Chapter 11

C aleb deposits me back at the tent with Nazar, who tells him that Merritt will be returning soon before sending him off for spiced nuts and honeyed mead. By the time my squire returns a second time, I have re-established myself as Merritt, my face scrubbed free of paint, my legs back in Light-blessed breeches and boots. True to his word, Caleb takes me ’round the whole of the tournament grounds, where I watch and listen almost as much as I laugh. I don’t see Fortiss again, nor the strange woman from the crowd.

I’m also no longer leered or sneered at. Not even once.

It’s an instructive night for sure.

Later, much later, I dream of laughter and spitting campfires and song; a lifetime’s worth of memories cobbled together in one night’s revelry.

By the time I awake the next morning, one of our horses, a heavily muscled gelding, has been tied closer to our camp. Caleb, when Nazar informs him it’s his, can’t stop staring at the horse—at least until Nazar gives him a brush to groom it. Then his grin splits wide, and he starts up a nonstop flow of chatter as he works, almost without drawing breath.

“Lord Rihad’s holding is the biggest castle you’ll ever see, they say, this side of the Exalted Imperium’s borders, and I believe it. Windows made of colored glass that turn sunlight into elaborate patterns, and the walls and floors cut of pure marble. And they don’t dress like this”—he gestures at our simple tunics and breeches—“for all that this material is the finest I’ve ever felt, sir, begging your pardon.”

His hasty words bring another smile to Nazar’s face. I’ve never seen the priest so tolerant, and my own doubts are chastened further. But I can’t help continuing to feel a vague disquiet about the squire, something that just seems…off.

“They wear state clothes all the time?” Nazar asks.

“To every meal and speech. And there are a lot of speeches in the Court of Talons. The Lord Protector assembles his house’s soldiers at least three times a week to remind them of their importance to the Exalted Imperium and within the Protectorate themselves. Bards are instructed to tell only the high form of the battles of the Western Realms, and they have banquets once a week, whether there’s anything to celebrate or no.”

I frown, looking up at the enormous castle on the far rise. “It costs a lot of money to host so many banquets.”

“They’ve got it, and to spare.” Caleb waves again, taking in the bustling fairgrounds. “The Tournament of Gold has already been going on for days and days. There’s money flowing freely, and you can be sure the First House gets its due. They’ve got their hands in everything, and what they don’t drive themselves, they know about, for sure.”

They’ve got their hands in everything, I think. Including who killed Merritt? Were they even now preparing an assault on the Tenth, seeking somehow to take over the farthest border house, the ancient gateway between the Protectorate and the Exalted Imperium?

But no, I follow hard upon my own words. No one considers the Tenth House a threat, regardless of the ancient role it served when the Protectorate was first created, to provide first news to the capital city of Hakkir of any threat within the Protectorate’s borders. Now the Tenth is merely a small, lonely house, out in the middle of nowhere.

The First House could roll over the Tenth if it wanted to, it’s simply too big. That’s not who was behind Merritt’s death. More likely one of the lesser, but more aggressive houses, one who felt it had something to prove.

My purpose here isn’t to root out Merritt’s killer, however. It’s to protect the Tenth.

“We need to make sure the soldiers are ready—and not too drunk to ride,” I say, renewed urgency tightening my words. “If we don’t leave today, then we leave midday tomorrow, no later.”

“Lady Talia, too?” Caleb asks, and Nazar fields that one as I blink.

“I’ve sent her to a proper inn with a small brace of men to prepare for her return to the Tenth,” he says, his voice stony enough that Caleb turns to him with wide eyes. “You did well to bring her back last night, and I thank you again for it. Something in the manner of Fortiss’s soldiers deeply distressed her.”

“Well, Rihad’s men are ass-mongers when it comes to women, everyone knows it.” Caleb shrugs his left shoulder, causing his stump to bobble. There’s barely three inches of his arm remaining, and he keeps the end carefully wrapped at all times. To lose a limb is virtually a death sentence, especially without expensive doctors at your beck and call. I can’t imagine the pain Caleb must have endured when it happened.

“All of Rihad’s soldiers live within the First House’s gates, yes?” I ask, to pull my mind away from the horror of those images. “Or do you know?”

“Oh, yes, I know that for sure. Fifty fighting men and a dozen banded soldiers, plus another six or so warrior knights,” Caleb confirms with a grin. “You don’t see ’em out here, mixing with the people, right? That’s on purpose. They have a certain status to uphold.”

“A status.”

“Not a good one. The whole lot of them are mean as snakes, not a noble-blooded warrior among them except maybe the Lord Protector’s nephew, and he’s as grim-faced as the rest of them.”

“You mean Fortiss,” I say, his face emblazoned in my memory. “Is he noble in truth? First-blooded?”

“He’s totally first-blooded, his family entwined with Rihad’s, though I’m not exactly sure how. His father died young, if I have the story right, when Fortiss was still a boy. Fortiss himself was raised by the Lord Protector, even calls him uncle, but there’s bad blood there.”

“So they’re not truly related,” I echo, while Nazar prompts, “Bad blood?”

“Absolutely. No one talks of it, which means everyone talks around it, but all these years later, there’s only whispers and dark secrets, none of it proven.”

A horn sounds in the distance, and I turn. Caleb hops up from where he’s been brushing down his new horse. The animal snorts, nudging Caleb’s good arm.

“They’re starting the pit battles,” Caleb announces eagerly, patting the gelding. He turns to me, then Nazar. “If you don’t have a need for us, Merritt should at least see that before we leave.”

I make a face, remembering this term, at least, from the bards’ tales. “Pit battles? That barbarism ended long ago, I thought.”

“They truly taught you nothing at the Tenth House, did they?” Caleb laughs. “They still call them pit battles, but you’re right, no one actually fights in pits anymore. They’re up on platforms so everyone can see—and so that the ground isn’t churned up for the real battles to come. But the fights live on—have to, to keep the flow of soldiers fresh. Accidents happen, people die. Even when there’s no war, you still want a whole company of foot soldiers on hand, if you’re smart, especially the houses like the First, where whole cities sprawl out around them. The pit battles make that easy. Everyone wants into a garrison, and this is the only way in. Once you’re in, if you don’t make banded-soldier status, it’s the only way to stay in, unless you rise to officer ranks. Gotta keep your skills sharp, after all.”

I shake my head. We have no garrison; we have no soldiers beyond our retainers, now numbering fifteen men. We should, by rights, have more defenses than the Eleventh and Twelfth House, at the least, but Father is tight with his money and tighter with his disdain of anything other than a first-blooded Divh.

I glance to Nazar, who’s cutting up a garment of deep, dark green into cloth strips. My old hooded undercloak, I realize with a start, the one specially made to cover my enormous coils of hair. Now that mass is a tidy wig of ebony braids, and my undercloak is nothing but ribbons.

I couldn’t be happier about that.

Before I can speak, the priest looks up. “Do you know how you would win in the pits, Merritt?”

“Win?” I blink at him. “I’d win by not entering them.”

My response is met with a guffaw from Caleb. “Not enter them, are you mad? If you’re a soldier and you have the chance to fight, you take it. Even as a warrior knight with nothing any longer to prove, you should be ready. You wouldn’t get beaten up again like the first time. I can show you.”

He tosses his horse brush to the folded blankets and squares off against me in the small space of our camp. Instead of rebuking him, Nazar stops his work and straightens. He watches as I jerk back, narrowly evading Caleb’s opening punch.

Irritation sparks through me. “I’m not trained to fight this way, Caleb.” In truth I’m not trained at all. Making war against posts driven into the ground only counts for so much.

“Of course you are,” he jibes. “You fight with stave and sword. What are stave and sword but extensions of your arms and fists? What are your arms and fists but extensions of your head and heart?”

His words sound so like Nazar that I glance over to the priest, who’s now regarding us both with greater interest. That glance is my undoing, as I see Caleb’s jab from the corner of my eye but can’t turn quickly enough to evade it. At the last minute, he pulls back, just tapping me lightly instead of walloping me, but I spin around anyway as he dances back.

“See? I do that with only one fist. You know how?”

“Because you’re fast.” I’m turning as well, my gaze not on his head, not on his nattering mouth, but on his stomach. That’s how you keep animals in check. Their torsos move before their legs do. If you can focus on their centers, you can capture them more quickly than if you follow their heads or their hooves.

“Not fast—well, I am fast, that’s true. But that’s not the whole of it. The whole of it is that I keep my center tight until I decide how to move.”

I smile with satisfaction. His trick isn’t so much a trick after all. He twitches to the left, and though his legs seem to angle right, I follow his body and attack his right shoulder, shoving him hard.

He breaks back quickly, too quickly, and I stumble forward, turning the fall into a somersault as he also regains his feet.

“Second mistake. You went for my strength, not my clear weakness.” He shrugs his left shoulder, his stump moving in its shortened sleeve. “I’ve gotten used to this, but no one else has. It’s a misdirection.”

He shrugs again, and my heart twists, but in that moment, he barrels forward, his head down, his body leading with his injured arm. Unsure how to move, I falter, and a moment later, I’m on my back, the wind knocked out of me.

“Ha!” Caleb leaps off me and holds out his right hand. “Be glad I don’t have two stumps, or you’d already be dead.”

I let him pull me to my feet, but I can’t help the grin. “Have you been this obnoxious your whole life? Or merely since your injury?” It’s the first time I’ve broached the subject of his arm, and the blood rushes to my cheeks even as I lean down to dust myself off.

Fortunately, Caleb seems unfazed. “I’ll let you guess the answer to that.” He bows to Nazar as I straighten. But Nazar’s gaze is on me, not Caleb.

“Remember the truth of what you said to me,” he says. “Don’t enter the pits. It’s not your place.”

My place? I squint at him, then turn to meet Caleb’s wide eyes. “What are you staring at?”

“Nothing—nothing.” Caleb grins, his gaze shooting from me to Nazar. “The fights will be starting soon. We should go!”

Despite his excitement, Caleb picks his way almost casually through the crowds of the tournament fair, giving me the opportunity to look around more thoroughly. There are more women, I notice at once. Both old and very young, though not many my age. They’re setting up makeshift camps and stalls, selling everything from food to tools to decorative trappings for horses and armor. Weaving among the stalls are the tariff takers as well, easily identified by their gold-and-black sashes.

Gold and black. The colors of the First House. The Lord Protector does have his hand in everything, it seems.

“What happens if the tariff takers find someone who’s operating without paying their charge?” I ask as we turn into a thicker knot of people. The closer we get to the towering spectator stands, the more excitement hangs in the air.

“Doesn’t happen much,” Caleb says. “First time they run across a cheat, they shave his head and brand his scalp, then parade him around the field. Doesn’t happen at all after that, not in any organized way. There’s always someone looking to cut, cut, and cut the system, but the system only has to cut back once and you’re done.”

I nod. “And the tournaments always bring in all these people?”

“Like this big?” He rubs his face, considering. “The stands alone hold five thousand or so, but there’re thousands more that throng to the Tournament of Gold, here more for the spectacle of people and goods and food than the fighting. And that’s besides the people who actually live here year-round.”

Thousands more? “Where do they all come from?” I ask, aghast.

“The closer houses, mostly. The Second for sure, the Fourth and Seventh. The Fifth, too. Not so much the Eighth. The holdings of all those houses span the plains of the Protectorate, and everyone who can spare the time comes to the Tournament of Gold at least once in their lifetime. Some come every year.” He scratched his chin, looking around. “Still, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it this big. The last tournament to be close was three years ago. That one was big but nothing like this.” His smile turns rueful, and I catch the undercurrent of his words.

“You were here?”

“I was here.”

He ducks his head and reaches for my hand, pulling me into a thicker knot of people. “We’ll never get there if we keep following this crowd. This way is shorter.”

I grimace as he threads his way behind a series of tents. A small canal trails below, and the water stinks of rotten vegetables. I squint down the length of it, and Caleb tugs me on. “Canal system starts farther up the mountain, with snow runoff. They say the cisterns beneath the First House are epic—that there used to be a whole network of aquifers through here, back when this plain flooded on a regular basis. As it is, we still get enough. Water dumps through here and eventually makes its way to Murky Creek, which feeds into the Grand Garrapy River. The few weeks of wear the canal gets from the tournament it can handle, but it helps if we get rain.”

The skies stretch out above us, cloudless. “So, this is going to get worse before it gets better,” I say.

“A lot worse. But it’s still quicker to cut through this way.”

He’s right about that. We climb out of the trench a few minutes later, and I realize we’re right behind the coliseum. There’s no one entering through this archway, which leads to a steep set of steps. “Where is everyone?”

“Not here. The pits are all ground level—well, not really pits, like I say. But cordoned-off fight zones. These stands were carved to watch the Divhs, not the fighters. Much easier to be on the ground for the pit fights. Lots more to see.”

As if to reinforce his words, a cheer sounds dead ahead, and Caleb darts off toward another door. I find myself staring high at the immense coliseum walls. “They use this only once a year?”

“Yes, but it’s maintained the whole year through,” Caleb says, his gaze also going up, though for just a moment. “Otherwise, they run the risk of animals and squatters, which creates its own problems. Can’t have a bunch of squatters here. Men with no good work to sustain them, and the women! Can you imagine a hundred or so of those, all of ‘em with squalling babies, cooking and making a mess of everything? It’d stink to the sky inside of two weeks.”

The comment is so off-handed, so casually disdainful, it nearly takes my breath away. “I hardly think—” I begin, but in truth I don’t know what to say. How would Merritt respond to such a comment? Is this how my brother spoke with the other boys?

Caleb’s now several steps ahead of me, and he shouts back excitedly. “Come on then! Here we are.”

Before I can stop him, he races down a short corridor, where we have the briefest respite of darkness. Then suddenly we’re out into the wide-open tournament field, filled with fighting men.

And it’s madness.