Finished with everyone but Tarek, Sajda moved to his side.
“It’s all right, little one. No matter what happens now,” he said.
“Nothing about this is right.” She laid the dagger on his arm and made a tiny scratch. Enough to satisfy the warden’s eagle eye, but hopefully not enough to make him much of a target to the roc. “She’s hurting you to punish me for helping Javan.”
“You did the right thing,” he said, his eyes clear and steady as they held hers. “I love you, little one. You remember that, no matter what. Promise me.”
She swallowed hard against the swell of tears in her throat and pressed a tiny amount of grave dirt to his chest. And then before she turned away, she pulled him close, wrapping one arm around him while the other pushed the hilt of her dagger into his hand.
“Don’t die. I can’t—” Her voice broke, and she let him go. Walked away. Crossed the arena, a hollow shell full of furious magic trapped when she needed it most.
If she could get the cuffs off, she could destroy the warden. She was sure of it. She could bring the arena down on the heads of every person screaming for blood.
But she couldn’t get them off. She couldn’t do anything but follow the warden’s instructions and put all her hope in the prince who’d sworn to protect Tarek.
“Release the first crate,” she said to the guard as she walked through the gate. She met Javan’s eyes across the arena.
He gave a small nod. He was ready.
She hoped the Yl’ Haliq he always prayed to was truly on his side.
He was going to need the help.
The guard dumped the crate into the arena. Twenty large red beetles scattered, their legs scuttling over the floor while the claws on their raised front legs snapped viciously.
The competitors closest to the front of the arena began attacking the beetles as they came close, but Javan and his allies stayed still, holding their formation while they waited for the true threats to arrive.
“Release the serpents,” she said.
A second guard helped the first wrestle a large barrel into the arena. They tipped it on its side, broke the seal, and ran for the gate, closing it behind them. Long brown and yellow snakes squirmed out of the barrel. Each serpent had a head at either end, each head raised to survey the arena while their bodies writhed, sending them across the floor in sinuous, muscular movements.
Intizara hefted her battle-axes and slashed at a snake that came close to the triangle. Kali was whipping a mace overhead as one of Hashim’s crew closed in on them.
Javan stood still, his muscles tensed, his eyes slowly roving the arena, searching for a threat his allies couldn’t dispose of.
Sajda was about to give him one.
Heart pounding, magic buzzing, she said, “It’s time for the dogs.”
The garmrs were housed in the stall closest to the arena’s gate. Yesterday, she’d laced their food with a sleeping herb so that she could enter their stall, snap an iron collar and chain around each of their necks, and loop the chains through a hook outside the door.
“Get the gate open, don’t let anything out, and stay clear of their jaws,” she said, moving to the stall as the guards did her bidding. Leaping to the top of a crate she’d moved beside the stall for this moment, she grabbed the chains and unlatched the stall door.
The pack of shaggy black dogs came out snarling. Their red eyes zeroed in on her, and their lips peeled back from their fangs as they began to circle her crate. She snapped the chains against their snouts, driving them toward the floor, and then she gathered her elven strength and leaped over their heads.
She landed just outside the row of stalls, and they instantly gave chase. She couldn’t afford to put her strength or speed on display now that the crowd could see her, so she ran just fast enough to stay ahead of their foaming, snapping jaws. Skidding into the arena, the garmrs hot on her heels, she shouted, “Close the gate.”
The guards slammed the gate shut behind the pack of dogs, and Sajda ran for the side, kicking a clawfoot beetle out of her way as she went. The dogs followed her, but they were slower now, distracted by the chaos as competitors fought snakes, beetles, and one another. She scrambled up onto the waist-high wall that edged the arena and let go of the chains.
A smart competitor could use the dangling lengths of chain to help defeat the dogs. A foolish or distracted competitor might trip on the chains and find himself fighting a losing battle against the pack.
She risked a quick look at Javan and found him standing directly in front of Tarek, his swords in his hands as two of the dogs charged. Her heart felt like it was tearing itself free of its moorings—thud, thud, thud—a reverberation she could feel in her spine.
Her wrists burned, as she balanced on the wall and considered leaping to join the fight.
She couldn’t join the fight.
Not without the warden shifting into a dragon and destroying her, Tarek, and Javan. The warden knew what kind of monster she had for a slave, and she wouldn’t risk allowing Sajda to turn the tables.
The best protection Sajda could offer Javan and Tarek was to stay out of their way and do her job. Keep the warden happy. Keep the aristocrats happy. And pray to a god she wasn’t yet sure she believed in that the two people she cared about would get out alive.
Jumping off the wall, she strode toward the stalls and barked, “Bring out the reiligarda.”
The guards looked terrified as they pulled the three coffins toward the gate. Lifting the first coffin, they balanced it on the edge of the wall until Sajda said, “Dump it.”
Grave dirt and a vaguely humanlike body crashed onto the arena floor. Quickly the guards did the same with the next two coffins.
For a long moment, the pile of dirt and bodies lay still, but then it shuddered, a ripple that became more and more violent, sending grave dirt cascading across the arena floor in a swift-moving wave. Seconds later, three skeletons as black as the walls of Maqbara rose in swift, disjointed movements. Strips of rotting black grave clothes hung from their bones, and their eyes were burning black pits of rage.
“If you’re there, please help Javan. Help Tarek.” Sajda whispered the prayer and wondered if Javan’s god would hear a girl the god’s people thought would be better off dead.
The reiligarda jerked their heads toward the competitors and then moved—heads leaning forward, arms rising, hands outstretched, their legs jerking in quick strides that ate up the ground.
Sajda looked for Javan and found him bleeding profusely from a cut on the side of his head. The body of one dog lay at his feet, a chain wrapped around its throat, its tongue distended. Tarek was crouched behind Javan, dagger raised, his back against the arena wall.
Intizara was still in position, the ground around her littered with beetles and two snakes.
Kali was down, her throat torn open.