Clay ignored him, staring down upon Fivecourt’s majesty with the same overwhelming awe he normally reserved for the sweep of stars overhead. Even at the height of Saga’s celebrity, coming to Fivecourt had always made him feel small. How could it not, he wondered, when the lives of half a million souls were unfolding all around? In Coverdale he’d been a big fish in a small pond, but here …
You’re still a big fish, he told himself. But Fivecourt’s an ocean.
There was a commotion at the city gate. An eight-wheeled argosy with The Screaming Eagles painted on the side in sloppy blue letters was blocking the road. Clay could hear loud music within, poorly played. A stream of pipe smoke and women’s laughter issued steadily from the open door. A young man was sitting on a set of fold-down steps that led into the massive wagon’s dark interior. He was shirtless and scrawny, his pale torso marred by crude but colourful tattoos. His long hair was dyed platinum white, and he swept it from his face as Clay and the others passed by.
“The fuck you looking at?” he asked Clay.
“The fuck you looking at?” Clay countered, moving on before the younger man found the wit to respond.
A courtsman wearing the six-striped tabard of the city’s urban militia was arguing with a sweating booker out front of the wagon. “I don’t care who’s inside it,” said the guard, “that thing isn’t going past this point. This road is for foot traffic and small wagons only, not for shit like this.” He gestured at the shabby monstrosity parked before the gate. “Anyway, you’ll have to back it up and go round to the Arena Gate. Or they could just get out and walk.”
“Walk? Walk!?” The booker, red-faced, was strutting and spitting like a bird in heat. “The Screaming Eagles don’t walk anywhere, son.”
“You could send for a carriage,” suggested the guard.
“I sent for one half an hour ago and it still ain’t here! Listen, if I don’t get these boys to the Riot House before dark it’s my ass.”
“Your ass’ll be in a dungeon if you don’t move this thing soon.”
“Well your ass better hope you-know-who doesn’t hear you kept her headlining band from entering the city.”
“First of all, I don’t know fucking who. And second, my ass’ll be just fine,” said the guard. He waved Clay and the others by without bothering to question them.
“Not if my ass goes, it won’t. If my ass goes, your ass is next.”
The two of them were still directing threats toward each other’s asses when a carriage ambled out of the crowd. Two white-feathered akra were yoked to its traces, mewling like sheep as they drew to a stop. The long-necked birds were a rare sight outside cities, but on cobblestone streets their dry, pellet-sized stool made them preferable to horses. The driver shook his head at the argosy wedged in the gate, and was about to whistle his arrival when Clay flagged him down.
“You’re late.”
The driver gave them a once-over, his gaze lingering on Moog’s sun-and-star pyjamas. “You’re the Screaming Eagles?” he asked dubiously.
“We are,” Clay answered without hesitation. He climbed aboard as if the carriage belonged to him. “We’re in a hurry.”
The driver looked toward the row going on at the gate. “Yeah, well, there’s a fight in the Maxithon tomorrow, so the city’s bursting like a brothel on two-for-one night, but I’ll go fast as I can without getting blood on the streets. Where to?”
Clay opened his mouth before realizing he had no idea where they were headed.
“Two stops,” said Gabriel. “Coinbarrow first, and then the Narmeeri Ward.”
“Narmeeri Ward’s a big place,” said the driver. “Anywhere specific?”
“Pearling Heights.”
The man looked over his shoulder, clearly surprised. “The gorgon’s place?”
Gabe nodded, and the carriage lurched into motion.
“The gorgon?” Clay muttered. He looked over at Gabriel, but his friend was gazing out over the sprawl of the city and would not meet his eyes.
Fivecourt was often called “the city at the centre of the world,” which was, as wine-addled cartographers had an annoying habit of pointing out, not even remotely true. It was, however, situated more or less in the middle of Grandual, governed by a council of representatives from all five kingdoms, and patrolled by a small army of dedicated courtsmen whose allegiance was to Fivecourt alone. The land for leagues in every direction was considered sovereign territory. Unlike the Free City of Conthas, however, which existed beyond the jurisdiction of any of Grandual’s monarchs, Fivecourt belonged to all of them. The city was, both geographically and metaphorically, the hub around which the wheel of Grandual turned.
The city itself was shaped like a shallow bowl. The homes of the wealthy ringed the circling heights, while the poorest lived in squalor at the bottom. It was divided like a pie into six wards, one for each of Grandual’s kingdoms, while the sixth doubled as an administrative district (at the top) and a seedy criminal underworld (at the bottom), though Clay had heard many joke that the two were interchangeable. The river cut a broad stroke through the city’s heart, spanned by half a dozen bridges and clotted with bustling boat traffic.
Floating improbably at the very centre was a colossal arena, bound against the river’s current by four massive iron chains anchored to towers on either shore.
As they rattled down the slope toward Coinbarrow, the arena looked even more daunting. Matrick, following Clay’s awestruck stare, cleared his throat. “The Maxithon, they call it. The largest man-made arena in all of Grandual,” he declared.
“There are others like this?” Clay asked, incredulous.
“Well, not quite like this. Brycliffe’s arena is a quarter the size, and the Ravine outside Ardburg is bigger, though it’s more or less just a conveniently shaped canyon. There’s one off the coast of Phantra called the Giant’s Cradle.”
“Good name,” Clay was forced to admit.
Matrick grinned. “I know, right? It’s shaped sort of long and narrow, like a boat, and it can actually cross the bay between Aldea and Eshere. It’s impressive, but not quite as big as the Maxithon.”
“If you say so,” said Clay warily. He wondered to himself why someone would build something as unnecessarily excessive as a sailing arena. Or a floating one, even.
As if reading his thoughts, Matrick went on speaking. “The world’s a changing place, Clay. Used to be there were monsters everywhere. Every cave, every forest, every swamp a lair for some awful thing or another. You couldn’t turn over a rock without finding a bloody murlog underneath it. The Courts couldn’t pay army regulars to fight monsters—not that they could handle that, anyway—and everyone figured the Heartwyld was someone else’s problem, so things just got worse and worse, until—”
“—until we came along.”
“Exactly,” said Matrick. “The bands changed everything. We cleared the goblins out of every sewer, killed every giant this side of the Wyld.”
“We turned over the rocks and killed all the murlogs,” said Clay.
“Damn right we did.” Matrick nudged him with an elbow. “So what was left? What glory remained for the bands of today?”
“They could still tour the Heartwyld,” Clay ventured.
“Sure, but there’s the rot to think of, and that’s a risk few are willing to take. Instead they build arenas like that—” Matrick pointed to the Maxithon looming dead ahead “—and bring the Heartwyld to them. Most bands today never go anywhere near the forest. They just tour from city to city and fight whatever the local wranglers have on hand.”
“And where do the wranglers get monsters from if not the Wyld?”
Moog poked his head up from the seat behind. “They breed them.”
Clay scowled to hide the fact that Moog had just startled the shit out of him. “They breed what, the monsters?” The wizard nodded, and Clay’s frown deepened. “Well, that’s just … stupid,” he said, peering up at the torch-lit Maxithon as the carriage reached the quay and turned sharply right.
He wondered what might be caged in the bowels of that place even now, stirring restlessly in the dark, waiting for its chance to kill or be killed as a crowd of thousands looked on.
And they call this civilization, he thought sourly.
Chapter Eighteen