But the crowd has gotten excited at last. They need to recognize me.
Extending my arms wide, I play the crowd, my gesture a boast that they must look at me. That they should know who I am.
I don’t look toward the royal balcony. Not yet.
Instead I spin my web of tricks across the ropes and beams and bars and traps, my somersaults and leaps, my tucks and flips, so high off the ground that if I fall then it will all be over for me, no coming back from such a disaster. This is our day. If we don’t fly, we will fall.
The crowd is roaring by the time I reach the resting platform for Traps.
“The general’s valiant daughter!”
“Spider! Spider!”
Only then do I pause to catch my breath. Only then when they are thrilled by my daring do I turn to face the royal balcony, where a king and a queen sit side by side beneath an awning. Gold silk sways up and down like the breath of the land trying to tug free from the stakes that moor it. Beside the royal sea-phoenix banner flies the banner of the horned and winged fire dog, marking the ascendency of Clan Garon, no longer languishing on a lesser balcony off to one side.
Lord Gargaron stares at me from where he sits next to Queen Meno?. Although I can’t really see his expression, the way he’s holding a cup like he wants to throw it at me reveals everything I need to know. If there is anything he hates, it is defiance.
My gaze slides to the king. He is dressed all in gold, and a gold diadem circles his brow like a ribbon of sunlight.
When I turn his way he stands, and thus every person in the Fives court except his sister and his grandmother must stand. That is his tribute to me, the only tribute I need.
The crowd erupts into a frenzy of astonished and outraged speculation. Everyone thinks today’s story is about forbidden love between a reckless adversary and a headstrong young king. It’s the best distraction of all. No one is watching as the entry gates that lead out of the tiers are closed.
His sister tugs impatiently on his arm, and he relents and sits.
I clamber down, chalk my sweating hands, and enter Trees. When I ran that very first trial, in this configuration the entry was a high horizontal bar the adversary had to leap to grab, but now it’s a simple ladder. I am certain Kalliarkos told Lord Perikos to change it because of my wrist. The climbing within these posts and shafts relies more on skill than hand strength but it doesn’t matter. I’m not halfway through before my wrist is throbbing. I struggle. Atop a set of posts I pause to breathe down the worst of the pain, and Dagger comes up beside me.
“Can you make it through with that injury?” she asks. “You have to win. You’re the only one who can be sure.”
“I’ll make it,” I say through teeth gritted from pain. “But it might take me a while.”
She flashes me a kiss-off sign and leaps away.
She’s so clean and strong as she climbs. We can all be strong, each in our own way, if we are not lashed into submission. The crowd salutes her skill with a cheer, and yet by the time I grind my way through the last of Trees, struggling through pain, they are cheering me even louder because they can see I am injured but unwilling to give up.
By now the other three adversaries have all reached Rings. My wrist just didn’t hold up, and the truth is they are all more experienced Challengers than I and would likely have beaten me anyway.
But I have to keep going. When I drop into Rivers it’s easy to recall the pattern of which stones will shift, like Father’s loyalty to his family when he was offered the sum of his ambition, and which will hold firm, like Mother’s love for her children. Yet as I cross in haste I hear the crowd’s noise start to falter into confusion. No shout of triumph greets a victor although there should be one by now. When I pull myself up onto the final resting platform, my entry point to Rings, I see why.
Dagger has reached the victory tower but she stands beside it, not climbing. Just then the older Saroese man dashes up, and he too halts at the base of the ladder.
I leap into the spinning Rings. I already know its pattern because I’ve been this way before. As I throw in twists and tucks for flair, the loudest sound in the court is the scuff and slap of my feet and hands. I’ve gone beyond pain; blood thunders in my ears, and my wrist pulsates with agony. The crowd has gone silent in furious disapproval, withholding their approbation. In any other circumstances it would destroy the career of a promising adversary. But I pay no attention. I swing down onto the ground to see all three adversaries standing at the base of the tower.
Waiting for the tomb spider, the herald of death.
“It’s up to you now,” says Dagger.
“Don’t signal unless you’re certain he’s with us,” adds the Saroese man.
“Efea is in your hands,” says Pythias.
They step away from the ladder to let me through. In tears I climb as the crowd begins to jeer and scream. What words they shout I will not hear for they are ugly. They think the new king has cheated to let his lover win.
It takes all my concentration to climb one-handed to the top. There flies the ribbon, purple silk embroidered with gold thread. In my rush I grab it with the wrong hand, and the pain that stabs through my flesh doubles me over. But I straighten.
The king is standing. Gaze fixed on me, he taps his chest twice with an open hand to show he has fulfilled his orders. Then he touches a forefinger to his lips and holds it out to me.
The crowd has gone wild with anger at this perversion of the sacred rules of the Fives.
Lord Gargaron is both enraged and gloating, thinking I’ve overstepped, that Kal’s attentions have made me overconfident, that I’ve missed my mark and begun my fall.
But he is the one whose arrogance has led him to this cliff’s edge.
I pull my mask from my face.
And I shout, “Efea will rise!”
30
Below, the other three adversaries join me, our voices together amplifying the words.
“Efea will rise! Efea will rise!”
That is the signal for my father’s loyal Firebird Guard to bar the gates from the outside and trap the highborn Patrons inside the Fives court. That is the signal for the hatches and trapdoors of every mechanism in the undercourt to open.
That is the signal for the Efean soldiers who entered the undercourt as workmen to climb into the light.
An arrow skitters across the victor’s platform and skids off. A second clatters through the scaffolding. It takes me that long to realize someone is shooting at me. I swing around to see a crossbowman on a balcony taking aim. At me.
I throw myself behind one of the big scaffolding beams. A bolt slams into its other side.