A hay trough, roughly the length of Sajda’s legs and the height of her waist, rested against the far wall. Sajda pushed it aside. Dust fell from the opening behind it. Ducking, she crawled through a tunnel that was only slightly wider than she was. After several paces, the tunnel opened up enough to allow her to crouch. She’d hollowed out a space nearly as big as her room with the idea that if the prisoners ever turned on her, she’d have a place to hide, though hiding wasn’t her goal. Escaping was.
Moving through the hollowed space, she reached the back where another tunnel was burrowing through the stone. It wasn’t much—she couldn’t even fit her entire body in it yet—but it was a start. One day, it would lead all the way out of Maqbara, up through the bedrock, and into the open air of the city itself.
Pressing her lips together to keep the dust from getting in her mouth, Sajda began swinging the ax. Bits of rock chipped away, falling into a heap as she painstakingly scraped another thin layer off the back of the tunnel.
Sweat dotted her brow as she finished what she could for the day. Hurriedly scraping the rock shavings into her hand, she stuffed them into her pants’ pocket and left the tunnel. She pushed the trough back in place, hid the ax, and left the stall. She was swinging the door closed when a voice from her right said, “Busy morning, eh, little one?”
Sajda spun, her fists clenched, magic itching in her blood. A short, stocky man with salt-and-pepper hair, a bushy beard, and kind eyes stood two stalls away, his left hand rubbing the arthritic knuckles on his right.
“Tarek, you startled me.” Sajda’s voice was low and calm, though magic still sparked along her skin, painful little nips that burned like ice. She stalked past him and placed an open palm against the stone wall beside the entrance to the stalls to steady herself. Drawing in the solid, immovable strength of the rock—a trick she’d learned by accident her first week in the prison when, overwhelmed with fear and loneliness, she’d pressed herself against the wall and wished for its strength to become her own. She’d been shocked when the stone had obeyed.
Now, her pulse slowed, and the painful prickle of magic mixed with the essence of the rock and became a cold, unyielding calm encasing her like armor. Pain seared the skin beneath her cuffs and then subsided. Keeping her voice soft, she said, “I’ve warned you not to sneak up on me.”
His smile revealed a missing front tooth—courtesy of the one and only stint he’d done in the arena eight years ago. “Sorry, little one. Thought you would’ve seen me. Must have been lost in your own thoughts again.”
“I could’ve hurt you.”
Tarek’s smile gentled as he handed her an orange from the prison’s kitchen. “You’d never hurt me.”
“Not on purpose.” Sajda stood beside the older man. “Where’s your breakfast?”
“Cook wasn’t finished with the porridge yet. I’ll go back up in a bit and get some.”
Sajda frowned. “Make it quick. I have to feed the beasts, and I don’t like you going to the kitchen when the other prisoners are there unless I can go with you.”
He patted her on the shoulder. “Nobody cares to bother an old man like me.”
“Not if they know what’s good for them. Is Batula here yet?” Sajda asked.
“On her way.”
“Good.” Sajda tore into her orange and devoured the slices quickly. Within moments, Batula stood outside the stalls, her hands sheathed in leather gloves. Sajda had long since given up trying to guess how old she was. Maybe forty. Maybe eighty. Her golden skin was leathery and sagged along the edges, but her eyes were clear and she was strong enough to help Sajda wrestle the creatures into the arena. She’d lived in the prison since before Sajda’s arrival, and Sajda had never figured out if, like Tarek, Batula was a prisoner the warden was using for her own purposes, or if she owned Batula like she owned Sajda.
“Hurry along, now.” Batula gestured toward the sacks of food that lined the wall beside the stalls. “These beasties won’t feed themselves.” Batula reached for the crank on the wall that operated the pulley system for the cell doors. “Guards in place?”
Tarek craned his neck and scanned the fifteen levels above him, searching for the black-clad guards who entered the prison at dawn and left at dusk once the cell doors were back in place. “Guards are at their stations,” he said as one of the guards set the first bell tolling, its mournful tone rolling through the air, fat and thick.
“Another day in paradise.” Batula cackled as she turned the crank. The harsh clicking of metallic gears catching on chains filled the air, followed by the scrape of iron bars lifting into the stone ceilings. Prisoners poured out of their cells. Most headed toward the kitchen on the ninth level, but some came straight for the arena to get a look at the beasts they might be unlucky enough to face in the afternoon.
Sajda donned a pair of leather gloves and grabbed a sack of sheep innards delivered that morning by one of the local butchers. Breathing through her mouth to avoid the worst of the sickly sweet scent, she opened the sack and moved to the first stall. A man-size white worm was coiled inside a cistern of water. Sajda tossed a handful of sheep guts into the cistern and shuddered as the worm’s head whipped up, its jaw stretching wide to reveal a glistening row of sharp fangs.
“I hate the water beasts the most,” she muttered to Tarek as he threw guts to a gaunt wolflike creature with red eyes and foam dripping from its muzzle. “Though I think we’re having something worse in round three—”
“What have I told you about sharing details of the upcoming combat rounds?” A thick, gravelly voice spoke from behind Sajda.
Sajda’s stoic shield of calm cracked, a tiny fissure of pressure that snaked along its surface, finding her weaknesses and burrowing in as she whirled to find the warden standing at the entrance to the stalls.
“You’re back!” Sajda reached for the indifferent composure she’d borrowed from the stone, but it disintegrated beneath the menace on the warden’s face.
The woman’s iron-gray hair was pulled back in its customary bun, and one dark eye watched her slave. The other was hidden beneath a bandage that covered nearly half her face. When she caught Sajda staring at it, she said, “It pays to watch yourself. One moment of carelessness, and the tables turn on you. Do you want me to turn on you, slave?”
Sajda froze, her magic scraping at her skin like tiny knives, her breath clogging her throat as she fought to keep her fear out of her expression. “I didn’t share the tournament details with any of the competitors. It’s just Tarek—”
“Tarek is a prisoner. A criminal. I don’t trust criminals.” The warden stepped closer to Sajda, her tone venomous, and grabbed one of the iron cuffs around Sajda’s wrist. Heat rippled along the warden’s skin, sinking into the iron and burning Sajda’s scars until she had to grit her teeth to keep from crying out. “I don’t trust you, either. But I know how to control monsters. Isn’t that right?”
Sajda nodded, magic snapping impotently at the runes that glowed with heat along her cuff.
“Did you tell anyone else what to expect in the combat rounds?” the warden asked softly while the skin beneath Sajda’s cuff burned.
“No. I—”