by Kate Elliott
But there is one detail I’ve not forgotten that he can help me with.
“I know you and Lord Thynos are angry I sneaked into Garon Palace the night of the victory games. But I saw Prince Nikonos plotting with Lady Menoë in the garden.”
Like a scorpion’s strike, he grabs my arm. The iron grip of his hand reminds me that this is a man who killed a king in battle. “That’s impossible.”
“Of course it’s not impossible. I heard them!”
“Ah! You heard but didn’t see any faces, so you’re just guessing and maybe trying to drive a wedge between your father and his new wife.” He releases me to flick a piece of sawdust off his sweaty cheek. “I suspect you harbor an unrealistic hope that somehow, against all odds, your parents will be able to reconcile and live together again. They won’t. General Esladas made his choice, and frankly I think he managed it in a cursed cruel way. There’s no going back from what he did.”
A pain like a blade of fire burns through my heart as I blink away hot tears. “That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about Lord Gargaron’s plot to put his niece and nephew on the throne. Which means deposing not just the king and queen but Prince Nikonos too, because he would become king if his older brother died. So if you were Prince Nikonos and were secretly plotting with Lady Menoë, you would need to get rid of Kalliarkos, and my father too, since he’s been assigned to protect Kal. Father needs to be warned, just in case I’m right.”
He considers me in silence. He’s a big man, broad and strong, very powerful, too tall and heavyset to be successful on the Fives court but perfect for the smash and endurance of battle. After a moment he nods. “Very well. I’ll send a courier in secret to the Eastern Reach.”
“Nar? Is that you?” Tana One-Hand appears at the door of her room, rubbing her eyes as she wakes from the afternoon nap. “I thought you would be gone already.”
“I just wanted to transfer this into your hands in person before I go.” As she comes up, he hands her the pouch.
“Are you leaving?” I ask.
“I am. Naturally I wanted to make my farewells to my cousin before I depart.”
“Tana is your cousin?”
“She is. It’s the kind of thing Lord Kalliarkos would know within a day of meeting people. Just because you are a better adversary than him on a Fives court doesn’t mean you would defeat him in every manner of trial.” His crooked smile cuts me, as he means it to.
I look from Tana to him and back again. “Wait! Is this about Lord Thynos leaving for West Saro? Are you going with him? Why is he going?”
“The news will be out soon enough,” he says. “Princess Berenise has arranged a diplomatic marriage for Thynos with a West Saroese princess in the hope of convincing the kingdom of West Saro to break its alliance with our enemies and make a treaty with us. He’s not happy about it, but years ago in exchange for Berenise allowing him to run the Fives he promised to accept any betrothal if Berenise found it necessary.”
Thynos gone, and Inarsis too! I feel more alone than ever with my family depending on what meager bits of prize money I can dole out to them without engaging Gargaron’s suspicions. Without the help of people like Inarsis and Father who have a web of military contacts spread throughout Efea, I’ll need a new plan to track down where Bettany and the others have been sent.
“By the way, Spider, I have news for you.”
Tana’s voice jerks me back to myself. She and Inarsis are both measuring me in a critical way that alters my posture: shoulders back, butt tucked, chin level. I have to stay sharp and not get distracted.
“I’ve been ordered by Lord Gargaron to enter you for a Challenger trial at the City Fives Court in one month. We need to follow up on your victory. People in the city are talking about you now but if we wait too long they’ll forget. I’m just not sure you’ll be ready.”
“I’ll be ready.”
Tana walks all the way around me, noting my muscled arms and my hair pulled back in a casual puff-tail. “You must decide how you mean to outfit yourself for the trials, Jes. Lord Gargaron will expect an elaborate costume, something flashy and bright that will declare you as running for a prestigious palace stable. You can even wear a stripe of gold to remind people of Princess Berenise’s royal birth.”
“I save my flash for my tricks.”
“Don’t think one victory makes you memorable.” She raises her stump. The scar tissue gleams palely, lighter than her skin. “I aspired to become an Illustrious but I fell from the high Traps and crushed my hand. It became gangrenous and had to be cut off. A day will come, sooner rather than later, when you lose once too often, get too old, get too injured. How you dress is part of your strategy, don’t you see? Do everything possible to get the crowd on your side. You want to encourage them to bet on you, cheer you on, sing your praises in the market. You want them to think you so dazzling they send you tokens of appreciation, all of which will fatten your bank account for your eventual retirement.” She rests the stump on my shoulder and fixes me with a stare. “What you wear is part of the way you announce to the crowd that they must pay attention to this new Challenger called Spider. So what will it be?”
Ro-emnu’s words from earlier still sting. And yet I see the truth in them.
Maybe I do talk and think like a Patron, maybe I was raised in a Patron household by a father I admire and love, maybe I won my first victory at the games held in honor of my father, the brilliant general whose name is on everyone’s lips.
But I am also a daughter of Efea, loyal daughter to a mother I must pretend is dead, loyal sister to a twin marched onto a barge bound for an unknown servitude, and grandchild and niece and cousin to kinfolk I have never known. I’ll run these trials for Garon Palace. Patrons will see whom they want to see, the girl who has no legal status because the law forbade her father and mother from marrying, the girl who triumphed anyway. The general’s valiant daughter is a story they can cheer for.
But I can also send a message to the Commoners who will be watching, a message about a girl who lost her beloved family because a Patron lord ripped it apart to serve his own ambitious plans. A girl who isn’t ashamed of who she is.
“Ordinary brown.”
9
So it is that when I arrive at the City Fives Court a month later for my first trial as a Challenger I am wearing brown leggings, a brown tunic, and a brown mask. I’m not alone because Mis is making her first Novice run and Dusty is hoping for his first Novice victory.
We arrive in the Garon Palace procession, for naturally Lord Gargaron has decided to attend. The highborn are escorted away to the viewing terraces.
A Fives court is both the huge circular building with tiers of seating where trials are held, and the actual playing court in the center where five obstacles are set up. Tana escorts us to the adversary’s gate, a staircase that leads down to the undercourt below. Crowds of people line the approach, silent as unknown Novices arrive, and then cheering while tossing ribbons and rose petals under the feet of Illustrious who boast the colorful clothing Tana wanted me to wear.
Mis has chosen a glassy-white tunic and a splash of perfume on her feathered mask to go with her court name of Resin, a reminder of her family’s perfume business. Dusty wears red. He stalks beside Tana in a way that makes me grin, because at the stable he’s so funny, always joking and good-humored, and now he is putting on his court name of Wrath in the same way an actor puts on a mask to play a part.
The last time—the only other time—I entered the City Fives Court was for a trial I ran in secret in defiance of my father. That day no one took any notice of me, but now my dull clothes instantly draw attention because I am the only adversary not wearing brighter plumage.
“Spi-der! Spi-der!”
I descend into the undercourt as the chanting of my Fives name echoes after me. By the trickle of perspiration running down my spine I realize I am nervous.
The undercourt is a vast underground construction made up of two parts. The first is
the area beneath the actual Fives court itself, sealed away from all people except the Fives administrators and engineers who devise a new version of the obstacles each week. The City Fives Court doesn’t have the truly elaborate structures of the Royal Fives Court, but the Royal Court hosts trials only four times a year as well as the occasional victory games. It can also be rebuilt each time, while the City Fives Court, where trials are held weekly, is rebuilt only once a year. No matter what variations the course architects create each week, the basic layout of the City Court will be the same for an entire year, which is an advantage for me because of my good memory for patterns.
The other part of the undercourt is the attiring hall, where adversaries with their attendants wait their turn to run. An adversary entered in the day’s trials can never see the court before the bell rings. That would be cheating.
Mis can’t stop pacing, so to help calm her I mirror her through a warm-up of menageries. My heartbeat slows. My mind steadies. When I clench my hands as part of bull I see how strong they are, ready for any challenge.
I can do this.
“Thanks, Jes,” Mis whispers.
A bell rings. Deep within the structure the winches start grinding, pulling the canvas off the court. A roar goes up as this week’s obstacles are revealed. Everyone sings the ritual opening song:
Shadows fall where pillars stand.
Traps spill sparks like grains of sand.
Seen atop the trees, you’re known.
Rivers flow to seas and home.
Rings around them, rings inside,
The tower at the heart abides.
A custodian calls the names of the first group, Mis’s among them.
I embrace her. “Keep your mind on the court. You’ll be fine.”
She hands over her entry chit and enters the ready cage with three other adversaries. I pace through another round of menageries with Dusty, staying warm and loose, and then he’s called.
Tana taps my arm a while later. “All the Novice trials are complete. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” I say. And I am.
My name is called for the first Challenger trial. I join my three competitors in the ready cage where we await the call to go to our respective start gates. It’s always smart to study the adversaries you’ll be running against. A lanky man with an aloof expression and the badge of a palace clan takes the green belt that means he’ll start on Trees. He looks strong and sure. A petite woman binds on the blue belt for Rivers. She looks almost dainty, even harmless, but small women like her have an advantage because they have less length and weight to move around than I do. The last adversary is a stocky older man with a few streaks of gray in his hair and scars at his knees and elbows, like he has recovered from a brutally injuring fall. He has the red belt for Traps, while I bind on the brown belt for Pillars. I like starting at Pillars, whose maze gives me a chance to work my intelligence. Maybe they will underestimate me, as I am easily the youngest of us four.
The woman ignores me, lost in her own mental preparations, but the two men study me, and I see one shape the word “Spider” with his lips.
A bell rings, and we are handed over to individual attendants who escort us down separate corridors to our respective start gates at the four corners of the court.
My attendant and I reach the start ladder that leads up to Pillars. The gate-custodian posted there gives me a friendly nod. I become a spear, poised and ready.
The bell rings, the sound clear and sharp. I leap up the ladder, the polished rungs flashing past as I scramble out into the hot sun. Glare fills my eyes, and I blink to cool the blaze. All around the court rise the stone tiers of seating, a huge circle of people shouting and cheering as they wait for us to make our moves.
A carved slab of wood that swings on hinges faces me, painted with a design of overlapping right angles to indicate this as the entrance to Pillars.
Shadows fall where pillars stand.
I ring the obstacle bell and push through to find myself facing myself, a girl dressed all in brown, and her brown face masked with brown. The maze is lined with mirrors, and the mirrors are reflecting mirrors, making it easy to miss turnings.
Unless you look for how the shadows fall.
It’s almost too easy.
I’m grinning as I climb up to the resting platform at the end of the obstacle. Sun drenches my face with heat. The grit of sawdust coats my lips. The crowd’s gestures help me identify where the other adversaries are: two in Trees and one in Traps. One person is already ahead of me.
Right now I have to choose whether to go on to Rivers, which means I will then continue on through Trees and Traps before Rings, or head into Traps and go the other way around through Trees and then Rivers.
I clamber down and run through the narrow passage to Traps.
As soon as I enter, exhilaration fills me. This Traps has three levels. No Challenger will take the lowest level, a mere arm’s length off the ground; that’s for Novices. The lanky young man wearing the green belt is working through the middle level, whose ropes and beams run along at the height of my head: challenging but not likely to be fatal should an adversary fall. The “trap” here on the lower and middle levels is a pole swing, a jump from the end of one beam to the beginning of another with a pole staked between that you have to swing around: you get momentum to help cover the gap, but momentum can also make it easy to overshoot the narrow beam.
But there is one more level, the highest of all.
Even if I don’t win, I have to make the best impression I can to ensnare the crowd’s affection by dazzling it. A murmuring buzz begins to build as I use my legs to power up a dangling rope, climbing past the middle level and straight to the top, three body heights off the ground. The wind teases across my face as I confront three challenges: a slack line, a beam split by a gap I’ll have to leap, and a taut rope. At the lowest level this would be fledgling work, but up here it’s possible for an adversary to fall to her death, adding spice to a trial.
Win, or die.
My father the baker’s son didn’t work his way up from his lowborn origins to become a general by not taking chances.
I cross the slack line with a series of tricks: a knees-up jump, a full turnaround spin, and an airborne somersault that lands me on the beam. The crowd roars its approval.
The beam is split into two parts with a gap between, and the flat top of the metal pole, the part you have to swing around on the lower levels, here functions as a stepping stone between the two halves of the beam. But I don’t use the pole as a step to bridge the gap. I back up five long steps and run. With a twist and a tuck, I spin over the pole, across the gap, and land solidly on the other side.
No training has prepared me for the howl of excitement that lifts from the crowd. Remembering how I saluted my father at the victory games, I straighten my shoulders and tap my chest twice in acknowledgment, and they howl even louder.
Then I tune out everything except the taut rope. Never look down to where death lies, far below. I breathe my racing thoughts into the calm pool of my innermost heart, and cross in ten swift steps.
Green Belt reaches the resting platform of Traps just after I do. I snap, “Kiss off, Adversary” before I vault down to the passage that leads to Trees. At the entry gate I shove open the door and step off to one side to study the obstacle, just in time, because my stocky red-belted opponent sprints past me to the first cluster of climbing posts.
The Fives song thrums in my head: Seen atop the trees, you’re known.
“Kiss off, Adversary,” Red Belt taunts before he swiftly finger-climbs up a set of boards to the top of the first feature. When I follow, the finger climb isn’t too grueling; I’ve done ten in a row to that height in training. But when I reach the top I see I can’t possibly beat Red Belt on this obstacle because it is nothing but strength-climbing up and down sets of posts arranged in various configurations between here and the resting platform above.
That’s when I notice the pos
ts themselves happen to be set into the ground close enough together that the tops of each could function as ascending stepping stones. Instead of climbing up and down each set of posts, a bold adversary could leap from the top of one to the top of the next in the same way a person might cross a stream one stone to the next. Anything that ascends counts as a climb, surely.
A slip means disaster—a broken leg or a broken neck. This route will take utter focus to ignore everything except speed, angle, forward propulsion, and balance, so I am just the person to try it.
Toes pushing, I dig deep, bending lower with each spring as my leg muscles thrust me up in a zigzag set of leaps, forward one two three four five six seven eight nine ten.… I’m slowing, and the gap between the last post and the final resting platform is too wide.
So I don’t try for the platform. I leap into the wind as if I am the probing filament of a spider’s thread cast into the air. I catch the edge of the resting platform with my hands, torquing my legs side to side to bring me to a halt.
For several breaths I hang, arms brushing my ears, body dangling.
Drifts of noise swell past like waves. Swinging up to the resting platform, I roll twice and jump to my feet. For once after completing Trees, my legs throb instead of my arms. Stocky is way behind me now. I flip him the kiss-off gesture to shouts of “Spider!”
I climb down and race along the next passage to Rivers. Quickly I negotiate the moving stones and then climb onto the nearest platform that gives entry into Rings, the final obstacle, at whose heart lies the victory tower.
In this configuration of Rings, short walkways and short stairsteps slowly rotate to produce a maze of brief connections that touch and vanish, creating both dead ends and open paths on the road to victory.
A foot scrapes the ladder as Red Belt climbs up, looking like he wants to punch me.
“You cheated,” he says. “You didn’t climb in Trees.”
“I climbed the tops of the posts. Each one was higher than the last.” My grin taunts him. “It’s not your judgment to make, Adversary. Kiss off.”
