by Gail Dayton
“Fine. What's yours?” Obed demanded.
“Bleeding, like the rest of us. Fine."
Obed didn't like the snap in the man's voice, but forgot it when Fox shook his head as if dazed. “Fox, trouble?"
“I don't—” Fox rubbed his eyes, leaving streaks of blood across them like a mask. “There's—shapes. I—"
“They're taking another off,” Torchay said. “Six to go."
“Only two to one now.” Obed glanced up at the box where Kallista sat, saw her rise and wrap her green healer's robe around her as she hurried away, her bodyguards behind her. The injured man must be hurt worse than he'd thought.
“Flag's gone down,” he said. “They're coming."
“I can see that,” Torchay growled. “I'm not blind."
“I am,” Fox said. “And ... I can see it."
“What?” But Obed had no time for questions. The purples were on them.
He'd fought against Habadra champions too many times to count—their families quarreled often—but he didn't know these. They fought without honor, using every low tactic they knew. Obed fought back the same way. Honor didn't matter today. Winning did.
He saved Torchay's life a dozen times, Fox's almost as many, and they saved his life twice that. Sweat rolled into a hundred cuts, making his skin sting all over. Damned purples. Why wouldn't they just die?
Fox shouted and he stumbled, falling awkwardly onto his backside and dropping his sword. Obed and Torchay held the purples off, taking on more of the shallow cuts while Fox groped for his blade like—like a blind man.
“Here.” Torchay got his foot under the blade, shoving Obed aside, and flipped the long sword to Fox who caught it as if nothing was wrong.
Fox stood with all his usual fluid grace, fighting as if he'd never stumbled. One of the Habadras staggered back, blood welling through the fingers he clutched over his belly and Obed laughed aloud. Another down.
As he watched from the corner of his eye for the flag to go up, Obed felt Fox lurch into his shoulder, almost as if he'd flinched. But Fox never flinched. Obed spun and slashed across the chest of the man pulling his sword out of Fox.
“Oh saints and bloody murder,” Torchay rasped, “it's Fox they've gutted."
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Three
Torchay attacked, holding off the four remaining Habadras on his own as Obed lowered Fox carefully to the sand.
Obed looked toward the flagpole. Why didn't they raise the damned flag? Couldn't they see the three men bleeding into the sand? This wasn't a death match, for the One's sake. There. Finally. It was up.
The Habadras pulled back from their half-hearted attack—they'd likely been waiting for the flag too. Medics ran out into the arena to collect the injured.
Fox grimaced as they lifted him, set him on a stretcher, then he smiled. “Kallista's already working. I can feel it."
Good. Obed swiped his forearm across his face, wiping on more than he wiped off. It burned, stinging his eyes and lips. Blood didn't burn like that, did it?
Obed grabbed a cloth from one of the medics and wiped his face, then tossed it to Torchay who ignored it. Rude bastard.
“Nice of them to give us these rest breaks.” Torchay brushed at the sand caught in the hair on his barrel chest.
“It's not a death match.” Obed struggled to even his breathing. “They have to at least pretend to keep us alive."
“Kallista'll make sure. And keep your great oversized feet out of my way. You nearly tripped me.” He wasn't joking.
“Wish I had,” Obed muttered, quiet enough Torchay would have to listen close to hear him.
“Is that what you want? Because I'll give it to you—soon as we finish these bastards off, I'll take you on. I'll be glad to finish you too."
“Keep dreaming. You couldn't finish me if you had four swords to fight with and a week to do it. You'd be flat on your back, crying like a baby, begging mercy."
“I don't need four swords. One is plenty—” Torchay broke off. “Flag's gone down."
Obed turned, laid his back against the other man's and waited for the purples’ attack.
In the infirmary, just behind a barred gate opening on the arena, Kallista met Fox as he was carried in, leaving the others to the medics. Fox was hurt the worst and he was hers.
“What happened?” She laid her hand over his wound, walking blindly beside his stretcher as the bearers carried him to one of the tables, using her magic to see what was torn. “Never mind. Don't tell me yet. Not till I'm done."
He smiled his crooked, foxy smile and closed his eyes, alarming her for an instant. But she felt the beat of his heart in her magic, the whisper of his breath under her skin. He was healing. The magic was healing him.
When veins and organs were knit together again and Fox's skin sealed over it in a pretty pink new scar too much like those Torchay bore, Kallista glanced at the other injured to see whether she was needed. An East magic healer “escaped” from the temple and the medics seemed to have things well under control, the life-threatening injuries healed to the point where non-magical care would cure. Kallista squeezed water from the cloth in the basin beside her and began to wash the blood from the scores of shallow cuts adorning the front of Fox's body.
“It's as if they thought enough of these little cuts would bleed you dry.” She ran a finger along one of the deeper ones, healing it shut.
“The others—Torchay and Obed look worse than this.” Fox opened his eyes and looked at her.
Kallista smiled. “By now they do, I'm sure. Is that why you let yourself get skewered? To keep yourself pretty for us?"
He stared, his eyes seeming to actually be focused on her face. “You're smiling,” he said finally. “I can see your smile."
Her heart squeezed, and she turned to rinse the cloth in the basin, still smiling. “I didn't know your knowing sense could recognize smiles."
“It can't.” Fox touched her chin, turned her face toward him with a gentle finger. “I can hear smiles, when you talk. But—I see you, Kallista."
He stroked his finger along her cheek. “You look just like you did in my dream, that time we dreamed each other, when I was prisoner of the rebels. Are we dreaming now?"
Too choked with sudden emotion to speak, Kallista shook her head. What was happening here?
“Don't cry.” He wiped away an escaping tear with his thumb. “You hate to cry. Do you think this will go away? I have a lot of things I want to see before it does."
“Did regaining your sight cause this?” she managed to ask, touching the just-healed wound in the center of his body. “Did you see in the arena? Did it confuse you? Blind you?"
“I was blind before,” he reminded her with a smile, still watching his hand explore her face. “It surprised me. I forgot to pay attention and the sword slipped by my guard."
“I'm sorry. My fault. I should have—"
Fox's fingers pressed against her lips, stopping her speech. “Done exactly as you did. Do you think I wouldn't trade a few moments of pain for this? To see you? To have the possibility of seeing the faces of my iliasti, my children? The wound is gone. You healed it. And I can still see you. For however long it lasts, I'm glad it happened."
“But—” She tried to protest around his fingers when the roar of the crowd outside drowned all ability to hear.
Fox sat up, looking with Kallista through the open grille of the gate to the arena beyond. She could see only a fallen champion struggling to crawl away from those still fighting. The little healer ran to peer through the grate. She turned to shout something, but the crowd's noise drowned her out. The alarm in her face had Kallista running to join her, Fox at her heels.
The roar of sound was fading but the healer didn't try to speak again. She pointed.
All the purple-clad champions were down, two of the four ominously still. Kallista spun off magic to stop their bleeding. Torchay and Obed alone still stood, so covered in blood, they had the same color skin—scarlet.
But they didn't stand wearily, accepting the accolades of victory. They fought each other, swords flying as if this time, this combat would be to death.
“The lion flag is up!” a medic shouted in Kallista's ear, pointing at the fluttering bit of irrelevant cloth. Flag or no, they shouldn't be fighting each other. Something was wrong.
“Fox, can you still sense the demon-touched?” Kallista unfurled her magic and sent it flying out into the arena. “Why isn't anyone stopping them?"
“They are dedicats, God-touched,” the healer said. “No one dares go near them."
“I dare.” Kallista started out the gate.
Fox caught her, pulled her back hard against his chest. “Why bother? They want to kill each other, let them. They've been wanting it since the beginning. Why stop them?"
Shock held Kallista speechless as she looked over her shoulder at Fox. That wasn't Fox speaking. She yanked her magic from its sniffing round the arena and sent it whipping through the infirmary. No hint of demonstink, nothing new since she'd cleared it earlier. Fox was only Fox but ... something was wrong.
She poured magic down her link to him, searching him roughly enough to make him shudder and swear. And there it was, seeping subtly through his veins. Not demons—demons couldn't touch the godmarked—but drugs.
More than one drug, she thought, acting together to produce an unnatural madness, so close to a body's natural function as to be almost undetectable. But how had it reached him?
Kallista shaped the magic to sweep the stuff from his blood but too much of it slipped between the bristles of her broom, refusing to leave him. She refined the magic, chasing the elusive drugs through Fox till she found where it was concentrated strongest. Nearest his myriad wounds.
“Their weapons—” She caught the healer-naitan's sleeve. “The Habadras’ weapons are drugged. They drugged my champions with every cut."
“I'll collect them,” the young woman offered. “So you have proof."
“Have your bodyguard do it. I need you to rid my Fox of the drugs. Look.” Kallista grabbed hold of the woman's healing magic and swept it through Fox's contaminated blood alongside her own, showing her how to filter out the drugs. “Do you understand?"
“Y-yes.” She nodded, gripping Fox's blood-streaked arm tightly as she led him back into the infirmary. He already began to come back to himself.
Kallista turned to hurry out onto the arena floor. Torchay and Obed circled each other, death in their eyes, riding the edges of their swords.
She got only a few steps onto the sand when strong hands caught hold of her again—this time, her bodyguards. “Let me go! I have to stop this.” Kallista clawed at their hands.
“They are drugged. They could kill you. We cannot allow that, my Reinine.” Samri's voice was quiet, matter-of-fact, calm in contrast to the fury with which she fought him.
“They are mine,” she wailed. “They could die."
“You are the Godstruck,” Night said. “They are godmarked like the Fox you healed. Can you not heal them from here?"
Could she? Kallista gathered magic from her undrugged four and sent it flying down the links to Torchay and Obed. The drugs were so subtle, so very like the body's own processes. It would take time to clear them away, time she was not sure she had.
* * * *
Torchay stepped carefully over the sand, over the legs of the fallen, his eyes never leaving his opponent's. “You will die,” he said casually, hiding the harshness of his breathing. He should not be so winded, or so angry. His mind should be clear for fighting, shouldn't it?
“Perhaps. Or perhaps it is you who will die.” Obed sounded just as calm. He had to be hiding the same rage, the same weariness. They had walked onto the sand at the same moment.
On the same side. Hadn't they? Torchay shook his head and his hair came loose, whipping round his face. He snarled, the small annoyance feeding the hot blaze of anger filling up his skin. He launched himself at that sneering expression but Obed knocked the twin swords aside, his saber flashing faster than any single sword had a right to.
Obed broke off, spun away. Torchay let him go, his heart trying to pound its way out of his chest. “I should have killed you years ago.” He gasped the words out, unable to hide his panting any longer. “You brought her nothing but pain with your Southron ways and your jealousy."
Obed glared past the sweaty strands of black hair spilling across his face. “You want to kill me?"
He threw his sword away, sent it spinning end over end across the arena, torchlight flashing along its polished steel length until it thudded onto the sand with a soft shush of sound. Torchay dragged his eyes back to Obed to see him standing with arms spread wide, offering himself up. “You want to kill me? Then kill me.
"Do it," Obed said. “You are the one who always knows what she needs. You are the one who can bring her back from the land of the dead. You are the one she loves. So do it. Kill me. But first admit that I am not the only jealous man in this ilian. You know I could not hurt her if she did not care for me a little, and that is why you want to kill me."
Someone was shouting, screaming his name, and it joined the buzz in Torchay's head, the roar of anger consuming him, confusing him. “She loves you, not me. I'm the one got banned from her bed."
“You're back in it now, aren't you?” Obed sneered. “She loves you. Perfect Reinas, always there, always right.” He slapped his chest with both hands. “Come on. Kill me. Get me out of your perfect way."
“I have to be perfect just to hold my own against her fascination with Obed im-Mysterious,” Torchay snarled. “With your black eyes and your damned tattoos. It took nine years for her to notice me, but you—you stroll in the door and she's falling over herself. Yes.” Finally, he admitted it. “Yes, damn it, I'm jealous. I am exactly like you."
He took a step, and looked at the swords in his hands. He'd almost forgotten he still held them. He opened his hands, let them fall to the sand and launched himself at Obed. Killing him with a blade was too impersonal. Bare hands were needed.
Torchay tackled him to the ground. Obed offered no resistance, toppling like a fallen soldier. Torchay straddled him, fist raised to strike. Obed lay gazing calmly up at him.
“Why aren't you fighting me?” Confusion held back Torchay's blow. Something was wrong here. He couldn't think.
“She loves you,” Obed said. “She needs you. I don't matter."
That wasn't right. Torchay slumped to one side, sitting in the sand. “She loves you.” He frowned. “And I—I want to pound you into the dirt."
“Then do it."
Torchay looked at Obed lying sprawled on his back, bleeding from a double score of cuts. “I think I just did."
“Why won't you kill me? I want you to."
“Perhaps that's why. To thwart you.” Torchay shook his head, carefully. It didn't feel quite proper, as if it were full of things it shouldn't be. Thinking was too hard. “Because as angry as you make me, jealous as you make me—and I admit it, you do. But you're my ilias. You are—"
He looked at Obed, understanding squeezing through the confusion. “You are my closest friend. More than that. My brodir. I can pound you into the dirt, but I can't kill you."
Others were in the arena now, kicking the weapons out of their reach, carting away the wounded. Obed paid them no attention as he groaned his way up to sit beside Torchay.
“Next time,” Obed said, “I will pound you.” He hesitated before speaking again. “She loves me?"
Torchay smacked him on the back of his head. “Yes, you idiot. You'd know that if you'd pay attention to your link. And you couldn't pound me if I had both arms tied behind my back.” He paused, then amended. “One arm. I'd need at least one."
Kallista appeared in a flutter of green robes. She dropped to one knee between them and peeled back Torchay's eyelids, peering into his eyes.
“How do you feel?” she asked as she subjected Obed to the same treatment, ignoring the myriad cuts blooming with blood
.
“Like a roast pig carved up for dinner.” Torchay cocked his head as he studied her, groping inside himself for the magic link between them to double-check what he saw on her face. “You're not angry we tried to kill each other?"
She gestured for the medics to help them to stand. “You didn't succeed.” She flashed a brief smile at him, before sobering. “You were drugged. Something subtle on the Habadra weapons so no one noticed until you attacked each other."
Torchay reached over his shoulder for his sword and found nothing. Oh, right. He'd thrown them down. Nor had he worn the sheath into the arena. “Where's my blade? I need to kill a Habadra."
“You need to go home and get rid of the rest of those drugs.” Inside the infirmary, Kallista beckoned to the little healer and handed Torchay the cup she brought, filled to the brim with water. “Drink. I don't like the way your heart is pounding. Or yours.” She gave Obed a cup as well. “The drugs affected your body as much as your mind. Where's Fox?"
“He went to collect the boy,” Samri said. “And the rest of the godmarked."
“Good. We need to get back to the embassy as fast as possible."
This time, Torchay managed to gain his feet on his own strength when Kallista moved away. Drugged. He'd think about it later, when his head was clear and he could control the anger he felt boiling up again. At least they'd won Stone's boy free. He would think about that instead.
* * * *
Fox strode through the back ways of the arena, enjoying the way folk backed away from him. It could be Night who parted the crowds—the former Habadra led the way to the viewing box—but it wasn't until they saw Fox with his blood-streaked skin that their eyes widened and they cowered away. Of course, it could be the naked sword in his hand that sent them scurrying.
He saw them scurry and cringe and stare. He couldn't see them clear until they came close, not like his sharp-eyed vision of before, but he could see. The One be praised, he could see.
As they left the crowds behind and entered the official sector of the arena, Fox closed his eyes, wondering whether he still possessed his odd magical knowing sense, or if it had left him when his vision returned. He experienced a moment's disorientation, as if he'd been concentrating too hard on seeing, before he could take in what was there—walls to either side, Night pulling ahead of him. Fox sensed a confused flurry of action beyond the point where he could see clearly.
