The fighter, Sam, hesitates for a second. The look he gives me is almost apologetic. Spinning a short, ugly looking blade over his hand, he shakes his head. “I’m really sorry, girl. This is just the way of it. Why don’t you lie down? I’ll make it easy for you.”
And just like that, I snap. I’m not lying down. I’m sick to death of lying down. “How about I make this easy for you. Leave,” I say, menace in my voice. My hands hover over my knife belt, still concealed under my shirt. If he takes one step towards me, I’ll have steel in both hands before he can blink.
“Don’t you touch her!” Ryka hollers, still restrained on his back. His boots dig uselessly into the ground as he tries to get away. The people surrounding the struggling fighters are all statues, clearly conflicted as to what the hell they should be doing. Most of them know Ryka, and his fury mars the air enough for them to keep quiet. Not so on the other side of the pit. The chant starts up low, but it gradually grows in strength as more and more people take it up.
“Raksha! Raksha! Raksha!”
The stupid call galvanises Sam, who, up until this moment, hasn’t really been all that convincing in his role cast as my murderer. The glint in his eye definitely gives the impression he’s starting to take his position seriously.
One step.
He takes one step and I do what I said I would. My daggers are a part of me, an extension of my body in a heartbeat. Sam hesitates.
“Oh, come now, girl. This doesn’t need to be a difficult. It can all be over in one quick thrust. I swear, you’ll hardly feel a thing. If you go up against me―”
“You’ll die,” I snap. Good thing my voice sounds confident, because I really don’t feel it. This is a first for me. A terrifying, raw first. I am not wearing my halo.
Before there were consequences to my fights, some of which remain the same now. If Sam wins, I die. If I win, Sam dies. Other consequences are different, however. If Sam cuts me, it’ll hurt. If he attacks me, my heart rate will elevate and I’ll be scared and I won’t be able to breathe and Iwillfeellike…thewallsofthepitare… closinginaroundmeand…
“Kit!”
The shout warns me just in time. Sam dodges forward with his crude blade, and the sweep he lashes out with would have slashed my stomach open if I hadn’t leaped back. I glare at him incredulously.
“One strike, huh? You obviously don’t know human anatomy very well. It can take days for a stomach wound to kill a person.”
Sam hunkers down and everything about him says, defend! “I’ll take what I can get to put you down first, girl,” he tells me.
“Fine. So long as we both know where we stand.” I dip so that my centre of gravity is close to the ground and I flick my daggers over in my hands. In this stance the hammering in my chest seems to ease. This is something I can do without thinking normally, but now I have to concentrate to process everything that’s happening over the roar of my emotions. It’s hard, but I can still do it. My body remembers what is required of it, and I strike out. Flashing metal sings through the air, and I’m the driving force behind it, urging it to seek out flesh and bone. My rapid manoeuvre has Sam on the back foot, literally, and I don’t take the kill I could rightly claim. Instead, I just graze his neck.
A stark line of red blossoms across his skin, and howls go up all around us.
The warning slice I’ve given him doesn’t serve its purpose. It takes five seconds of staring at Sam’s dismayed face before I realise I haven’t made things better for myself by showing him I’m capable. I’ve just sealed my fate. Rather than extricating myself from one ridiculous ritual, I’ve landed myself well and truly into another: the blood demand. I made him bleed, and no one here is foolish enough to pass this off as a symbolic cut between a man and a woman. We are fighters, both, regardless of our sex.
Freetown witnessed me taking the lifeblood of another, and, strict record keeper that the town is, a debt now exists between Sam and I. A debt that can only be paid with my blood. From the expressions on the people hovering at the edges of the pit, payment is due immediately.
Sam takes a dazed look around and then starts circling me. I let him prowl for a moment, subconsciously keeping track of him while I watch Ryka buck, still trying to get out from under his friends. What is he going to do if he actually manages to get free? If he steps one foot on the pit floor without being called for, the High Priestess will demand his death, just like mine. That can’t happen.
I find Jack still standing next to James, and oddly both the men don’t look as worried as they did a few minutes ago. “What am I supposed to do?” I call up to them.
Jack’s eyes flash—steel and resolution. “What you need to,” he says. He’s telling me I need to kill Sam. He knows as well as I do, along with everyone else, that that’s the only way I’m climbing out of this pit. Maybe even then that won’t be enough. James folds his arms across his chest and just stares down on me. The look in his eyes says one thing: impress me.
Sam is heavy-footed and clumsy in his second attack, but I have to give it to him―he’s fast. Just not fast enough. He lunges from behind, a coward’s strike by anyone’s standards, with his knifepoint honing in on my kidneys, and I spin, throwing a wide kick. My foot connects with Sam’s forearm and the force of the blow is more than enough to knock away his weapon. A displeased grumble from our audience tells me that I’m not the favourite in this match. Surprise, surprise.
Immediately, Sam has another weapon from the belt at his waist, and this time he approaches slower. I let him come to me again, not willing to play the dart and dodge game. I want this over. I’ve weighed Sam, weighed his brash attack mode and the way he favours his right side, and now I’ve set my body on pause. I’ve fought people like him before, and the inevitable always happens. They get too close.
He’s a foot away and I’m breathing slowly, trying to calm the thunder in my chest, when Ryka breaks free. He jumps to his feet and immediately goes to leap down into the pit, but Jack’s seen what is happening and comes out of nowhere, bear-hugging his grandson before he can leap. Above all the noise and the chanting and the jeering, I hear Jack yell, “Just stop, Ryka! She doesn’t need it. Watch! She doesn’t need saving!”
Sam circles closer, his movement predatory, his shoulders tensed. “That’s it,” he coos. “Don’t worry. It’ll all be over in a moment.” I almost laugh when I realise he thinks I’m panicking or something and I don’t know what to do. Fine. I let him believe it. Jack sees me for what I really am. What I’m capable of. Soon everyone else in Freetown will, too. An inch closer. Another inch―
“Do you have family, girl?” Sam whispers.
His question throws me. “What?”
“Tell me their names. I’ll make sure they’re cared for.”
My voice cracks when I say, “I have no one.” Not because I miss my brother or my birth mother. But because he asked me in the first place. Suddenly, I have to fight to keep myself still. It’s not right that I have to kill this man. It’s not right that I need to murder someone to satisfy some stupid superstitious ritual.
“You don’t need to do this,” I tell Sam.
“I’m sorry,” he breathes, “but I do.”
I close my eyes, and he leaps. I’m not where he thinks I will be, of course. With a swift spin, I pivot on my heel and lock the hilt of my dagger against the flat, open palm of my free hand. I bring it to the side of my rib cage just below my breast, and I twist around Sam’s body as his intended deathblow meets with thin air. There’s not much to it from here. A final rotation of my upper body; a transference of energy as potential turns to kinetic, travelling up from the floor, through my body, pushing outwards with very little exertion. Metal grinds on bone, and a wet gurgle wheezes out of Sam. One punctured lung. He sinks to his knees… and all hell breaks loose.
The crowd starts screaming. I look up at Jack and Ryka, and Ryka has gone still in the old man’s arms. He’s just looking at me, eyes wide, and all I can think of is Cai’s recordin
g. How he watched me kill endlessly, harrowed out by my inhumanity. Well, right now I’m chock full of humanity but I’m still capable of destroying life. Is Ryka horrified by me now? He should be. I horrify myself. His eyes grow wider and I think I can see how disgusted he is by me, but then his mouth opens and the shape of a soundless warning masks his face. Something’s wrong. I duck instinctively and feel the biting sting of pain slash across my arm. I’m on fire, my nerve endings protesting angrily, as I roll away from the danger.
Sam is on his feet, blood spilling from his mouth and dripping from his knife. My blood. I don’t dare touch my fingers to the searing wound on my upper arm. Who knows how deep it is, and I can’t worry about that right now. I have to focus on finishing this, otherwise we’re going to cut each other away piece by piece until nothing remains but the red earth. Ultimately, I don’t want to die just yet, and it’s this thought that pushes me forwards at a near run. Sam weaves as I charge him, my tactics completely changed now, and it’s not a considered dodge that saves him from my blade; it’s his body collapsing as he spits up more shiny, viscous blood from his mouth. To his credit, he doesn’t pause. He kicks my legs out from underneath me and then we’re grappling on the ground. I don’t want this kind of a fight. Even though he’s injured, Sam’s reach is much greater than mine and there is strength in his muscled, heavy arms. I strike out with both feet, trying to put some distance between us, but Sam covers my body with his, pressing me downwards.
He spends two seconds trying to pry my dagger from my hands before he gives in and manfully flips me onto my front, shoving my face down into the dirt. He almost has my arm locked behind my back when I push my hips up and unseat him, flinging him off me.
From there, things happen quickly. My hands are full of his death and Sam sees it. He has time to rise to his knees as I spring up and scissor the blades; they sing as the metal scrapes together but soon they’re both buried in Sam’s neck. It takes a lot of power to follow through with the sweeping motions, but I make good. His head makes a dull thumping sound as it hits the pit floor, and a jet of red arterial blood sprays up at me, soaking the front of my shirt, my face, my hands
I take a deep breath. I can’t…what the…? I can’t breathe. I drop my knives, panicking that Sam somehow managed to puncture one of my lungs without me noticing, but he hasn’t. I just…can’t…breathe…
I rest my hands on my knees, leaning forward in an attempt to get some air into my lungs, but my head won’t stop spinning. The roaring sound in my ears is my blood pounding, pounding, pounding. It’s also the voices of every single member of Freetown losing their minds.
RASHATTA
I’m floating. When the High Priestess approaches me, still leaning over Sam, I’ve totally checked out of my body. I’m somewhere above us, watching everything play out, and honestly I don’t really care what happens next. I’m just too spaced out by the reality of what just happened to locate any of my self-preservation instincts. The hunched figure places a hand on my shoulder, close to the painful gash Sam gave me, and I wince. The old lady has a powerful grip on her.
“Rashatta!” she screams. I can’t remember what that one means, but I’m glad it’s not freaking Raksha. If I never hear that word again, I’ll die happy. Unlike before, the crowd doesn’t respond immediately. Their objections over what I just did echo long after the High Priestess’ call fades in the night air. She calls it again, and this time there’s a demanding note to her tone. By increments, a cautious, unhappy silence develops.
“The sacrifice is satisfied. The blood debt is satisfied,” the old woman cries. Her hand tightens on my shoulder and I wince through the pain. She draws me upright and I can see the slow rise and fall of her chest as she breathes. It’s the only thing that makes this small pillar of red material a real person. That is, of course, until she starts lifting the veils back from her face.
A frightened whisper begins to run around the crowd. Whatever she is doing, I don’t think I want to stick around for it. The way people are reacting says a lot. They’re freaking out, and I probably should be too. “Can I go?”
“Rashatta!” she screams. I suddenly remember when she used the word before, back at the blood ceremony when she started calling the fighters to be ranked. It makes no sense that she’s calling it now, but maybe it’s a part of other ceremonies, too. Other ceremonies that hopefully don’t involve me killing any more people or dying myself.
In a slow brush backwards, the High Priestess removes her final veil to reveal the white porcelain mask that covers her face, just like the one that covers all the priestesses. Olivia, too, by now, I think. You can hear a pin drop as her watery blue eyes peer out at me from behind the smooth white mask, bordered by black counters. We stare at each other for what seems like forever before she reaches up quickly and rips the mask from her face.
A collective gasp goes up around us, so sharp that if it had happened indoors, all of the oxygen would have been sucked clean out of the room. I look up and no one―no one―not Jack, not Ryka, nor James or any other person, is looking at the High Priestess. Every single set of eyes are averted to the ground, some closed entirely. The women start crying again, but this time it’s not showy wailing. It’s gentle whimpers trapped behind bitten lips. They’re frightened.
I turn and face the woman before me, determined not to let the town’s reaction affect me. Tough, though, when the subject of their fear has a face like this woman’s. To say it is ruined would be a kindness. A maze of violent scars crosshatch her face, angry and purple. Some look like they could be really old, but it’s obvious none of them have been allowed to heal properly.
She lifts her hand high over her head and brings the mask down to the ground, hard. The impact is enough to shatter it into three jagged pieces. She doesn’t say anything, just produces a knife, showing me the blade. Her pale blue eyes are on me when she draws that over her head, too. Suddenly I know what’s happening. I have no time to figure out if I want it to happen. The knife slashes out like a cruel claw in the High Priestess’ hand, and it scores me along the already brutally painful injury on my arm. It’s inside me―a scream so great I feel like my teeth will work free if I let it out. I bite it back, but it’s not only for fear of losing my teeth. If I made a sound, if I so much as flinch…
The old woman weighs me the same way I weighed Sam just now as I sit on the waves of pain pulsing through my body, begging me to cry out. All it would take is one small grimace and she will cast me out of the pit. But I can’t. It’s just not in me to purposefully fail a test like this. The High Priestess nods, grinning when I refuse to react. What have I done? I know what this means, even before she opens her mouth to call out one last time. I’m one of them now. I’m a fighter.
Her lips peel back, revealing a row of blackened teeth, and the High Priestess smiles. “Tamji!” she hollers. The word rocks through me to my very boots. Tamji. She’s named me one of the higher-ranking fighters in Freetown. As the kickback of her announcement rides over the people still gathered by the pit, I feel faint. I must be mad. I escaped the Sanctuary and washed the blood from my hands only to find myself standing here, the death of another person on my conscience again.
“Who will stain your skin with the sacrifice of this man?” the High Priestess asks me. I stare at her gormlessly for a moment before I realise what she’s saying. She wants me tattooed. I look up and see the only person I can bare the thought of touching me.
“Ryka,” I say.
His eyes meet mine and the blood in my veins runs a little cold. He’s never looked at me like this before―sad, angry and confused. He bites down, his jaw clenching. “No,” he says quietly. “I won’t do it.”
“You have been nominated, boy,” the High Priestess tells him. He glowers at me, still careful not to look at the High Priestess, and all the while the muscles in his body twitch, like he’s considering turning on his heel and walking away. He doesn’t, though. Jack nudges him in the back and Ryka reluctantly drops
down into the pit. All the while, I’m sinking. Sinking into the pit floor, growing smaller and smaller under the furious heat emanating from him. I don’t really notice when he reaches me. Don’t notice him grabbing my hands in turn and firmly drumming the sharp point of a blackened blade into the hard bone underneath my wrists. It all happens in a blur, because my brain is still frozen on the moment when Ryka said no. The moment when he wanted to turn his back and walk away.
CHOOSE
A fever the likes of which I have never experienced before rips through me for the next six days. For the most part I’m unconscious, although occasionally I sense another presence in the tent with me. Funny how I can discern who stands over my bed just by the quality of their silence. Jack is pensive and paces, and August sits on a chair by my side, so incredibly quiet. From the complete lack of worry in the air whilst he is with me, I get the feeling he’s asleep most of the time.
Ryka, on the other hand, hovers on the peripheries. The powerful tension that accompanies him whenever he visits puts me on edge, filling my restless dreams with shadows, drowning and ghosts of the dead. He never stays long.
The first time I wake properly a familiar woman is washing a cool cloth down my arms. It takes me a while but I eventually remember that I saw her once with Jack and James when I first arrived here. I can’t recall her name, but her presence is soothing. She smiles at me when she sees my eyes are open. Doesn’t say anything, but she draws the damp cloth over my forehead and I almost die from how good it feels. I drift back into unconsciousness on a peaceful cloud after that.
The second time I wake, things seem more real. The hazy edge that surrounded everything in my tent is gone, replaced with a crisp contrast that makes my eyes hurt. The sounds of Freetown are a soft hum, and somewhere I can hear the slow, rhythmic thwack and splinter of wood being chopped. I lay there in my bed for a good hour before the first strains of a panic attack start to develop inside me. Regardless of my wishes, my brain insists on playing out my fight with Sam, of his head cleaved neatly from his body. Ryka’s face, over and over again, as he finished tattooing me and threw down the blade into the dirt, refusing to look at me as he hurdled out of the pit and disappeared into the night.
Halo (Blood and Fire Series (A Young Adult Dystopian Series)) Page 24