Chapter 8

N azar waits just outside the gates of the coliseum. He meets my shocked gaze with a raised brow, as if of course he knew we’d find our way here. He carries a heavy satchel over his arm but otherwise looks like any of the other commoners on their way to be awed and amazed by the exhibition.

Though Caleb’s fairly bursting with the news of our negotiation, he turns to me and bows. I look directly at Nazar, aware that anyone might be watching.

“It’s done,” I say, surprised at the real relief I feel, that our house is protected once more. “Ten men to the Tenth House, and enough extra horses to carry them. They’ll be ready by tomorrow, and they’re more than we’ll need, judging by their looks.”

Even as I speak, the horns sound again, marking the beginning of…something.

“Sorry, I must be going,” Caleb says, pulling off his green tunic and handing it to Nazar. “I’ll—I’ll—” He stumbles, but Nazar merely nods to him.

“Go,” the priest says, taking his tunic, as if he knows where Caleb is off to.

I don’t, of course, but Nazar says nothing more after the squire dashes off with his usual frantic energy. Instead, the priest gestures me to follow him toward a rear entrance to the coliseum. Once we climb the dozen or so stone steps to slip inside, I stare up at the huge, groaning wooden infrastructure drilled into the bedrock, shaking beneath the pounding of many feet. It’s dark back here and hung with shadows.

“What…?” I manage, but Nazar silences me with a look until he’s convinced that we’re well and truly alone.

“You can study your opponents like Merritt of the Tenth, but you can only gawk as Talia,” he says quietly, shifting his satchel closer to me and opening it. Inside, despite the gloom, I see the coils of my old hair. “This way, you can do both.”

I jerk my gaze up to him. “You want me to dress as Talia ?” I squeak, barely able to believe it. “Why?”

He surveys me with steady eyes. “Because warrior knights don’t sit in the stands. They stand on the battleground, ready to fight.”

“But I’m from the mountains,” I protest. “And the Tenth House isn’t competing this year. No one would be surprised that I’m interested in how Lord Rihad runs his tournaments.”

“It shows weakness.”

“Well, we are weak right now.” I shove the satchel away, but even through my irritation, I see his point. Merritt of the Tenth House has his own Divh, his own house to defend. He doesn’t need to be entertained with the masses like some child. But Talia…

I ball my hands into fists. “There’s no respect for women here. I expect that at home, but I thought…” I blow out a breath. “I thought it would be different in the city.”

“And now you know better. Accept what is until you change it,” Nazar says without inflection, pushing the satchel back toward me.

With a muttered curse, I give in. The gown is easy enough to swap into—a cut-down version of my travel clothes, thank the Light. But my hair…

I frown at the glistening wig, trying not to be unnerved by it. “Where’s the rest of it?”

“You’re not on your way to get married. I kept the bulk of it for later use.”

“Mmm.” Pushing away the thought of random coils of my hair sitting around our tent like serpents ready to strike, I lift the wig to my head. I pull it on tentatively, surprised at its snug fit. Then I squeak as Nazar steps up to me and yanks it roughly into place. He drags me out from beneath the stands into a sliver of sunlight, turning me this way and that. Then he nods.

“You’ll pass, and your face has healed well enough that no one will look twice. If anyone asks after you later, we can say that your experience of the great exhibition has quite overwhelmed you, and that we have decided to send you back to the Tenth House ahead of our eventual return.”

“Ohhhh…” I round my eyes and grin at him. “That’s good. Do I need paint, do you think?” I wave vaguely at my face.

“Only enough to satisfy the briefest of glances.” After rooting around in the satchel, he produces a pot and brush and hands them to me, and I do what I can in the shadows while he bundles Merritt’s clothes away. Eventually, I present myself to him, and he nods again.

“It’s enough.”

Curling my arm into his, he leads me out of the shadows and down a long corridor until we step into the sunlight once more. Then he turns, and we mount the steep stairs that take us to the spectator seating. The massive rows of stands are sturdily built, for all the groaning I heard far below. How many battles have been fought here in the past three hundred years? I’ve no idea. There is still so much— too much —I don’t know.

We jostle our way to where the crowd finally thins. Nazar sits at the edge of bench where we settle, his eyes keen on the field below. I squint to see over the mass of heads, fixing on the horses and riders far below who have already engaged in combat by the time we’re seated. “They’re too small to see.”

He snorts. “This field wasn’t meant for men.”

I frown but the battle below has become a hopeless snarl, and I can make nothing out. I lean forward, straining, and at length, Nazar sighs and fishes in his robes. He withdraws a small enameled cylinder and hands it to me. “Put it up to your eye.”

As I take it, I realize I’m not alone in my prize. Most of the wealthier spectators around us—male and female alike—have a similar tool, and I lift mine, turning it in my hand until I realize it’s a lens of glass set into a long tube. I lift the narrower end to my eye, and the scene below me leaps into crystal clarity.

“Oh,” I breathe. I can see every horse and rider, every stroke of the blade. My fingers tingle and my arm burns, which makes me sit up straighter. I’ve forgotten about the band wrapped around my bicep and am doubly glad for the heavy covering of my cloak to keep it from prying eyes.

The fight beneath us roils as more spectators flood into the stands, both on our side of the field and in the far distance where another bank of stone seats looms, now thronged with hundreds of watchers. I lift my glass toward those stands and see a constellation of glinting glasses in return. Even with all the seating, the tournament field is immense, and I sweep my glass along the crowd until another platform catches my eye.

It’s carved into the stone embankment at the midpoint of the coliseum stands, nearly two-thirds of the way to the top of the wall. Before it on the battlefield are two towers made of wood, each with a broad rooftop space accessible by a door that clearly opens onto a steep stairway inside the narrow structure. The towers stretch up to just over half the height of the observation platform, but their rooftops are empty, both of them lonely sentinels standing between the melee and the coliseum stands.

The stone overlook directly above those wooden stands isn’t empty, though. Several richly dressed noblemen crowd the space, each more pompous looking than the last. The glass makes them look as close to me as Nazar, and I gape as I take in their fine robes and heavy, jeweled belts.

One of them arrests my attention, and I stare openly. Fortiss. Standing among his retinue of men, his face stern, his gaze sweeping the crowd, he somehow manages to appear even nobler than he had on his white horse. He definitely looks more like a warrior knight than the idiot Hantor, who fought Caleb. He looks more like a warrior knight than I do too.

Beside me, Nazar notices my attention. He seems to not need a glass. “That’s the company of Lord Protector Rihad, Master of the First House, governor of the Protectorate.”

“Did you really think what Fortiss said was true?” I swing my glass to the crowd below. “That they’re going to award thirty Divhs and banded soldiers to the top house of the tournament—twelve to the winner of the winged crown alone? Caleb also says it will happen.”

“Caleb would know,” Nazar says mildly. “There are already more than a dozen such men in the First House’s barracks now, warrior knights and banded soldiers alike. To add more would make them powerful indeed.”

Caleb said as much to me already, but now I pause, considering the ramifications. Someone—another house—dispatched its soldiers to attack the Tenth House, to kill Merritt. Were we the only house struck? If our attacker is growing secretly stronger while weakening other houses, what could that mean?

Thinking of the squire brings another concern to mind. I study the seeing glass in my hand for a long moment, then I push forward. “Can we, ah, trust Caleb?”

Nazar glances at me, his expression mildly surprised. “Why? Did he handle the money improperly? Steal it?” He frowns then, growing more concerned. “Did he guide you to hire weak soldiers? He seemed well pleased with your choices.”

“No! No, nothing like that,” I say hurriedly, instantly regretting my words. Caleb has done nothing but help me. “It’s just—we don’t know him.”

“We don’t know him,” Nazar agrees, but he says nothing more. Clearly, he’s not worried, but that does nothing to assuage my own concerns.

Instead, I turn my gaze to the men on the platform. Once again, an unexpected thread of anger coils through me. My purpose here isn’t vengeance but protection…and yet, I am close— so close to whoever took Merritt’s life. Could I find that warrior? Force him to face justice?

I swallow. “Do you think it’s the First House that sent the soldiers who…?” I don’t finish the words. To even say them out loud seems sacrilege.

Nazar doesn’t respond at first, pauses so long that I don’t think he will.

When he does speak, it’s to ask me a question, not provide the answers I crave.

“Why would they do that?” The priest’s murmur is for my ear alone, and I instantly know it’s a test.

I grimace. “I don’t know , Nazar. That’s why I’m?—”

His mouth tightens, and I swallow my own hasty words. Even though I’m wearing a dress, I’m now a warrior knight, the protector of my house. There must be some reason why the priest is asking me to puzzle through the question. I sigh, then repeat what I’ve heard about these people, this place—not Nazar’s scant few days of teaching, but the snatches and songs I’ve heard from the bards over the years. It’s the only way I can think of to find the answer he seems to believe I already know.

“Lord Rihad rules the Protectorate,” I recite. “The First House is the strongest of the twelve ruling houses. Those twelve houses are in charge of the Protectorate’s security and by extension the security of the Exalted Imperium, shielding it from the threat of the Western Realms.” I shiver as I say the words. No one knows what the Imperium discovered beyond the western borders of the Protectorate that halted their most recent attempt at expansion a hundred years ago. But whatever it was, it sent the imperial army all the way back to its capital city, ostensibly to rearm. They never returned. As it has for the last three hundred years, the Protectorate remained in place after the army’s departure, our mighty Divhs arrayed against…something. But the attack from the Western Realms never came.

“How does the Protectorate remain strong?” Nazar prompts.

“Through its houses and Divhs, and, to a lesser extent, its unbanded soldiers.” I gesture to the battle below us. According to legend, however, now gilded with three hundred years’ gloss, ordinary soldiers hadn’t saved us against whatever we encountered in the Western Realms. Only the Divhs and a dozen banded warriors had done that. “The tournaments give them an opportunity to practice for warfare, should it ever come again.” By the Light, I pray it doesn’t.

“And why would a house take on another house?”

“It wouldn’t,” I say instantly.

He’s silent. I try to push on, but it’s impossible to imagine, though I’ve seen it with my own eyes. “It…can’t. It’s not of the Light.”

“We were attacked,” he reminds me, and my heart hardens anew. Merritt’s sightless stare, the dead gray arrow, so much crimson blood.

“To weaken the Protectorate overall by turning us against each other?” I finally guess. “That’s the only reason. But how can that make sense?”

A roar goes up from the crowd around us, the fighting taking on a new level of frenzy far below. I see warriors fall, their horses twisting and stampeding. Men are getting injured down there, I realize. Maybe dying. Good, strong fighters—and for what? For entertainment?

I scowl at the carnage. “The tournament is supposed to be a training ground, I thought. Not a killing field.”

Nazar doesn’t reply, and I swing my glass again to the nobles and warriors assembled on the stone platform at the center of the stands opposite me. I see a tall man dressed all in cloth of gold, looking like the Light himself. Lord Rihad, I decide. Has to be. He’s slender but conveys an implacable strength, and his left shoulder is bare, the heavy golden cloak thrown back. Not one but two sentient bands span his broad bicep, and I stare. Who can rule two Divhs? I’ve never heard of such a thing.

Fortiss stands beside the Lord Protector, and I study him again, my heart picking up speed. Something about the warrior knight draws my attention more than any other man on the platform—and they’re all men, I realize with sudden awareness, feeling the weight of my mound of hair, my heavy gown. My lips flatten in a hard line. Even if they didn’t do the deed, had Rihad and Fortiss ordered the killing of Merritt?

Even as I think it, I long to reject the idea. It would be the height of foolishness, on the eve of a tournament the First House itself was hosting, to take out a small house who poses no threat. Far more likely that it’s another house, working in the shadows. If it’s a house at all.

And yet, Fortiss was there. In the forest, wearing gold and black. Not hiding his affiliation to the First House at all.

Why was he there?

A horn blast sounds over the melee, not once but several times, and I snap my gaze back to the tournament grounds far below us.

Slowly, the men battling on the field pull apart from each other. Squires swarm forth, capturing horses whose riders have been knocked to the ground, helping men up and off the field. The area clears quickly. The other spectators lean forward in excitement, and I do as well.

Two tiny forms appear on either end of the mile-long field atop warhorses. The crowd erupts in cheers as the men race toward each other. As I strain to see more, however, I realize they’re not holding lances, spears, or blades. They merely gallop in proud splendor, their plumage flying in the wind, cloaks stretching out long and theatrically behind them. Clearly these are warrior knights. Eventually, they slow their horses to a trot, then a walk. They meet in the center of the field and turn on point to face the central platform, each of them raising a hand to the Lord Protector.

The riders dismount. One of the knights is dressed in the rich purple of the Sixth House, a major holding whose livery even I instantly recognize, whose stronghold lies in the far northwestern reaches of the Protectorate. One wears sky blue—the Fourth House, I’m almost certain. To my eye, both warriors are strong and well made, their faces aristocratic.

There’s movement at the base of the three-story-tall wooden towers that stand in front of Lord Rihad’s imposing stone perch. Doors at the base of the structures pop open, and two figures emerge, dressed in gold-and-black livery. Squires of the First House. The squires hustle out toward the knights and take the warhorses’ reins, then the warriors stride toward the towers amidst more cheers from the crowd. There is a near frenzy of anticipation building around me, and even I am up on my toes, desperate to see more.

The men pass through the doors at the base of the wooden platforms, and moments later they exit onto the rooftop platforms, facing each other. I frown. What are they doing? Beside me, Nazar remains unhelpfully silent as always, but I sense his gaze upon me, not on the men on the stands.

My attention, however, remains fixed on the warrior knights. They move to the center of the platforms. Each of them raises his right hand high in the air—then claps it to his left bicep.

An unearthly roar shakes the stands as the air snaps taut around us, and suddenly, cheers turn to startled shouts and everyone scrambles to better see the miracle before us.

I’m jostled as the crowd presses in tightly, but no one is stretching forward more eagerly than me. When I finally can see, I nearly drop Nazar’s seeing glass.

By the Light, I certainly don’t need it anymore.

On either side of the mile-long expanse before me, gargantuan creatures huff and blow, staring each other down.

Divhs.