by Brent Weeks
“So it was you.”
He looked confused. Then, briefly, frightened. If she knew her pistols had been unloaded, did that mean she’d loaded them again?
She had thought to talk to him, to appeal to the loyalty she thought she’d built in him, to offer him a choice, to appeal to logic. But he wasn’t a superviolet or a blue drafter; Phyros was a warrior. He attacked instantly, and was on top of her before she could think.
His gigantic hand was around her throat, squeezing, throwing her into panic. With his other hand he flung the pistols away from her hands, grabbed the others from her belt, and tossed them away, too. The sword and knife at her belt followed, as the blackness closed in.
Phyros carried Liv by her neck and her belt up the weatherbeaten stairs out to the very point of the promontory. She curled into a fetal position and kicked, kicked blindly. Then they reached the top.
His hand was still wrapped around her throat, though loosely now, and he was pawing through her pockets. He found the necklace and pulled it out. He pushed her back until she was on the very edge of the cliff. The wind whipped them. She could barely breathe. There was no strength in her.
“What’ll it be, lady, the black or the abyss?” He loosened his grip just enough for her to speak.
“The blade.”
“What?” he asked. Perhaps the wind had swallowed her words.
She rammed the hidden blade her father had given her deep into his chest, twisted hard, and pulled it back.
He pulled away instinctively, which was the only thing that saved her from falling off the cliff as he dropped her. She flung herself toward the ground and rolled past him.
He roared wordlessly and drew his huge sword. He darted forward and stood over her. There was no escape. He lifted the sword, but then lowered it, the expression on his face softening. “You killed me. I guess I—” He fell over sideways, lifeless.
Liv stood and walked past his corpse. Walked out onto the cliff. She glanced at the drop. It should have terrified her, but she was numb. She looked up to the superviolet seed crystal, twinkling in the air. It floated at the nexus of a thousand streams of superviolet light, some of it spontaneously shimmering into luxin in the presence of the crystal, lifting it. The crystal tumbled end over end, and each time it did, it sent a little flash of purple light in the visible spectrum.
It called directly to Liv’s heart. Here is calm, here is reason, here is power, here is fearlessness. The seed crystal called to Liv, and Liv raised her hand and called to it.
And it came to her.
Chapter 86
Karris ran down the broad steps of the hippodrome’s tiered seating, not even trying to be ladylike.
With the broadness of the steps, she couldn’t take her eyes off her footing to see if Gavin still lived. But the audience still seemed transfixed, so she guessed he must. Maybe it was only torture.
As she descended the crowds got thicker, until she had to push through a mass of people standing at the chest-high fence that ringed the track. The track itself was fifteen feet below them. With her dress, Karris had to push through the crowd instead of dodging through it. But she wouldn’t be denied.
A man took umbrage at her shoving. He said, “Who the hell do you think you—”
Sometimes being short was a blessing. She swung a hand up between his legs, grabbed a fistful of cloth and his stones, and twisted, hard. He dropped, and she snatched his ghotra off his head as he fell.
From the spina, she heard a man’s screams. She recognized the voice. No, no, no.
She unwrapped the ghotra as she moved. Reaching the front, she vaulted over the worn stone handrail. She threw the ghotra into a knot around the rail and jumped, sliding down it until she ran out of cloth.
She dropped daintily onto the sand of the hippodrome floor and ran out onto the dirt racetrack before anyone could stop her.
There was a murmur from the half of the hippodrome that saw her immediately. What was a noblewoman doing running out onto the track?
But the people on top of the spina—drafters and what looked like a chirurgeon—didn’t see her immediately. They were looking at Gavin, bound to a table. He was screaming, throwing himself against his bonds, obviously in agony, but he couldn’t move. The chirurgeon was lifting a red-hot poker in gloved hands. Karris had never seen him in such pain. Gavin, admitting weakness, admitting pain? Gavin?!
They were blinding him. Dear Orholam, they’d already burned out one eye.
The soldiers standing around the spina saw her. These were the Nuqaba’s elite drafter soldiers, the Tafok Amagez. Bad luck. But then, Ironfist had once said that Karris was the fastest drafter that he’d ever seen, and Ironfist didn’t flatter. Karris’s white skin was a disadvantage in full battle. There was no way to draft vast amounts of luxin without it showing in her arms. But she’d learned a thing or two. There are advantages to apparent disadvantages.
The hot poker descended toward Gavin’s face.
Green luxin uncurled down the underside of Karris’s arm to make a ball that fit nicely in her fist. Her feet danced through a progression, positions on a clock, hips twisting like throwing a javelin, loading tension and snapping forward to impart it all into a projectile. It was faster than the Tafok Amagez could react. The green ball flew at the chirurgeon’s head. Connected.
She spun away hard enough that when she dropped the burning poker it didn’t fall on Gavin’s face.
Karris turned her odd steps into an awkward swaying dance, desperately trying to clear her skin of any hint of green luxin. The projectile had been small enough and so fast as to be invisible. That, together with the sight of Karris moving strangely, might leave the crowd simply baffled. More importantly, it might leave the Nuqaba baffled.
Play it to the hilt, Karris. Pretend you’ve got the confidence of Gavin.
She raised a hand, her index finger up. “Pardon me!” she shouted.
As she stepped forward, she remembered to alter her steps to a lady’s. Her sidesteps had triggered Ben-hadad’s other contraption. As subtly as she could after having just demanded the attention of fifty thousand people, she reached a hand down to the ridiculous huge bow and pressed it firmly to her hip once more. It clicked. Wait, had she landed on that hip? Had she destroyed the mechanism?
No, she’d landed on the other hip. Right?
She raised her other hand at the same time she checked the bow. “Pardon me?” she shouted again. She smiled, as if she were asking a man to come to her bed.
Which confused the hell out of them, as intended.
There was brief chaos on the platform on the spina. The chirurgeon was on her knees, in serious pain, but she wasn’t saying anything. An Amagez tried to pick up the poker. He was smart enough not to grab the glowing end, but not smart enough to realize iron didn’t need to be glowing in order to be hot.
He threw the hot iron away, cursing loudly, adding to the chaos.
Karris made it to the steps before the Amagez tried to intercept her. She ignored them, jutting her chin high and dismissive—and made it to the top before they brandished muskets and luxin to show her they were serious. Amateurs.
She stopped, now in full view of everyone in the hippodrome, as if shocked and put out that soldiers would threaten her. A young one stepped forward and started searching her.
Moment of truth. Big stage, big body language to let everyone see it.
He had to push hard against the many petticoats to try to feel the inside of her legs. For a moment, she let him search as if stunned and violated. But she had to let him search enough that he could be convinced to stop.
She stepped back, as if horribly insulted, flinging her arms wide. In her loudest battlefield voice, she projected, “Pardon you, sirrah! I no more have a weapon between my legs than you do!”
And she slapped him. Not hard, not with the correct body mechanics to put the poor fool on the ground, but sloppily, tossing her hair like a dimwit.
The audience roared with laughter, still wonderin
g what the hell was happening. Was this part of a show?
She held up her hand again, turning to face the Nuqaba’s box. She was sitting right at the front, beside Eirene Malargos.
The young guard moved toward Karris again, chagrined, but she boomed out, “Your Excellency!” toward the Nuqaba. “Move aside, young man,” she said in a withering whisper. “Your betters are speaking.”
It was enough to freeze the young Tafok Amagez. Accustomed to taking nonsense orders from an imperious woman who demanded his obedience without question, he felt suddenly bereft of authority.
This is how tyrants fall. By destroying their people, they destroy themselves.
Blackguards knew exactly what they were entitled to do, and they were authorized to do it to whomever entered their sphere. A lord might complain, but not even a luxlord would go without being searched in an area where weapons were forbidden. No Prism or White or Black would ever reprimand a Blackguard for doing his duties thoroughly. The Nuqaba was clearly not so rational.
She stood in her box, and motioned to the young Amagez to move back.
“Who are you?” the Nuqaba demanded. “What is this?”
“This man,” Karris projected, so that not only the Nuqaba, who was near enough to easily hear, but all the hippodrome could hear as well. “Is my husband.” Karris turned, to shout it the other direction. “This man is my husband!”
What she hadn’t planned was to see him as she turned. He was strapped down so he couldn’t turn his head. But he heard her. “Karris?” he shouted. “Dear Orholam, Karris, get out of here!”
His left side was to her, and blood trickled out of his eye, down his cheek, a stream of red tears from a wound that hadn’t been fully cauterized.
Her stomach caught and she tried to stifle a sob. She hunched over, but set her jaw. Weeping and running to him would mean death for both of them.
Put it aside, Karris.
“Your Excellency!” Karris snarled, whipping around to face the foul bitch who’d done this to Gavin. Her fear was gone, and her rage wasn’t red. “I declare my husband innocent of any wrong. By your own old traditions, I demand trial by combat!”
“I demand trial by combat,” she announced to the other half of the stadium. If only she had an orator’s voice that could be heard over fifty thousand murmuring souls. But most orators couldn’t pull off this dress, either.
She turned to the Nuqaba and lowered her voice, trying to project just enough for the woman and those privileged few in the front row to hear. “Or I tell everyone here our surname and rally those who are not traitors.”
The Nuqaba’s face gathered a storm. Eirene Malargos interjected some question. A quick volley of questions and responses between them, impossible to hear. Both angry. Both insistent.
There was no ancient Parian tradition of trial by combat. It was pure horse shit.
But the fifty thousand bloodthirsty Ruthgari spectators in the hippodrome didn’t know that. And they loved the idea. Chariot races could be bloody—crashes frequent, injuries common—but true blood sports had been banned and reinstated, banned and reinstated repeatedly for the last four hundred years. They had been illegal for the last ninety or more. A licit taste of an illicit activity? A taste of a vice that the audience could blame on Parian barbarity rather than their own? It was irresistible.
But that pressure wasn’t enough. The Nuqaba didn’t mind angering fifty thousand of some other satrapy’s people. But the pressure wasn’t the bait.
Karris looked closely as the Nuqaba and Eirene Malargos bickered. She could lip-read ‘wife,’ and multiple curses. The Nuqaba nodded her head and said some words to a handsome, muscular Parian man who was still seated next to her. Then she stepped forward and raised her hands. Eirene put a hand on her arm, but the Nuqaba shook her off, giving her a poisonous glance. Eirene surrendered, trying not to make a scene, but clearly furious.
When Marissia had pitched the idea to Karris, she’d said, ‘I’ve studied Haruru for fifteen years. She’s hateful, petty, jealous, and vindictive—and she was involved with Gavin once. If she can do anything to hurt him, she will.’
And now we find out just how competent Marissia really is.
And then a sick thought punched Karris in the stomach: It’s not as if Marissia has an incentive to send me to my death.
Sudden fear shivered down Karris’s back.
Her rival.
Oh, Orholam, what have I done? I thought I’d finally won her over. I thought we shared a love for Gavin that trumped the rest. I thought she was working with me. I’ve taken everything from her, and this is her one chance to reclaim her work, if not her man, whom she knew was lost to her forever.
This is what you get for trusting a slave.
It had been a colossal blunder. The kind Karris never would have missed if she hadn’t been so pressed for time. How long had Marissia sat on that information, in order to make sure Karris was pressed for time? Marissia could have known about Gavin’s imprisonment for weeks, and held it back just so Karris would rush off and get herself killed. Even the trial by combat had been Marissia’s idea.
But the White trusts her. And she loves Gavin. She wouldn’t hold back information when he was in danger, would she?
But Gavin had pushed her aside without a thought when he’d married Karris. How would Karris react if a man had done that to her?
Orholam have mercy.
The crowd quieted, and Karris waited for the word. She would be dragged off as a co-conspirator. Alone, with no one to speak for her, all that needed to happen was for the Nuqaba to say that Karris was a madwoman, and that a trial by combat was never part of Parian history. There would be those in this vast crowd who knew that was true.
It was all falling apart.
“It has been many, many years since the trial by combat has been requested,” the Nuqaba said. And Karris’s heart soared. She had a chance. “As set down in our ancient laws, the trial by combat can only be requested once, and must be fulfilled by the one who asked for it. No champions!”
Bait, swallowed.
Before the crowd could shout, enthralled by the idea of some insubstantial little girl in a dress fighting in a trial by combat herself, the Nuqaba continued. “There is no drafting allowed in trials by combat, and the trial is to the death!”
Now the crowd roared.
So Marissia didn’t betray me.
But this was almost worse. All Karris’s preparations to hide her drafting abilities were for nothing. Either the Nuqaba or Eirene Malargos had known who Karris was and that she could draft. The Nuqaba was vicious, but she wasn’t stupid.
Shit.
The Nuqaba quieted the crowd again, and gestured to the man who’d been sitting to her left. As he stood, the Nuqaba said, “Do you, O common woman, wish to face the hand of our justice, the Lord Commandant of the Armies of Paria, Enki Hammer?”
On his cue, the man, clearly the Nuqaba’s consort, came forward out from under their shade to stand full in the noon sun. He was tall, very tall, with slim hips and shoulders but the reedy forearms that told a warrior like Karris that under his rich Parian cloak—his burnous—and his gold-brocaded tunic that he was a soldier. He wore the ghotra, too, to cover his head, but there was nothing of pious humility in him. Even his ghotra was woven through with gold.
He shrugged off the white-and-black-striped burnous and pulled the laces of his tunic open, dropping it to reveal impressive musculature. Karris wanted to hate him for his vanity, but she dabbled in vanity more than her fair share.
Odd, she thought. That would have made me hate him twice as much not too long ago.
Oh, she was supposed to respond. Something gutsy but that didn’t hint to the crowd that she was a fighter. “I would rather die,” she shouted, “than let you hurt my husband any more.”
The crowd cheered. The Nuqaba tried to whisper something to Enki, but he shook his head. She tried again, but the crowd was too loud, too impatient. He waved her off. Later.
As Enki jogged down the steps and across the sand toward the spina, looking vexed, the Nuqaba waited for the cheer to die and then shouted, “Then may your blood be on your own head!”
There was confusion on the spina as the soldiers tried to figure out what precisely they were supposed to do during a trial the likes of which they’d never heard of, much less trained for, all while under the watching eyes of fifty thousand people. The professional in Karris had some pity on them, but she said nothing. Any hint she gave that she knew exactly what she was doing could get her killed. This is why you strike fast—some part of the enemy force may have intelligence that will destroy you, but if they can’t communicate it in time, it doesn’t matter.
She bent her head and wiped at her cheeks defiantly, as if she were weeping uncontrollably but was angry about it. A fool wisp of a girl in a ridiculous dress, that’s what she was, not at all a Blackguard.
She wanted to look at Gavin. She wanted to go to him. But she’d lose herself if she did.
Finally, on quick orders from Enki himself, the Tafok Amagez set up a perimeter around the spina as he mounted the steps. An Amagez broke ranks and came forward for the offering of weapons. He was probably thirty-five years old, ancient for a warrior-drafter. He lifted his scabbarded longsword from his belt and offered it to Karris. Another Amagez joined him a moment later and offered a stabbing spear. Then another, with a scorpion. Enki himself wore a long, thin-bladed scimitar, scabbard and hilt encrusted with mother-of-pearl and rubies.
Karris looked at the weapons, and shook her head and waved her hand in denial, still making the motions large enough that they could be interpreted even by the farmers in the highest seats. “Oh, no, I shan’t need anything there, I think. But thank you.”
She glanced at Gavin as murmurs rippled through the crowd again. No weapons? What insanity was this? Was she simply committing suicide?
Gavin was still twitching, still obviously in great pain, but he said nothing, didn’t cry out in his agony, didn’t call out to Karris. He couldn’t see what was happening, and the not knowing would be driving him insane, but he held his silence. She knew at once it was because he trusted her. He knew she had a plan, and he knew it was desperate, and he wasn’t going to distract her from it.