Queen of Fire

Lyrna was quickly conveyed to the middle of the formation where she found Snowdance slumped on her side, ragged flesh dangling from her claws, fur matted with gore and the stone beneath slick with blood. Despite her injuries the cat’s great yellow eyes stared up at Lyrna as bright as ever. She even uttered a soft purr as Alornis knelt to run a hand over her head.

 

Lyrna looked up as the cacophony suddenly abated, the clash of weapons fading to leave only the groans of the wounded. The Arisai were thick on all sides but seemed to have retreated somewhat. Many were wounded, some grievously so, missing eyes or standing with gaping wounds to the face or blood flowing freely from rents in their armour, but they were all smiling, not in mockery, or cruelty, but joy.

 

This is what they were made for, Lyrna thought, her eyes playing over the sea of happy faces. A new race born to delight in slaughter. The Volarian bred to perfection.

 

Around her the Queen’s Daggers all stood, drawing breath in ragged gasps, tensed for the next assault. Most had bloody scars, some wide-eyed in shock or grief. But still no fear, she saw, seeing how their ranks tightened around her, many casting furtive glances as if fearing her disapproval. The Empress made something vile, she decided. I made something great.

 

“We make them happy it seems,” she said, rising from the war-cat’s side. She raised her hatchet above her head, the gore-covered blade evidence its owner had died hard, as she intended to do. “Stand with me and we’ll make them weep!”

 

As one the Queen’s Daggers roared, a savage blast of defiance and bloodlust, waving their weapons at the Arisai and voicing taunts rich in obscenities. “I’ll feed you your balls, you grinning fucker!” a stocky man with a halberd spat at the nearest Arisai, who seemed to find this even more cause for amusement.

 

Lyrna met Lord Nortah’s gaze, reading a grim certainty in his expression. He glanced down at Snowdance, her eyes closed now, and his face spasmed in mingled rage and grief before he straightened. “We are taking our queen out of here!” he told his soldiers. “Assault formation!”

 

The response was immediate, the Queen’s Daggers moving with the unconscious precision born of months of training, ordering themselves into a wedge shape in the space of a few seconds. Nortah raised his sword, preparing to give the order to advance, then paused at the sight of some commotion in the ranks of Arisai. The throng parted to reveal a tall figure, armoured in red as they were, but his face that of a much older man, the features long and lean, thin lips and pale blue eyes. Also, unlike the Arisai, he wore no smile.

 

Lyrna saw Nortah’s sword arm sag as he gaped at the tall man, face drawn in mystification. “Aspect?”

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER NINE

 

 

Reva

 

 

 

 

 

“Why you not . . . afraid?”

 

Lieza’s Realm Tongue was adequate but not accomplished, though considerably better than Reva’s Volarian. She sat on the only bed, knees drawn up and clasped in her arms, eyes bright as she watched Reva go through her scales. On the first day of their confinement Varulek had provided her with a wooden short sword and some intently spoken advice, “Ready yourself with all vigour. The arena cares not who you were, only what you might be.”

 

Their quarters consisted of a windowless cavern-like chamber providing more than ample room for practice. Reva danced across mosaic-tiled floors, dodging between elegant pillars of black marble veined in white. The walls were decorated in faded paintings depicting various beasts and men in combat and she noted how Lieza did her best not to look at them. At the far end of the chamber a large bath was inset in the floor, supplied with hot water via some hidden contrivance of pipes. Besides the bed, however, there was little in the way of furniture, or anything of sufficient weight to make a decent weapon. Even her wooden sword was made from sandalwood and like to shatter at the first contact with anything substantial.

 

“Fear kills,” Reva told the slave girl, spinning through a final combination of parries and thrusts. “You’d fear less if you trained with me.”

 

The scale was her own invention, a much modified variant of one of Vaelin’s Order standards, designed for confronting the Kuritai. Although from what Lieza told her of the spectacles Reva concluded a contest with the slave-elite might be preferable. She had quizzed the girl closely for several hours, leaving off only when she began to cry, tears flowing as she stumbled over a description of some kind of cat with teeth like daggers.

 

“I not a . . . fighter, like you.” Lieza hugged herself closer, resting her head on her knees.

 

“Then what are you?” Reva asked.

 

“Slave.” The girl spoke in a murmur, not raising her head. “Always just slave.”

 

“You must have skills, abilities.”

 

“Numbers, letters, language.” Lieza’s shoulders moved in a shrug. “My master taught me much. Won’t help here. I am Avielle, you Livella.”

 

“And they are?”

 

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