight to the feeder pens.”
Eapha started crying, huddled at the foot of the bed. Ril watched the handlers leave, heading out of the stall and closing the door behind them. They stayed on the other side, though, watching.
Ril turned to the window cut for spectators. A few people stood there, staring at Eapha and murmuring to each other. Justin and the other two feeders were gaping at her as well. Ril sighed, hating this, hating them, but most of all hating himself. Standing up, he wrapped an arm around Eapha’s neck. She eyed him with fright, but he pulled her against him, pressing his lips to hers.
Leon woke around noon, the sun high enough to roast him where he lay. Rising, he drank some water and stumbled out past Xehm, waving to the man blearily. He knew he looked terrible, but time was wasting and there were a lot of people around who looked worse.
Wrapping his robe around himself, he went into the city, his stomach rumbling. Breakfast could wait—or lunch, he supposed, given the time. It was broiling out, making him sweat u
nder his robe. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to the heat, though he hoped he wouldn’t be around much longer to find out. Still, the temperature was the least of the things he loathed about this place.
As he walked, he kept his head down and didn’t think about Lizzy or Ril. Instead, he imagined Betha and his four youngest daughters. Betha would be setting out lunch right now, Cara having helped her make it. Nali and Ralad would be sitting at the table, arguing with each other and drawing their mother’s attention away from Mia’s endless questions. These thoughts lightened his mood and filled his heart with a warmth that had nothing to do with the temperature.
Genuinely happy, Leon went past half a dozen battle-sylph guards, and at the arena paid his penny admittance down into the corridors beneath the structure. It was cool there, if bare and sandy. Narrow rectangular windows were set periodically along one wall, letting those who passed look into the stalls of the gladiator battlers. Leon strode past the first half dozen, glancing in just to see what was happening but not stopping. A few stalls were occupied, mostly by things that looked like creatures out of a nightmare, but the middle ones were empty, which they hadn’t been on the last visit. No one was looking through any of those windows.
Ril’s window was crowded. A group of people struggled to see inside, many giggling and pointing. A few held their children up for a better view. Leon paused, watching them. To leave now would be odd if anyone noticed. He glanced down for a moment, focusing, and tried to feel his battler. Ril felt…bored. Very bored. And a little annoyed.
Puzzled, Leon lifted his head and joined the crowd, carefully working his way close enough to see through the window. Ril was on a bed, a sheet tossed carelessly over his naked hips and legs. He had a woman under him and was moving against her, his upper body braced on his forearms above her.
Leon gaped for a moment in stunned amazement, a slow blush spreading over his face until he felt as though things might be cooler outside in the sun. He never would have expected this. Ril didn’t even look at women, and he still felt bored…
Oh. Leon’s eyes narrowed. Ril was faking.
What are you doing? he thought toward his sylph as hard as he could.
Ril’s rhythm faltered, and the battler shot a startled look over his shoulder at the window. The assembled crowd giggled, but Leon just raised an eyebrow. His battler made a sort of embarrassed, apologetic shrug, and Leon had to hide a smile. I’m not sure I want to know.
Ril glared and went back to the woman, apparently finishing whatever he was doing and rolling off her to reach for his pants. She sat up more slowly and retrieved her dress. She had a collar around her neck, Leon saw, and was chained to the bed. He also saw three women in brown standing on the other side of the stall gate, watching. The feeders were staring as well. Justin’s face held disgust.
Ril wandered into the center of his stall, ignoring the crowd, and he sat down, staring at nothing. The woman with whom he’d pretended to dally dressed and grabbed his bedsheet, wrapping it around herself togastyle. She was an attractive woman, probably around thirty, with full lips and a generous figure. She sat on the end of the bed, fingering the chain at her collar and watching Ril, who appeared determined to ignore everyone, though his emotions didn’t correlate. Leon could feel Ril’s boredom had turned into uncertainty—about him, he supposed, remembering that dream last night. He tried to send as much reassurance toward his battler as he could. He had no way of telling if he succeeded, though. Ril ignored him as much as he did everyone else.
The show was over. Still sniggering about it, the gawking men and women continued on. More important, the female handlers left. Leon waited until all had disappeared and the passageway was clear, then longer until he heard a fight start in the arena. Once it did, he tapped on the window.
Ril looked over his shoulder, seeing him, then down at his hands. Leon tapped again. Ril sighed and stood, approaching. It wasn’t until he reached the viewing window that he lifted his head and met his master’s gaze. Leon tapped the glass and stepped back. Ril slammed an elbow into it, shattering it.
Leon moved quickly forward. Above, he heard the screams of men being killed on the sand, and inside the pen he heard the other battlers moving and handlers calling to each other. Ril’s three feeders stared at him. Justin was one of them. The youth shook the bars of his cage and screamed without coherence.
“Do you trust me?” Leon asked Ril. The battler closed his eyes for a long moment, then nodded.
It wasn’t good enough. Leon could still feel his fear. “Do you trust me?” he asked again, even as he prayed inside that this was indeed the right thing to do. As far as he could tell, it was the only solution.
The woman with whom Ril had been pretending to make love sat on the bed, watching with wide eyes. Ril finally met Leon’s gaze, studying him and probably his emotions, and after a long minute nodded again.
Leon took a deep breath and looked at Ril, really looked at him, focusing all his willpower onto the sylph. Ril’s eyes widened, and Leon waited for him to relax again. It took a few minutes. Leon didn’t let himself think of how someone could come along at any moment and see him standing before the broken window, or that the handlers could come back to check on Ril from the inside. He just focused on what he needed—absolute control of the being inside the stall.
Ril shuddered under that control even as he stared back. Did he trust him? Leon had asked him and meant it. He didn’t know how many orders Ril had. He didn’t know how strong were the wills of the people commanding him. Leon was primary after Solie, but that was never an absolute, not when the morass of masters and orders Ril did have could outweigh anything he said, through sheer numbers. Leon didn’t dare just tell Ril to speak or rescue his daughter, or escape. There was too much chance of him being redirected or even driven mad by the contradiction of it all. Did Ril trust him enough to let him force his mastery far enough to overwhelm the hundreds of orders he’d received since he was taken? Could he trust him enough? Leon waited to see if Ril could.
Ril wondered exactly the same thing. No sylph had undergone what Leon was asking of him. They obeyed their queen and their masters. They were born to obey and reveled in it when the orders were kind. But what he wanted? Ril wasn’t sure that Leon even understood it fully. Leon was asking him to give up himself, to give up all essence of individuality. He wouldn’t be Ril anymore. He’d be an extension of Leon, a focus of Leon’s will alone, and his own emotions and needs would cease to matter. It might even break his link to his queen, or drive him mad. He was already different from other battlers, strange and limited, but now he’d become something else entirely, something that wasn’t a battler. He’d be rejecting his queen as well, which was a betrayal no true battle sylph would ever suffer!
If he did this, the orders of the Meridal masters wouldn’t matter anymore, but neither would his love for Lizzy—not beyond how Leon himself loved her. To save Lizzy, Ril would have to give her up and accept a living death where he wouldn’t even have enough of himself left to hope that Leon would put things right.
But…he’d have the chance to save Lizzy. For her, he’d be willing to do anything.
Leon waited as patiently as he could. Finally, the battle sylph’s eyes dilated and went out of focus. The tension flowed out of him, and Leon felt his surrender. Ril was tired, he was afraid, and he didn’t want any of this, but still he gave himself over to his master, letting Leon make the decisions instead. Once, Leon would have committed murder to have his battler do that. Now, he felt sick as he leaned close to the broken window. The circumstances precluded this choice being entirely made by free will.
“Ril,” he called clearly, though he knew the woman and the feeders would hear. The handlers on the other side of the gate might as well, but he had to be absolutely sure that his battler understood him. “I am your master. I have been your master since you entered this world and I killed the woman who drew you. Her blood flowed over my hands and I chained you with your name. You are
Ril. You are mine. You will always be mine. I am the first pattern on your soul, and I will always be primary.”
Ril shuddered, and Leon ached for him. He’d never wanted to remind Ril of this. And yet he added, “I am your master. Say it.”
Ril’s mouth opened, his eyes blank. He tried to speak, but nothing came out.
“I am your master,” Leon repeated. “I am primary. The commands given to you by others are nothing compared to mine. I am in your mind. I am in your soul. You will obey me. Obey me, Ril. Obey me. Tell me that I am your master.”
“You are my master,” Ril breathed, and the woman and the feeders both jumped. Justin’s eyes narrowed.
“I am your master,” Leon told him again. That was the most important point—and also the first thing he would rescind once they all escaped. Then he would pray that Ril forgave him. “You will pretend to obey the orders given to you by others, but you will only pretend. You will do what the others ask of you, but only until they contradict my commands. Then you will pretend. At all times, I will be your master. Your only master. You will obey only me. Say it.”
“I will obey you.”
“What will you do?”
“I will obey you. I will always obey you. The commands of others are nothing. I will obey you.” Ril’s face was pale, broken. Leon could feel the numbness spreading through him, could actually feel the core that was Ril retreating, and he wanted to stop, wanted to pull away and give Ril back to himself. Instead he kept his will firm, his intent absolute, and felt his battler fade.
“Free the feeders,” Leon ordered him. “Be quiet about it.”
Ril turned and walked numbly to the feeder cages. Grabbing the door of the first, he wrenched it off and the man stumbled out, staring wild-eyed at him while Ril went to the next. He freed all the men in the same way, Justin climbing out of his cage last to stand on unsteady feet.
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