by Kate Elliott
The tower at the heart abides.
Deep in the undercourt the start bell rings. The hatch opens. Sunlight spills down over me, and on its rays of brightness I climb.
The tiers of seating ripple with color as ribbons tied to the awnings flutter in the breeze. From here I can’t get a good look at the royal balcony but that’s not my first concern. A quick scan reveals soldiers stationed at all the entrance arches. They’re standing at parade rest like people expecting no trouble, just an ordinary day of duty. Most wear the colors of the Firebird Guard, but soldiers wearing the sea-phoenix tabards of the palace surround the royal balcony. They will become a problem, but that obstacle is not mine to solve.
Rope stairs lead up to a maze negotiated off the ground on a series of narrow beams. It’s a clever design: the need to balance diverts a certain amount of concentration from figuring out the correct route. I’ve been on a maze rigged like this one so recently that my body remembers the course it took. At one turning when I step to the right instead of the left an odd reluctance checks me; this way leads to a dead end. I’m so sure I know this route that I let go of thinking and let memory guide me without a single wrong turn.
My bell is first to ring for a second obstacle as I head into Traps.
I’ve seen this exact entry into Traps before: a choice between ropes and beams running hip high above the ground and a set of ascending horizontal bars that lead up to a faster, and highly dangerous, route. Pythias is still in this obstacle, doggedly clambering upside down along a tipping bridge at the lower level. He’s right where an adversary named Sandstorm was, the only other time I ran a trial in the Royal Fives Court.
That’s when I realize what Perikos was telling me. Kal must have ordered him to re-create the course from the Maldine victory games, a course that favors my skills. I once swore never to run a rigged court again, but today the Fives obstacles aren’t the real trial, and anyway the court of Efea has been rigged for a long time; it’s just I couldn’t see it before.
Of all the chances I must take this is the big one. I test the brace and binding on my wrist. It’s not hurting yet. So I leap, grasp the horizontal bar, swing up to catch the next-higher bar with my knees, and fly backward to release and catch the highest bar, which swings me up onto the most dangerous and thus shortest path, beams and ropes so high that if you fall, you can die.
I should go slowly. I should.
But the crowd has gotten excited at last. They need to recognize me.
Extending my arms wide, I play the crowd, my gesture a boast that they must look at me. That they should know who I am.
I don’t look toward the royal balcony. Not yet.
Instead I spin my web of tricks across the ropes and beams and bars and traps, my somersaults and leaps, my tucks and flips, so high off the ground that if I fall then it will all be over for me, no coming back from such a disaster. This is our day. If we don’t fly, we will fall.
The crowd is roaring by the time I reach the resting platform for Traps.
“The general’s valiant daughter!”
“Spider! Spider!”
Only then do I pause to catch my breath. Only then when they are thrilled by my daring do I turn to face the royal balcony, where a king and a queen sit side by side beneath an awning. Gold silk sways up and down like the breath of the land trying to tug free from the stakes that moor it. Beside the royal sea-phoenix banner flies the banner of the horned and winged fire dog, marking the ascendency of Clan Garon, no longer languishing on a lesser balcony off to one side.
Lord Gargaron stares at me from where he sits next to Queen Menoë. Although I can’t really see his expression, the way he’s holding a cup like he wants to throw it at me reveals everything I need to know. If there is anything he hates, it is defiance.
My gaze slides to the king. He is dressed all in gold, and a gold diadem circles his brow like a ribbon of sunlight.
When I turn his way he stands, and thus every person in the Fives court except his sister and his grandmother must stand. That is his tribute to me, the only tribute I need.
The crowd erupts into a frenzy of astonished and outraged speculation. Everyone thinks today’s story is about forbidden love between a reckless adversary and a headstrong young king. It’s the best distraction of all. No one is watching as the entry gates that lead out of the tiers are closed.
His sister tugs impatiently on his arm, and he relents and sits.
I clamber down, chalk my sweating hands, and enter Trees. When I ran that very first trial, in this configuration the entry was a high horizontal bar the adversary had to leap to grab, but now it’s a simple ladder. I am certain Kalliarkos told Lord Perikos to change it because of my wrist. The climbing within these posts and shafts relies more on skill than hand strength but it doesn’t matter. I’m not halfway through before my wrist is throbbing. I struggle. Atop a set of posts I pause to breathe down the worst of the pain, and Dagger comes up beside me.
“Can you make it through with that injury?” she asks. “You have to win. You’re the only one who can be sure.”
“I’ll make it,” I say through teeth gritted from pain. “But it might take me a while.”
She flashes me a kiss-off sign and leaps away.
She’s so clean and strong as she climbs. We can all be strong, each in our own way, if we are not lashed into submission. The crowd salutes her skill with a cheer, and yet by the time I grind my way through the last of Trees, struggling through pain, they are cheering me even louder because they can see I am injured but unwilling to give up.
By now the other three adversaries have all reached Rings. My wrist just didn’t hold up, and the truth is they are all more experienced Challengers than I and would likely have beaten me anyway.
But I have to keep going. When I drop into Rivers it’s easy to recall the pattern of which stones will shift, like Father’s loyalty to his family when he was offered the sum of his ambition, and which will hold firm, like Mother’s love for her children. Yet as I cross in haste I hear the crowd’s noise start to falter into confusion. No shout of triumph greets a victor although there should be one by now. When I pull myself up onto the final resting platform, my entry point to Rings, I see why.
Dagger has reached the victory tower but she stands beside it, not climbing. Just then the older Saroese man dashes up, and he too halts at the base of the ladder.
I leap into the spinning Rings. I already know its pattern because I’ve been this way before. As I throw in twists and tucks for flair, the loudest sound in the court is the scuff and slap of my feet and hands. I’ve gone beyond pain; blood thunders in my ears, and my wrist pulsates with agony. The crowd has gone silent in furious disapproval, withholding their approbation. In any other circumstances it would destroy the career of a promising adversary. But I pay no attention. I swing down onto the ground to see all three adversaries standing at the base of the tower.
Waiting for the tomb spider, the herald of death.
“It’s up to you now,” says Dagger.
“Don’t signal unless you’re certain he’s with us,” adds the Saroese man.
“Efea is in your hands,” says Pythias.
They step away from the ladder to let me through. In tears I climb as the crowd begins to jeer and scream. What words they shout I will not hear for they are ugly. They think the new king has cheated to let his lover win.
It takes all my concentration to climb one-handed to the top. There flies the ribbon, purple silk embroidered with gold thread. In my rush I grab it with the wrong hand, and the pain that stabs through my flesh doubles me over. But I straighten.
The king is standing. Gaze fixed on me, he taps his chest twice with an open hand to show he has fulfilled his orders. Then he touches a forefinger to his lips and holds it out to me.
The crowd has gone wild with anger at this perversion of the sacred rules of the Fives.
Lord Gargaron is both enraged and gloating, thinking I’ve overstepped, that Ka
l’s attentions have made me overconfident, that I’ve missed my mark and begun my fall.
But he is the one whose arrogance has led him to this cliff’s edge.
I pull my mask from my face.
And I shout, “Efea will rise!”
30
Below, the other three adversaries join me, our voices together amplifying the words.
“Efea will rise! Efea will rise!”
That is the signal for my father’s loyal Firebird Guard to bar the gates from the outside and trap the highborn Patrons inside the Fives court. That is the signal for the hatches and trapdoors of every mechanism in the undercourt to open.
That is the signal for the Efean soldiers who entered the undercourt as workmen to climb into the light.
An arrow skitters across the victor’s platform and skids off. A second clatters through the scaffolding. It takes me that long to realize someone is shooting at me. I swing around to see a crossbowman on a balcony taking aim. At me.
I throw myself behind one of the big scaffolding beams. A bolt slams into its other side.
Shouting and screams break out on the seating terraces as Efean soldiers swarm up from the court, climbing into the tiers. People race for the exits but the Firebird Guard controls the gates and aisles with its intimidating shield walls and spears. Their job is merely to hold so no one can get out or come in. It’s the Efeans who take charge.
Each highborn clan has guards; it’s how they display their importance. Those who kneel and surrender are allowed to live but the guards who draw their swords and fight are cut down as the Efeans wade in with fierce resolve and a supple and disciplined fighting style honed by the menageries.
Two more arrows flash past me from different directions, one hissing so close to my face I can taste its iron. A bolt from the first archer scrapes my left thigh and slides away across the planks. Across the distance he cranks back the crossbow, lowering his sights on me yet again. Then he’s hit from behind by a sword thrust, so intent on harming me that he failed to notice Efean soldiers storming the balcony.
A shout from below: “Spider! Get down!”
I flop down, face against the platform, as more arrows whistle over, where my head just was. One stabs into the plank next to my shoulder, quivering from the force of its impact. A thin rail of blood leaks through ripped cloth on my thigh but my pulse is pounding so hard I don’t feel any pain except in my wrist. Up here I’m a target and yet if I try to climb down the ladder while they’re still fighting I’ll be even more exposed. I have to hang on.
Pockets of resistance drop back toward the royal balcony, hoping to join up with the sea-phoenix soldiers who have frantically set up a perimeter around the royal household. But Efean squads swarm the retreating Saroese guardsmen time and again. Each clash of swords and spears leaves broken bodies bleeding out onto stone, some Saroese and some Efean.
The royal balcony has become an island of shocked calm isolated amid the chaos. My scan of the terraces reveals how comprehensively we have ambushed them, how many people kneel with hands on heads, shaking as they beg for mercy. Parents clutch children to their breasts. Women strip themselves of jewels and gold braid to throw at the feet of their assailants in the wild hope that all the rebels want is loot. From up here I see a few Efean soldiers grab a ring or necklace for themselves but most kick the baubles aside to officers who are collecting the valuables into bags. Trust Mother to have made the demand that everything be accounted for so she can disburse it fairly later.
All through the seating terraces that have come under the complete control of the Efeans, the Saroese are driven into lines and roped up like criminals.
After a bit, when no more arrows fly past, I risk rising to my knees, then to my feet. I turn toward the royal balcony. The king has not budged from his throne. He sits rigidly as he watches the end of his world. A last few knots of loyal guardsmen trying to fight their way to the royal balcony are overwhelmed and slaughtered.
The women and children and unarmed officials of the Garon household have been pressed back under the balcony’s awning, protected by a last circle of sea-phoenix and fire dog soldiers standing three deep. A captain daringly tugs on the king’s arm, trying to get him to move back so he won’t be so exposed, but he shakes him off. He doesn’t budge. A single well-aimed arrow could kill him.
A noise grinds on the floor of the court, and it seems every gaze fixes there. Four big platforms are winched up through the open trapdoors. Normally they would hold a change of equipment for Rings. But today brass carapaces gleam as spiders emerge into the sunlight.
The king stands, in defiance or in welcome. A great shout arises from the Patrons, because for one moment they believe the spiders have come to rescue them.
The spiders scuttle up the tiers in a terrifying display of flashing limbs. I’m sure that the spider scout leading the way is Father, risking himself at the forefront as always. They slam to a halt as they crash over the railing onto the royal balcony. There they loom above the royal guards, their bladed forelegs held ready to slash through the massed line. But they wait.
Menoë bravely tries to go forward to stand beside her brother but Lady Adia holds her back. In a show of courage I wasn’t sure he possessed, Lord Gargaron walks from the group hiding in the back and right up to the exposed throne. He speaks sharply to the king. Kal raises a hand to gesture Gargaron away. Briefly Kal’s gaze drifts to where I stand atop the tower but there’s no relief or lightness in his posture. How can there be?
Thousands of highborn Saroese have been taken prisoner and hundreds killed, and he had a hand in it, even though none of them know that he’s complicit in their defeat. That’s part of the plan: That they believe he, too, has been taken by surprise, betrayed by his lover.
Out of the mass of Efean soldiers the Honored Protector in his lion mask pushes forward. Beneath the sheltering shadow of a spider he faces the royal Saroese. Astoundingly, no one in the Garon household appears to recognize Inarsis in his mask and armor.
The honored poet at his side speaks. His actor’s voice carries easily to all the tiers. He speaks Saroese as well as those seated there do, because we must learn the language of the conqueror while they can remain ignorant of ours.
“There has come this day when truth will bloom and Efea will rise. You are done, you who have walked on our bones and nourished yourselves on our blood for so many generations. I counseled that we kill you all. But she who is rightful Custodian of the land desires mercy, so she makes this offer: Let the heads of your highborn clans make a formal surrender in your own Temple of Justice under the gaze of your god Seon. These clan heads alone will be held responsible. Do this, and your households will be allowed to embark on ships waiting in the harbor, which will take you to the lands of old Saro whence you came.”
Gargaron actually laughs. “Do you mean to cleanse every person of Saroese ancestry from Efea? Most of us were born here, just like you.”
“That is Efea’s offer to the highborn clans,” says the honored poet. “Take it, and most of you will live. Refuse it, and you will surely die.”
Menoë yanks free of her mother’s restraining arm and comes forward to Kal. The girth of her pregnancy gives her the weight of authority.
“Esladas will turn the Royal Army home to come to our rescue. Our West Saroese allies will return.” She looks ready to spit in Ro’s face although she wisely restrains herself as she turns to her brother. “Let them have their way for now so no one else dies. I counsel surrender because it will be temporary. These Commoners will rue the day they dared to defy us.”
The king has gone as ashy pale as if all the blood has been drained from his body, but he refuses to look away. In fact I think he is staring at Ro as if a crawling suspicion is worming its way through him, as if he is wondering if I have played these Rings against him, if it was Ro all along I favored. If I will actually stab him in the back as I did once before on this very Fives court.
Again he looks up at me,
where I still stand atop the victory tower. I can make no gesture. I can shout no words of encouragement. There can be no hint that he’s in on it.
In the end it is his decision alone, and he knows it.
The legacy of the first Kliatemnos and Serenissima is one betrayal after the next, their descendants steeped in an ugly history. Even though his cause is just, King Kalliarkos is a betrayer too. He knows it as he speaks the words that spell the end of the royal dynasty he was meant to inherit.
“So say we, Queen Menoë and King Kalliarkos. Seeking the path of mercy rather than blood, we surrender into the custody of the gods’ judgment.”
31
As we leave the Fives court for the Temple of Justice I still clutch the victor’s ribbon. I walk with the other three adversaries alongside columns of Efean soldiers. Marching in disciplined ranks, they escort the royal household and the head of each highborn clan to Seon’s temple. The firebird veterans remain behind in the Royal Fives Court to stand guard over the thousands of highborn Saroese captives. The Honored Protector, still hidden by his mask and armor, leads the procession down the King’s Hill in a silence that contrasts with the turmoil unfurling throughout the city.
Threads of smoke rise from within Saryenia’s walls and I don’t know if it is the Saroese or Efeans who have set the fires. The city rumbles with noise and confusion. Even so, our prisoners, surrounded by a tight wall of Efean troops, might as well be in a cage. Four spiders clank along, two on either side. The only courtesy shown is toward Princess Berenise, who is carried in a litter because of her age. Even Menoë in the fullness of her pregnancy is forced to walk in the heat and the dust, the sun blasting down on her. She’s leaning heavily on Kal. His face looks dead.
Numbness has turned my heart to stone as we reach the wide staircase that leads up to the portico of the Temple of Justice. We are welcomed by a colossal statue of Seon with his stern Saroese face and his neck wreathed with flowers in the Efean manner. The hall of the Sun of Justice admits Saroese and Efeans alike even if the laws favor Patrons. Father has always preferred Seon’s worship to that of Inkos although he was not a man who prayed beyond what was socially required.