They watched each other in silence while far below the sound of the door that led to the magistrate’s office slammed shut behind the last guard.
Finally, she said quietly, “We have a deal. But you have to listen to my advice this time. And you have to give me my first lesson within the next three weeks.”
“Yes. Anything. That’s . . . Thank you. Truly.” He paused. “Wait . . . what happens in three weeks?”
“The next tournament round. It’s going to take us a while to procure the next group of beasts and get the arena set up. I want to learn about the stars first. In case nearly dead turns into actually dead.”
“I do love your optimism,” he said, his voice shaky at the edges as relief swept through him. “Thank you.”
“Tarek will bring you meals so you can avoid Hashim in the kitchen. He and his friends are on level five and are separated from you during chore and practice hours, so don’t stray from where you’re supposed to be unless I personally come to get you. We’ll see if we can figure out at least four other competitors who can be bribed into liking you enough to be your allies during rec hour and in the arena.”
He opened his mouth to thank her again, but she was already walking away.
Holding on to fragile strands of hope that felt as tenuous as a rope made of water, he crawled into bed and prayed until sleep claimed him.
TWENTY
THE PRISON HAD long since fallen silent when Sajda crept from her room, closing the door quietly behind her.
Her body trembled with fatigue, but she couldn’t bear to sleep yet. The remains of the creatures from the day’s combat had been skinned, chopped, and turned into meals for either the remaining beasts or the prisoners. New monsters had been commissioned from the bounty hunters on Llorenyae. She’d scrubbed some of the arena floor and dragged the bodies of those who’d died to the center of the arena for the warden to deal with in the morning. And of course she’d lost her mind and defended Javan and then agreed to help him gain allies.
She wasn’t sure she’d made a good decision. She’d spent the last two years ignoring Hashim’s speculative gaze and disgusting suggestions. Shrugging off his questions about why the warden made her wear cuffs. Keeping him in line through an occasional show of power and the composure she borrowed from the prison’s stone. She didn’t need him to decide she was his enemy.
His eyes already lingered on the runes carved into her iron cuffs. Some days he stared so hard at her while the magic was stinging her blood that she feared the power trapped within her was branded on her skin. She’d met prisoners like him before, and it always ended the same. A confrontation far away from the guards and the warden. A show of dominance and aggression that required her to call on her elven speed and strength just to survive.
She’d endured it all. Years and years of whispers and stares. Of offers and threats. Of violence spilling over, outside the arena.
She’d survived.
And she’d keep on surviving until she could learn how to survive in the outside world too. How to get the cuffs off.
How to escape, not just Maqbara but any hint of the slave she’d been.
Her boots didn’t make a sound against the stone floor of level five as she crept past the cells, circling the arena below until she came to the staircase that was nearly opposite her little room. Moonlight drifted in through the skylights above and gleamed against the iron bars of the cells. Sliding into the narrow staircase, Sajda listened carefully.
The quiet snores of prisoners. The faint whisper of the desert wind scouring the ground far above her. But no footsteps. No warden hunting for a prisoner who’d failed to return to his or her cell at twelfth bell.
Satisfied that she was alone, Sajda climbed the steps, pausing at the landing on each level to listen for footsteps. When she reached level fifteen, she turned left and moved silently down the line of cells, many of which stood empty, waiting for new prisoners to be swallowed by the dark depths of the prison. She paused briefly beside Javan’s cell, though he was nothing but a dim outline beneath the blanket on his bed, before moving on. The aristocrat who claimed to be the true prince might be able to help her learn how to survive outside Maqbara, but his belief that she could somehow help him survive the next three rounds of competition was optimistic bordering on foolish. Maqbara crushed the innocent and the good. He’d be no different.
Still, she hadn’t turned him down. Even though it meant declaring war with Hashim. Tarek was the closest thing to family she had, and he rarely asked her for anything. She hadn’t had the heart to tell him the pretty aristocrat with the earnest sense of honor and duty was beyond saving.
At the opposite end of the landing, she came to a small supply closet whose door stood permanently ajar, one broken hinge hanging askew. A few empty buckets, a mop, and several dusty chests filled with old bedding lined one wall. The ceiling had a deep crack running across it, a fissure just a few handspans wider than Sajda’s waist. The walls were stained with water that had leaked into the prison during the last monsoon season, and small eddies of dirt covered the floor.
Sajda entered the room and dragged the door as close to shut as it would go. Then she pulled one of the chests into the center of the floor, careful to move slowly to avoid the scrape of wood sliding over stone. Another long minute of listening to be sure no one was coming to discover her, and then she climbed onto the top of the chest, crouched, and leaped for the crack in the ceiling.
Grabbing the edges of the crack, she swung her body up and through, keeping her head low to avoid banging it on the enormous support beam that helped keep the city above from crashing into the prison below. The first time she’d tried crawling into the ceiling, she’d been nine, and even with her magic giving her strength, she’d had to stack two chests on top of each other to make the leap possible. She’d been so sure she could find a way out of Maqbara and into the world above if she followed the support beams long enough. If she explored hard enough.
She hadn’t found a way out.
But she’d found something almost as good, and it had sustained her through hundreds of lonely nights.
Crawling out from under the support beam, Sajda half stood half crouched to avoid hitting her head and began moving swiftly toward the far corner of the prison. Dipping her hand into her pocket, she took out the rock fragments from the morning’s tunnel excavation and let them fall to the floor where they’d never be noticed. The darkness here in the upper recesses of the prison was impossible for a human to navigate without a torch.