Talon is ahead of me, but she jumps to the wrong ring and finds herself spun so she has to head out again, losing time. I won’t make that mistake.
I leap to the first ring and work my way inward because Rings is the strength I inherited from my father: the ability to process multiple bands of information and see how they fit together. Talon was far enough ahead that her mistake sets her back but doesn’t defeat her. We hit the ground at the same time for a short dash to the ladder. For an instant I’m tempted to slacken my pace and let her go up ahead of me. It’s her first trial; she’s done well, and I can tell by the shine in her face that she wants to win, that it means something to her that I can’t even fathom. My hesitation allows her to get a step ahead of me.
I will never let anyone win if it means I have to lose.
So I leap over her, grab the ladder above her head, and surge up to the top. The victor’s ribbon is nothing fancy, just a white ribbon that I snag and hold up as the crowd cheers. A few scattered voices chant, “Spider! Spider!” but more call out, “Talon! Skreek!”
The victory doesn’t taste as sweet as usual. I don’t linger on the tower.
She’s still standing at the foot of the ladder with a hand on a rung, having pulled off her mask the better to catch her breath. The other two adversaries stroll toward us through Rings but for this brief interval she and I are alone.
Do I dare ask where she comes from? If she is the East Saroese princess I now realize she might be? If Meno? and Berenise have been holding her back until the exact moment they need her to show their new allies they have something that once belonged to Nikonos but escaped him?
Before I can take the leap, she heads down the ladder into the retiring hall. The other two adversaries flash me the kiss-off sign and peer with interest as her head recedes into the darkness of the undercourt.
“I have never seen a Patron woman run the Fives,” says Brown Belt, a brawny Saroese man with two rings in his ear to mark him as a former criminal allowed back into society.
“That was something, wasn’t it?” agrees Blue Belt, a young Efean man who speaks Saroese as easily as I do. He grins at me but doesn’t address me directly.
“Have a drink later?” asks the Saroese man, with Saroese manners.
“I surely would,” I say recklessly, even though I know Gargaron will forbid it.
Captain Neartos escorts me back to the stable. He’s chatty and cheerful.
“You were a bit shaky, not up to your usual standard, but that’s to be expected, considering your lack of dedicated practice time. I won a tidy sum on bets with those West Saroese soldiers. They just can’t believe a woman can beat a man.”
“Happy to be of use.”
Either my sarcasm flies over his head or he ignores it. “His lordship says to tell you he’s pleased with how you are playing your part.”
“What exactly is his game? Was I the lure to attract their attention so they would come to the court and see Talon for the first time?”
“You know better than to think I’ll answer that. Or to think there’s only one ring spinning at a time.”
It’s not yet midday and already scorching. I’m grateful to drink my fill at the dining shelter as Darios offers a few perfunctory critiques, although I can tell he is uneasy at Neartos’s constant presence.
“I’ve been told Talon and I are to sail with Queen Meno? south to Saryenia,” he says. “Does that mean you have different orders, Jessamy?”
“Jessamy’s circumstances have changed,” says Neartos.
“Captain.” I don’t want to beg but I don’t know how else to ask. “As I have been studying the Precepts in my spare time, I had a few questions to put to Lord Menos’s tutor. Perhaps as a courtesy, in reward for playing my part, I might be allowed to see that individual briefly.”
He shakes his head. “If you’ve quenched your thirst, you may go bathe, Spider.”
“Maybe send my victory ribbon to her as a token?”
“You may go bathe, Spider.”
I do as I’m told. Neartos stations himself at the entry. I disrobe in the outer room and scrub myself in the bathing room until my skin starts to feel raw, then go into the inner chamber and immerse myself in the soaking pool with my head tipped back to rest against the rim. The gloom washes over me like defeat.
Soft footfalls alert me. I open my eyes. Talon ventures in with a length of linen wrapped around her from armpits to knees even though the rest of us adversaries walk around naked without giving it a thought. I always assumed she had a Patron woman’s arrogance, not wishing Commoner women to see her body. Just as I’m about to congratulate her on her first Fives run, a voice from the entry startles us both.
“Why, yes, Captain, we will just go in,” says Queen Meno?.
Talon flinches with acute distress and loses her grip on the linen towel. It lands at her feet, and I try not to gasp but succeed only in slapping a hand over my mouth as I flinch.
Her torso is hatched with seamed white scarring all the way down her belly, just as Meno?’s is, scars of an abuse whose ferocity still has the power to rob me of words. Talon splashes clumsily down the steps as three women enter the soaking chamber.
“Here you are, Talessa,” says Meno?. “I wanted you to meet Princess Shenia, for I am sure you two will be thrown together a great deal now and I, for one, recall vividly that I never had the benefit of a single friend when I lived in the palace of East Saro.”
In private Princess Shenia has a bold stare and blunt manner at odds with her public modesty. “So you really are Princess Talessa of East Saro! Everyone thinks you are dead, murdered together with your brother, Stratios. What are those ugly marks on your body?”
Talon goes pink with shame. Of course I’m staggered by this revelation, even though I suspected it, but the rude comment so offends me that I stand up, grab the linen towel off the floor, and hand it to her.
“Excuse me, Your Gracious Majesty, we were not expecting visitors and did not dress for the occasion,” I say in my best Patron accent. My nakedness disconcerts Shenia so much she stops staring at Talon and scrutinizes the floor. Lady Adia, however, gives me a long look from my head to my toes that hits like a scalding splash of boiling water.
“You may continue your soak, Spider,” Meno? says with exaggerated condescension, “and indeed I wish you would.”
Furious, I sink into the water. Talon has wrapped the towel around herself.
“My dear Shenia,” says Meno? with a smile that skates right at the edge of mockery and yet does not quite fall over. “Perhaps you might give me and my mother a moment alone with Princess Talessa. Your ladies are outside, are they not?”
“Yes, they are watching the men practice. We are not accustomed to men racing about in front of women in so little clothing as people wear here.”
“It is very hot here in Efea compared to the kingdoms of Old Saro,” agrees Lady Adia placidly.