Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

Keera

M y saber weighed heavy against my sweaty palm in the afternoon sun, the feeling of the grip foreign in a way that set my teeth on edge. In a few short months, I had already gotten used to the saber I trained with for the guard, and the blunted standard issue version passed out for the next challenge of the Trials brought me a sense of discomfort, the balance just off.

Still, I was glad this challenge would not involve drugging me and leaving me to die in the desert, instead providing me with an opponent I could face with a weapon in hand. I remained unsure of just how I had made it back to the city alive, although perhaps it was because a chunk of time was missing from my memory as I wandered in a fevered fugue. Whatever had caused my illness had worked its way from my system though, and I had woke up shivering and nowhere near the spring in the dead of night.

Neven and Aderyn had insisted I see a healer when I returned to the city, but they found nothing wrong with me outside of exhaustion and dehydration. It was nothing that a few days of rest between events couldn’t fix. Neven credited my miraculous recovery from my illness to the desert’s favor. I wasn’t so sure.

Now, I pulled my hood higher over my head to protect my face from the sun beating down from above. The searing brightness could be used as an advantage against my opponents if I positioned myself right, and I thanked the sands for the line of black paint Neven drew across my eyes before I reported to the encampment for the competition. It would absorb the worst of the sun’s rays.

The last of the competitors filed into the large, flattened area, marked off for the fight and surrounded by spectators. The herd had been thinned considerably, but I estimated about fifty competitors filled the arena.

A hush fell over the crowd as Queen Ginevra climbed the steps to the temporary dais at the far end of the arena.

“We challenge all the remaining competitors to a melee. Those who are hit should leave the arena. The last sixteen participants will move onto the remainder of the competition,” she proclaimed grandly, raising her arms. Light glanced and scattered off a series of gold bangles at her wrists. “Fight honorably and bravely with the spirit of the desert.”

The fighters all shifted on their feet, hefting weapons and sizing each other up out of the corners of our eyes. Sixteen competitors remaining would mean it was time for the final duels. While I was squarely in the middle height wise, most of the competition still outmatched me in muscle, even with me eating Aderyn and Neven out of house and home for several months.

As the judges positioned themselves at regular intervals around the edges of the arena, spectators crowded in close, jostling against each other for the best few. Coin purses jingled with people placing the occasional bet on who would emerge victorious.

I raised my saber in a ready position above my head, point facing forward with my free hand extended in front of me. The competitors took a collective breath, followed by a stretched moment of stillness.

Clang.

Queen Ginevra rang the gong, and I sprang into action. Immediately, the clash of blunted steel and grunts of exertion filled the air, punctuated by the occasional yelp. My first lunge carried me into a fighter with a blue hood at a speed that surprised even me. He moved to parry my swing, but I ducked the tip of my sword beneath his blade and caught him squarely in the breastbone .

He clutched his chest with a soft oomph as the air rushed out of him. He raised his other hand in surrender, but I didn’t wait to watch him leave the arena. Turning to the next opponent, I swung before I even zeroed in on my target.

My limbs moved of their own accord, my dissatisfaction with my weapon completely forgotten. While both the forms and sword drills had come to me more easily than my general fitness, the feeling of muscle memory that wasn’t mine grew as I fought. Perhaps fueled by adrenaline, or the freedom of my first time fighting with true abandon, my mind grew fuzzy as I landed blow after blow. A feeling of static; the sound of wind whispering through the dunes filled my head as I nearly slipped out of my body.

I watched my arms swinging my sword with more force than I knew I could muster, slapping one opponent upside the head before hitting one behind her knee, causing her to crumple to the ground. The rushing feeling in my head threatened to overwhelm me, dragging my ability to think coherently under, panic rising as my breath came faster.

Not again, I couldn’t lose—

Before I could finish my thought, my gaze caught on the flash of light off a blade. A dirk tucked behind a man’s back, glinted menacingly, certainly not dulled like the rest of the competitors’ weapons. I jolted at the sudden danger, the sight of the dirk pulling me from my fugue. He approached a tight knot of fighters, all gathered around a dark figure cutting a shadowy splash across the sun-bleached landscape.

The Viper faced off against a half dozen fighters, all coming at him together. Despite them teaming up against them, he held them off admirably, parrying an overhead strike from a fighter to his right while stepping back to avoid the blow from a man directly in front of him.

The man with the dirk tucked behind him approached from his unguarded left side. I lurched forward, feet pounding across the sunbaked earth without my direction. The sun glinted off the sharpened blade as the man raised it overhead.

With a clang, it flew out of his hand, spinning through the air before burying itself sharpened point first in the trampled ground. My saber swept through the air from where it had knocked the blade out of his hand to catch the would-be cheater in the shoulder, a blow that would have taken his arm off if my weapon weren’t blunted.

The Viper’s head snapped in my direction, and I caught the briefest glimpse of wide metallic eyes before I spun back to the fight at hand. Between the two of us, the remaining fighters in this knot of combat were taken out quickly.

He eliminated nearly twice as many as me, but soon, the combat around us had thinned enough that our attention drew toward each other. As fiercely as I had leaped at other competitors, I backed off a step, circling around the Viper cautiously. He needed to be eliminated for the sake of Kelvadan, but the speed at which he had dispatched his other enemies left me hesitant. Doubt creeped into the edges of my mind. He was the superior saber fighter.

To my surprise, the Viper didn’t circle at all or advance, instead standing perfectly still with his blade in a forward guard. It might have made me think he was unprepared to block a sudden blow, but my mind rang with alarm bells. A Viper could strike with no warning.

I debated trying to take him off guard with an uppercut from my off hand but dashed that idea. He seemed like the type who had thrown enough mad-cap right hooks in his life to see it coming.

Sensing my hesitation, the Viper cocked his head to the side, and with a deliberate motion raised a hand to crook a finger at me. A deliberate challenge.

My blood boiled and a snarl ripped from my throat. I crouched ready to spring forward sword first.

The gong rang out across the arena, and all fighters raised their hands in unison, blunted sabers falling to the ground in a clatter. The set number of fighters had been eliminated, and the melee was over.

My breath came in quick pants, and I ripped my gaze from the Viper’s expressionless mask to the raised platform where the gong rested. I blinked, finding Queen Ginevra already descending the steps and approaching the line of stones that marked the edge of the arena.

She picked between the fighters who deferentially made way for her. At first, I thought she was heading toward me, and I shrunk back. Perhaps she was going to berate me for not taking the opportunity to eliminate the biggest threat to Kelvadan from the Trials. I wouldn’t blame her, and she didn’t even know how I had pulled him from the sinking sands.

Her course turned to the side though, and she approached an open patch of ground, marked by the dirk I had knocked from a fighter’s hand. She plucked it from the sand, and all the remaining fighters in the area remained preternaturally still as she examined it.

She ran her finger across the edge, and we collectively hissed as a line of red marked her flesh. Blood welled and dripped to the sands at her feet, soaking the gold to a deep crimson.

The blade had been intended to end a life during this melee.

The queen grabbed her skirt, wrapping her hand in the fine linen, seemingly unperturbed by the stain the blood would leave on the pale green fabric. With the other hand, she pointed the offending blade at the at the competitor who had wielded it, standing at the edge of the arena with the rest of the eliminated fighters. He clutched his shoulder where I had struck it, and I tamped down the odd swell of pride that filled me at the sight.

“Seize him. He has violated the sacred agreement of the Trials and tried to unfairly injure a competitor.”

City guards rushed forward and grabbed him. He didn’t resist, his eyes trained somewhere over my shoulder on the battlefield. I turned to see what he stared at, only to be greeted by the retreating form of his intended target. The Viper didn’t look back, walking off the field, his broad shoulders harshly silhouetted by the afternoon sun.

I turned back in time to see the Kelvadan guards wrenching the fighter around, his hood falling from his face in the process and revealing a stony expression. His gaze held no trace of remorse, only defiance as he was turned away toward the city walls.

“Keera.”

I started, heart leaping into my throat as the queen said my name.

“Walk with me,” she instructed, already striding back toward the city as well.

I swallowed thickly as the gazes of the remaining competitors weighed heavily on me. They made my skin itch—a far cry from the invisibility that came with my life of isolation not so long ago. Still, I squared my shoulders and marched obediently after her.

I caught up with her quickly, my long strides carrying me farther than her much shorter legs. I fell into pace at her left, while Aderyn materialized at her right, a protective shadow.

We walked in silence through the city, climbing the levels to the palace at the top. Our steps echoed through the uncharacteristically empty courtyard—most of the usual inhabitants were still mingling in the encampment on the plains.

I looked up at the mounted statue, as I always did when I entered the palace, and finally placed the jolt of familiarity that shot through me. While Queen Ginevra certainly bore similarity to Kelvar, the proud cheekbones and delicate nose were the same as those of the man in the mask.

Erix.

Kelvar’s great-grandson.

I wondered if Erix ever smiled like Kelvar did, full of mischief that would have looked like arrogance if not for the softness of his eyes.

Queen Ginevra and Aderyn were almost to the palace doors, and I wrenched my eyes from the statue, lengthening my strides to catch up with them.

“Dispatch a rider to the lord of Clan Tibel. The punishment of his rider for breaking the agreement of the Trials will fall to him,” Queen Ginevera instructed Aderyn.

“You don’t wish to pass down judgement yourself?” Aderyn asked.

The queen shook her head. “Dealing out punishments that should belong to another lord would not help my case if the clans are uniting against Kelvadan. I do not seek to usurp their power, only to offer a place where the clans can put forth a united front to the rest of the world, and a safe haven to those who do not agree with clan life.”

I chewed my cheek as I remembered the words Lord Alasdar had used to whip the combined clans into a frenzy against Kelvadan. I didn’t think this soft response to a crime would ingratiate Kelvadan to those who thought the loss of the old ways was tearing the desert apart.

This conversation was between Queen Ginevra and Aderyn though, so I stayed silent. They did not keep me around for my understanding of the nuances of politics. I was a blade and a sometimes-unpredictable source of power .

“I would speak to the rider though, before he is sent back to his clan,” said the queen.

“They will have him held in the cells near the guard quarters. I will dispatch your message while you speak with him, so it will precede him to his clan.” Aderyn bowed her head with her fist on her breastbone before heading off toward the stables.

I hesitated, shuffling my feet as I debated whether I should follow Aderyn or not. I still wasn’t sure why I had been summoned.

“Come,” the queen commanded again, answering my unspoken question. Still, she didn’t speak as she led me toward area where the guards without their own homes in the city stayed.

It was only when we reached the room with the cells, and I cocked my head curiously at the wooden structures, did she speak.

“Kelvar had the foresight to make many things when he hewed this city into the mountainside, but a place to hold criminals wasn’t one of them. It turns out he was a touch optimistic.” She wore a wry smile at the thought.

Indeed, it was odd seeing wooden cells when I had become accustomed to everything from walls and stairs to benches being seamlessly integrated into the rocky city.

We walked to the end of the row where the fighter from the melee sat cross-legged. His head remained bowed as we approached.

“The Trials are supposed to be a time of unity,” she began without preamble, her voice icier than I had ever heard it. I straightened my spine at the total lack of her usual warmth.

“They were not always so.” The man still did not look up.

“It has been hundreds of years since the Trials were a fight to the death. Twenty years ago, the last time somebody tried to spill blood at the Trials, I did not tolerate it. I will not tolerate it now.” Her tone was sharp as a saber.

“And yet the one you exiled is the one who sends his snake after us now, spilling our blood so we might march on your city and restore the desert’s good will,” he ground out, finally looking up, eyes still as defiant as when he had been marched away.

“Lord Alasdar chose exile when he resorted to lethal force in his efforts to win the title of Champion,” Queen Ginevra argued .

“And now he sends the demon in a mask to bring the clans together and purge the weakness of the city that sent him into exile for his determination. The man I tried to kill, the one she stopped me from killing”—he inclined his head toward me—“is the one spilling the blood of my kin. Yet you would deny me my justice.”

“You say I was wrong to exile Alasdar and call me weak for punishing murder. Yet you also seek to kill the one who serves Lord Alasdar,” the queen pointed out.

“You can both be wrong,” he said with a shrug. “Besides, I’m not the first one to attempt murder in these Trials.”

The queen took a step forward, and for all her posture appeared calm, her knuckles whitened as she clasped her hands tightly with each other. “Who is interfering with the Trials? Tell me and I will urge your lord to be lenient.”

The prisoner ignored her, his attention swinging toward me instead. I raised my chin against his casual perusal.

“I’m surprised to see you made it back from the survival challenge.”

I stiffened, pieces clicking together in my head.

“You… you poisoned me!” I accused.

He had the gall to smile. “I was too busy trying to kill the Viper to worry about you, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t offered a great price to see that you didn’t make it back to the city alive. I’m sure somebody else took it.”

“Who asked you to do this?” The queen’s voice was sharp enough to cut stone, but the man just leered.

“And why would I tell you?”

“To uphold the tradition of the Trials, the Ballan Desert’s most sacred tradition,” the queen said imperiously.

“The desert’s most sacred tradition is spilling blood, and you are too much of a coward to do so even when it would save us a war. Kill the Viper, and Lord Alasdar and the clans who wish to march against Kelvadan will be crippled.”

The queen shifted next to me, and a moment of silence echoed through the stone room. Her lack of response weighed heavy, settling like a blanket over us.

“You will be allowed to return to Clan Tibel, but your lord will be informed of your actions. He will decide your punishment, whether it is to be exile or worse,” she finally said, her voice dangerous and soft.

I suppressed a flinch at the thought of his exile. It was not a fate I wished on any.

At this, the man’s stony fa?ade shattered, and he tipped his head back and laughed. “You think I will be punished for trying to kill the Viper? When he is the one responsible for the death of Lord Einil of Clan Ratan, my lord’s cousin.” The fighter shook his head with a broad smile that did not reach his eyes. “His only disappointment will be that I did not succeed.”

“You will be escorted from the city and beyond the encampment by the guard. If you should try to return, they will use all necessary force to stop you,” Queen Ginevra declared. With that she turned on her heel and strode away in a swirl of green linen.

I stood stunned for a moment, head swirling, before my mind caught up with my body, and I turned after her. I chanced one glance behind me before leaving the room, but the man was back to staring at his lap, sitting just as he had when he entered.

The queen stormed up the stairs, clearly angry but somehow managing to maintain her dignity in the process. It wasn’t until we stopped on a balcony overlooking the city and the encampment beyond that I cleared my throat.

“What did you want me for?”

Queen Ginevra sighed, leaning her forearms on the railing. For the first time, the silvery hairs at her temple made her look weary.

“You saved a man’s life today,” she answered.

I stayed silent, but she didn’t continue, so I thought she might be waiting for a response.

“I would have done it for anybody.” For some reason, I bit back the admission that I had saved his life in the team challenge as well. Then I would have to dissect why I kept going out of my way to save a man who was supposed to be my mortal enemy.

“But it wasn’t just anybody. He is your greatest enemy in the Trials and to Kelvadan.”

I clasped my hands tightly behind my back, waiting to see where she was going with her speech .

Queen Ginevra looked me over carefully “You would have good reason to want him dead, and I must thank you twice over for not letting him be killed.” She took a deep breath as if to plunge headfirst into a pit of sinking sand. “I’ve never told you about my son.”

I blinked, but apparently my expression didn’t convey adequate surprise to convince her of my ignorance.

“You knew?”

“I’d heard you had a child,” I admitted.

“He died—or at least we thought he had—ten years ago. He was… troubled. So intensely powerful that we feared he would suffer from the same madness as Kelvar. Even as a baby he was hard to calm, a whirlwind of emotion in human skin. We tried our best to help suppress his power, but the desert spoke to him so strongly, he lost control often. One night, he snuck out of the city and wandered into the desert. We searched and searched, but never found him. We assumed he faced the same fate as his great-grandfather.

“But I then I heard his voice behind that mask, and it was like seeing a ghost. I’ve prided myself on my diplomacy my whole life, and for the first time, I’ve been disarmed by my opponent.”

“I’m sorry.” It was a horrible thing to say, but it was the only thing there was. After so many years with only myself to talk to, poignant sentiments were beyond me. I could only hope to help through action.

“And I’m sorry to saddle you with this burden, knowing you will likely have to face him in the duels.” For the first time ever, the queen looked tired. A few hairs in her perfectly braided crown slipped out as she scratched her head, and something heavy and uncertain settled in the pit of my stomach.

As the Trials went on, the simple charge of emerging victorious became more fraught. It reminded me of my apparent brush with death in the survival challenge.

I cleared my throat. “When we were stranded in the desert…”

The queen’s gaze sharpened—the heart-aching exhaustion was gone, only to be replaced with the fierce political observation once more. “Somebody tried to kill you?”

“I thought I had an adverse reaction to the drug that was used on us, but the rider of Clan Tibel’s words make me think that I was poisoned,” I admitted. “I fell ill after I drank from a spring.”

“Was anybody nearby that could have poisoned it?”

My heart skipped. “Axlan of Clan Tibel. He pointed me toward the water when we happened on each other.”

The queen summoned a guard.

“Find Axlan, and bring him here.”

I shot to my feet when a commotion sounded at the entrance to the terrace where the queen and I sat drinking lyra tea, rejoined by Aderyn who was not partaking. The reason for the noise became clear as four guards dragged not one, but two struggling figures before us.

My mouth fell open, but the queen beat me to the gasp of recognition.

“Hadeon?”

Gone were the dancing eyes of the man who had urged me to dance at the feast almost a week earlier. Instead, the expression that met me was the calculating gaze of a man appraising a horse.

“We found the two of them meeting together in Hadeon’s quarters,” one of the guards explained. “They had this.”

A second guard stepped forward and presented Aderyn with a vial filled with a viscous black liquid. Aderyn popped the cork off and took a delicate sniff before drawing back and blinking rapidly.

“Pit viper venom.” Aderyn’s tone was grim. “It would cause the bleeding Keera described when she returned.”

I whirled back toward Axlan and Hadeon, the former of which at least had the decency to look ashamed. Fury boiled in my veins, and if not for the lyra leaf tea I had just finished, my magic would surely be bubbling up beneath my skin. As it was, it frothed discontentedly in my belly. It didn’t matter that I was too angry to speak though, as the queen stood from her chair. No matter that she was the shortest in the group, everybody shrunk back a step.

“You come here as ambassador and enjoy my hospitality, only to turn and interfere with one of my land’s most honored traditions? Even when you knew what rested on Keera emerging as Champion?” she demanded.

Axlan shrank back but Hadeon stood tall.

“It was your mistake admitting that Kelvadan might fall if the Viper were to win the Trials,” Hadeon commented as if discussing the weather and not the fate of the entire desert. “It was too good of an opportunity to pass up, when all it would take was a subtle push to set the fall of your Great City into motion.”

“Opportunity?” I spluttered finding my voice again.

He leveled me with a gaze full of condescension. “For two hundred years, Kelvadan has stood between the rest of the world and the desert. This city is the one entrance point that would need to be overcome for Doran to invade through the mountains. With the city gone and all the clans fighting for themselves it would be all too easy for our armies to march in and take what we want by force: the horses of the Ballan Desert.”

This time, it was Aderyn who cut in, her voice dangerously calm. “You think it would be so easy to subdue the clans?”

“Nothing but ragtag savages with swords,” Hadeon sneered.

“I thought you were on my side,” I snarled. All his talk of how he wanted to be friends with next Champion of the Desert. The feeling of his hands on my skin, one of the first times I had allowed even a casual touch on the arm. The golden armband he gifted me.

“A means to an end.” Hadeon shrugged and my skin crawled. “I had hoped that I could charm my way into your bed where I could knife you quietly in your sleep without having to get anybody else involved. Due to unforeseen interruptions, I had to recruit some help.”

I swallowed bile. This marked twice that a man had shown romantic interest in me since I arrived at the city. Instead of feeling desired, or like I belonged though, I just felt sick. Dryden’s interest had abruptly ended when the truth of my power had been exposed. Hadeon had only feigned interest in me for my power. Either way, the magic that I couldn’t control defined me.

“And Axlan, why would you agree to violate the peace of the Trials?” Queen Ginevra demanded .

Axlan’s eyes flicked back and forth between the queen and me. I stared him down with all the rage that simmered below my breastbone.

“He offered me a place in Doran—a way out of the desert.” Axlan’s voice was halting but did not shake. “No matter the outcome of the Trials, the desert shudders at the seams. I was there when a bone spider attacked my clan. We will not survive if we stay in the desert, and I have no desire to die to a creature of legend.”

My heart sank. A bone spider. The desert had moved beyond sandstorms and thinning herds. Now, creatures that had not been seen since the desert had been crossed were rising again.

“Well,” the queen said tersely, “you shall both get your wish. You are to depart for Doran immediately.”

Axlan’s eyes widened. “I am not going to be punished?”

“This is your punishment. You wanted to leave the desert, and so you will never see it again. You are stripped of your clan and your horse.”

The moment the weight of his choice hit him, Axlan’s face crumpled. The desert was harsh, but it was home, and to those who rode with a clan, their horse was their life.

The guards began to pull the men away, ready to send them on a perilous journey through the mountains. Before he was dragged away, Hadeon managed to sneer, “Doran will be watching, and we will be waiting for the desert to fall.”

As the group retreated into the palace, Aderyn released a long breath. “Are you sure we should let them go?”

“I’m sure of very little anymore.” The queen shook her head. “But imprisoning or executing an ambassador is asking for a war we cannot afford right now. Keeping the Trials fair so Keera can become Champion is still our best hope for peace.”

They turned to look at me, and my pulse pounded harder than Daiti’s hooves against baked earth.

“After all, you’re almost there. Only one more challenge faces you before the duels.”