Arkades blinked and caught himself. Swaying on his feet. Glancing up at the champion, Executus cleared his throat, rubbed at bleary eyes.
“You have the skill and the will to see us all the way to the magni, Furian. I did not pluck you from the mire to redeem you from the sins of your past. I did it because I see in you a champion, just as I was. You can win your freedom. Walk among us as a man once more, not the animal you were. But those who stand for nothing die for the same. And if you stand only for yourself, you fall alone.”
“Stand for myself?” Furian repeated, incredulous. “I stand for these walls!”
“Then prove it,” Arkades growled. “Fight with the Crow, not against her. And when the silkling is bested and our berth assured, when you face the Crow in the grand games e mortium, you can prove yourself the man I know you to be.”
Arkades placed one hand on the champion’s shoulder.
“Or fall alone,” he repeated. “And bring this house down with you.”
Executus swayed like a tree in a storm, the grip on Furian’s shoulder more to steady himself than prove a comfort. But though the goldwine hung heavy on his breath, though he could barely stay upright, it seemed he’d aimed true.
Furian clenched his jaw. But finally, he nodded.
“I will stand with her at Whitekeep,” he said. “But in Godsgrave, she dies.”
Arkades nodded, limped toward the door, clink, thump, clink, thump, turning at the threshold to look Furian over once more.
“Perhaps before? Who can say?”
Executus smiled, closing the door behind him. Furian stood still, listening to the sound of his limping tread fade down the hallway. Sinking to his knees, he offered a hand to Leona, helped her drag herself out from under the bed. Once standing, the dona snatched her hand away from his, dragged her dress over her head to cover herself. Indignity written in every movement.
“So,” she glared. “You’d disobey my command to fight beside the Crow, but Arkades speaks a handful of words and you see the right of it?”
“Domin—”
“You told me you were a trader before this,” she said, fixing the champion in her glittering blue stare. “A merchant.”
“I was,” Furian replied.
“Arkades did not make it sound so. He named you animal. How many sins can a simple merchant accrue, that he fights so fierce to redeem them?”
The Unfallen made no reply.
“What did you do, Furian?” she asked. “What lies have you told me?”
The champion only stared at the trinity of Aa on the wall, refusing to meet her gaze. She stood there long moments, searching his eyes, looking for answers. Finding only silence. And with a disgusted harrumph, she turned, stomped toward the door. Listening for a moment, she tore it open, almost heedless, and strode out into the hallway, slamming it behind her.
The Unfallen slumped his shoulders and softly cursed.
Sitting on the bed, he saw Leona had left her underslip behind. Gathering it up in his hands, he stared at it for long moments, lost in thought. Running his fingers across the silk, the lace. Inhaling her perfume. And finally, he bent down and stuffed it under his mattress, hiding it in the shadows beneath his bed.
The shadows where a not-cat sat and listened.
Trying terribly hard not to roll his not-eyes.
“… sigh…”
CHAPTER 23
WHITEKEEP
The crash of waves on a stony shore.
The screams of gulls in sunsburned skies.
The roar of seventy thousand voices, joined as one.
A lone gladiatii stood in the arena’s heart, bathed in thunder. The blinding scorch of the two suns glittered on the twin lengths of razored chain he twirled about his body. He was clad in gleaming steel, arm wrapped in scaled mail, greaves at his shins. His face was hidden behind a polished helm, fashioned like a roaring drake’s maw.
The prisoners around him wore no such protection—a few scraps of piecemeal leather, rusty swords in hand. Execution bouts were meant to entertain the crowd between the major events, but there were a dozen condemned men and women in the arena, fighting against a single gladiatii; it wouldn’t do to give the criminals much of a chance at surviving. They were meant to die here, after all.
A convicted rapist charged with a cry, the gladiatii whipping his spike chain across the man’s belly, spilling coils of purple guts onto the now-scarlet sand. The crowd roared in approval. An arsonist and a murderer struck at the gladiatii’s rear, but both were met with a whistling wall of steel, slicing their sword arms off at the elbows and their throats to the bone.
As the mob’s cheers swelled louder, as the walls of Whitekeep arena near shook with the stomping of their feet, the gladiatii went to work in earnest. Opening windpipes and stomachs, severing hands and legs, and as a thrilling finale, taking the last prisoner’s head clean off his shoulders.
“Citizens of Itreya!” came the call across the arena horns. “Honored administratii! Senators and marrowborn! Your victor, Giovanni of Liis!”
The gladiatii roared, raising his bloody chains. As he strode about the sand, whipping the crowd to frenzy, the criminals’ mutilated corpses were dragged away for disposal. Only an unmarked grave and the abyss awaiting them.
Mia stood in her cell, staring out through the bars to the sands beyond. The games were almost done—only the equillai race and their feature match against the silkling remained between now and the Ultima. Butcher had fought earlier in the turn, but he’d been soundly thrashed by a swordsman from the Tacitus Collegium—only a plea for mercy from the editorii had seen his life spared. Wavewaker and Sidonius had fought in a bestiary match with two dozen other gladiatii and a pack of Vaanian scythebears. The pair had slain three beasts between them, though they’d been bested in the final points tally by a pair of stalkers from the Trajan Collegium. Only two marks shy of victory.
So close to a laurel, yet so far away.
The pair sat in the cell with Mia now, nursing their wounds and stung pride. Butcher was with Maggot, getting his head and ribs stitched up. Bladesinger sat with her back to the sand, listening to the furor die outside. She was busy tying a handful of hooked knives into the ends of her saltlocks, humming to herself. The blades were three inches long, razor-sharp. She was clad in a boiled leather breastplate, spaulders and greaves of dark iron. A helmet with the crown cut away sat on the bench beside her.
“Bryn and Byern will be up soon,” Mia said.
Bladesinger nodded, saying nothing.
“Nervous?” Mia asked.
“Always,” the woman replied.
“Courage, sisters,” Wavewaker smiled. “This match is yours.”