by Sara Raasch
The stands thundered with whistles and applause. Only Geoxus’s representatives scowled.
The dancers peeled themselves off the sands and bowed, grinning at the fanfare. They had done well; Ignitus would heap gold on them, enough to forget that once it ran out, their bellies would be empty until he called them to dance again. Even so, it was a preferable life to being born Undivine. They were the rabble, the workers, the people who suffered first—and most—when resources were scarce. For every ten children born to a Divine, one was likely to be Undivine; but children born to only Undivine parents were always powerless—and ignored.
Ash didn’t stay to bow for the audience or risk getting pulled into another conversation with the dancers. Performing as Ignitus was one thing; she could use igneia beautifully, show its other sides. But she’d rather live out the rest of her days slowly freezing to death in the icy northern mountains than wave to the crowd and pretend she was proud of playing her god.
Besides, an announcer had begun to speak. The main event was starting.
“Most Merciful Ignitus, god of all igneia, stands accused of encroaching on the fishing grounds of Deimos by Powerful Geoxus, god of all geoeia.”
Ash turned toward one of the arena’s tunnels. Sand trickled over her bare feet as her pace quickened, faster and faster until she slid into the hall.
Her vision blackened in the shadows, but lit sconces brought shapes into view. Tor, his towering form making his head brush the ceiling, stood with his shoulders bent protectively around Char, who sat on a bench against the wall. She had her head tipped back, eyes closed, black hair in a sleek braid. Her armor, made to be as a second skin, rose and fell with her steady breaths.
“Mama.” Ash darted forward.
Tor looked up at her approach. “She’s fine. Just preparing.”
He wasn’t much older than Char, but gray peppered his black hair and a few wrinkles cut through a crescent-moon scar around his eye. Those wrinkles deepened when he gave Ash a look that said Don’t push her. Not now.
“As decreed by the gods, this conflict warrants a single match,” the announcer was saying. “The winner shall be declared based on the surviving gladiator, and the losing god will forfeit the fishing grounds and pay twenty gold bricks.”
Char gaped up at Tor. “This fight is for gold and fishing rights?”
Tor shrugged, but what could he say? The gods determined the prizes, and mortals suffered their losses.
Ash lowered herself to her knees on the rocky floor. “You brought home ten gold bricks from your win against the air goddess last week. That will help.”
Char dug her knuckles into her temples. “It doesn’t make up for the thirty gold bricks he lost to Biotus while I was gone. More than most Undivine see in a lifetime of work. And three full years of wheat harvest when he’s barely able to keep his Divine fed as is. He keeps gambling away resources in multiple arena matches at once instead of just waiting for me to be ready—”
Char blinked down at Ash, startled, seeming to realize who she was talking to. “Ash. Sweetheart. I—I get carried away.” She batted her hand, but it trembled. “Don’t let my ramblings worry you. Your dance was lovely. The new lip paint was a striking addition.”
Ash gave a weak smile. They had bought the blue paint yesterday in the market. She and Char had tried yellow first, and cried laughing at how it made them look ill.
She warred with making light of it by mentioning those awful masks in the stands and how Char should paint her mouth too so people would make the masks even more ridiculous with wild lip colors. But Ash’s voice came out soft. “Kula’s suffering isn’t your fault, Mama.”
She wanted to add, Let me help. I can fight some of these battles for you. You can’t trust other gladiators to always win, but you can trust me—you’ve taught me how to fight.
Char walked into every arena and dispatched Ignitus’s enemies precisely so Ash could stay out of those arenas. It was one of Ignitus’s few mercies—as long as Char had his favor, Ash was unwanted. Char had only taken over for her own mother once she had been killed.
For now, Ash was a dancer. She used igneia as an accessory and prop. Not as a weapon.
“Ash,” Char sighed. She put her fingers around Ash’s wrist and squeezed.
“Fighting on behalf of Deimos is a great-great-great-grandnephew of Geoxus—Stavos of Xiphos!” the announcer bellowed.
The mostly Kulan crowd met the introduction with boos and hisses.
Behind Ash, Tor huffed. “Remember what we talked about, Char. Stavos is a brute, but he’s overconfident and slow. Use that.”
Char started to stand when Ash tightened her grip on her mother’s hand. Her heart stuck in her throat as the flames in the sconces behind them pulsed, yellow and hot.
No flame was ever just a flame. Each god could spy through their energeia—fire was an eye, an extension of the god Ignitus himself.
Ash had asked Char and Tor once why no one stopped Ignitus. He could choose not to declare fights against his siblings. He could dole out food and money equally if he wanted. Kula’s sufferings were his fault.
Char had smacked her hand over Ash’s mouth and cast a horrified look at the fire in their cottage’s hearth. “Ignitus could be listening,” she had said as Tor snuffed out the fire. “You must never speak of harming him.”
“But why?” Ash had pressed.
Char’s eyes had teared, so Tor had answered, his own eyes shadowed in the absence of flames. “He is a god. Mortals cannot defeat him. But we have moments like these”—he motioned at Char, Ash, himself—“alive and together. Obeying him is a small price to pay for that.”
So Ash held her tongue when Char’s leg snapped in a match. She silently scrubbed blood out of Char’s clothes and braided her mother’s hair over her bruises. She choked down the food she was given freely as a gladiator’s daughter while people begged along the streets.
But Ash knew, through every soft moment, she was waiting for her mother to die.
“Mama,” Ash whispered now. Agony cut into her, visceral and searing. She tried not to ask this often. “Let me take your place. Ignitus may let you retire. You could have a life, you and Tor. I’m younger; I can buy us time until Ignitus finds a new line to favor—”
Color drew across Char’s brown skin, chasing away the paleness that had become too normal. “Stop.” Her tone was rigid, but she touched Ash’s cheek. “I’m fine. I won’t lose. How could I, when I have the strongest fuel and the brightest flame cheering for me?”
Ash bit her lip. Char sacrificed everything to bring resources to Kula. The least Ash could do was not make things harder on her.
But silence was killing Ash. Silence with Char. Silence with the other fire dancers. Silence with Ignitus. She wanted to race into the arena and scream her hatred at him.
She wanted to stop having to hide everything.
“Fighting on behalf of Kula,” the announcer began, “is Char Nikau, granddaughter of Ignitus, beloved of the fire god.”
Ash braced at her mother’s title. Though every mortal, Divine or Undivine, was descended from the gods, the Divine with the closest connection to their god were thought to be the most powerful. It was absurd, of course—Tor was just as skilled with igneia as Char, and he was so far removed from Ignitus’s direct descendants that he couldn’t trace the relatives.
Char covered Ash’s fingers with her own and squeezed. “After the fight, we’ll practice making fire orbs. You could do wondrous things with them in the Great Defeat dance, I bet.”
Ash managed a brittle smile. If she had been more selfish, she would have begged Char to run. But there was nowhere to go—Ignitus and his immortal god-siblings ruled each of the six countries and wouldn’t risk offering asylum to Kula’s best gladiator.
This was their fate. This choking monotony of blood.
Ash let Char stand, her hand falling limply to her lap as her mother walked toward the wide, waiting glitter of sand.
The momen
t Char passed into the sunlight, the crowd howled with excitement.
Tor was already at the edge of the pit, just within the hall’s shadow. Ash joined him there, her body vibrating.
“She’ll be fine,” Tor assured her. He gave a firm nod, but his eyes were tense.
“She’d listen to you,” Ash whispered, “if you told her to let me fight.”
Tor frowned. “What makes you think I want to see you in an arena any more than I want to see her out there?”
“What you want; what she wants. I don’t get a choice at all?” The question cut Ash’s tongue. She knew the helpless answer.
“No,” Tor told her, bittersweet affection in his eyes. “Not when it means risking your life.”
Ash turned away, knowing it was childish to sulk, but what else could she do?
Her own father had been an arena worker from Lakhu—not an uncommon thing, for people from two different gods to be together. If they were both Undivine, where they lived was of little consequence—but if they were Divine, that caused more difficulty, as both gods had claim to their powers. The only reason Ignitus had allowed Char to keep Ash was that her father had been Undivine, so there was little chance of her being Air Divine or even Undivine, with Char as her mother. But her father had died long ago, before she had even gotten to know him, and she couldn’t remember a time when Tor hadn’t been in her life.
“To the glory of the gods,” the announcer shouted. “To the death. Fight!”
At the proclamation, Stavos stepped in front of the rock pile that had been provided for him. He was tall and bare chested—a bold choice to sacrifice protection just to show off his muscles—and his shaved head made his large eyes appear feral. He stretched out a hand over the rocks and they shriveled into a great puff of dust. All of them, gone.
Ash hissed through her teeth. Some gladiators chose to harness their energeias externally—Animal Divine could control creatures; Earth Divine could move stones and rocks. Others chose to absorb energeia into their bodies, letting it add speed, strength, and endurance to their physiology. Though the arena boasted other sources of stone, the gods’ firm rules limited each gladiator to what energeia sources had been provided. Stavos had taken all his geoeia at once.
A wash of nausea pinched Ash’s stomach. She had seen gladiators infused with smaller amounts of geoeia cleave through stacks of logs with a single blow. She imagined that fighting one powered on so much of it would be like fighting a landslide.
A firepit sat opposite the former rock pile, near a weapons rack. Char stood before it, eyes closed. It sharpens my other senses, Char had said, but seeing her mother defenseless froze Ash’s lungs.
The crowd roared encouragement. Stavos drew a broadsword from the weapons rack that sat near his tunnel and took a step forward. Char still didn’t move.
“Come on,” Ash whispered.
Tor was rigid beside her. “Patience,” he said tersely.
Stavos took off at a sprint. The arena was large enough for him to be winded by the time he reached Char, which had to be her intention. His broadsword was aloft, glinting in the sunlight.
Ash’s attention went to Ignitus. He gripped the box’s railing, his lips quirked. He knew Char would turn the fight. He knew she wouldn’t fail him.
The broadsword came down over Char, and finally, finally, she moved.
The firepit sputtered as she pulled on igneia. She cartwheeled to avoid the broadsword and got in a solid kick to Stavos’s jaw before her feet planted back on the ground. Stavos reeled, his sword thundering against the earth and giving Char another opening: she chopped her leg against his hands, dislodging his grip. She kept going, pulling more igneia—but this time the fire came in a hypnotic arc of gilded scarlet, swooping through the air on Char’s command. She twisted, and the ribbon washed into Stavos, slamming him onto his back as he gave a bark of pain. The fire knotted into a ball to sit heavy and hot on his chest, keeping him down, pinned, as the bare skin on his sternum began to crackle and burn.
Stavos shrieked.
Ignitus pulled back, arms crossed, grinning. Geoxus’s senator shouted something at his gladiator that Ash couldn’t hear. Her eyes, her focus, her soul, were fixed on her mother.
Char bowed forward and the flame dropped torturously slowly, sweat beading down her face with effort as the crowd hooted. She would drive the fire into Stavos’s chest. How long had this fight lasted? Not even five minutes? A new record, surely.
Stavos squirmed in the dirt at Char’s feet. The fingers of his left hand slipped to his thigh—finding a holster hidden under his pleated skirt.
“Wait!” Ash screamed. “Mama—”
A knife flashed in Stavos’s palm. He swatted his hand up, looking as though he was batting at Char’s legs. But the blade sliced Char’s ankle, and she buckled enough that her igneia wavered.
Stavos wriggled free, launching himself to his feet and scrambling for his broadsword. His chest was a red-black mess of fresh burns.
Ash’s lungs screamed from lack of breath as Char stumbled away from Stavos.
“Char!” Tor bellowed. “Get to the weapons rack! Go for long range—the spear!”
A single thin line of blood welled on Char’s leg where Stavos had cut her. It wasn’t deep, but Char teetered as though dizzy. She lost hold of her igneia, the fire sizzling out into nothingness, and there was no fire left in the braziers. She would have to fight without igneia now.
“Something’s not right,” Ash managed, unease prickling down her arms. “She looks—ill.”
One of Tor’s hands balled against the stone wall. “Not ill. Drugged.”
Ash flicked a look at Tor. Drugged?
It connected. Stavos’s knife had been tipped with poison. An illegal move.
“We have to tell Ignitus.” Ash whirled on the flickering sconces. “We have to—”
But Stavos swung his sword, and Ash realized that Tor had been right before. She didn’t have a choice when it came to her fate—but not in the way he’d meant.
Even if she’d wanted to stay in this hall with Tor, she wouldn’t have been able to.
She refused to let her mother die like this.
Ash moved as though music was forcing her into a dance.
She grabbed for the igneia in the sconces and sprinted into the fighting pit. The sand was unsteady under her feet. Tor screamed for her from behind, but she pressed on, pooling igneia into her palms, forming it into a whip like the one she had made in the dance.
Ahead, Char shook her head, her fingers pushing into her temples. She blinked, registered Stavos’s coming sword, and shot to the side to dodge the blow. The momentum caught her wrong and she faltered, sprawling on the dust.
The sand was red. Had it been red before?
Ash gasped, sweat pouring down her back. The tone of the crowd’s cheering shifted, but their incessant noise dulled to a hum as she ran, her fire whip lengthening, lengthening—
Char heaved herself backward, then back again, leaving a trail of maroon in her wake.
Stavos dragged the tip of his sword through the sand. He noted Ash coming with a wicked sneer.
Char followed his gaze, her lips moving. Maybe, Ash, no! Maybe, My fuel and flame.
Stavos lifted his sword and hurled it through the air.
Ash reared, her fire whip snapping to fill the circumference of the fighting pit as it had during the dance. She tightened it until the flames knotted around Stavos and hefted him above the sand. He shouted, thrashing, and she tossed him across the pit, as far away as she could.
She swung around, eyes scrambling for Char.
Mama, don’t do this, please. She had been eight, begging Char to stop. She had been eleven. She had been eighteen, this morning, Mama, please stop, he’ll kill you—
Stavos’s broadsword pinned Char to the sand. Her body lay sprawled and delicate like the dancers depicting the vanquished gods, only she didn’t rise for a finishing bow.
The world blurred. The blue sky, the
heaving crowd—and movement in the viewing box.
Ashi’s own grating breath deafened her as she looked up, numb.
Each god could spy through their energeia. Try as Ignitus did to limit his siblings’ access, he couldn’t get rid of all other energeias—which meant the earth god had been able to watch this fight.
And he was here, now, standing in the viewing box next to Ignitus.
Geoxus’s body was half dust and dirt, a product of traveling through stone, as all the gods could do with their elements. He formed as he rose over Ignitus, rock yielding to flesh and blood. He was his brother’s opposite in all but their black hair and brown skin; where Ignitus was long and slender, Geoxus was all chiseled solidity and muscle.
He spoke, breaking into Ash’s shock with a searing crack as his voice came from every pebble and rock and particle of sand in the arena: “Your mortal interfered, brother. You cheated. I declare war on Kula.”
Three
Madoc
“CAN YOU BELIEVE it?” Elias huffed, a wild light in his eyes as they raced down the narrow street. Madoc had seen the same excitement in half the faces they’d passed since the foreman at the quarry had dismissed them early from work, and felt the rush of anticipation buzzing from the crowds that had gathered on the street corners.
War was coming to Deimos. The fire god, Ignitus, was bringing his best Kulan gladiators to battle the fiercest of Geoxus’s champions in the arena. For two weeks and four strenuous rounds, the competitors would battle their fellow fighters for a chance to advance and represent their country in the final match to the death. People would swarm to see their favorites attack with earth and fire. Parades would jam the streets and parties would last until dawn.
There was nothing the people of Deimos liked better than blood soaking its golden sand.
“That we’re at war with Kula? Or that we got a half day off work?” Madoc asked. They’d been creating the foundation for a new bathhouse near the market for the last two weeks. When news of war had hit the streets, the foreman had been in such a hurry to join the thousands signing up for gladiator tryouts that he’d tripped over a bale of straw.