by Stephen Hunt
Doctor Horvak shrugged. ‘Nobody is caught.’
Duncan listened to the crowd baying, hooting with encouragement, large sections chanting songs at each other. ‘They sound as if they actually care.’
‘Everyone from our district is here or watching the challenge on the screens of Vandis,’ said the doctor. ‘What is the saying? They have a dog in this fight, too. If the house falls, our district will be divided up, the fattest slices going to Circae and her allies. The millions of citizens we’re responsible for will be expected to switch fealty to other princelings. Those with good positions in our manufactories and businesses and mills will be demoted to make way for the new incumbent’s favourites. Even those on the dole, the gratis imperium, will have to scramble for fresh ration cards and fight like dogs to make sure they aren’t allocated worse rooms in fouler slums. And that is if it’s an orderly transfer. If Circae’s allies fall out over the choicer spoils, then you can factor in months of bloody violence and skirmishing to any handover.’
All that riding on a single challenge. And so much more. If Helrena fell, who would give a damn if Lady Cassandra was returned alive? She would become the notional fig-leaf the punishment squadron was flying out to avenge. Nobody outside of their house wanted a live heir standing in the way of appropriating Helrena’s holdings. If Cassandra was rescued alive, the little girl wouldn’t stay that way for long. The best that could happen was Circae would claim custody of her granddaughter and use the poor girl to lend an air of legitimacy to the looting of the spoils. And that was a dangerously poor best.
‘I don’t want to lose Helrena,’ whispered Duncan. ‘I can’t. Not now.’
‘A word of advice,’ said the doctor. ‘I know that you have been given your papers; that you are a citizen now rather than a slave. But it would still be better for you to think of the princess as employer, rather than anything more intimate.’
‘Helrena cares for me, I know she does.’
‘You are not celestial caste. The princess cares first and foremost for her house and if she ever takes another husband, it will be an alliance of political necessity. Powerful lords do not care to keep potential cuckolders around, however long and loyal a servant’s previous service. Your best fate in that unhappy event would be a new life in a rabble tower inside our district, a ration card and an empty existence spent watching kino screens while trying to steer clear of the street gangs.’
‘I’m a free man now.’
The doctor nodded towards the baying crowds. ‘They are also citizens for the most part. And the only real difference is that we wait over here on marble, and the mob occupies the cheap seats.’
‘I think you are somewhat cleverer than they.’
‘How kind of you to say. In possession of a clearer mind, perhaps. But I am not quite clever enough to be safe in my homeland surrounded by family, rather than standing here in an imperial arena praying for the better of two outcomes.’
‘Helrena said something about sticking close to Paetro if things go badly.’
The doctor nodded. ‘Paetro has a number of helos sitting ready to evacuate us to the house’s holdings on the eastern frontier. To wait it out until matters are settled inside the capital.’ Horvak indicated the crowds filling their side of the arena. ‘If the princess loses the challenge, you will not wish to dally outside the arena. There will be many thousands of severely disappointed citizens spilling out onto the streets of Vandis keen to rip us apart to make their own suffering briefly more tolerable.’
Without Helrena, maybe it would be better if they did? But who would be left alive to keep Cassandra safe, then? He and Paetro would try, surely? There had to be a way they could sign up with the punishment squadron. Thousands of soldiers would soon be shipping out to Weyland. Duncan glanced back, up towards the only level of the arena more luxurious and exclusive than this. The imperial box stood empty. Whatever the Emperor Jaelis’s business today, it wasn’t here at the Krevhalle. Two of his numerous offspring were about to murder each other over power and territory and petty jealousies … but such events occurred weekly here. It was a salutary reminder of how small Duncan’s concerns stood in the scope of the greater imperium. To Duncan, his entire world was at stake. To the imperium, this was just another day at the arena.
Horvak nodded towards the spectators on their side. ‘Trouble, my boy. You might wish to make yourself scarce.’
Trouble? Duncan cursed as he saw who the scientist had indicated. Of course she would be here. Adella Cheyenne had a dog in this fight too, but on the rival side. Of all the Weylanders to have remained behind when most of the survivors had escaped back home, it had to be the woman he had once so foolishly loved … a long time and far too many treacheries ago.
Duncan scowled at Adella. ‘You have a nerve coming here to watch this.’
‘That’s unfair, Duncan. I travel where Baron Machus takes me. Unlike you, I haven’t been given my freedom. I’m still a slave.’
Duncan stared at the spectators. He couldn’t see Machus in the throng, but the platform was filling up with imperial nobles and their entourages now. Those on Helrena’s side, or those who opposed her and supported Helrena’s scheming motherin-law, Circae.
‘I know what you did when you visited our castle, slipping the traitor a device to bring our defences down. I nearly died protecting Lady Cassandra when Circae’s assassins attacked us.’
‘I heard that act of stupidity earned you your freedom,’ said Adella. At least the Weyland woman didn’t have the nerve to deny the role she had played in trying to destroy them. ‘You should be thanking me.’
‘You’re joking! I could forgive you betraying me – it wasn’t exactly the first time, was it? But Cassandra’s just a little girl!’
‘Circae never intended any harm to the precious little brat,’ said Adella. ‘The assassins had orders to seize the girl and bring her to Circae, not murder her.’
‘What about Princess Helrena? She rescued you from the sky mines. She passed you into the care of her cousin.’
‘Care?’ Her voice fell to a whisper as she glanced around to make sure they were not being overheard. ‘How can you call anything that beast Baron Machus does to me care? What about the bloody princess? What are their squabbles to you? Machus fights Helrena, Helrena battles Circae, Helrena confronts Elanthra. A pox on all their houses. They can murder each other in their stupid, endless feuds until the empire’s one big graveyard. I didn’t ask to be grabbed by skel slavers and sold at the end of the world to the imperium. Do you think I give a lump of horse shit about what happens to the baron? I’m just a pretty bauble to him. To be toyed with and discarded when he gets bored. Just like you and the princess.’
‘It’s not like that—’
‘Oh, Duncan. You’re not that big a fool, are you? A free citizen here is just what the upper caste calls the slave who happens to have been born inside the empire. They’re fed and watered like farm animals, worked when they’re needed, and culled when they’re not.’ She pointed to the roaring multitude beyond the almost invisible glass barrier. ‘There they are, free citizens all. You’re a single droplet of water in the ocean. You’re nothing to the empire’s rulers and you’ll never be more.’
‘You know what the real irony is?’ spat Duncan. ‘If you hadn’t got your ticket out of the sky mines by betraying Carter’s escape attempt, you would have been on the mining station during the slave revolt. You’d have left with them. You’d be home in Weyland now, strolling the streets of Northhaven and all of this just a bad memory.’
‘Perhaps. Or maybe I’d be one of the corpses covered in volcanic ash in the mines’ shadow. You still think you’re better than me, don’t you? So quick to judge. Heir to the mighty Landor fortune back home. The princess’s lapdog, here. None of it earned by you. Well, you could be searching for a new kennel, soon, Duncan Landor.’
Her words bit home. ‘We’ll see. Send word when Machus gets bored of you and wants a new mistress. Maybe I’ll buy you
myself. The castle’s barracks can always use a whore who knows her way around on her back.’
‘Better that than a fool who doesn’t even know they’re a whore.’
‘I chose to be here.’
‘Then you’re the biggest fool of them all.’ She patted her belly, and for the first time, Duncan noticed the bump below her red silk dress. ‘And soon you won’t even be the only Weylander freed as a citizen inside the imperium. When I give the baron an heir, he’ll make me a gift of my papers. It wouldn’t do to have the mother of one of his sons occupying the lowest caste in the empire, would it?’
Duncan reeled back, astonished. ‘You’re pregnant?’
‘You see, there is still something a mere slave can do better than you. I’ll have a real position inside the baron’s house. Secured by blood. Not subject to the whims of that ruthless cow you follow around.’
How could he have been so blind for so long? It was suddenly clear to Duncan, now. All the moments the two of them had snatched together in the grounds of his estate at Hawkland Park, their late-night assignations. Adella refusing to run away with Duncan to build a new life together far away from his overbearing father. To start again from scratch. Duncan had never mattered a damn to her, only his position and inheritance. This was exactly what Adella had been trying to do to him back home. A chancer attempting to marry into a fortune. To snare him. ‘You and the baron deserve each other!’
‘That’s funny,’ said Adella, ‘I was about to say the same thing about you and your royal bitch.’ The woman strode angrily away, quickly lost inside the swarm of nobles and their retainers.
Doctor Horvak reappeared, having been hanging back, a concerned look on his face. ‘Do not judge her too harshly.’
Duncan snorted. ‘Circae’s assassins nearly murdered you in the castle, too. She’s the one who opened the door for them.’
‘Unlike yourself, I have lived alongside the empire throughout my life. I understand the imperium all too well. The only choice slaves have here is to say yes and choose survival, or disagree and embrace a usually unpleasant end. Would you have had the girl refuse Machus when the baron decided to swap sides and betray his family? She would be dead, as would the new life swelling inside her body.’
Beyond the glass barrier, the crowd erupted with excitement. Portions of the arena floor were sliding back, Helrena and Elanthra rising into the open space. They were tiny in the vast floor, built to accommodate mass battles between hundreds of fighters, war as sport and spectacle. Stewards stood by, ready to offer the long wooden weapon cases, each containing a sabre and dagger. Medical staff advanced with hypodermics and surgical devices to ensure neither party had been doped. The testing was done quickly, and then the stewards offered Princess Helrena her choice of cases to select her killing tools.
Duncan ignored the portentous drone of the challenge commentator warbling over the speakers, treating the coming brutal combat with the fake solemnity of a church ritual. ‘Perhaps, Doctor, but how well did Adella choose in the sky mines? Friends of ours were executed when she sold out the escape plot; people we knew, our neighbours, people we had grown up with. All of that, just to leave the mine and become a house slave?’
‘She is too young to choose better. She must have been terrified.’
‘It’s our decisions that define us,’ said Duncan. ‘Trust me; Adella knows what she’s doing. She’s probably the only one of us snatched from Weyland who did.’
‘We fight to survive and prosper.’ The doctor sighed. ‘And not just in the slave caste, it would seem. The challenge begins.’
Duncan gazed through the barrier separating their platform from the arena sands below. The banner-shaped screens had stopped showing shots of the baying crowds and moved their focus to the two women. At this distance the two combatants were just black dots, tiny on the sand. But the screens showed everything. The look of deadly calm on Helrena’s face, the pinched malice facing her in the form of her half-sister, Elanthra’s pale gaze focused on her challenger, both women warily circling each other, a sabre clutched tight in their right hand and a dagger swaying in the left. Elanthra said something to her half-sister, but Duncan couldn’t hear either the words or Helrena’s response, accompanied by a shake of the head – both exchanges too far from any microphone, lost among the encouraging roars of bloodlust from the crowd and the echoing commentary from the chief adjudicating steward. Duncan tried to clear his head of what Adella had just told him, his burning renewed hatred of her. This is all that matters now. The future, not the past. The life he had hewn for himself here, dangling by the thinnest of threads.
Helrena and her half-sister began the combat like a dance, shifting and circling, each making feints to try and draw the other out. It seemed almost choreographed, as if this were a pre-arranged show and not a real duel. But it wasn’t. They had both been expertly trained, and neither of them would commit unless they could draw blood, so the false attacks and retreats continued, the crowd’s roar rising and fading with each pass. Both women fought unarmoured, wearing white silk-like material wound around their bodies like bandages, all the better to show their wounds for the crowds and the audience to track and follow the challenge’s deadly progress. It didn’t take long before the first crimson lines stained the clothes. Elanthra drew a cut across Helrena’s right arm, the princess a fraction of a second too slow to turn her opponent’s blade as the feint became real. Helrena’s lips pursed in pain and she drew back as they pivoted smoothly around each other, sabres held high in the right hand above their heads with daggers offered in the left, quivering, like locust antennae trying to sense the direction of the next attack to parry. Encouraged by the initial blood, Elanthra grew bolder, and a couple more flicks of her sabre saw additional crimson stains added to the marks along Helrena’s twists of silk – one to the princess’s shoulder and another to her leg. Duncan was amazed Helrena’s rival struck as fast as she did. Elanthra stood thin and bony. Facing the woman must be like defending against a serpent-fast skeleton. The fight went on in a similar fashion for ten minutes, no fatal wounds, but glancing cuts traded five to one in their foe’s favour, and even the Weylander could see that poor Helrena was flagging now. Blood loss, perhaps? In the duels back at Northgate, the cut and thrust of clashing steels was savage, short and brutal; but not often intentionally to the death … rather, meant as blunt punishment. If an opponent was killed and the murder publicized, the prefecture’s constables would come riding for you quick enough. This arena fighting was highly tutored art; too expertly matched to end quickly with a ring of onlookers rushing in to protect a badly wounded friend or family member. Hell, the crowd would probably rip anyone apart who tried, even if the snipers in the steward towers didn’t drop them first.
Duncan heard a braying sound of amusement from the crowd to his side. It was Baron Machus, the princess’s hulking treacherous cousin, cheering on Elanthra. The rumours were that the two were lovers, but a more mismatched pairing Duncan could hardly imagine, like a bull and a sickly peahen mating. And the bull should have possessed the courage to face Helrena in the duel, rather than slipping his more proficient lover into his place at the last moment.
Duncan bridled at the insufferable arrogance of the nobleman. Selling out his cousin, then cheering on her death as though this was a horse race. ‘That should be you down there, if you had the guts, Baron!’
The doctor reached out to quieten Duncan but it was too late, the baron’s attention had been diverted from the challenge, both duellists separated by stewards as trumpets marked a brief rest break. The break was unnecessary, but helped draw out the spectacle for the clamouring mob. Extra stewards sprinted out onto the sands, setting up colourful, quickly erected tents where water could be swigged in relative privacy, out of sight of the loud, jeering multitude.
‘So, Helrena’s pup is still yapping,’ said Machus. ‘Swaggering like a citizen with a sky miner’s dust still fresh on his servant’s breeches. If you had done a little better prote
cting Lady Cassandra during the slave revolt, perhaps there wouldn’t be a punishment squadron being assembled and your mistress’s guts wouldn’t be about to be spilt into the sand.’
Duncan felt a flash of anger burning across him, his fingers twitching for the ceremonial steel dagger of an imperial citizen hanging from his belt.
‘Don’t be tempted, lad,’ said Paetro, appearing at Duncan and the doctor’s side from the crowd of onlookers. He raised his voice loud enough for Machus and his entourage to hear. ‘The baron knows the hoodsmen will gun down anyone foolish enough to start an unlicensed duel on the emperor’s neutral ground. Find someone else to taunt to their end, Machus. Or better yet, make it formal and have the balls to actually step onto the sands yourself.’
‘And here was I thinking the good doctor was in possession of all the brains inside your house,’ laughed Machus. ‘Yes, Horvak’s knowledge is a prize worth having. I’m not sure if there will be a place for you, though, Paetro Barca, in the new order. You’ve got a habit of always being on the wrong side. You’re unlucky. That’s a poor trait in a soldier.’
‘Maybe it’s because I don’t switch sides every time the wind blows in a different direction,’ said Paetro. ‘Or maybe it’s because I can’t afford to buy women to use as blade catchers when the action heats up.’
Machus’s face grew crimson at that last insult, but a tall blond nobleman Duncan didn’t recognize appeared to pull the fuming baron away. The newcomer shrugged at Duncan, Paetro and the doctor. ‘We’ll settle this through the law and the challenge, soon enough.’
The stranger disappeared into the crowd as armoured housemen from both sides interposed themselves along the middle of the elites’ viewing gallery. Battle lines had been not so subtly drawn inside the gallery, for and against Princess Helrena, a division as stark as in the arena below. It was all too noticeable how few allies remained alongside their house.
‘There’s a lie if ever I heard one,’ spat Paetro. ‘If we win, Circae will never let this rest here. She will keep coming at the house until either Helrena is made a corpse, or she is.’