“We didn’t follow you,” he said. “We didn’t have to. I brought Talo here so that he could ask the questions he needs to, and to check on Arrun and Lueski.”
At that, Raz blinked. At his waist, Lueski shifted, and he let go of her head so she could look up at him.
“Mister Yu’ri helped us when the bad men were coming,” she said with a smile. “He gave us food and water and hid us so we wouldn’t get caught.”
For a moment, Raz could say nothing, staring down at the little girl. Then he whirled on her brother.
“These are the friends who helped you?” he hissed, waving at the Laorin. “These are the men who got you out of Azbar?”
Arrun nodded, half smiling. Apparently seeing Raz so taken aback was amusing, somehow.
“High Priest Yu’ri took us in when the warrant was put out for our arrest,” he said. “Our parents were part of the faith. He wanted us to stay in the temple, but I was the one who insisted on running.”
“Warren and Marta—Arrun and Lueski’s parents—were members of my temple before their passing,” Kal Yu’ri continued the explanation from by the fire. “The children got to us easily enough, but Arrun wasn’t convinced the guard wouldn’t be willing to disturb the Laorin to find them, just to set an example. I wasn’t either, but the others we’d snuck out of Azbar hadn’t fared well, so I was willing to take the chance. It was his right to deny it, though, and he did the best he could by his sister.”
Raz looked down at Lueski again, who still had her arms around him as she smiled, serenely oblivious to the tension in the room.
“You might have mentioned all of this earlier,” he said, patting the girl’s head before extracting himself carefully from her hug. “Our prior conversation may have gone a little differently.”
“I wasn’t sure what your intentions were with the children,” Yu’ri said with a shrug. “I admit that I don’t find it easy to trust you, Master Arro, nor am I sure the Koyts should. As it is, though, it seems you’ve shown them no ill will, so I am inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt.” He glanced at Brahnt briefly before finishing. “Would you grant us the same?”
Raz hesitated, his eyes shifting to the larger man. Talo Brahnt had a formidable figure, wide at the hips and shoulders, and tall enough that he reached Raz’s neck, which was a rarity in and of itself. His hands looked better suited for throttling than praying, and there were scars there, Raz realized. They were old and pale, long healed and faded, but they nicked and lined his fingers and knuckles enough for Raz to second-guess his earlier assumption that both men had led an easy life among the faith. Kal Yu’ri, perhaps, had been raised for the cloth.
Talo Brahnt, on the other hand, seemed to have taken a more complicated path into the arms of his god.
Making a decision, Raz reached out to lean Ahna against the wall. His gladius and war ax came next, their harness undone and hung from the iron peg by the door where he usually hung his mantle. The furs themselves he kept, mostly because the falling snow outside had left him with a chill that hadn’t quite faded.
But also because they helped to hide the knife still strapped above his right hip.
When he was done, Raz turned back to face the Priests. Though he’d said nothing, the two men seemed to take his disarming as an agreement, and they relaxed slightly.
“There are many words I owe you,” Brahnt spoke first, blue eyes sad as they met Raz’s. “About the Arros, about Karth, about you…”
Raz bristled at the sound of his family’s name, but he didn’t respond, resolving to let the man have his moment.
“I took Syrah from the city as soon as was possible,” the Priest explained. “I barely had time to find out your name before we ran, making north again weeks before we had intended. I remember her worrying, how often she would look back the way we came. I remember telling her that you would be alright, that your head and heart were all you needed to make it in that harsh world.”
He paused and swallowed. Through the haze of anger Raz was fighting to control, he allowed himself to realize that this conversation was clearly not easy for the man.
“Had I known—Had I even suspected—I don’t know what I could have done. I would have returned, at the very least. I would have sought you out. I cannot aptly explain to you how much I or the faith owe you, Arro. Syrah was—Syrah is—as a daughter to me, and the woman she has grown to be will put any great name among the faithful to shame one day. What you did for us cost you greatly. It took from you what you held dearest, and I will bear the responsibility for it gladly. I should have been there. It should have been me watching over her. It should have been me—”
“You would have had to kill them.”
Talo stopped abruptly at Raz’s interruption, looking surprised at the words. Raz, for one, sighed and moved closer to the fire. He kneeled before the flames, letting the heat wash over him and into the steel of his armor.
“You would have had to kill them,” he repeated after a moment, not looking up at Talo, who stood beside him now. “To keep them away from her, you would have had to end their lives. I admit I may not know as much about you as I claimed, Priest, but I do know some things, and I know you don’t kill. You can’t.”
He watched the fire for a moment more, recalled the stale dry air of that little house, the settling of brick dust as he stood among the dead and dying.
“The slave rings don’t accept defeat graciously,” he said. “They don’t take kindly to being thwarted. I killed four of the five men in that house, that day. I let the last one live, because your girl asked me to. Can you guess how they found out I was involved?”
Talo didn’t respond, listening intently.
“If I’d finished the job, if I’d ripped his throat out like I’d wanted to, there’s a chance my family wouldn’t have died that night. Not a big one, mind. Someone was bound to figure it out eventually. But still, a chance…”
Raz looked away from the fire now, meeting the man’s eyes.
“If it had been you there that day, Priest, would you have been able to stop them?”
Talo hesitated. Then he nodded.
Raz chuckled. “I thought as much,” he said, glancing down at the man’s scarred hands again. “Next question now… Would you have been able to kill them?”
A short hesitation. Then Talo shook his head once.
Raz smiled dryly at the response. “Then you would have been done for. Word would have gotten back to Ayzenbas—probably even faster—and within hours the city would have become one giant net. The girl would have been taken, as would you and the others if you’d given them half a chance. If not, they’d just have killed you and left your bodies for the slum runners to loot and violate as they saw fit.”
“Ayzenbas was their leader?”
It was Kal Yu’ri who asked, almost whispering the question. Raz looked around Talo to see the other Priest and Arrun both standing there, listening raptly. Lueski seemed to have run off to play with her new doll again.
“He was,” Raz nodded. Then he smiled wickedly. “Would you like me to tell you what happened to him?”
“No,” Talo said gruffly, speaking for the first time since Raz had started talking. “And I don’t think you would even if we wanted to, given we are within earshot of your new charges.”
Raz lost his smile at that.
“Fair enough,” he said, watching Talo again. Then he got to his feet, standing to tower over the big man, barely a foot from each other.
“I doubt I will ever be your friend, Priest,” he said. “It should have been you and your ilk to fall beneath the blade that day, not my friends. Not my family. I’ll never forget that. But I won’t let you claim fault for it either. The men who are to blame for that are dead, though Ayzenbas could never suffer enough to atone for what he did, as hard as I tried.”
Brahnt stood before him, unflinching under Raz’s gaze, meeting his eyes evenly. When he spoke, though, his voice was hoarse, as though he were hard-pressed
to keep the emotion out of his words.
“I would never ask you to forget it,” the man said. “But can you forgive it?”
For a long time Raz stood over him, taking the Priest in. Here was a man who had lived a hard life. Raz was sure of it now. Despite that, there was a gentleness in Brahnt’s bearing, a kind countenance that spoke nothing of softness or weakness, but rather of the pride and strength found in peace.
Here was a man who had sought, and found, his redemption.
“I will try,” Raz said with a small nod.
At his words, something bent in the big man. Relief washed his bearded face, replacing what Raz realized had been the lines of hidden heartbreak and grief.
“You really had no idea, did you?” he asked quietly.
Talo shook his head at that, smiling sadly. “None. You might have made a name for yourself in the South, Arro, and have a good start on doing the same here, but I haven’t heard a whisper of you since we fled Karth. Kal told me today.”
“Word spread quick when you arrived,” Kal spoke up from behind Talo. “The North knows by now, too. Quin Tern’s birds will have seen to that.”
“The birds were my idea,” Raz said. “Your Chairman was smart enough not to take advantage of Miropa’s offer until he saw the benefit of every angle. He’s clever, Tern.”
At that, Kal spluttered in anger.
“You praise him?” he demanded. “After everything he’s done? After what he did to Arrun and Lueski! How could you—!”
“That wasn’t praise, Kal.”
Brahnt cut across Yu’ri’s outburst. The big Priest was watching Raz with a new face now, not one cut from the grief he’d worn minutes before. This face was calculating and alert, aware of Raz’s implication.
“It was acknowledgement,” he finished the statement. “Arro was merely highlighting that the Chairman has his strengths.”
“Precisely,” Raz told Yu’ri with a nod. “It would do if you could stop jumping down my throat every other word I utter, High Priest. I don’t care much for false friendship, but if we intend to work together, then civility is the least we can manage.”
At that, Kal looked surprised.
“Work together?” he asked, as though he wasn’t sure he had heard Raz correctly. “You mean… You would be willing to help us?”
Raz snorted. “I’d love to pretend that would be the case, but in truth I think it’s I who is more in need of assistance. I’d hoped a month or two of blood would satisfy the crowds, or at least dissuade people from signing up to fight, but the bounty from the South is substantial, and Quin is only going to add to it as needed to keep interest in the fights going. At this rate I’m more likely to kill off half the North—and probably do myself in in the process—than I am to convince your Chairman he should abandon his aspirations for the fights.” He looked to Talo. “It’s my understanding that the faith has taken down the Arenas once before. What’s stopping them now?”
“Timing,” the man responded, taking a step around Raz to get his bad leg closer to the fire. “Manpower. The favor of the people. You name it. You think it’s bad now? Wait until the Arena has been standing for a hundred years. Last time the Laorin took a stand, the people of the North had had enough of the blood, enough of living in fear that they might suffer the same fate of the unfortunates they jeered down upon whenever there was a fight. Here in Azbar, the leadership was different, too. Markus Tern tolerated the Arena because it was tradition, and because it was a primary source of capital for the city. He never enjoyed it, much less thrived on it, as his son does. When the opportunity came to ban the fights, when the Laorin presented him with alternative means for the town to support itself, he required little convincing. I doubt Quin will be as accommodating.”
“It’s certainly not likely,” Raz said thoughtfully. “What were these alternatives, though? What were you able to offer the town that enabled them to abandon the Arena?”
“Well first, the Arena wasn’t making near as much profit as the city claimed,” Kal answered now. “Fees came in hand over fist, true enough, and the place looked nothing short of a goldmine if you only gave it a cursory once-over, but there was much more to it than that.”
Raz frowned, glancing at Talo for confirmation. The big Priest nodded.
“Kal was a driving force the first time the faith took on the Arenas,” he said. “He knows the political ins and outs better than I do, at the very least.”
“And the financials,” Kal said with a note of pride Raz found amusing coming from such a pious man. “Despite the gold it took in, the Arena was costing the city at least half its intake every cycle. Purses and prizes were an obvious loss, but there were others. Maintenance of the stadium and pit. Training of the gladiators. Training of the attendants. Cost per head for the hunters and poachers to bring back live game as sport. Fees to smiths and armorers throughout the city to make and repair weapons and gear. Smaller costs included paying off the physicians treating the gladiators, as well as the gravediggers and cemetery keepers for dealing with the dead. Still, even those added up over the months and years.”
“What about now, though?” Raz asked, looking between the two Priests. “What’s changed that’s made people forget? If it’s not as substantial a pillar to Azbar’s stability, why was it allowed to reopen?”
“Time,” Talo told him. “The likelihood is that little if anything has ‘changed,’ as you say. It’s been decades since the ban was put in place, and longer still since the battle began to do so. Many alive then are gone, and the masses with the power to make change now were too young to have witnessed the discussions, to hear the reasonings. I doubt if one in ten who crowd the stadium have any concept of the things we are discussing, and fewer still would care even if they did. Beyond that, the last winters have been so brutal that the entirety of the city is willing to cling to anything that might make life a little easier during the freeze, and the Arena does that, especially now.”
“Now?” Raz asked.
“Now that you’re here,” Talo said with a shrug. “Even fewer are willing to make a stand with Tern and his guards no longer drafting their entertainment from within the walls of the city. Not to mention the profits the taverns and inns are seeing from outsiders coming to see the fights.”
“So you believe I was mistaken to step in?” Raz bristled. “You’re saying I should have let those people—some as young as Lueski!—face men and women who wouldn’t think twice before murdering them where they stood?”
“No.”
It was Yu’ri, surprisingly, who spoke so vehemently.
“Please try to understand, Master Arro, that Talo and I are in a difficult position,” he said, sounding frustrated. “We understand that you seek peace, and we applaud it. Where our disadvantage lies is in your methods. On the one hand, your business is one of death and violence and, in the eyes of the Lifegiver, such transgressions should be unforgivable. On the other, though… well…”
Yu’ri looked suddenly uncomfortable, as though he was having difficulty articulating his intentions.
“On the other,” Talo picked up for him, “you single-handedly ended the harvesting of debtors and criminals from within Azbar. We of the faith hold no life in value above another, but we are not so blind as to deny the fact that the men and women who fall in the Arena now are all there by choice. I say, with a clear conscience no less, that you have done a great thing, here in this place.”
“Talo,” Yu’ri hissed, shocked, but the bigger Priest waved any further comment away impatiently.
“Until the day comes when He sees fit to end all wars, the Lifegiver is not unaware that violence will exist among His flock. Yes, no life may have greater value than another, Yu’ri, but are you honestly going to sit there and preach that there is not a difference between a life taken and a life given? We will bring down the Arena again, but in the meantime you cannot argue that Arro’s way is a far lesser of two evils.”
Yu’ri seemed to have no im
mediate answer to that, opening and closing his mouth as though biting back half-formed thoughts.
“Lesser or not,” he finally managed to squeak out, “are we really going to condone this, Talo? I mean”—he dropped his voice to a low whisper—“did you see what he did today?”
“Three hundred and forty-seven.”
Both Priests looked around at Raz, who was frowning.
“What?” Yu’ri asked, perplexed.
“Three hundred and forty-seven,” Raz said again. “That’s how many are left on the list—the bounty hunters who’d come to Azbar for a chance at my head. Before today, it was over five hundred. Exclude the ones lost this afternoon, and nearly a hundred withdrew their names after today’s final match.”
He watched Yu’ri carefully, judging the man’s reaction as he continued.
The Wings of War: Books 1-3: The Wings of War Box Set, Vol. 1 Page 56