The Sun Guardian

by T. S. Cleveland

  “Handsome,” the sallow man remarked.

  “You’ll notice I took especial care not to mark his face,” grunted Ebbins.

  The man hummed his approval. “Stand him up.”

  Ebbins obeyed, lifting Scorch by the hair so the other man could direct his glare from head to toe. After several minutes of uncomfortable inspection, Ebbins spoke again. “He’s a guardian. Was boasting something awful at a tavern, and me and my boys picked him up. He looks a little rough right now, but he’s strong and he’s Guild-trained.”

  The sallow man arched an eyebrow. “A guardian? We haven’t had one here in years.”

  “I know.”

  The man stared at Scorch so hard he had to look away. He watched the floor for the remainder of the short exchange, which was mostly a stunted banter of unfamiliar jargon, followed by the clinking of coins passing from one hand to another. Then Scorch was being dragged again, Ebbins yanking him along by the rope.

  In the back of Scorch’s mind, he wondered how it was he was allowing himself to be led around like an animal. Why wasn’t he putting up more of a fight? Why hadn’t he tried to crawl away when he hadn’t been able to run? To what level of disgrace had he sunk to have gotten an innocent woman killed and himself taken? Later, he would think back to his state of mind as he’d walked behind Ebbins down the torch-lit hall, his head concussed, and Flora’s blood staining his skin, and he would recognize the sensations as shock. But in that moment, Scorch only knew he felt off-kilter, his senses dulled, like he was under water, and beyond the deep-seated shame permeating the forefront of his mind, Scorch’s main focus was on the careful shuffle of his feet. The Guild felt a world away. He blinked and saw a neck split wide as a smile.

  Ebbins pulled so hard on the lead, Scorch lurched forward, coughing as the rope dug into his skin. He was being taken through a maze of molding walls, the smell growing ranker the further they went, until, finally, Ebbins kicked him through a door that led to an open chamber. Scorch’s heart thudded unnaturally in his chest. Every wall of the room was lined with grotesquely twisted wire cages, and in every cage was a human.

  Ebbins dragged him toward the nearest cage, but Scorch was finally resisting. He wrenched his shoulders, trying to break free of the binding around his wrists, and the rope cut into his neck where he thrashed against its pull. He kicked with his free feet, but Ebbins drew him in close with the rope and grabbed him by the hair. Scorch gasped when he felt the blow to his kidneys, and before his eyes could refocus, Ebbins was ripping open the door to one of the cages and forcing Scorch inside.

  He hit the ground hard, his head bouncing against the floor. He heard a soft intake of air and the slam of the cage, and then, for a long time, he just floated.

  His vision was filled with clouds, and he was vaguely aware of cool hands cupping his cheek, a sweet voice, a gentle melody lulling the fever in his skin. His body ached in a thousand ways, but the voice was steady in his ears, until the clouds began to dissolve and his vision became clear once more.

  The first thing he saw was the wire crisscrossing of ugly metal a few feet above him. He let his head fall heavily to the side and saw a young woman sitting cross-legged beside him in the cage. Her hair was shorn close to her scalp and she had a raw mark of a burn across her right cheekbone. She returned his gaze with piercing almond eyes, reminding Scorch of the grey cat that stalked the halls of the Guild.

  He sat up and leaned against the wall of the cage. A sharp pain shot through the back of his skull and he lifted a hand to assess the damage. While prodding at the wound, he realized his hands were free from their binding.

  “You did this,” he said, and his voice was hoarse. He flexed his hand and could feel the blood pumping into his fingers.

  The woman nodded, gesturing toward the pile of rope in the corner of the cage that used to be around his neck and wrists.

  “I had a look at your injuries, too.” Her speaking voice was as melodic as her hum. “They’re not good, but they probably won’t kill you.”

  Scorch’s fingers were bloody where they’d touched his head, his fresh blood on top of Flora’s dried blood. A wave of nausea rose in his throat and he coughed pathetically, turning away from the woman to look out through the cage.

  With his mind no longer drowning in shock, he was better able to assess his bleak surroundings. He was in a large chamber, as he’d noted dazedly before, a dungeon, and the walls were lined with cages similar to the one he was in, most only holding one person. He stole a curious glance back at the woman. She wasn’t watching him, but leaning casually against the side of the cage with her eyes closed.

  He looked back out at the room, at the different people shoved into different cages. The ratio of men to women appeared to be equal, but they were all relatively young, relatively built, and plagued with the same body language of the defeated. Scorch unconsciously straightened his shoulders. He didn’t want to look broken. He didn’t want to believe he was broken.

  In the cage beside his own, a man was rolled into a crumpled heap of bloodied rags and grime. He wasn’t the worst off one in the room, but he was the only one close enough for Scorch to hear his low-pitched moan.

  “That’s Julian,” the woman said. Her eyes were open again and she was staring unerringly at Scorch. “I’m Kio.” To Scorch’s surprise, she held her hand out. It seemed such a normal gesture for such a terrible place, but he took her hand without pause. She squeezed it once with a cool, strong grip before letting it go.

  “I’m Scorch,” he offered.

  She narrowed her eyes at him for a moment before abruptly twisting around to bang on Julian’s cage, which was flush against their own. Rattle their cage wall, rattle his. The man called Julian lifted his head from the floor, blinking confusedly.

  “Hour’s up,” Kio told the man, and he groaned, unfurling from his cower on the ground. He stretched as much as he could in the cramped space allotted him, and when he scooted forward to get a look at Scorch, Scorch couldn’t keep the shock from his face. Julian was black and blue with bruises, and one eye was swollen completely shut.

  Kio shifted around and carefully maneuvered the gaps in the cages until the pads of her fingers touched the welt over Julian’s eye. He whimpered beneath the touch.

  “It’s too soon to tell if you’ll lose it,” she whispered, and Julian nodded meekly. A tear rolled free from the swollen eye and Kio wiped it away.

  “I can’t see anything out of it.” Julian’s words sounded heavy in his throat, like he’d rather be screaming than speaking.

  Kio kept the calm in her voice as she responded. “You only need to see out of one eye to win. Look at me.” Julian’s one good eye darted unsurely up to Kio as another tear traveled down his ruined face. “They’re coming for you soon, Julian. Get yourself together. Cry when you come back, after you’ve won.”

  Scorch would have felt more awkward witnessing such an intimate moment if he’d been the only witness, but everyone in the room could hear Kio’s words. In a way, it felt like she was speaking to every soul in every cage. More than a few were looking over, their own wounds gashed across their faces and chests and arms.

  Julian wiped gingerly at the wetness on his face and turned away with a curt nod. He set his jaw firmly and sat as straight-backed in his cage as its height allowed. Kio placed her hands in her lap and turned away from Julian. The cage was so closed in that her knees were pushed up against Scorch’s thigh, and he had to keep his head bowed or it scraped the wired ceiling.

  He was on the verge of asking her where they were, what had happened to Julian, what had happened to her and everyone else in the dungeon, but before he could solidify his questions into sensible sentences, a heavy parade of steel footsteps sounded in the adjoining hallway.

  At once, the atmosphere of the room shifted as dozens of panicked heads looked toward the source of the noise. In the cage beside them, Julian was moaning again.

  “Don’t hesitate, Julian,” Kio commanded in a rush
ed whisper right before a team of masked men barreled into the room.

  Cages banged and shook as the captives beat against them, but the men paid them no mind, walking straight ahead. For a frightening moment, Scorch thought they were coming for him, but no. They were coming for Julian. They stepped in front of his cage, and the biggest of the men, with a plain black mask, unlocked the cage door and reached in with leather-gloved hands.

  Julian was fished from the cage, dragged out by his throat, and thrust into the arms of the accompanying guard. Scorch could do nothing but watch as he was led from the room with a sword at his back. Scorch turned to Kio, alarmed, but she lifted a hand, a quiet plea for his silence. He followed her gaze back out amongst the cages, where more masked men were opening a second cage and pulling out another man. This one looked slightly older than Julian did, and dirtier, and the masked men held most of his weight as they shuffled him from the room.

  When they were gone and their footsteps could no longer be heard echoing off the walls, the others stopped beating at their cages and slowly grew muted, save for occasional murmurs, sobs, and tortured groans.

  Kio touched Scorch’s knee and he turned to look at her. The burn on her cheek looked angry.

  “Kio?” he asked, suddenly uncertain whether he’d hallucinated her name or whether she’d told him. He waited for her to nod before continuing. “Where are we?”

  Even scrunched up in a cage, Scorch could tell she was graceful; it was evident in the way she turned her head and shifted her shoulders. “The Circle,” she answered.

  He frowned, chipping flecks of dried blood from his forearm. “I don’t know what that means. Where have they taken your friend?”

  Kio answered with carefully measured words. “They took him upstairs, along with the other man. They’ll fight until one of them is dead, and they’ll bring the winner back here. Julian’s last fight was two days ago, and now it’s his turn again.” Her eyes were sorrowful. “They’ll come for you soon.”

  He shook his head, which still throbbed. “I don’t,” he began, searching wildly for a composed thought, “I don’t understand. Why? What is this place?”

  “I told you, it’s the Circle.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” he replied, bitterness fighting his shock. “I’m a guardian. I’ve done nothing wrong. Why would I be taken here?”

  “You’re a guardian?” asked Kio. “That explains why you’re here. Slavers, people like the man who brought you here, take the most skilled fighters when they can. You’re worth more. Last longer. Put on a better show.” Her eyes raked up and down his hunched body. “How were they able to take you?”

  Scorch’s breath rattled from his lungs as a vision of gored flesh flashed behind his eyes. He ran his hands over his face, as if he could wipe the memory away.

  “I was caught off guard,” he answered, and Kio accepted the explanation with a small hum. “What about you?”

  “I was also caught off guard,” Kio said casually, as though they weren’t inches apart and stuffed in a cage. “I’ve been here eight days. I’ve been through three fights.”

  Scorch was worrying more dried blood from his arm when she answered, and his head shot up. “That means you’ve killed three people.”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  “How? Gods, how?” He couldn’t stop the horror of Flora’s bed from flooding his mind. He stuffed his head between his knees, taking deep breaths and trying not to get sick.

  Kio’s cool hand rested on his shoulder. “Because I don’t want to die,” she soothed. Then, softer, “Do you want to die?”

  Scorch didn’t look at her, but he shook his head. He thought of Julian crying from his one good eye and shivered. “They can’t force me to kill anyone. I won’t kill an innocent.”

  Fingers hooked beneath his chin, lifting his head. Kio demanded his eyes. “It won’t feel like killing. It will feel like surviving.”

  He pulled his knees to his chest and spent the next several minutes trying to even his breathing and tamper down his nausea, but there were too many points of pain on his body, too many rumblings of despair in his ears. His skin was hot and his fingertips dewed with sweat, but he swallowed it, pulled it deep down in his chest, where it bubbled and roiled and sent acid crawling up his throat.

  All too soon, the sound of heavy boots infiltrated the room and every caged human looked up at the door to see who would be dragged back through it. Scorch saw a masked man first, and then, staggering behind him, splattered in bright, fresh blood, with gruesome scratches joining the bruises on his face, he saw Julian. He was marched back to his cage and thrown inside. Scorch made to speak to him but Kio gave a minute shake of her head. The masked men locked the cage and Julian was quick to gather himself into a ball on the floor, hiding his face. A sob burst from his throat, raw and ghastly, and Scorch reached for the cage siding.

  Kio placed a hand on his wrist and looked him in the eyes. “Don’t worry about Julian,” she told him. “Worry about yourself.”

  He squinted at her in confusion the instant before their cage door opened. Kio released his wrist but maintained eye contact with him when the masked men reached in with grabbing, greedy hands and ripped him from the cage.

  The others banged violently on their cages, filling the room with a symphony of rebelliously clinking metal. Scorch struggled against his handlers until he saw the sword pointed at his navel and felt the sting of a dagger against his tender throat. His hands and feet were unbound. All he needed to do was get his hands on a sword, and then—what? Even standing straight had his head spinning, and if not for the hands on his arms, he was sure he’d be on the floor. Water hadn’t passed his lips in at least a day, and he was weak. If he managed to get his hands on a weapon, could he take on all of these guards by himself? He couldn’t even take Ebbins and his men, and six had come to escort him from the cage.

  A horrible feeling knotted in his gut. Helplessness. When the dagger pressed against his neck, he let the masked men walk him from the room.

  He was taken a different route than when he’d first arrived with Ebbins, and he concentrated on the number of turns down the different, moldy halls, trying to memorize the way. There wasn’t much to commit to memory—left, left, narrow stairwell, right—and then he was shuffled into a small room with black stains all over the floor and nothing else. One of the men locked the door while a second stalked to the door on the opposite side of the space. Scorch could see daylight streaming through its edges, and then it was unlocked and pulled open.

  He hadn’t been expecting an entire speech or anything, but a few words of direction would have been appreciated before the dagger left his throat and he was unceremoniously kicked out the door. He landed on his knees in the mud. It was raining and the air was cool enough that little clouds of breath puffed from his mouth. Beyond the steady patter of rain on his bare shoulders and the hastening beat of his heart, a roar was erupting all around him.

  Scorch lifted his head, his hair already darkened by the rain and clinging to his forehead. He was in a mud-caked circle, slightly smaller than the training rings at the Guild, but he didn’t have the mind to suss out an exact measurement. It was enough room for a proper scrimmage, and from the looks of it, it had been well used and poorly maintained. There were patches of mud stained a disconcerting reddish-brown.

  All around were onlookers, sooty faced with scraggly clothes, packed together behind the high chain fence that surrounded the circle. They whooped and hollered a collection of obscenities and nonsensical chants, some shaking pouches of coin. Shoved in amongst the spectators were more men wearing black masks and carrying swords. The fence was made with a similar wire as the cages and stretched beyond the top of Scorch’s head, but it wasn’t so high it couldn’t be scaled.

  Scorch stood, his boots sliding in the mud, and that’s when he noticed the two weapons lying in the center of the circle. His first steps forward were hesitant; he hadn’t walked without being pulled or pushed
in what felt like a lifetime. It was a pleasant surprise when his body carried him, without fail, all the way to the wooden staffs collecting raindrops on a heap of blood and mud. Scorch’s boots squelched as he bent down to take a staff. He held it up for inspection, disbelieving it was really in his hands. It was nowhere near the quality of the Guild’s practice staffs, but it was heavy and thick and his palms warmed beneath its weight.

  He gave it a twirl with nimble fingers, testing his own balance as much as the staff’s. His hands were shaking, but he didn’t drop it. In fact, with a weapon in his hand, he almost felt normal. But that feeling faded fast when the crowd erupted in a renewed wave of jeers and whistles. Horror prickled his spine as he watched a second door open on the far side of the circle.

  Scorch hadn’t taken notice of another body being pulled from the cages before—he’d been too bleary-headed—but, of course, they had taken a second captive. There were two weapons in the circle. One for Scorch and one for the man he was expected to fight to the death, the man who had just been shoved through the door.

  Like Scorch, he landed on his hands and knees. He scrambled to his feet at once, his eyes darting between Scorch and the staff still lying in the mud. Scorch stepped back several feet and held up a hand in peace. The rain was falling heavier now, and the dried blood on Scorch’s skin was streaming pink rivers down his arms.

  The man’s body was tense, reminding Scorch of a hunting lesson, and the deer that heard a rustling of leaves and bent back its ears, preparing to bolt. When at last the man did move, it was a broken run toward the staff, so quick his feet slipped out before him and he landed on his side with an audible smack. The audience cheered and Scorch took several steps further away. The circle wasn’t nearly large enough now that there were two of them within its walls.

  The man rolled onto his knees and used the staff to haul himself up. His movements were clunky with the staff, but he brandished it in front of his gaunt body like a sword. Scorch kept one hand wrapped around his own staff, but the other he maintained before him, palm turned outward, trying to keep his body language as non-aggressive as possible.