Trumpets blared again, the match began, the Crow moving swift as her namesake. She had to even the numbers quickly, weed out the weakest of the Falcons before sheer numbers overtook her. Thus, the girl went straight for Felix, skipping under his broad, scything blow and slipping inside his guard. The man was clearly the worse for his captivity, slow to react, and with the speed that had made her the collegium champion, the Crow plunged her dagger into his leather breastplate and the heart beyond.
The crowd roared, Felix clutched his skewered chest and toppled to the sand, the blood spraying bright and red. The Crow moved in a blur, kicking a toeful of sand up into Wavewaker’s face and charging at Bryn. The Vaanian girl might have been a daemon with a bow and arrow, but with a sword, she was less the prodigy. The Crow smashed aside her strike with her heavy gladius, opened a small cut on her thigh. As Bryn cried out, staggering, the Crow spun behind her and plunged her blade under the Vaanian girl’s spaulder and up into her back.
Blood. Gushing from the wound. Glinting on the Crow’s steel. Reflected in the crowd’s eyes. They roared as the Vaanian toppled forward in a pool of scarlet, Wavewaker bellowing and running at the Crow like a madman. He swung his rusty blade in a terrifying overhand strike, the steel whistling as it came. But the weeks of starvation in the Gloryhound’s hold had weakened his legs, left him slightly off-balance and late to recover, and a swift strike sent him to his knees, hands to his chest, blood welling between his fingers.
“No!”
Bladesinger charged, the crowd thrilling as her strike opened up a shallow cut on the Crow’s arm. Sidonius struck from the side, Butcher and Albanus from behind, Crow rolling aside and rising again with shocking speed. Her dagger flashed, Butcher cried out, fell back in a spray of red, Bladesinger falling on the Crow in a frenzy. The girl rolled back across the sand, flinging a handful of dirt into the woman’s eyes. Flipping to her feet, she met Sidonius’s blade on her own, her legs almost buckling under the bigger man’s strength. But as every man in the stands winced in sympathy, the Crow drove her knee up into Sidonius’s bollocks, dropping him to the sand with a high-pitched wail. Her counterstrike whistled past Albanus’s guard, her dagger buried to the hilt under his armpit, the blood a scarlet waterfall.
Blinking the grit from her eyes, Bladesinger stuck again, the Crow bending backward as the blow skimmed past her chin. The woman’s long saltlocks seethed as she followed through, knocking the Crow’s gladius flying. Armed only with her knife now, the Crow struck back, punching the woman in the face with her free hand, ducking beneath another strike and snatching up one of Bladesinger’s long locks. Dragging the woman off-balance, she pulled Bladesinger backward and onto her blade. The audience howled in approval, Bladesinger stumbled to her knees, blood spilling from her ruptured breastplate and down her belly, collapsing face-first on the sand.
Only Sidonius remained. The man was bent double, clutching his jewels. The Crow moved toward him, merciless, the bigger man trying to fend her off. He was screaming at her, but the pair were so far away, Leona only caught a handful of words.
“… traitor…”
“… father…”
“… no…”
And the Crow?
She said nothing at all.
Instead, she feinted sideways and slashed at his wrist, his sword spinning to the sand. She kicked out at his legs, sending him onto his knees. And as the crowd roared, she spun around to his back, long hair streaming behind her, plunging her dagger past the collar of his breastplate and down into his spine. Sidonius’s face twisted in agony, a gout of glittering scarlet spraying from the wound. He toppled forward, red spilling across the sand, the mob bellowing in delight.
Leona saw his lips move.
A whispered prayer, perhaps?
A curse for the girl who’d slain him?
And then, his eyes closed for the final time.
Leona sat still, peering at the Crow. The bloodstained blades in her hands.
That slow frown deepening on her brow.
The sanguila about her gave polite applause. Tacitus glanced at her and offered an approving nod at her champion’s form. She looked to her father, but couldn’t catch his eye. Instead, Leonides was staring at that blood-soaked slip of a girl out there on the sand. The girl who’d bested his Exile. The girl who’d just murdered seven gladiatii and barely gotten a scratch. His scowl was black. His eyes, narrowed.
He turned to his executus, Titus. Whispering in the big man’s ear.
Leona’s frown only deepened.
“Citizens of Itreya!” the editorii called. “Your victor!”
The Crow retrieved her fallen gladius, pointed the bloody blade to the empty consul’s chair, then held it to the sky. She was wrapped in black steel. Falcon wings at her shoulders, a cloak of red feathers at her back. As she walked a circuit of the arena, the corpses of the murdered gladiatii were dragged off the sands. The face of a goddess covered her own, only her eyes visible through the helm’s facade.
No one could tell if she wept.
CHAPTER 34
MAGNI
Not long now.
Mia had been ushered off the sand after the execution bout, taken straight to a large staging cell, still drenched in blood. Her wound was dressed, she was given a ration of water, then told to wait. Though her mouth was bone dry, instead of drinking, she wasted her water trying to wash the gore from her shaking hands.
By the end of the cup, her fingers were still sticky.
She watched a cadre of Ironpriests scurry past, guards delivering gladiatii to the staging cell a few at a time. She recognized a few from Governor Messala’s palazzo; Ragnar of Vaan, Champion of the Tacitus Collegium; Worldeater, Champion of the Swords of Phillipi. But soon there were dozens, then hundreds of others, standing about the chamber, clad in leather and steel.
The temperature was stifling, the walls dripping with sweat. Attendants moved about with buckets and ladles of water, the fighters drinking greedily, but Mia only asked for more water for her hands. Scrubbing away at the stains of the execution, refusing to look at her reflection in the red puddling beneath her.
She could hear mekwerk groaning under her feet; some colossal engine ever hungry for blood. Trying not to think of Bladesinger and Bryn, Wavewaker and the others. They’d chosen their fates. Written them in red. She couldn’t afford to spare a thought for them. Their trials were over now, where Mia’s greatest lay before her. She could still hear Sidonius’s parting words as he lay facedown in the sand.
Eyes fixed on hers.
So quiet, none but she could hear.
“Good luck, Mia,” he’d whispered.
Her hands were still sticky.
“… we are with you…”
“… WE WILL ALWAYS BE WITH YOU…”
“You fought well.”
She didn’t look up. Didn’t need to know who it was who stood before her. The sickness in her belly told her that. The lust and the hunger, the ache of longing. Her shadow moved, inching ever closer to his, like iron to the lodestone. Her lips twisted in a bitter smile as she replied.
“I fought against seven starving prisoners who could barely swing their swords.”
“Such, the price of defiance in Itreya,” the Unfallen replied.