The contest of oratory was a quiet reprieve from the activity of the day. When it concluded, there was a rush to find something to eat and to heal those who had been injured in the duels. A greater test of strength and skill was coming. Aysulu slipped out to fetch her horse from the Darela estate, accompanied by a few of the house guards, who wore surcoats of sapphire blue. She returned, horse in tow, as the crowd applauded the last speaker.
I waited until Khalim woke on his own to get up. When I came back with food for the team, he was pacing the length of the bench restlessly.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“There are others who are hurt,” he said. “I should help them.”
Aysulu took some of the steaming, leaf-wrapped parcels from my arms and handed them out. “Better not,” she said. “Some of the Divines’ people are whispering about you healing Jahan. We can’t collaborate with another team.”
Khalim looked doubtful. “Isn’t that what we’re doing?”
“Not at all,” Garvesh argued, gesturing with a half-eaten dumpling. “It is only outside of the competition that we are working together. In the arena, we are each striving separately for the same goal.”
To me, this was not much of a distinction. And Jin had, upon realizing he could not defeat Ashoka, signaled to me that it would be my duty—surely that was some form of collaboration. I supposed it was less obvious than Khalim would be, walking from one rest area to the next, but surely by now the gods of the city at least suspected something, and had passed their knowledge on to their followers. Perhaps I should not have spoken a challenge to Ashoka as I had done.
In any case, our instructions were clear: win the Sword of Heaven. We could not do so if we were thrown out of the tournament.
“They have their own magic-workers,” I told Khalim. “You should save your strength. We have much still to do.”
He was quiet, but still restless. Something weighed on his mind. He did not offer to speak of it, so I sat beside him and we ate in silence.
Soon after, the beasts were brought to the arena. I had seen them before, on the first day of the tournament, but they were no less magnificent for their familiarity.
The arena hummed with quiet anticipation as the announcements were made. The Tribe of the Lion and Wolf would face six wolves, each half again the size of a man and bristling with coarse gray fur. The Hounds of Malang would be set against a bear, huge and long-clawed as the one I faced at the mountain stream so many months ago. Two great cats, their fangs as long as my hand, would face Jin and his team.
Behind these creatures came a rhinoceros, its horn painted in shimmering gold and its steps shaking the arena. It would be the opponent of the Golden Road. I feared for them—their team was already struggling, and had come under the ire of the Ascended once already. I worried less for House Darela, though they also were under the watchful eye of the divines, for I had seen their performances before. Their task was a giant beetle, its carapace like plates of armor and its mighty pincers as long as the weapons carried against it.
For the champions of the Ascended, there was a bull, white like the one that had been sacrificed the previous evening, and dressed in banded armor. And for us, there was the salamander: a lizard the length of a ship, with eyes burning like coals and heat escaping from its jaws in great jets of steam.
“Amazing,” Garvesh said. “I’ve been told that the menagerie is far more fantastic at this festival than it has ever been. The Ascended have scoured the four corners of the world for these creatures. It seems a shame to slay them.”
I met that salamander’s eyes and saw in them an ancient and wicked cunning. It was not a dragon, having no wings, but it was a dragon’s close kin. This would be a challenge worthy of the songs of my people. I knew not how it had been subdued—that would have been a story in itself. Surely, this was the most terrifying of all the beasts. Had the Ascended chosen it for us, as a more subtle means of removing us from the competition? I hefted my axe. They were about to be sorely disappointed.
At that moment, before the horn blew to begin the first combat, I remembered: blood on the altar. It mattered not whether the champions, ourselves or the other teams, were successful. There would be blood spilled on the sands no matter the outcome.
And blood there was, and much of it. The rhinoceros charged the merchants’ guild team, knocking into Gaius’s shield and tossing him aside. It thundered after their rider, a tall fellow I had not met. The horse panicked and threw him, and the beast trampled him into the dust. I could not hear the awful sound of his bones breaking over the noise of the astonished crowd, but I could imagine it.
Khalim stifled a gasp, both hands over his mouth, before he slipped around me and out into the arena. I reached out a hand to stop him, but he paid me no heed. He ran across the sands, a trail of dust in his wake. I followed him once more without another thought, and it was only when I was well away from the barrier separating our resting area from the arena that I realized I had no idea what I would do once I caught up to him. I heard Aysulu and Garvesh shouting after me.
Six attendants, along with several armored guards carrying long pikes, converged on the rhinoceros. It wheeled around and roared, a high, piercing sound like a scream, the gold on its horn catching the afternoon sun in a blinding flash. The unarmed attendants fell back as the soldiers came closer, forcing the creature back.
A pike darted out from the formation and lanced into the rhinoceros’s side, and it gave a low grunt of pain. The dust kicked up around it clung to the blood from its wound. It lowered its head for another charge, its wicked horn leveled at its attackers. Another pike pierced its thick hide behind its ear, and another caught its front leg. The colosseum shook as it was brought down.
I caught up to Khalim and the injured man. The glow of Khalim’s magic was almost invisible against the brightness of the day. His eyes looked blank and white. The rest of the Golden Road team still held their weapons ready, staring at him from a few feet away, quiet but for an exchange of a few whispers.
The man was so dreadfully wounded as to be unrecognizable. His limbs lay at sharp, painful angles, and his clothing was soaked through with blood. I could not tell the original color of his skin for the extent of his wounds. I turned my gaze aside before I could see the horror of his face. I could not tell if he still breathed, but I guessed he must have been—Khalim had not stopped his effort to heal him. As I watched, Khalim gently rearranged the man’s arms and legs, and with more force set his bones, and some of the rends in his flesh began to knit together.
The muffled beat of booted footsteps approached us. Gaius and his teammates stepped aside to allow the soldiers through, still staring at Khalim.
I did not trust these soldiers. I put my axe over my shoulder and placed myself in their path.
“This is outside of the decrees of the tournament. Call off your mage,” the first soldier said. He had abandoned his pike, and he rested one hand on the hilt of the sword at his hip.
I shook my head. “There might be a chance to save this man. Let him work.”
The soldier’s other hand went to his sword. “Call off your mage,” he said again.
Gaius, the Golden Road’s leader, came up beside me. He took a breath and began to speak, but a look from the soldier silenced him. Something was terribly wrong here, in addition to the horrible accident. None of the others spoke a word for their fallen friend, and they avoided my eyes and those of the soldiers.
They would not help me. I could not fight off the soldiers with their swords and pikes on my own. If I were to attack them, more forces might be brought to bear against me—the Ascended wanted blood, and they would happily take mine as well if I stood in their way.
I tried once more. “There’s no need for this man to die.”
“Enough.” The soldier drew his sword, and his companions spread out in a half-circle around me. “Remove yourselves from the arena, both of you, or we will arrest you.”
For a brief moment, I entertained the idle thought of contending with the soldiers, at least long enough for Khalim to do his work. There was no way for me to win, and we would eventually be either killed or thrown into the dungeon. Our blood would strengthen the Ascended, and our chances of winning the sword all but disappeared. Another team might be able to succeed in our stead, but without Khalim, Reva’s plans for revolution would end at the tournament’s closing ceremonies.
I held up my free hand to show I was not about to attack, and I backed away to where Khalim knelt beside the injured man.
“We need to go,” I said.
“He’s very badly hurt,” Khalim replied, not looking up. “I need more time.”
The soldiers were quietly advancing, closing off all directions of escape but the one that led back to our team.
“We don’t have time,” I told him. “Let their magic-workers care for him.”
He turned his glowing eyes on me, and I took an instinctive step back.
“They can’t do it fast enough,” he said. “He’s dying.”
He closed his eyes tight and lowered his head, shaking it sharply. When he looked up again, his eyes were their familiar soft brown. “I think I can save him. I don’t know. I have to try.”
I looked back at the soldiers. They had not closed in on us yet, but we were well within the range of their pikes. “These guards are going to arrest us if we don’t leave,” I said.
Khalim turned back to the injured man, whose breathing was now evident but slow and labored. His limbs now bent only in the usual places, but it was hard to tell under the gore how improved his condition might have been. I hoped his pain had not simply been prolonged.
“What is my purpose, if not to heal?” Khalim said.
I took my axe from my shoulder—slowly, so as not to startle the waiting soldiers—and knelt down beside him. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. But if we don’t go now, we might disappear into a dungeon. We’ll do a lot more good if we stay in the tournament.”
He extended his hands again, and I could just see his magic in the sunlight. The first soldier advanced, his blade aimed at my face.
I put one hand on Khalim’s shoulder and the other on my axe. I was not about to let any more of the Ascendeds’ followers lay even a finger on him. I got to my feet. I thought if I kept him close to me, I could get inside the reach of the pikes and contend with their leader one to one. After that, I did not have much of a plan.
But Khalim stood, and with an accusing glance at the soldiers, allowed me to lead him back to the rest area. Aysulu had her bow in one hand and her arrow in another, and put them both away as we returned.
“Is everything all right?” she asked.
I was unsure how to answer. The arena was cleared, and the next team’s challenge brought out. Khalim sat down on the dusty bench and did not speak until we were called for our match.
I did not learn what had become of the man from the Golden Road team, and we did not see him again. There were others injured in the fights with the beasts—Alaric, the leader of the Lion and Wolf, lost an eye, and Jahan’s leg was wounded a second time. The Ascended received their blood, and even I could feel the arena hum with power, like a taut string. I felt Khalim shudder beside me.
Finally, the salamander was released into the arena. It opened its maw and released a burst of flame at the cloudless blue sky. I hefted my axe, and the four of us crossed the sands to meet it.
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