Ashlords

by Scott Reintgen

  It’s traditional for the loser to bow, but the Ashlords are fond of telling us they only bow to the gods. Oxanos glares around the room, then at me, before setting his jaw and walking out the front door of the bar. It’s quiet. The only sounds we hear are the door banging shut, his boots crunching in the desert dark. No one’s foolish enough to cheer or shout or celebrate, but Amaya slips a cold drink into my hand. She taps the neck of her bottle against mine and smiles.

  “Look sharp, girl. I don’t think that’s the last Ashlord you’ll have to outdance.”

  Daddy’s got us set up well before the Crossing match begins.

  His private box in Lady’s Stadium is normally the opposite of private. He’s always believed with the right drink and the right view, any man will be willing to make a deal. I’ve watched him cozy up to oil tycoons and ship builders, tobacco farmers and war veterans. I didn’t know the scope of what he was planning, but every conversation was a brick in the road to a second Rebellion. He’s been crafting his war quietly, patiently.

  Which means his final pitch is for me.

  He’s got his money, his troops, and his rebels. All he needs now is a face to put on the posters. The other seats sit empty. It’s just Antonio Rowan and Daddy, sipping their drinks and talking up the two teams below us like a game could possibly matter right now.

  “I like the kid from Panhandle,” Antonio is saying. “Fastest quickling I’ve ever seen.”

  Daddy makes a thoughtful noise. “Never seen him before.”

  “He’ll keep it interesting,” Antonio replies. “But Sanctuary’s defense is one of the best in the league this year. I’ve got a little side action on them.”

  I sip my own drink, watching the players stretch in the arena below, my mind leagues away. We spent all night watching the broadcasts. How would Furia react to our announcement? Only natural that the gossip wove its way through every newscast. We saw Pippa’s interview. An Ashlord noble; this year’s favorite. Daddy pulled videos of her amateur races months ago and had me studying them. She’s fast and smart, a hell of a rider. But most of the amateur races are contact free. The actual Races require knowing how to fight, how to defend your ashes, and how to strike someone down without killing them.

  One broadcast called my entry a revolution that could change the stagnant scene in phoenix racing. Others described it as a doomed sideshow. I’m too big, or too blunt, or too slow to matter. Some channels were crude enough to link footage of the last Longhand who entered the Races. He was beaten to death just before the second leg began. A team of Ashlords took their time killing him. Murder’s not legal, even in the Races, but only one of them ever got put on trial for it. According to reporters, that rider spent the last twelve years in prison. The newscaster was kind enough to predict I’d make it out alive, but whether or not I’d be in one piece at the end was another question altogether. Daddy says they’re blowing enough smoke to call it a fire.

  His war depends on the attention, on me. I try not to think about how much it all weighs as I take another sip and the two teams line up below us. Crossing is a simple and brutal sport. Two teams of seven. The court is fifty paces wide and three hundred paces in length. When the gun fires, both teams release. The first team to get one of their players across the opposite line wins that round. Teams are made up of quicklings and bruisers, sometimes a few hybrids. It’s easy to tell the big boys from the fast ones.

  My eyes settle on the Panhandle runner Antonio mentioned. He’s short and lighter-skinned, with legs as wide as doors. Daddy raises his glass and toasts with Antonio as both of the teams settle into racing positions. The arena is narrow, but the starting block’s even tighter. All seven members hunch shoulder to shoulder, waiting for the burst, their minds racing through practiced formations and counterformations. Their only weapons are their bodies and how fast they move them.

  A gunshot thunders out. The crowd erupts as both teams launch into motion.

  Panhandle’s team swings five right, two left, an overloaded formation. Sanctuary’s formation is a reaction to theirs. A classic balanced set. Two on the right, two down the middle, and three to the left. At least one bruiser runs in each pack.

  It takes two seconds for both teams to get up to a full sprint, and two more seconds to collide in a crunch of bone and body at center court. Panhandle’s quickling darts out from behind a veil of bruisers, cutting center and bursting through the gap in Sanctuary’s defense. Antonio’s right. He’s the fastest person I’ve ever seen. He highsteps the first lunging tackle, avoids a second swipe, and looks like he’s going to break free.

  But a desperate shoestring tackle catches him by the ankle, staggering his strides. On the opposite side, two of Sanctuary’s sprinters have broken free, and they race to cross the finish line, chased by Panhandle’s too-slow bruisers. The horn blows and the first point goes to Sanctuary. Match attendants pull the weak and wounded away as substitutes step in to replace them. “Didn’t I tell you?” Antonio asks. “Sanctuary is brutal.”

  The remaining rounds play out the same way. Panhandle steals a few points, but they can’t keep up with Sanctuary’s athleticism. I find myself half watching the collisions and the sprints and half watching the crowd around us. A few rows beneath our booth, a couple’s enjoying the game. They’re about my age, and it looks like a first date. He’s nodding a lot, talking too fast, laughing too loud. She’s nervous, too, though. Every now and again something he says has her blushing like a desert rose.

  Down a few rows, a father sits with his three boys. He orders them a bag of salted hardpans and shows them how to crack the outer shells with their teeth. They laugh at a face he makes, and watching them, it’s like they’ll live forever. The crowd’s full of similar moments.

  Something about the whole scene has my stomach turning.

  The match ends. Antonio heads off to collect his winnings. Daddy tells him to come by around dinnertime. We walk together, matching each other’s quiet. He leads us away from the stadium, but doesn’t take us home. I follow him—the way I always have—and figure out where we’re heading as we reach the outskirts of town.

  I frown. “This is your pitch?”

  “It’s more of a plea than a pitch, Adrian.”

  We wind through the dusty streets until they widen out, dumping us into a red-dusted desert that’s empty of houses but full of ghosts. The graveyard waits at the edge of the city.

  “You saw that couple?” he asks. “Right in front of us?”

  I nod to him. “Looked like a first date.”

  He laughs. “I suspected as much. You know, the two of them are old enough to fight in our revolution. More than old enough. What else did you see?”

  My stomach turns again, but Daddy is waiting for an answer. I take my time with the details. I talk about the father and his three sons. Daddy points out that they’re too young, but the father wasn’t too old. I describe a few of the vendors moving through the grandstands. The crowd of university students who were off to our right, laughing and drinking loudly enough to annoy everyone but each other. He nods and listens. I know he saw those details, too.

  “We start this war,” he says, “and they march with you. I wanted you to see the cost, Adrian. Sons will lose fathers. Husbands will lose wives. Friends will watch their comrades take their final breaths. I took you to that game so that you never forget the cost of what we’re about to do. But you needed to see this, too. There’s another side to every coin.”

  There’s no fence to mark the area. Just stones rising up unnaturally from the sand. Some are wreathed in flowers, others long cracked and faded. An attendant patrols the opposite side, hunting rifle settled against his shoulder. Daddy lifts a hand in greeting and the man nods back.

  “Our ancestors came north after the Dividian were defeated. That was the first division. Our people didn’t like the sudden reliance on the gods. We valued freed
om too much. And while the Ashlord gods offer many things, freedom is not one of them. It is a relationship of bondage. It always has been. That’s why we separated from the Ashlords. That’s how the Reach was born.”

  It’s not hard to see where he’s heading. The truth of this story is in my bones. I keep walking at his side, thinking about our history. I’ve heard him tell the story he’s about to tell hundreds of times, but I’ve always felt like there was more. Truths he kept quiet because I was only a child. I have a feeling this time will be different.

  “Early treaties failed. The Ashlords—and their gods—didn’t like the idea of a group of people unwilling to bow. They tried to take all that from us. The Rebellion happened. It’s been forty-eight years since our war with them ended.” Daddy starts down the familiar graveyard rows. “As you know, we failed. We lost. Most of the Purge happened in the years that followed. Every first son and first daughter from the Reach was rounded up and executed. Some escaped. Sailed north and never came back. Others took new names and went back to new villages. But the Ashlords had our inscription lists. They knew who fought. How many children they had. Where they lived.

  “It took thirty years of hunting, but eventually they found every single name. Your mother told me her real name after you were born. It was the first time she was ever really afraid. The Ashlords hadn’t executed an escapee in nearly a decade, but now we both had something to lose. We thought the trails had gone cold….I killed the first Ashlord they sent for her. It was easy, once I figured out why he was there.”

  The graves whisper at our passing feet. I never knew he killed anyone. The sun shines down overhead. We keep walking.

  “She was smarter than me. Always was. Said they’d keep coming. They’d send more and more of them. She took the blame when they came back since they were going to take her anyway. Told them she’d killed the man. They took her and she made me promise not to do anything. She wanted me to raise you. Make you a man.”

  He doesn’t cry, but his voice buries itself in grief. We stop in front of Mother’s headstone. This stretch of land was set aside for them: the firstborns. Sons and daughters who paid the price for the Reach’s rebellion with their lives. She was the last one they buried here. I was only two years old. I don’t remember any of it. I can barely remember her face.

  “You saw what we might lose if we go to war. But this?” He gestures to Mother’s grave. “This is what’s already been taken from us, Adrian. We dared ask them for freedom, and they put our loved ones in the ground for it. My older brother was killed, too. I’m alive because I was the second. Your mother’s dead because she was the first. It was just a number game to them.”

  I can feel a tightness in my chest. Until now it’s all been practice. Training sequences. Riding phoenixes. Studying alchemy. For the first time, it feels like there’s an actual weight on my shoulders. I am walking into the unknown. Real blood will spill.

  “I know you’re unsettled,” Daddy says. “I’m sending you down there to start a war. I’ve been around you long enough to know that you’re not afraid for yourself. I know full well you can survive anything. You’re afraid for everyone else. What happens if you win? What happens if we actually go to war?

  “But hear me say this, Adrian. Everything you saw today, that first date, that man and his three boys? That’s all an illusion. A false peace the Ashlords allow us to have. The truth of this world is buried all around you. They did all this to send a message. You are not free. You are at their mercy. And if you rise again, this is what they will try to take from you.”

  He kneels, and he’s old enough that it costs him something. I watch him wipe dust from my mother’s grave. “I ask this of you, Adrian. Rise. Stand up. Show our people true freedom.”

  You spend the whole morning surrounded by publicists. Statements are drafted and dismissed. The critics are still flocking and frenzied. Your most suggestive photos are being paraded on every news channel, half screened with the blurred faces of your accusers. There’s nothing shocking about what they say. It is how men have always seen you, and dreamed of you, and wanted you. The accusations are welcomed by other men who will never get to dance with you, or taste your lips, or know your bed. The rumors work because they’re feeding the desperate what they’ve always wanted and could never have.

  Your publicists turn away thirty-seven interview offers. Money slips back into the pockets of certain sponsors who are pulling out amidst the storm. They forget that dark clouds and strong winds only mean lightning’s about to strike. You know they’ll want back in when you’re illuminating the whole damn sky, but you will not forget and you will not forgive.

  You’re far more worried about Bravos. He sends you a single text from his public phone:

  if it wasn’t true, you would have denied it, right? finding out this way? c’mon.

  That’s the text the hackers will pull and parade around the Chats. The two of you have given them little tastes just like it ever since the fake breakup. That was always the plan.

  Feed the public, let the other racers think you’d split, and then win the Races together. Bravos can’t hold a candle to you when it comes to riding or alchemy, but he’s one of the top duelers in Furia. Together, you’d have taken first and second place easily, but now you’re not sure if his recent message is part of the plan or a sign of actual anger, because you know he’s right. You didn’t tell him about the beholder shots and you feel so guilty about it.

  As the publicists flap around like caged birds, you keep checking your burner phone. But Bravos hasn’t texted and you know he’s been awake for hours now. It has you half worried and half furious, because you actually love him. Bravos is the one man you want to dance with you, to taste your lips. The idea of losing him to Furia’s hungry circuit of false rumors is enough to make your teeth grind.

  Evening arrives and your head publicist, Zeta, has two action plans for you.

  “First thing: you win the Races. You’re the daughter of two former champions. Fulfill their prophecies for you, and almost all of this will go away. Just ask the Longhands or the Dividian. The only thing that matters in the Empire is who wins. Do that and this all goes away.”

  You nod. “Consider it done.”

  Zeta says, “You won’t like the next one.”

  “Why not?”

  “You need to throw the spotlight somewhere else. Even if it’s just for a few hours.”

  She’s right. You don’t like it. “Fine, who?”

  “Have you ever heard of the Alchemist?”

  Zeta pulls the video you saw the other day. You watch the girl leap through the air and land on the reappearing horse. You’re nodding, but not understanding what Zeta wants.

  “And?”

  “We did some research,” Zeta says. “In the last fifteen years, fourteen of the Qualifiers have been boys. The Empire Racing Board always talks about how equitable the Races are.”

  “And they are,” you reply. “Girls always outnumber the boys in the Races. They win more often, too.”

  “Which is true,” Zeta counters. “But in the one instance that the Empire Racing Board gets to select a participant, they’re completely biased against Dividian girls. So all you have to do is talk up the girl’s video. Say it shows the kind of brilliant riders the Empire Board’s been unfairly keeping out of the Races. Make it about the advancement of women. I’ll write up something about how this is their chance to put the most competent scholarship rider in the Races, regardless of gender.”

  You’re nodding now, seeing the genius of Zeta’s plan.

  “So the spotlight is on the Dividian girl and the Empire Racing Board. What will that get us? An hour of newscasts without those blurred creeps claiming me as their mistress?”

  “An hour or two,” Zeta says. “We just need to stop the bleeding long enough to get us to the Races. Once we’re there, the talk won’t
be about the way you look. It’ll be about how you ride.”

  You know that’s not entirely true, but no point correcting Zeta now. She’s done her job. It’s time for you to do yours. “Set up the interview,” you say. “Let’s get it over with.”

  The interview’s arranged, and brief. You recite the memorized script, and Zeta’s plan sets everything into flawless motion. As you sit in your room, alone for the first time all day, the talking heads hound representatives of the Empire Board about sexism. Ten minutes pass without your name on anyone’s lips, and that’s the freest you’ve felt all day.

  Until your burner phone vibrates. It’s from the phone you gave Bravos a few weeks ago.

  finally, they’ve stopped spitting out these lies about you. so sorry, love. i’ve been stuck in interviews all day. left my burner phone at home. But I love you. The plan’s still the plan, right? Call me later.

  You’re so thankful to read his words, to know that he’s not mad, that you start typing a response. But halfway through the first sentence you remember the rules. Always ten minutes between texts. Hackers will catch quick signal bursts if the two of you aren’t careful. If other competitors know you’re teaming up, strategies will change. You want to keep the damage control to a minimum. Dinner and your parents are waiting downstairs, but you sit there in bed, the burner phone clutched to your chest, until the ten minutes pass.

  you ARE my plan. I’ll call in a few hours.

  You descend the marble steps. The hall is silent, except for the occasional clatter of silverware. Dividian butlers move in and out of the dining room. One holds the door open as you approach and offers a wide smile. Mother and Father are already seated at the crystalline dining table. You’re expecting to be scolded, but they both look up with smiles of their own. The table is big enough to seat thirty, but it’s just the three of you tonight. You take your seat across from Mother, who sparkles in her eveningwear. Father’s looking fine, too, in his charcoal suit.