“Well, they have excellent taste.”
Bryn’s twin emerged from the stable, carrying a great shield and leading a pair of horses harnessed to a long, sleek chariot. The beasts were white as clouds, muscles carved in marble. Despite herself, Mia felt a small pang at the sight of them, thinking of her own stallion, Bastard. After he’d rescued her from near death in the Ashkahi desert, Mia had set him free rather than lock him up in the Red Church stable. She hoped he was wandering somewhere pleasant, siring as many of his own bastards as he could.
She missed him.
She missed a lot about that time, truth told …
“Sister Crow,” Byern waved to the horses with a flourish, “meet Briar and Rose.”
Mia studied the pair pulling Byern’s chariot. Like every horse she’d ever met, the beasts were skittish around her, so she gave them a wide berth. The fact that she called the only horse who’d ever tolerated her “Bastard” spoke to her feeling about the beasts in general, but she knew a fine specimen when she saw it.
“They’re mares,” Mia noted. “Most equillai I’ve seen run stallions.”
“Most equillai you’ve seen are idiots,” Byern replied.
His sister nodded. “Stallions think with their cocks. Mares know how to keep their heads in a crisis. As with horses, so with humans, eh, brother mine?”
Byern raised a finger in warning. “Respect your elders, pup.”
“You’re two minutes older than me, Byern.”
“Two minutes and fourteen seconds. Now, are you coming or no?”
“Stand out in the center,” Bryn directed Mia, nodding at the dusty track. “When I give the word, you let fly with the best you have.”
“… You want me to shoot you?” Mia asked, eyebrow raised.
Bryn laughed aloud. “I want you to try. And remember to breathe.”
With that, the Vaanian jumped into the chariot beside her brother. With a snap of the reins and a wink to Mia (met with a punch in the arm from his sister), Byern led the horses onto the track.
The chariot was two-wheeled, broad and deep enough to allow the siblings to trade sides. It was red, trimmed in gold paint, carved with the falcon of the Remus Collegium. The great shield Byern carried was also painted with a red falcon, and its edges were crenelated like the walls of a fortified keep.
Mia walked until she stood in the island of ochre dirt, surrounded by the oblong track. Strawman targets were arranged in a single row down the middle of the island, to Mia’s left and right. At a real venatus, those strawmen would be real men—murderers and rapists set to be executed e equillai before the adoring crowd.*
Mia watched as the twins tore around the track, faster and faster. Bryn’s topknot whipped in the wind behind her, Byern’s bronze skin gleaming in the sunslight.
“Ready?” Bryn called to Mia.
“Aye,” the girl replied.
“Let fly, little Crow!”
Mia sighed, drew a bead on Byern’s chest. She tracked the chariot, breathing slow as Bryn had instructed despite the ache in her wounded fingers. And as the pair wheeled around the corner, she loosed a shot right at the handsome Vaanian’s chest.
Byern raised his shield, blocked the shot easily. Firing through the crenelation in the raised shield, Bryn loosed four shots, two of which struck the dirt at Mia’s sandals, the other two striking the strawman closest to her.
“I said shoot us, not ask us to dance!” Bryn shouted.
“I can dance with you later, if you wish,” Byern called.
Bryn punctured another strawman, and her brother leaned out of the chariot at a precarious angle, scooping up a small stone off the track with his free hand. Mia scowled, trying to shake the feeling she was being made a fool of.
“All right, fuck this…,” she muttered.
Mia began firing, shot after shot as the pair galloped around the track. And though her aim was true, she soon realized Bryn and Byern were both masters. Byern’s shield was impregnable, and his skill at driving his horses was almost equal to his sister’s archery. At the most humiliating point, Byern blocked a shot whistling straight for Bryn’s throat, while simultaneously leaning out of the chariot to scoop up a stone, holding the reins in his damned teeth. Meanwhile, Bryn peppered every strawman with a dozen shots, pausing occasionally to make Mia dance by loosing a shot at her toes.
Nine laps later, the pair pulled to a stop in front of her. Byern hopped out of the chariot, bowed low. “Do you prefer the waltz or the Balinna, Mi Dona?”
Bryn punched her brother’s arm again, smiled at Mia. “Fine shooting. You almost got me there, once or twice.”
“Liar,” Mia said. “I never came close.”
Bryn winced, nodded sadly. “I was trying to make you feel better.”
“Where did you learn to do that?”
“Our da raised horses,” Byern said. “And Bryn’s been a daemon with a bow since she could walk.”
Mia shook her head. She knew she shouldn’t ask. Shouldn’t get close. But truth was, she liked this pair. Byern’s easy smile and Bryn’s self-assured swagger.
“How did you come to be here?” she asked, looking at the track about them, the silhouette of Crow’s Nest in the distance. “This place?”
Bryn sniffed. “Bad harvest. Three years back. Village didn’t have the grain to pay our tithe to the Itreyan administratii. They locked our laird in irons, had him and his whole familia flogged in the stocks.”
“We didn’t like that,” Byern explained. “Me and Bryn were too young for our da to let us go, but anyone big enough to swing a sword marched up to the magistrate’s door. Dragged him down to the stocks and gave him a flogging right back.”
“He didn’t like that,” Bryn said. “You can imagine what came next.”
“Legionaries,” Mia said.
“Aye,” Byern nodded. “Five centuries of the bastards. Killed every rebel. Burned every home. Sold everyone left standing. Sis and me included.”
“But you weren’t even involved,” Mia said. “Your da didn’t let you rise.”
“You think the Itreyans care?” Byern smiled lopsided. “This whole Republic, the Kingdom before it, even. It’s built on the back of free labor. But now, Liis, Ashkah, Vaan, they’re all under Itreyan control. So where do the new slaves come from? When there are no lands left to conquer?”
“They build a Republic that’s unfair in its bones,” Bryn said. “That benefits the few, not the many. But the few have steel. And men they pay to wield it, unthinkingly. So, when someone among the many rises against the injustice, the brutality, the system locks them in irons. Makes of them an example for others, and with the very same stroke, sends one more body to be branded. One more pair of hands to build their roads, raise their walls, work their forges, all for a pittance and fear of the lash.”
Mia shook her head. “That’s…”
“Bullshit?” Byern offered.
“Aye.”
“That’s life in the Republic,” Bryn shrugged.