“He’s blinded me, gods curse him!” Pain knotted Tylond’s voice.
“Sit.”
Tylond sat.
Fesh and Teth slipped in through the open door, eyes bright and attentive. They might not have seen what happened, but their ears were sharp and they were canny creatures.
Picking up Sherakai’s discarded shirt, Bairith pressed the cloth against the catastrophe of Tylond’s face. As he did, he considered his prize pupil. “I assume you have a reason for this, Sherakai.”
Not boy, not little dragon, but his name. That rarely happened. He wanted to rip it from the jansu’s lips. He had no right to use it. “A thousand.”
“Insufferable, ungrateful brat.” Tylond accepted the soiled shirt from his master and held it against his eye himself. Pain rolled off him in potent waves.
Sherakai drew on it, fueling his anger and his bone-deep desire to return even a fraction of all the hurt Tylond had ever visited upon him. “You made this—” He gestured sharply, indicating himself, “—and now you despise it? You are never satisfied, shader.”
“Hush,” came Bairith’s soft voice. He closed the space between them and took Sherakai’s bloody hand in his to examine the cut. “How did this happen?”
He curled his lip in a silent snarl at Tylond, but gentle fingers turned his face, and sea-blue eyes demanded his attention. Beautiful eyes. Deadly eyes. The eyes of a creature with no conscience. No heart.
“A claw tore through the worthless piece of junk we call a vambrace.” From the table beside him Sherakai picked up the shredded bit of armor and slapped it down again. A chunk broke off and fell to the floor.
“How unfortunate that it didn’t remove your tongue instead,” Tylond observed. He looked at the cloth, went another shade paler, and put it back in place.
The jansu touched the wound and murmured the spell to draw together the edges of skin. Light and energy prickled through the youth’s arm. Sherakai held still as stone.
“What happened to the armor I sent for you?” Bairith picked up the remains of the vambrace, his anger obvious, but clearly held in check.
“I wear the scraps Hamrin finds.”
“I see. Someone must have misplaced it.” No doubt that someone would pay for the oversight.
“How do you know this one hasn’t lost it or ruined it, only to lay the blame at Hamrin’s feet?” Tylond asked.
“I would not.” Anger trembled through Sherakai’s frame.
“If you haven’t done it, then surely Hamrin has, and he’s even more of an incompetent than dan Sorehi.”
Sherakai lunged for the healer, but Bairith put a hand on his chest and halted him with a single word.
“Stop.” He tilted his head a fraction. “Easy, my dragon. Control your temper. Keep it and hone it into the sharpest of blades.” Though he’d stopped him, the note in Bairith’s crooning voice was pitched to incite, not calm.
Tylond didn’t help. “Who knew the two of you were so close that you’d fly to the defense of your former—and quite dead—teacher. Remind me again, how did he die?”
“Shut up.”
“Is he not beautiful with such fire in his eyes?” Bairith asked, glorying, glowing.
“I could tell you better if I could see,” Tylond snapped.
“Surely you can appreciate the result of our efforts.”
“Should I return later?” Hamrin hesitated in the doorway.
“Not at all.” With his hand still on Sherakai’s chest, Bairith drained away the youth’s fury. The compulsion to remain in place did not fade. “I sent armor for Sherakai. It was marked with my insignia.”
“It did not come to me, lord.”
The jansu scrutinized the instructor, then nodded. “It will be found. In the meantime, purchase the boy clothes more fitting to his position.” From the pouch at his belt, he produced a small bag. Coins inside jingled when he tossed it. “These rags are an embarrassment.”
“Aye, m’lord.”
“I don’t know why you bother.” Petulant, Tylond fished around in his kit with one hand. “He’s as much of an embarrassment to your house as his clothing.”
“You would do well not to question me, my friend. I might start reconsidering some of my other choices.” He smiled. It was not a reassuring sight. “From small and simple things we shape greatness.” A gentle push urged him toward Hamrin. “I will be watching, rest assured. And Sherakai… You know where my box is; I will have an acknowledgment next time you are on the sands. Please me, and there may be a reward.”
He did not believe for an instant, but no elegantly clad courtier could have executed a more graceful, more proper bow than he. “Yes, lord.”
Chapter 24
“What you are?” Rinlag Kirath asked in his heavy accent. His words blended with the whispers from those around them and stole the silence of the night. “Bairith Mindar’s thing. That is said.”
A thing…
An elbow slammed into a throat and a spear thrust perfectly beneath an upraised arm had landed Sherakai on the fifth deck. It didn’t surprise him to find Rinlag in the cell next to his, but what did that make him? What did that make them? Undisputed murderers.
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Despair spiraled. Behind him, Teth grunted and shifted, pressing against him.
“Hamrin Demirruk is much reputed. He trains for your master.”
He banged his shoulders against the bars. Teth growled, but didn’t move. “Bairith Mindar is not my master.” Behind that thought came another. Hamrin had a second name after all.
“You are zimann kesturos? Mm, child of coin?”
“What do you mean?”
“Father here send for fame?”
“No.” He snorted and shook his head. “My father had nothing to do with me being here.” His father would be angry to learn that Lord Chiro had forced Sherakai into a life he despised. He hadn’t wanted to go to the college of magic, but it was infinitely preferable to this.
Rinlag’s puzzlement was palpable. “What Bairith Mindar to you is?”
If the deaths of those he had killed did not weigh upon him so heavily, Rinlag’s twisting of words might have wrung a smile from him. “He is a liar, a shader, and a cold-blooded thug. He tortured my brothers and my sister, then murdered them. He hurt and humiliated my father.” And he’d likely suffer Bairith’s indignation for voicing such insults.
“Owner of you, then.” Sympathy rather than mockery colored his voice, his aura.
Sherakai’s jaw worked. “He would like to think so. And more.”
“What more?”
He made a sharp dismissive motion. “Everything. He wants me to be his son. He could teach me so many things.” Derision was sharp. If only it could cut through the half-elf’s perfect hide. “He believes I could come to love him.”
Tenting his brows, Rinlag hitched closer, wrapping one bony hand around a bar. “His son?” he echoed. “He is rich, this Bairith Mindar. And powerful. You could have much.”
A sour grimace twisted Sherakai’s mouth.
“Coin. Power.” A small silence came, wrapped with an air of suggestion. “Vengeance.”
“How?” The last intrigued him. “He’s bound me with his magic.”
One of the beasts got to its feet. Fesh, for Teth had his back. The creature moved restlessly up and down the space in front of the cell, talons ticking on the stone.
The movement caught Rinlag’s eye, and he leaned closer, curious. “Like ropes?”
“Yes. I’m tied to him and he’s tied to me. He can feel what I feel.”
“Is like? Same from him to you?”
“No. He has better control than I do, and I don’t want to feel him.”
“Then he has advantage. That is right word? Longer reach.”
“True,” he conceded, turning the idea over. He wasn’t sure he wanted to touch the link at all. “But if I swim in that stream the stench is likely to stick.”
Rinlag laughed. It was an odd,
hissing sound like steam escaping a boiling pot. “Is poison?”
“What if it is? What if I become like him? He is the complete opposite of everything I believe in or hope for.” Why was he baring his soul to a stranger?
“You go wary. You choose.”
Fesh pressed close to Teth, pushing his snout through the bars over Sherakai’s shoulder. He clicked his teeth together sharply.
“Those follow words?” Rinlag pointed at the pair.
“Yes.” He lifted a hand to rub Fesh’s jaw and the creature gave a soft snort.
Celery-green light glinted on a fierce smile. “They say them back to Bairith Mindar?”
“No. You were telling me about vengeance.”
Rinlag eyed him, then nodded. “Yes. Know enemy. Know magic. Make strong like ox and sly like fox. Bairith Mindar be so surprised favorite pet rip out throat when he stroke head.”
The animal similes were too close to his reality for comfort. Fesh must have thought the same, for he bared his teeth and gave a little growl.
“Is warning?”
“No, agreement.”
“How you know?”
“I’ve been with him for a while.”
“How long?”
Whatever ground he’d gained from Rinlag’s rebellious talk fell away before an onslaught of uncertainty. “I—He captured me shortly before my fifteenth birthday. And I—” He swallowed the constriction in his throat. “I haven’t seen the sun for such a long time…”
The whispers of the other captives tumbled around them like a breeze in the trees. Fesh whined softly. Rinlag tapped a finger against a bar, wrapped in thought. Then, “Rain,” he said. “I am miss rain.”
“The sky.”
“Wind on lake.” He made a back-and-forth gesture with his hand.
“Birds singing.” Sherakai gave a crooked, humorless smile. “And my own bed.”
“Is girl?”
“My bed?” How bizarre…
“No. Is girl home? For kissing?”
“No.” He paused, remembering plans for him to marry Jasoshi. He’d never kissed her. Did she know he was gone? Did she care? “How about you?”
“Yes.” There came a sigh, quiet and tight. “These thoughts are for staying alive. For freedom.”
“Besides death, is there freedom from this place?”
“Yes. Ask Hamrin Demirruk.”
“Was he a player?”
“Ask.”
Chapter 25
Death stained the sands beneath the oppressive, churning clouds hunched over the arena. Sherakai knelt a little way from the newest corpse he’d made. Assaulted by the roar of a crowd that never quite solidified to the eyes, it was all he could do to keep the tumult of savage euphoria from overcoming him. Horror escaped him, wrenching from his gut and spilling onto the ground. He supported himself on one stiff arm, the other clutched against his chest.
When he leaned back to wipe a sleeve over his face, someone kicked sand over the vomit.
“You arm break,” Rinlag said.
“Yes.” Bone pierced through skin and fabric; blood trickled and tickled. Hot. He wanted to hold it, but he still had his knife in his hand.
Rinlag had saved Sherakai, stepping in at the last minute to distract and unbalance the foe. Yet it had been Sherakai’s blade that had robbed their opponent of life. Crimson covered his chest, arms, and hand. The sticky warmth on his neck and face might be blood, or it might be his imagination. He couldn’t get the fellow’s startled expression out of his mind. Iniki dan Sorehi had worn a similar look.
“Are you all right?” he thought to ask.
“Yes. Stab leg, but here.” He pointed a thumb at the top of his thigh. It oozed crimson. “Not bad.”
“Good.” He nodded, surprisingly glad.
“Good,” Rinlag agreed and caught hold of Sherakai’s armor to pull him up. “You can walk, or cleaners carry?”
The cleaners carried the bodies away—living and dead—picked up severed limbs, and raked the sand smooth again. Fighters tended to use the term with a derogatory tone, but envy seeped from them. We’d be cleaners, if only it meant living instead of dying, picking up filth rather than becoming filth. Maybe they had their own nightmares, but it could not equal the terror the deckers faced every day. What happened to those who lived, but were unable to fight again?
“I’ll walk.”
Rinlag pried the knife from Sherakai’s hand, put an arm around his waist, and guided him toward the doorway. As they got underway, the spectators in the nearest section burst into a new uproar. The din beat upon him and he sagged under the weight.
“They scream for you.” Rinlag had to shout.
“What? Why?”
The young man shook his head and said something Sherakai didn’t catch. The noise stole away his words, but disgust curled his mouth and darkened his eyes.
Sherakai clung to it—to the sense that Rinlag hated this place and what happened here as much as he did. For an instant, he dreamed they could leave, that this burden forced upon them could be lifted. “Find us, Papa,” he whispered. “Please.”
Rinlag didn’t hear him; no one did, least of all his father. Something hard struck his shoulder and bounced into the sand. It lay there winking back at him. Gold. Dear gods… Rinlag’s foot tangled with his and they both went down. Automatically, he put both hands out to catch his fall. Rinlag managed to keep him from hitting the ground with his full weight, but it jarred him enough to draw a strangled cry of agony.
“Is fine, is fine,” Rinlag repeated, holding Sherakai close for a moment. “Is in your pocket.”
The words made no sense. He pressed his forehead into Rinlag’s shoulder, breathing through his teeth, fighting to turn the pain into energy he could use.
“Hide it or they take. Is yours. You see. Here is Hamrin Demirruk. Also Bairith Mindar. Remember, you are ox.”
He didn’t know how to be strong. He nodded anyway and allowed Rinlag to push him upright and into the care of a trio of gray-clad servants that materialized from out of nowhere.
“Ye fought well, Sherakai,” Hamrin announced. “Three kills! Did ye hear the crowd?”
Bairith’s Voice easily overrode him. “Come, boy. Let me see what you’ve done.”
He had no choice but obedience. With an economy of movement, the jansu cut away the ruined sleeve. The motion and inevitable pulling of fabric and skin hurt. He stared at the wound in morbid fascination, then turned aside before he embarrassed himself again.
The brief examination made Bairith’s face hard, then he drew his fingers from elbow to wrist. At a word, shadows wrapped around Sherakai’s forearm. They did nothing to mend him, but the pain eased considerably. “That will hold it for now.”
Whether by accident or intent, Hamrin and Bairith cut Rinlag off without so much as a sound. The young warrior hung back near the doorway to the arena, his own trainer waiting impatiently nearby. Bairith snapped his fingers at the servants, then took a position on Sherakai’s left to protect and to urge him along.
Sherakai drew away from helping hands. “Thank you!” he called.
Rinlag smiled and touched his forehead, fingers spread.
“A friend of yours?” Bairith asked, aversion competing with concern.
“No. That’s not allowed, is it?” He would like that, but likely one of them would kill the other all too soon. “Will I fight again?”
Bairith beamed as though he’d been given a gift. “I have no doubt. You are capable, and you will heal. Mage Tylond will see to that.”
“I don’t want to.” As long as he was daring to voice that opinion, he could carry it a little further. “I hate it.”
Bairith put a gentle hand on the back of Sherakai’s neck as they walked. Hamrin came behind; a servant held Sherakai’s right arm as if the youth might faint at any moment. Another went in front—but backward—with a bowl of water and a cloth that no one seemed inclined to use.
“And yet you have a natural talent, one you
have begun to embrace in spite of your protestations to the contrary. You forget that I can read your emotions as easily as I can read a book; perhaps better because no nuance is lost to the insufficiency of letters and words. I know the quickening of your blood, the pleasure of a blow well placed, the exultation when you win.”
You mean when I avoid getting stabbed or beheaded. He stopped without warning and held his good hand out toward the water bowl. Hamrin nearly trod on his heels. “Please?” The others surged ahead, then drifted back.
Pale-faced, the servant handed the dish over and bowed.
Bairith tented his fingertips together at his waist and waited, patient as a spider. Sherakai refused to look at him, lifting the bowl to his parched lips. He drained the water, then took the cloth to wrap around his arm.
“Your wound needs to be washed and mended,” Bairith pointed out.
“Yes, lord,” he murmured, and set off again. The level corridors were manageable, but the multitude of stairs threatened to finish him. Drawing upon the steady throb of pain kept him going for a while. Finally, Bairith pressed his hand against Sherakai’s neck again. Cool energy flowed down his spine.
When at last they reached the magical portal, the jansu waved a hand in command and barked a short phrase. The portal shimmered as he guided Sherakai into it. There was the same sensation of infinite space, of indistinct images, of falling. When the motion stopped, he opened his eyes to find himself in the low bed in his room. It smelled familiar. Comfortable.
Turning his head, he saw on the trunk a plate with half a slice of buttered bread and a bit of leftover crumbs. He remembered eating some of it, then setting it aside. But that had been weeks ago.
“Fesh?”
The creature bounded through the open door and up onto the bed where he sat expectantly on Sherakai’s feet. Ridiculous how much he’d missed that. “How long were we at the arena?”
Fesh stretched his arms out wide. Long. A circle made with a knobby thumb and forefinger held over his head indicated the moon in the sky. Then three fingers.
“Three months?”
A nod.
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