Court of Fives

by Kate Elliott

  “You look lovely,” I say.

  “Amaya? Are you in here?” Her friend Denya waits behind the closed entry drape for permission to enter. “Lord Ottonor is about to receive visitors! You better hurry!”

  I grab my linen finery as a servant lifts the drape. Denya steps into our little refuge and stops, trying not to stare at me pulling the long sheath of a gown down over my dark body.

  Amaya places herself between Denya and the couch to hide the Fives clothes draped in full view. “Glad tidings! Who is coming, Denya?” she asks in what Maraya calls her bird-twitter voice. “I simply can’t wait to see!”

  “A party from Garon Palace. It’s a great honor for Lord Ottonor to host a palace lord at his balcony!” Denya is a soldier’s daughter, like us, but both her parents are Patron-born. She has the courtesy to be embarrassed at being caught staring, for which I like her. Her gaze catches on the tunic and leggings, and her forehead wrinkles as she puzzles. “Is your headache better, Jessamy Tonor?”

  “Salutations, Denya Tonor,” I reply, for every person who lives under a lord’s sponsorship takes the clan name as their surname to mark their allegiance. “While languishing here with a headache I have been reciting poetry to improve my character:

  At dawn face the east to sing in the new day.

  What the oracle speaks, your heart yearns to obey.”

  “You are so dutiful, Jessamy Tonor,” Denya says politely as she grabs Amaya’s hand and hauls her to the entry drape. For all that Denya is pure Patron and pretty enough, she knows Amaya is the lamp that draws the moths. “If we hurry we won’t miss Lord Gargaron’s party as they arrive. I’ve seen them on their balcony. His nephew is really good-looking. If we pick the right place to stand, he might speak to us!”

  “Truly?” Amaya’s interest shifts away from the damning clothes to the far more interesting prospect of flirting.

  They slip outside just as a roar of disappointment bellows from the spectators. An adversary has failed to complete one of the obstacles. I slowly tuck the clothes away in my satchel. It was far easier to climb up the ladder onto the Fives court than it is to go stand among people who will stare, wondering why Father allows a daughter who looks like me out in public. But I don’t want him to think I’m a coward. And hiding will dishonor Mother. So I walk out along the cloth-walled passageway to the balcony where Lord Ottonor and his entourage watch the trials under the shaded comfort of an awning.

  Lord Ottonor sits on a cushioned chair with an excellent view of the playing court below. My father’s sponsor is an avid spectator of the Fives. He ran them himself when he was young. I find it hard to look at this old man with his sagging jowls, patchy breathing, and complexion gray from ill health, and imagine him as a Fives adversary good enough to compete at the Royal Court, much less as an Illustrious.

  “This set has no adversary as adept as that last pair,” he wheezes as everyone listens attentively. They don’t even notice me enter. “Look at the fellow wearing the green belt. He’ll never get past the rope bridge if he can’t figure out it is rigged to collapse. I put no odds on the red-belt girl. She’s slow like day-old porridge, ha ha!”

  The men standing beside his chair all laugh politely. A table laden with fruit, roasted shrimp, spicy beans, and sweet finger-cakes dusted with sugar sits close enough that he can gesture to whatever he wants. Right now my father is offering him a platter of shrimp from which Lord Ottonor is picking off the fattest and juiciest with a pair of lacquered tongs.

  None of Lord Ottonor’s blood relatives are here today, only people he has elevated through sponsorship. Besides my father there are three other military officers, an administrator wearing the long sleeves of a bureaucrat, and one dour merchant. The men have been allowed to bring their marriageable children.

  Amaya and Denya have taken a place at the railing at the edge of the awning, where they can get the first look at any visitors coming through from the back. Another Patron girl joins them; I don’t know her name and have never seen her before. Three boys about our age watch the game.

  My mother is the only Commoner seated beneath the awning. All the other Commoners here are masked servants, none of whom would ever sit down in the company of Patrons, because they would be whipped.

  I don’t want to talk to Amaya and her friends so I find a place to stand at the far end of the balcony. The only thing I really care about is what is going on down on the court. The green-belted adversary is stuck at the rope bridge in Traps. My father sees me. With a stern nod he indicates the platter in his hand, so I hurry over and return it to the table.

  My movement catches Lord Ottonor’s eye. “A shame about her, Esladas, no? The other girl is so pretty.”

  I busy myself with arranging the platter among the others, keeping my face averted.

  My father says, “Jessamy is an obedient girl, my lord. Obedience must always be valued above beauty in a woman.”

  “I suppose so,” said Lord Ottonor. “Although when obedience goes hand in hand with beauty, the world smiles more brightly, does it not?” He nods at my mother, whom he allows to sit beside him because he enjoys admiring her.

  She is embroidering a length of cloth. Her hugely pregnant belly should make the work a little clumsy, except my mother can do nothing clumsily. No ribbons confine her hair, which she wears in its natural cloud. She makes no effort to lighten her complexion, nor does she need to. Men have written poems to the lambent glamour of her eyes. She looks up with a kind smile.

  “I think all my daughters are beautiful, Lord Ottonor, both the two who look like Esladas and the two who look like me.” Her silk-soft voice is as exquisite as her face and rather than scolding him seems to be agreeing with him.

  I don’t know how she does it. I don’t think she knows. I think she just is that way, like a butterfly whose bright wings capture the eye simply because it is a radiant creature.

  “Four daughters, Esladas!” Lord Ottonor drones on. “I’m surprised you kept them all, since they will just be a burden to you when you have to pay to marry them off. If you can marry them off.” He pops a shrimp in his mouth as he considers the vast swell of my mother’s belly. “Perhaps this one will be a son.”

  My father says, “If the oracles favor us, it will be a son.”

  My mother’s eyebrows tighten. Although she takes an offering tray to the City of the Dead once a week in the manner of a proper Patron woman, she herself never consults the oracles, not as Father and all Patrons do.

  At the railing Amaya tugs on Denya’s sleeve. A party of men enters the balcony box. My mother rises from her chair and retreats to the back benches where sit the Patron women who are the wives of the soldiers. Out of respect for my father’s new fame as hero of Maldine they allow her to rest among them. Anyway, they like her.

  Once I am sure she is settled I sidle to the far corner railing out of the way as the newcomers are announced. Lord Gargaron is a slender man of about my father’s age, a thin-faced fellow with thin eyes and a thin nose and a thin smile. Lord Ottonor laboriously rises to greet him.

  I am as invisible as any servant. Which is a good thing, because I sustain a shock that jolts right through my body as my hands clutch the railing.

  One of the people with Lord Gargaron is Blue Boy.

  6

  Blue Boy is called Lord Kalliarkos. He is the nephew of Lord Gargaron.

  Tidied up and dressed in lord’s clothing, he is the same youth I allowed to reach the tower first. He patiently acknowledges the men being introduced to him by Lord Ottonor, but by the way his gaze keeps flicking to the court below I can tell he wants to be watching the game.

  “Ah, you just ran that trial, did you not?” says Lord Ottonor. “Shame about your last adversary falling from the Rings. I thought it a funny slip for her to make.”

  “So did I,” says Lord Kalliarkos.

  A mighty shout rises from the spectators. Everyone looks to see what has happened.

  The green-belted youth has figured out
the trick with the rings but his rhythm is off as he leaps from one to the next. The turning rings are about to cut him off. If he is smart he will stop and swing down to the ground, but he sees the girl in the red belt running along the ground and he doesn’t want to lose.

  I suck in a breath. A terrible thing is about to happen.

  “Stop. Stop, you fool,” I whisper. I know what it is like to have your pulse pounding in your ears and your breath surging in gasps and your entire being so fixed on the handhold you are reaching for that you don’t see the gaping chasm opening at your feet.

  I grip the railing so hard it bruises my fingers.

  Just as Green Boy leaps into the next ring, its nested smaller ring cuts inside the larger ring, which he is holding. The crowd shrieks as the ring crushes him. He falls, screaming. The roar of the spectators drowns the thump of his body onto the ground. From the angle of his neck and the sprawl of his limbs, anyone with eyes can tell he is dead.

  Sucking in an oath, I push back and look around.

  Even Amaya, who has not the slightest interest in the Fives, is clasping hands with Denya and staring avidly at the dead youth. It’s not that the spectators want adversaries to die. It’s just that it adds spice to the game, not to mention spatters of bright-red blood on the sandy ground like the spots on a tomb spider’s brown back.

  As the crowd cheers, the red-belt-wearing girl climbs the ladder to take her triumph.

  Kalliarkos is staring at me with the same narrow-eyed frown I saw when he pulled off his mask on the victory tower. He glances around Lord Ottonor’s retinue, spots my mother, and looks back at me. He walks to the railing next to me and glances at my feet in the five-toed foot-hugging leather game shoes I did not have the wit to change.

  In a low voice he says, “Doma, I swear by the oracles that you remind me of someone who was wearing scuffed leather shoes exactly like those, down to the three lines of chalk smeared across the right foot.”

  My gasp causes Kalliarkos to smile.

  “I won’t tell if you don’t want me to. Where do you train?”

  “I can’t say. They don’t know I run.” My cheeks burn.

  “Any of them?” he demands, almost laughing.

  “Shh! My sisters know. Not my father and mother.”

  He studies the Patron men surrounding Lord Ottonor. “Which one is your father?”

  My father happens to look our way at that moment, mouth tight and expression hard.

  “Ah,” says Kalliarkos. “The hero of Maldine. I should have guessed.”

  I want to know why he “should have guessed,” but it seems rude to ask a lord what he is thinking. No lord has ever spoken to me before today. Father will not like the attention he is showing me. I should want him to walk away but I don’t.

  “You lost on purpose,” he says.

  I stare down at the playing court, trying to ignore him so he’ll leave. Men roll the dead adversary onto a stretcher.

  “It made me feel my victory was a cheat,” he adds.

  “My apologies, my lord. It was not my intention to make you feel like a cheat.” It is hard not to snap, because I still feel the moment when I had to fall. I manage a calm tone. “But I can’t win.”

  “That’s not true! You’re really very good.…” He trails off, tracing the polished wood of the railing with a finger. “Oh.”

  “If I’d won, I’d have had to take off the mask. Then they would have seen.”

  A smile teases his eyes, one that doesn’t quite touch his lips. “That must be frustrating, having to lose when you know you could have won.”

  “It is—!” I break off. “Not that it wasn’t close, I mean.”

  “That’s kind of you to say, but the truth is I didn’t see how the rings would turn into a tunnel. You would have beaten me.”

  I bite my lower lip to stop myself from agreeing with him. Instead I gesture to the court. Men carry the stretcher off while the ground is sprinkled with sand and wood shavings and raked for the next run. “You have to get the timing of the rotation exactly right. If you don’t, the smaller rings turning inside the bigger ones will break your grip or crush your fingers. Like what happened with that adversary, may the gods judge him kindly.”

  He doesn’t even look toward the court. Instead he leans toward me. “Rings is my weakness. I need to be good enough to make it out of Novice and into Challenger. That’s never going to happen if I can’t succeed at Rings. You saw it all, where it was and where it was going and how it would get there. How do you do that? Where do you train?”

  “Kalliarkos,” calls Lord Gargaron, making no effort to keep his voice down. “Kalliarkos, pray pay attention when I speak to you. Lord Ottonor ran the Royal Court when he was your age, did you know? He could give you a piece of advice or two, well worth listening to if you ever want to be good enough to get past Novice and not just dabble at the Fives as it seems you do.”

  I wince.

  Kalliarkos’s handsome face turns to a blank mask, utterly still, so you can’t tell what he’s thinking. But by the bleak splinter of doubt in his eyes I see that his uncle has poked him with this knife before, calling his skill into question in front of others.

  “Maybe Rings isn’t your strong point,” I mutter in a low voice, “but you can learn some tricks to help you see how the timing falls into place.”

  “Kalliarkos, do not speak to the servants. Ottonor, why is that girl standing idly by? If you must employ Commoners to serve in your household, please be sure they wear a mask.”

  Lord Ottonor’s flushed face betrays his embarrassment as he glances toward my mother. The moment he looks toward her, the women seated around her move away.

  “She is the daughter of Captain Esladas.” Lord Ottonor’s tone is stretched so tight that it grates.

  Lord Gargaron’s thin face sneers in condescension. “I have heard of your excellent tactical breakthrough at the battle of Maldine, Captain Esladas. I would think a man of your talents would have arranged a beneficial marriage with a woman of proper Saroese ancestry years ago. With adequate sponsorship and a suitable wife, you might go farther than a second-rate captaincy.”

  The group under Lord Ottonor’s awning goes deadly quiet. The flush on Ottonor’s face drains to a pallor. He looks a little sick. He presses a handkerchief to his brow but makes no reply. What emotion smolders in the press of my father’s gaze I dare not guess, but Father does not move nor speak.

  Gargaron eyes my mother with a pinch of hostility, then looks straight at me. “Regardless, I am surprised you parade the girl before her betters in this unseemly way. Surely you are not hanging her out in the hope of attracting a buyer.”

  “Forgive me, Lord Gargaron,” says Father in a soft voice. “I brought my daughters with me today in the hope of giving them some polish. That they are allowed to mingle in company with their betters cannot but improve their characters.”

  Kalliarkos stands with the fingers of one hand pressed to his forehead, gaze fixed on his sandaled feet. Most of the other men have the courtesy to look away but Denya’s father is smiling as if my father’s public humiliation is a long-hoped-for prize. To my surprise, Denya does not step away from Amaya but remains stubbornly at her side, holding her hand, even when her father gestures for her to come over to him.

  Amaya looks at me. Tears sparkle unshed at the corners of her eyes. By the fixed intensity of her gaze I can tell she is furious. I stare at her, wordlessly promising that we will endure this. Words cannot humiliate us unless we let them. We have seen our mother accept much worse and smile graciously.

  “Daughters?” Lord Gargaron professes innocence as he glances at Amaya. “Have you more than one? An expense that surprises me, given your humble origins. I believe you are a baker’s son, are you not? Come to Efea to make your fortune?”

  “I have four daughters,” Father replies. “Amaya is my youngest, Jessamy a year older.”

  “Where are the other two?” asks Lord Gargaron.

  Father glance
s toward the tent as if he fears by some malicious mischief we have hidden Maraya inside with her shameful crippled foot. “They are not here, my lord.”

  “Have you eight sons to match your four daughters, as the oracles tell us, ‘Let your sons be double in number so your wars will flourish’?”

  “I have hope of sons, my lord,” says Father.

  Every person under the awning, even the masked servants, looks at my mother’s pregnant belly.

  “Merely a hope of sons! Meanwhile you suffer four living daughters to be ensconced in your household! You have gone native indeed, Captain Esladas. Everyone knows the Commoners spend themselves into penury for the vanity of their daughters. No wonder you are stuck at a captain’s rank despite your famous exploits. You will rise no farther if your feet are stuck in the mud.”

  Kalliarkos actually gasps. He glances at me although surely he understands I cannot react.

  Father takes in a long and slow breath, and he lets it out in a long and slow exhalation. Mother calmly chain-stitches white petals to fill out an embroidered rose. She does not look up nor does her hand falter. One might be forgiven for thinking her simpleminded, or deaf.

  “Friend Gargaron, shall we not watch the trial?” says Ottonor feebly. “They are about to begin a new trial.”

  “So they are,” says Lord Gargaron, settling back to observe. “Let the girl bring me something to eat.” Father beckons to me at the same time as Lord Gargaron adds, “The other girl, the pretty one.”

  I stop short, panting a little, because I’m both angry and scared. Amaya looks confused and apprehensive, not sure if she should be flattered by the lord’s attention or worried about it. She hesitates, looking toward Father for direction.

  “I’ll get what you need, Uncle.” Kalliarkos shakes his shoulders as if releasing himself from a rope that has pulled him up short. He walks to the buffet table. “These shrimp look particularly succulent. Let me add one of these stuffed mushrooms, your favorite, Uncle. And here is coriander bread shaped as fish!”