by Jay Kristoff
“I need you to stop working at odds with the Crow,” Arkades replied, slightly slurred from the drink. “I need you to fight beside her, not against her.”
Furian scowled. “That girl is on every tongue this nevernight, it seems.”
A blink. “ . . . What?”
“She is a liar and a cur, Executus. Her glory is undeserved.”
“How can you say so?” Arkades frowned. “Aa’s cock, I hold no more fondness for her than you, but you saw her fight at Stormwatch. Her victory over the retchwyrm—”
“Was steeped in treachery. She is not a victor, she is a thief.”
Arkades sighed, reaching for his flask before he caught himself. He stood, unsteady for a moment, Leona sighing in relief now she could breathe again. Regaining his balance and limping around the room, Arkades motioned to the walls around them.
“What do you see?”
“My domina’s house,” the Unfallen replied.
“Aye. The walls that shelter you, the roof that keeps the suns off your back. Know you what will happen, if we fail to secure berth at the magni?”
“I need no aid besting the silkling, Executus,” Furian growled, bristling. “And I will not fight alongside an honorless dog who steals what should be earned.”
“Because you’d know all about being an honorless dog, neh?”
Furian’s eyes grew wide. “You dare—”
“Spare me your indignity,” Arkades growled, raising one callused hand. “You forget I was the one who found you, brought you here. I alone know where it is you came from, what it is you did to find yourself in chains.”
Furian glanced to his bed. The figure lurking beneath it.
“That was many a turn ago,” he said. “I am that man no longer. I am a god-fearing son of the Everseeing, and a gladiatii who lives to honor his domina.”
“You live to honor yourself,” Arkades replied, shaking his head in exasperation. “To prove yourself better than the man you were. And I see to the heart of that. But say not that you fight for your domina. If you truly thought for one moment of Leona, if you felt one drop of what I feel for h—”
Arkades blinked and caught himself. Swaying on his feet. Glancing up at the champion, Executus cleared his throat, rubbed at bleary eyes.
“You have the skill and the will to see us all the way to the magni, Furian. I did not pluck you from the mire to redeem you from the sins of your past. I did it because I see in you a champion, just as I was. You can win your freedom. Walk among us as a man once more, not the animal you were. But those who stand for nothing die for the same. And if you stand only for yourself, you fall alone.”
“Stand for myself?” Furian repeated, incredulous. “I stand for these walls!”
“Then prove it,” Arkades growled. “Fight with the Crow, not against her. And when the silkling is bested and our berth assured, when you face the Crow in the grand games e mortium, you can prove yourself the man I know you to be.”
Arkades placed one hand on the champion’s shoulder.
“Or fall alone,” he repeated. “And bring this house down with you.”
Executus swayed like a tree in a storm, the grip on Furian’s shoulder more to steady himself than prove a comfort. But though the goldwine hung heavy on his breath, though he could barely stay upright, it seemed he’d aimed true.
Furian clenched his jaw. But finally, he nodded.
“I will stand with her at Whitekeep,” he said. “But in Godsgrave, she dies.”
Arkades nodded, limped toward the door, click, thud, click, thud, turning at the threshold to look Furian over once more.
“Perhaps before? Who can say?”
Executus smiled, closing the door behind him. Furian stood still, listening to the sound of his limping tread fade down the hallway. Sinking to his knees, he offered a hand to Leona, helped her drag herself out from under the bed. Once standing, the dona snatched her hand away from his, dragged her dress over her head to cover herself. Indignity written in every movement.
“So,” she glared. “You’d disobey my command to fight beside the Crow, but Arkades speaks a handful of words and you see the right of it?”
“Domin—”
“You told me you were a trader before this,” she said, fixing the champion in her glittering blue stare. “A merchant.”
“I was,” Furian replied.
“Arkades did not make it sound so. He named you animal. How many sins can a simple merchant accrue, that he fights so fierce to redeem them?”
The Unfallen made no reply.
“What did you do, Furian?” she asked. “What lies have you told me?”
The champion only stared at the trinity of Aa on the wall, refusing to meet her gaze. She stood there long moments, searching his eyes, looking for answers. Finding only silence. And with a disgusted harrumph, she turned, stomped toward the door. Listening for a moment, she tore it open, almost heedless, and strode out into the hallway, slamming it behind her.
The Unfallen slumped his shoulders and softly cursed.
Sitting on the bed, he saw Leona had left her underslip behind. Gathering it up in his hands, he stared at it for long moments, lost in thought. Running his fingers across the silk, the lace. Inhaling her perfume. And finally, he bent down and stuffed it under his mattress, hiding it in the shadows beneath his bed.
The shadows where a not-cat sat and listened.
Trying terribly hard not to roll his not-eyes.
“ . . . sigh . . .”
1 A infamous Itreyan opera commissioned by King Francisco XII (known by his subjects as “the Proud” in life, and “the Wanker” in death). Francisco was an enthusiast of musical theater, and after his triumph during a rebellion by King Oskar III of Vaan, he commissioned an ode to his glory. His court’s premier composer, Maximillian Omberti, toiled for over a year on the composition, naming it “Mi Uitori” (My Victory).Francisco was convinced his opera was a path to everlasting fame and popularity with his subjects. He spared no expense in assembling the production, and fancying himself as something of a singer, decreed he would play the role of himself at the premiere. Held at Godsgrave arena, every member of the nobility was in attendance, along with ninety thousand citizens. To ensure the crowd would appreciate every moment of his masterpiece, Francisco XII ordered the arena exits locked as the overture began.Sadly, though the opera does feature the aforementioned titular “Mi Uitori” in its final act—considered Omberti’s finest piece, and still played centuries later—the king had demanded the composer include every detail of his Vaanian triumph. The premier performance was over seventeen hours in length, its duration made all the worse by Francisco’s singing voice, which was described by the historian Cornelius the Younger as “akin to two cats fucking in a burning bag.”The performance went so long, two women gave birth during it, and several hundred citizens risked broken legs and execution by leaping from the arena’s walls to the street outside. A particularly wily baron of the king’s court, one Gaspare Giancarli, faked a heart attack so that the guards would permit his familia to remove his lifeless corpse from the premises.Francisco was reported to be “quite disappointed” with the opera’s reception.Omberti committed suicide shortly after the premiere.There was no repeat performance.
23: whitekeep
The crash of waves on a stony shore.
The screams of gulls in sunsburned skies.
The roar of seventy thousand voices, joined as one.
A lone gladiatii stood in the arena’s heart, bathed in thunder. The blinding scorch of the two suns glittered on the twin lengths of razored chain he twirled about his body. He was clad in gleaming steel, arm wrapped in scaled mail, greaves at his shins. His face was hidden behind a polished helm, fashioned like a roaring drake’s maw.
The prisoners around him wore no such protection—a few scraps of piecemeal leather, rusty swords in hand. Execution bouts were meant to entertain the crowd between the major events, but there were a dozen condemned men and women in the
arena, fighting against a single gladiatii; it wouldn’t do to give the criminals much of a chance at surviving. They were meant to die here, after all.
A convicted rapist charged with a cry, the gladiatii whipping his spike chain across the man’s belly, spilling coils of purple guts onto the now-scarlet sand. The crowd roared in approval. An arsonist and a murderer struck at the gladiatii’s rear, but both were met with a whistling wall of steel, slicing their sword arms off at the elbows and their throats to the bone.
As the mob’s cheers swelled louder, as the walls of Whitekeep arena near shook with the stomping of their feet, the gladiatii went to work in earnest. Opening windpipes and stomachs, severing hands and legs, and as a thrilling finale, taking the last prisoner’s head clean off his shoulders.
“Citizens of Itreya!” came the call across the arena horns. “Honored administratii! Senators and marrowborn! Your victor, Giovanni of Liis!”
The gladiatii roared, raising his bloody chains. As he strode about the sand, whipping the crowd to frenzy, the criminals’ mutilated corpses were dragged away for disposal. Only an unmarked grave and the abyss awaiting them.
Mia stood in her cell, staring out through the bars to the sands beyond. The games were almost done—only the equillai race and their feature match against the silkling remained between now and the Ultima. Butcher had fought earlier in the turn, but he’d been soundly thrashed by a swordsman from the Tacitus Collegium—only a plea for mercy from the editorii had seen his life spared. Wavewaker and Sidonius had fought in a bestiary match with two dozen other gladiatii and a pack of Vaanian scythebears. The pair had slain three beasts between them, though they’d been bested in the final points tally by a pair of stalkers from the Trajan Collegium. Only two marks shy of victory.
So close to a laurel, yet so far away.
The pair sat in the cell with Mia now, nursing their wounds and stung pride. Butcher was with Maggot, getting his head and ribs stitched up. Bladesinger sat with her back to the sand, listening to the furor die outside. She was busy tying a handful of hooked knives into the ends of her saltlocks, humming to herself. The blades were three inches long, razor-sharp. She was clad in a boiled leather breastplate, spaulders and greaves of dark iron. A helmet with the crown cut away sat on the bench beside her.
“Bryn and Byern will be up soon,” Mia said.
Bladesinger nodded, saying nothing.
“Nervous?” Mia asked.
“Always,” the woman replied.
“Courage, sisters,” Wavewaker smiled. “This match is yours.”
Bladesinger nodded slow. In the weeks leading up to their departure from Crow’s Nest, their training with Furian had improved no end, and in the long sessions beneath the burning suns, the trio had reached a kind of synchronicity. Moving as one, they’d begun to best Arkades regularly. Mia’s speed. Furian’s brawn. Bladesinger the bridge between. Though the Unfallen was kept apart from them in his champion’s cell, as was tradition before the match, they were as close to a team as they would ever be.
“We have a chance,” Bladesinger admitted.
Truth told, they had more than one. Ashlinn had arrived in Whitekeep a week before the gladiatii of the Remus Collegium, and had been skulking about the arena ever since. Passing messages through Eclipse, she’d told Mia exactly how the editorii planned to spice up the spectacle of the clash between the champions of the Leonides and Remus Collegia. But moreover, Ash had arranged a special gift to tip the scales further in their favor.
Mia closed her eyes, listened to the sound of the distant ocean.1 Godsgrave was just across the water—if she climbed the city walls, she’d be able to see it from here. She was just one step away from the magni.
One match away from revenge.
Trumpets sounded, the crowd roaring in response. The stone beneath her feet trembled, the great mekwerk apparatus beneath the arena floor churning. Mia looked out through the bars, saw the center of the sands split apart, an oblong island rising in the heart of the arena. Almost forty crucifixes were lined up in a neat row along the island’s length, convicted prisoners lashed tight to the crossbeams.
“It’s starting,” Mia said.
Bladesinger joined her by the bars, Wavewaker beside her. She glanced at Sidonius as he muscled up next to her. They’d not spoken about the revelation of her parentage since the nevernight they’d fought in their cell—Sid seemed a man content to wait until Mia approached him, to talk when she was ready. But she noted he never strayed far from her anymore. Sitting next to her at meals, training nearby, never more than a few feet away. As if he felt protective of her now. As if the news she was the daughter of Darius Corvere—
“Citizens of Itreya!” came the editorii’s booming call. “We present to you, the equillai race of this, the Whitekeep venatus!”
The crowd roared in answer, waves rippling across the mob. The Whitekeep arena wasn’t quite the size of its sister in Godsgrave, but Mia reckoned there were at least seventy thousand people in the stands. The clamor of them, the heat, the pulsing rhythm of their chants swept her up, back to the sands of Stormwatch as she prowled up and down the retchwyrm’s corpse.
“What is my name?” she screamed.
“CrowCrowCrowCrowCrow!”
“WHAT IS MY NAME?”
They knew it now, sure and true. Word of her victory had spread across the Republic; Ashlinn had heard pundits telling tales in a taverna just two nevernights ago. “The Bloody Beauty,” they called her. “The Savior of Stormwatch.”
She looked in the direction of Godsgrave. Listening to the sound of the ocean above the crowd’s clamor.
Soon, all will know my name.
She clenched her fists.
My real name . . .
“And now, our equillai!” the editorii called. “From the Wolves of Tacitus, the Colossi of Carrion Hall, Alfr and Baldr!”
Two huge Vaanian men rode out from the rising portcullis at the southern end of the arena. They stood astride a chariot embossed with snarling wolves, the wings on their helms and the blond of their beards gleaming in the sunslight as they raised their hands to the cheering crowd.
“From the Swords of Phillipi! Victors of Talia, the Ninth Itreyan Wonders, Maxus and Agrippina!”2
A second chariot rode out after the first, drawn by chestnut stallions. The equillai were mixed sex like Bryn and Byern, but by the bow in his hand, the male looked to be the flagellae of the pair. In an impressive acrobatic display, he stood astride the horses, arms spread wide, whipping up the crowd.
“From the Falcons of Remus Collegium . . . !”
“Here we go,” Sidonius breathed.
“ . . . the twin terrors of Vaan, Bryn and Byern!”
The siblings burst forth on their chariot, hooves thundering on the packed dirt. Not to be outdone by the Phillipii’s flagellae, Bryn was astride Rose’s and Briar’s backs in a handstand, her bow in her toes. She loosed her arrow into the air, the shaft falling to earth and piercing the track right at the finish line.
Mia and her fellows whooped as Bryn and Byern’s chariot swooped past their cell. Byern flashed them a winning grin, Bryn blowing a kiss as they passed, Wavewaker reaching out as if to snatch it from the air.
“Trelene ride with you, my friends!” he bellowed. “Ride!”
“And now, from the Lions of Leonides, Victors of Stormwatch and Blackbridge, the Titans of the Track, your beloved . . . Stonekiller and Armando!”
The equillai charged forward onto the track to deafening applause, smiles wide. Their hands were joined, held aloft. They wore golden armor, their shoulders draped with the pelts of mighty lions. Armando reached into the quiver at his side and began firing arrows into the air. Through some arkemy, the arrows exploded into confetti and ribbon, falling in rainbow-colored showers among the delighted audience.
Rhythmic chanting filled the stands as the equillai took up their positions, each at an opposite point of the oblong. Mia watched Bryn and Byern with no fear in her heart, but s
he knew their odds were long. With Leona fielding no one from her stable in the Ultima, even if the twins won, the Falcons would still be one laurel short of a berth at the magni—only Mia’s feature match with the silkling could guarantee them a place now. Bryn and Byern were competing simply for the purse, and perhaps for their own glory. But it was a great deal to risk for a handful of coin and some pride.
Mia wasn’t the only one who knew the odds. Bladesinger stood beside her, tense as steel. Wavewaker was gripping the bars tight, Sidonius holding his breath. Mia recalled Bryn and Byern’s words to her back at the Nest. The saying from their homeland they’d shared.
“In every breath, hope abides.”
She reached out, squeezed Sidonius’s hand.
“Keep breathing,” she whispered.
“Equillai . . . ,” came the editorii’s call. “Begin!”
The crack of reins. The percussion of hooves. Mia grit her teeth as the race began, each of the teams building up a swift head of speed. As the chariots roared around the track, gaining speed, the archers released shot after shot at the helpless prisoners, trying to kill as many as possible in order to rack up points. The crowd bellowed, the condemned screamed, scarlet painted the sands.
Editorii stood in the crowd with spyglasses, marking the different colored feathers from each team and noting who scored the kill shots. Two tallyboards stood in the west and eastern stands, spry children marking each team’s total by slotting stones into divots in the board. Sidonius pointed to the score.
“We’re in the lead.”
The crowd roared, dragging Mia’s attention away from the points. The Phillipi team had adopted an aggressive early strategy, neglecting the prisoners and quickly engaging instead. Their archer was firing at Bryn and Byern, black-feathered shafts whistling through the air. Byern protected his sister behind his shield as she put a shot into one of the last prisoners, and spinning on her heel, she returned fire, forcing the Phillipi archer back into cover. Meanwhile, the Lions of Leonides were trading shots with the Wolves of Tacitus, the crowd thrilling as Armando landed a clever shot into the Wolf archer’s thigh.