The Game: A Tale of Aradane

by Matthew Ward

  He's an age too late. The rabble surges up the stage's timbers, trampling one another in their desperation to reach the crest. They reach Selloni before he has time to turn. No weapon is drawn – they're too lost to Arlia's madness. Hands tear at his limbs, bearing him backwards. A heartbeat more, and he's lost amongst them. His screams gurgle away almost as soon as they begin, drowned out by wet, meaty thuds.

  The pressure on my arms vanishes. My escort knows the score, certainly better than his late, unlamented master. Stumbling footsteps rush away behind me. I don't even watch him go. He doesn't matter now.

  Niarr rushes forward, weapon drawn, to defend an ally already dead. The Thrakkian was never quick on the uptake. Or maybe it's his complicated honour at work again. His axe bites deep. The leading edge of the feral tide crumples in a bloody spray. But those following behind are beyond fear. Two bodies fall beneath the bite of Niarr's blurring axe. Then he too is dragged into the vengeful mass.

  "What have you done, Solomon?" Lithel Andri spins me around with strength I hadn't expected. The feathered veil can't hide her desperate eyes any more than it can block her spittle. She glances to where Arlia sits serene upon her perch. Apparently I'm not the only one who can see the Red Lady now. "What have you done, Solomon?"

  I'm not surprised Andri put everything together. Most of what I know concerning Mistress Arlia came from the Crowmarket. It's just possible there's a deeper connection I haven't made. Not that Andri seeks to share that knowledge. I barely see the stiletto move. It's a glint in the firelight, nothing more.

  The greasy crack is barely audible above the howling of the mob. Andri drops, her neck lolling at a decidedly awkward angle. Balgan snatches the stiletto from her falling hand, severs my bonds and stares mutely at me for approval. I think he's worried he overstepped our agreement.

  I pat the hulking youth on the shoulder. "No, that was exactly right."

  The truth about his father's death was all it took. Balgan doesn't need to know that he's just killed his mother. It's a poor parent who disowns a child out of loathing for their imperfections. Or perhaps it was the other half of the parentage that severed the maternal bond. Not that it matters now.

  I'm actually rather pleased about the symbolic justice. Perhaps Lumestra and I have something in common, after all.

  If Niarr's defiant roars are anything to go by, he dies harder than Selloni, but he dies all the same. The mob cheers. Hungry eyes glance in my direction.

  Arlia has abandoned her perch to walk in the mob's wake. She doesn't meet my gaze. She's lost in ecstasy. She may have stoked these fires, but now she's feeding on them.

  I had no idea she had such power. She's anarchy in a silk dress. She's everything I despise. It's no consolation that her star was in ascendance long before today. A year, at most, and she'd have subsumed her rivals without my aid. All I've done is provoke events in exchange for personal advantage and a period of stability for my beloved city.

  It's not going to be enough. Five years isn't going to be enough. I'm going to need help. Someone who understands what's at stake.

  It won't be Natilya. She's disappeared as surely as if she was never here. The self-preservation instincts of the ageless on display once again.

  That leaves Quintus. Quintus, who's watching me the way a hawk watches a rabbit – when he's not watching the mob, anyway, or flicking his gaze longingly to an exit he knows he'll never reach.

  There's a sword in his hand and a crumpled minder at his feet. The other minder is still at his side, trying and failing to replicate the captain's imperturbable expression in the face of imminent death. It doesn't exactly tax me to put the pieces together – his man on the inside, just as Balgan was mine.

  I was correct before, when I said Quintus and I were equally in the dark – which is to say nowhere near as much as Selloni and his peers believed. Despite appearances, neither of us came to this place unwillingly. Both playing the same game, if for different reasons.

  I sought to stabilise the city's underworld. Even with my guidance, it's been too fractured of late, too unpredictable. Uniting it under a guiding hand, one I could predict, that was the goal.

  Quintus wanted the same, in his way. Selloni, Niarr, Andri and Natilya all in the same place, ripe for the taking? A lawman's dream. Net the big fish, leaving the others easy pickings. It wouldn't have worked, of course. Remove the big fish, and the lesser will fight like demons for the scraps. But the goal? I can't fault that.

  "I've a hundred constables within a bell's toll of this place, my lord," Quintus growls, "but I reckon we'll be dead long before they get here, don't you?"

  The mob gives no warning. The howls come in the same moment as the screams. But this time, their fury is directed inward, upon one another. If anything, it's worse than before. It's something about the scale of the frenzy – a hundred desperate souls rending and tearing in ensorcelled madness. It's the welter of wet, ripping sounds and the stench of spilt blood. I've seen worse, but never so close.

  My stomach churns at the coppery tang. There's no art to this, no necessity. This is slaughter for its own sake. But even now I barely consider the consequences for myself. This is what Arlia will make of my city, if she's given the chance.

  It's too much for Quintus's inside man. He doubles over, something wet and unspeakable slithering from his throat. For his part, the captain looks on unflinchingly, as does Balgan – though I suspect for different reasons.

  The thrashing slows. Half the mob are lifeless upon the bloody stage. Others are twitching fitfully as the life leaves them. I have eyes only for Arlia. She's still atop her perch, lost in rapture at the slaughter she has wrought.

  Arlia only opens her eyes when the last body hits the bloody stage. She glides serenely through the fresh carnage, not sparing a glance for the ruin at her feet. The trailing ends of her skirts ripple as they touch the gore. I occurs to me they may not be cloth at all.

  She flashes a mocking smile. "Our truce begins now."

  She doesn't have to say anything else. She's made her point. She sweeps the mildewed curtains aside and is gone. Not a one of us moves to stop her. Even Balgan knows better.

  "Oh, I'm locking you up for this, my lord." Quintus bears down on me with the inevitability of an avalanche. "They'll hang you from the nearest bloody tree." There's an unfamiliar tremor to Quintus's voice. Then again, one does not look upon five-score mangled bodies without being moved by the sight.

  I contrive to look appalled. "For what, exactly?"

  Nothing's changed between us. Quintus has no proof. He doesn't even know why I was really here. Much as it twists him up inside, for all he knows I'm just another victim. Not that it'll stop him wanting someone to blame.

  He rounds on me, storm clouds gathering behind his grey eyes. "I heard every word. Fitzwalter. The Hayadra Grove. All of it."

  So the Red Lady brought Quintus into the grey world with me? In hindsight, it's obvious. Quintus and I are both agents of the Council. The terms of the truce left her unable to harm us, so she instead sets us at each other’s throats. Clever. Ambitious. But she's underestimated us, just as I underestimated her.

  I advance to within a pace of Quintus and press my wrists together, inviting shackles. "Then arrest me. Parade me through the streets. Throw me in the Pit. Hang me from the tallest tree in the city. Arlia won't give you trouble for some time yet. She'll have her hands full once word of this massacre spreads. Every racketeer and coshman of standing will be out to stake his claim now Arlia's removed their masters and mistresses. But in five years, she'll be ready. I hope you're ready too."

  A vein throbs in Quintus's cheek. I know what he's thinking. Even if he can make the charges against me stick, which is unlikely, not one of my fellow councillors will believe the rest of it. They've spent decades systematically purging magic from the Republic. They have no defence against someone like Arlia, which means they won't want to believe. Which means they won't act. Not until it's too late.

  Democra
cy is merely another word for inaction.

  Though Quintus is loathe to admit it, he needs me. Just as I need him. Because the truth is, we have something in common. That something is our ambition, and what it serves. We act not out of desire for personal gain or status, but so our city, our republic, can survive, and maybe even prosper. I may deride Quintus's methods. He may abhor mine. But today, and for the next five years, that which unites us is greater than that which divides us.

  I only hope Quintus admits as much before he strikes my head from my shoulders. Otherwise 'awkward' won't cover it.

  Quintus turns away. The sword slips from his grasp and clatters to the stage. When he speaks, it's like he's dragging the words from the very bottoms of his boots. "Get out of my sight, my lord."

  Motioning for Balgan to follow, I comply. Another game lies ahead. A game five years in the making.

  It’s time for the first move.

  About the Author

  Frequently accused of living in worlds of his own, Matthew now spends his days writing most of them down so others can visit. He lives near Nottingham with his extremely patient wife, and three attention-seeking cats.

  Keep up to date with exciting new stories, worlds and characters at: www.thetowerofstars.com

  Follow him on Twitter: @thetowerofstars

  And on Facebook: www.facebook.com/thetowerofstars

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