JAVAN STOOD BESIDE the arena with the other competitors. There were about forty-five prisoners preparing to enter the ring. His heart thudded in his ears while the aristocracy filed in. Guards flanked both the prisoners and the doors, swords out in case someone decided to make a run for it while the door was open. More guards stood watch on the upper levels, making sure any prisoners who were too old or too injured from the last round of competition stayed in their cells. The bars stayed up, as they did throughout the day, but the guards pacing the halls with their swords out discouraged anyone from breaking the warden’s rules.
Javan’s blood was on fire with nervous energy. Every physical contest he’d participated in at Milisatria had been a well-ordered test with clear boundaries and the expectation that every student would obey the ironclad rules against harming one another. This, on the other hand, was utter chaos. Water monsters. Competitors who may or may not have any weapons’ training. No rules against attacking other people. And a crowd ready to bet on the outcome. There were so many ways it could all go wrong.
Panic clawed at him, a jagged pulse of fear that tore through his veins. Javan clenched and unclenched his hands, shook out his arms, and paced in the small space between each guard, to the annoyance of those closest to him.
“Will you stop? You’re making my nerves worse,” the man who couldn’t swim said. Sweat beaded his brow and collected beneath the arms of his gray tunic.
Javan shrugged as if to say he was sorry, but didn’t stop. The jagged pulse of fear twisted within him. If he stood still, it would paralyze him. He needed to be loose and limber. Fighting a horde of bloodthirsty creatures was going to test the skills he’d learned at Milisatria to their limits. Fighting them with water up to his waist while trying to avoid the other prisoners?
Nearly impossible.
As soon as the thought hit, he banished it before the panic could consume him. Nothing was impossible. Nothing. Not even the daunting task of winning a tournament when he was already hundreds of points behind and when everything in the arena with him wanted him dead. He just had to work for it harder than anyone else. And he’d spent the last ten years doing exactly that.
Pacing, he scanned the crowds as they made their way to their seats, their sashes a bright slash of beauty in the drab stone interior of the prison. So far, he didn’t see anyone, student or parent, he’d met at Milisatria, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. And if he made enough of an impression—if he drew enough attention to himself—he’d have accomplished two huge steps forward in his plan to get out of Maqbara.
He’d have gained enough points to give himself a chance at qualifying for the final round. And if he was recognized by any families who knew him from the academy, he’d have alerted them to his predicament. They could call upon the king and tell him the truth. Hope churned through him, twining with the fear until he wasn’t sure which was worse.
As the judges for the match climbed onto the narrow wall that surrounded the arena and strapped themselves to support poles to keep from falling into the combat zone, someone bumped into Javan. Hard.
He turned to find Hashim glaring at him, his lip curled in derision.
“You’re meat. I’m going to see to it personally.” The midday sunlight glaring in from the skylights above traced the white scar tissue that crisscrossed Hashim’s face.
Javan shrugged. “You’re the crowd favorite, I hear. And currently in first place. If you want to give that up by taking a five-hundred-point deduction on my behalf, who am I to argue your strategy?”
Hashim spit on Javan’s boots as a sturdily built woman dressed in black walked out onto a platform on level one. The crowd fell quiet as she raised her hands. Her iron-gray hair was pulled back into a bun, and one dark eye glared down on the arena. The other side of her face was hidden beneath a bandage.
Moving away from Hashim, Javan stood next to the non-swimmer again and asked quietly, “Who is that?”
“The warden, you fool.”
Javan’s eyes narrowed as he stared up at the woman who ran Maqbara and forced her prisoners to fight, sometimes to their deaths, for her own profit. What kind of person dealt in death and violence to line her own coffers?
The same kind of person who bought a child of five and put her to work in the middle of Akram’s most violent criminals.
He found himself hoping she’d accidentally fall into the arena.
“Welcome to the second round of this year’s tournament!” Her voice was low and gravelly. “We have forty-six competitors still in the running for the prize.”
She swept the prisoners with a glance and frowned when her eye landed on Javan. For a long moment, she glared at him, her nostrils flaring as if finding a new competitor in the group was infuriating.
Finally, she said, “It seems we have forty-seven competitors. A new prisoner has joined our ranks. If you want to take a gamble on an untried young man, we will be accepting bets for another five minutes before combat starts. Odds on the favorites are listed at the betting table.” She gestured to her left, and Javan followed her movement to see a small table set up on the platform with a short, bespectacled woman sitting behind it, her quill flying over parchment as she recorded bets and collected coin.
Turning away, Javan paced again, his knees shaky, his palms clammy. Nausea burned the back of his throat as the realization hit that he was about to get into the water with the vicious, man-size worm he’d seen in the stalls, plus a bevy of other dangerous creatures.
This wasn’t sport. It was madness. It was also the only way he could win an audience with his father and save both himself and the king.
Over by the stalls, Sajda, Tarek, Batula, and several unhappy-looking guards were standing beside cisterns and barrels of water. A long wooden chute was mounted to a pole beside them. They could pour the contents of the barrels into the end closest to them. The other end dumped the creatures straight into the water inside the arena.
Sajda met his gaze once, but her expression looked carved out of stone, and he couldn’t find a hint of worry or compassion in her eyes.
Not that he needed it from someone who’d made it clear she disliked him and had only given him advice today out of respect for her relationship with Tarek. Besides, it was time to focus. He had a combat round to win.
The warden stepped to the front of the platform again and yelled, “Betting is closed. Competitors, take your stations.”