Mercurio scowled, stubbed out his cigarette.
“I realize the odds of the administratii sending out a search party to look for a pack of dead gladiatii are slim, but if you lot are finished chatting, we have a daring escape to undertake.” The old man gestured toward the door. “So if you wouldn’t fucking mind…?”
“Apologies,” Ashlinn muttered. “He’s always like this.”
Straightening his helm, Sidonius squared his shoulders. His comrades behind him, he marched out into the corridor. The arena’s innards were virtually empty, all eyes on the spectacle above. They made their way swiftly through the hallways, Ashlinn out in front, until they came to a small servants’ entrance, locked and barred.
Ashlinn opened the door onto a small alleyway. Two guards were slumped outside it, dead or sleeping, Sid couldn’t tell. But he also saw a small merchant’s wagon, and a pretty blond girl sitting in the driver’s seat. She looked at them and smiled.
“This is Belle,” Mercurio said. “She’ll take you across the aqueduct. A slaver named Teardrinker is waiting for you on the mainland.”
“A slaver?” Bladesinger growled.
“She owes Mia a favor,” Ashlinn said. “The largest kind of favor there is. She has the papers verifying that you’ve purchased your freedom. And contacts with the administratii to get your brands removed. Now go.”
“Mia…,” Sid began.
“Go.”
Bryn and the others were already in the wagon. Wavewaker clasped Sidonius’s arm, hauled him up into the flatbed. The girl snapped the reins and they were moving, bouncing across the cobbles and off through the Godsgrave streets.
“Fine horses,” Bryn said, nodding at the beasts leading the wagon.
“The black stallion is Onyx,” the girl smiled. “The white mare is Pearl.”
Sidonius climbed into the driver’s seat beside her, trying to look officious in his uniform. But he found his hands were shaking, his knees weak, the ordeal leaving him hollow. After weeks of plotting, playing the part, praying they might somehow pull it off, the adrenaline was souring in his veins, leaving him exhausted and …
“Don’t be afraid,” the girl said, squeezing his hand. “All will be well.”
Sidonius looked her up and down. Dark, wide eyes. Barely more than a child.
“… How do you know?” he scoffed.
“Because the voices in your head that say otherwise are just fear talking. Never listen to fear.”
The girl smiled, turned her eyes back to the open road.
“Fear is a coward.”
*
Mia gasped as Worldeater cracked her skull back into the stone again, his thumbs pressed into her eyes. And slipping her gravebone dagger out from the bracer at her wrist, she slammed the blade up under the champion’s chin, right into his brain.
Worldeater gurgled, toppled aside. Rolling to her feet, she snatched up her gladius and charged across the battlement, lips peeled back in a snarl. Ragnar had his hands about Furian’s throat, looking up as the girl ran him down. He raised arms to ward off her blow, but the Swoon still hummed in his veins and her blade of Liisian steel sheared through his wrist, cleaving his helmet and splitting the flesh and bone beyond. Mia tore the blade free, the champion’s body falling back in a spray of red.
Furian kicked free of the corpse, rolled up to his feet. Mia’s spring-loaded dagger was still clutched in his hand, dark eyes burning into hers. The crowd was roaring with bloodlust. Of the hundreds of men and women who’d taken to the sand, only two now remained. Though they couldn’t hear the words the Falcons spoke over the distance, the howls of their fellows, the blood pounding in their veins, all knew the match would soon be ended. The fact that these two were comrades from the same collegium made no difference. There was only one way this could end.
“All must fall so one may stand!” came the cry.
Mia and Furian stared at each other across the carnage, shadows seething at their feet. Where once they’d been entwined, coalescing to a perfect black, now they were coiled, writhing, clawing at each other with fury.
“So,” Furian spat, hurling the false dagger at Mia’s feet. “A liar to the last.”
The crowd was a distant roar. The arena a faded backdrop, pale and translucent. Mia could feel the city of Godsgrave around them, sweltering beneath those awful suns. Feel it like a living thing, feel the rage and hatred nestled in its bones, like the truedark so long ago when she’d failed to kill Scaeva in the Basilica Grande.
Feel it like she felt herself.
“Furian…,” she began.
“You’ve learned nothing of honor, have you? I thought you claimed you weren’t a hero? That if they needed help, they could help themselves?”
“They did help themselves, Furian,” Mia replied. “We helped each other.”
“And why?”
“Because they’re my friends. And they didn’t deserve to die.”
“But die they will,” he spat. “Like the traitors they are. When I am named victor, the first thing I will do is tell the editorii of your ploy. And all your lies will be for naught.”
He stooped and picked up a bloody sword from the carnage about them.
“You can’t wash your hands clean with more blood, Furian,” Mia said.
“I give myself to the Everseeing.”
“Furian, can’t you feel it? Look at our shadows! Listen!”
“I hear nothing,” he spat. “Save the witch I am about to kill.”
“Don’t!”
The Unfallen charged across the stone, bloody sword raised high. The roar of the crowd came crashing back down around her, a deafening tidal wave ringing in her skull. Time crawled, second by second, Furian’s mouth open in a roar, his blade raised high.
She didn’t want to kill him.
But she didn’t want to die.
“… mia…?”
“All must fall so one may stand!” came the cry.
“… MIA…!”
All must fall so one may stand.
And so she moved, gentlefriends. Moved like wind. Like silver. Like shadows. Slipping beneath the blow scything toward her throat, steel whistling past her skin. The dark beneath them clawed and tore at each other, ink black upon the bloody stone, hate and hunger and something close to sorrow. The shadowcat hissed and the shadowwolf growled and the girl, the Blade, the gladiatii struck, the tip of her sword catching the Unfallen in the neck as he rushed past.
A spray of red. A breathless gasp. She felt pain, hand pressed to her throat as if she’d been dealt the blow herself. No bladders filled with chicken’s blood now. No ploy. No play. His blood as real as the sunslight on her skin.
Furian looked to her, eyes wide with surprise. Clutching his throat, he turned to the sanguila’s box, looking toward his domina. Mia felt it all. Regret. Sorrow. Bidding Mister Kindly and Eclipse to reach out across the stone, and in his final breath, to take his fear away.