Ren had seen a boy survive the Sun’s Justice, had seen the ransom’s charred and flaking skin, his blind eyes and cracked lips, his neck and shoulders dotted with yellow and white pustules that ruptured when the boy bent his arm or flexed his neck. Now it was he who would stand and wither in an oven-sized shaft while the sun’s heat turned the stones around him into searing coals. If he survived the ordeal, he was innocent. If he died, he was guilty and would be sent back to his kingdom in a casket, and the empire would demand a new ransom.
Already the priors were grabbing him by the hood of his tunic, taking him to the roof. “Go,” he told Tye, who had tears in her eyes. “Forget about me.” At least she is safe. It was comfort enough to know he had kept her from the worst of it. And Adin was free. His friend had escaped the Priory. Ren had spent the better part of his brief life dreaming of the day when the three of them would be free. It was all he wanted for himself and his friends. He tried to take some solace in Adin’s freedom, but his thoughts were a jumbled mess. Soon he would face the Sun’s Justice.
Strong hands lifted him by the armpits while he kicked and strained. His foot met the face of a gray-haired prior. He kicked again, but a younger and stronger man took hold of his ankle and wrenched the joint into a painful half-turn as they dragged him down the corridor.
They enjoy this, he thought, they like watching us squirm.
Ren saw an arch above him, which meant they were on the stairs. He had struggled for years to see the sun, to catch a glimpse of the sky, and now it was here, bright and blistering.
A door banged open and everything went white. Warm air buffeted his face. Ren squeezed his eyes closed, but sunlight pierced his eyelids, filling his vision with a red-veined panorama.
“Open your eyes, boy. We’re on the roof,” said one of the priors.
“No,” he murmured, “I don’t want to see the sun.” In truth, he had wanted to see it his whole life, but now that the moment had come he wasn’t ready. No matter. Ren did as told and saw a pair of crooked teeth smiling at him. The prior turned his head and spat into a lightwell. The spittle hung in the air, falling and falling, then disappearing into the darkness.
“That’s where you’re going—into the well, to bake like bread, to cook like a goose,” he chortled. “Pain makes the man. Pain makes the man,” the prior hummed the words.
Two and ten shafts dotted the roof of the Priory—long, narrow cuts dug into the flat stone, wells that fed light into the underground chambers of the Priory of Tolemy, the house for the emperor’s ransoms.
“Here you go,” said the crook-toothed man as he fed a rope under Ren’s arms and tied a knot behind his back. “Careful not to touch the stones, you don’t want to burn yourself,” he japed.
Ren closed his eyes, the sun was too bright—he wasn’t ready. The rope tightened around his chest. He felt a tug as the prior led him forward. His eyes clamped shut. He wished he could shut his ears too. The city was loud, almost suffocating. Dogs barked and hawkers cried.
“No, I—”
The prior’s foot hit his back and Ren fell, tumbling into the darkness. The rope caught beneath his arms, the knot tightening like a hangman’s noose. He grabbed the cord and tried to steady himself as his feet hung, kicking in the air.
“Help,” he said.
A grunt echoed from above as the priors struggled with the rope. Ren was dropped again, but more slowly this time. When he kicked, his foot hit stone. A ledge. He put one foot down, then the other, until he stood on a small foothold within the lightwell.
“Is this it? Is this where I’ll stand?” he asked, but no one answered.
The shaft felt like nothing more than a narrow pipe, one that was slowly tightening around him. He wanted broth on his lips and amber in his belly. There was an angry pulsing in his head that only a meal could fix, but he would not eat this morning. There was no knowing when the next meal would arrive, or if he would eat at all.
I wish I were back in my cell. He had not appreciated how much he had until it too was taken away.
The priors pulled up the rope and soon they were gone.
It had all happened so quickly that he had not yet had time to consider what was in store for him.
He was alone on the ledge. The light shaft provided no shade, nowhere to shit or piss. He could jump, he could end his life, plunge to his death. But even then the fall might not kill him. If he was only maimed, the priors would surely nurse him back to health just so they could abuse him once more.
The sun was rising, and the rocks were already growing hot. Soon the stone would be too hot to touch, the air too smoldering to breathe, and the sun and his justice would be upon him.
Ren wanted to be back in the dark, loamy comfort of his cell. I want to eat bread and drink amber and see my friends. A ransom had no other desires, no other privileges. Standing alone beneath the vast sky, trapped inside a veritable oven, the absence of those comforts struck him as a blow mightier than any the priors could strike.
He pressed his shoulders to the stone. The rock was warm.
I’m ready.
A ray fell across his face, and after ten years in darkness, Ren raised his head, opened his eyes, and finally saw the sun.
2
“Dear friends,” Merit Hark-Wadi said, projecting her voice across the stadium so that each person in the arena could hear her words, “people of Harkana, honored guests from Feren, on this last day of the feast, I wish each of you a good death.” The crowd applauded as she sat back down on her father’s chair. Adjusting her finely pleated dress, it occurred to her that she did not truly wish each of them a good death. After all, it was the bloody deaths that made the crowds cheer loudest.
“May you honor Sola with your presence, and Harkana with your blood,” she said as she waved to each of the combatants, her eyes lingering on a tall and powerfully built Feren warrior in silver armor. Merit settled back into her chair. The first daughter of Harkana was a woman of regal bearing and a cool, calculating gaze. She was a decade past coming into her womanhood but still a grand beauty at six and twenty, with long black hair that fell in thick ebony waves down her back, bronze skin, and full pink lips. Dressed in a dyed-blue linen so new it sweated color on her elbows and ankles, giving her elegant limbs a shadowy, bruised look, she raised one silver-bangled arm and waited—for the sounds of the crowd to die down, for a silence that she deemed sufficiently respectful of her place and position.
“Take arms and let the contest begin,” Merit said.