Court of Fives

by Kate Elliott

  Five generations later, Father identified the advancing army as the Silver Spears, elite forces under the command of the king of West Saro. Like the king of East Saro and the king of Saro-Urok, he was a descendant of one of the rival clans, all of them cousins of the royal family of Efea and still squabbling over the corpse of the old empire like jackals over bones.

  Father’s captain dismissed the report as impossible, for before that day, armies from old Saro who invaded the new kingdom of prosperous Efea always came from the Eastern Reach through its rich agricultural lands. They never attacked out of the north through the bone-dry desert. He ordered Father to strike aggressively at the enemy because he was sure they were bandits who would be easily driven off.

  The desert garrison had not the numbers to turn back a massive invasion. All they could do, Father said, was hold their ground defensively and take their losses for long enough to give messengers time to reach the king and call the main army into play.

  He commanded the defense with such skill—for the main army had time to be alerted and march to the rescue—that he was rewarded with a captaincy. We never heard one word more about the highborn Patron captain, although we suspected our father had killed the man to stop him from dooming his troops to a complete slaughter. Of the 512 men garrisoned at the five desert outposts, 128 survived. Father remembered the exact numbers, and the day he told us the story he recited their names in the form of a praise poem.

  Even when you face defeat, he told us, you must not falter.

  19

  All adversaries know that the architects of Fives courses can rig them to favor an adversary based on political favor or a crowd’s preference. Tana and Darios have changed the practice course to emphasize upper body strength over agility. I have no hope of defeating Lord Thynos and Inarsis on a court rigged for pure strength.

  But I am a soldier’s daughter. I won’t falter.

  Naturally Tana starts me on Trees, my weakest obstacle. This new configuration emphasizes straight climbing up and down poles and includes a rope climb that I manage by leveraging my leg strength. My arms start aching sooner than they should. My left elbow develops a persistent “pop” every time I bend it. The obstacle finishes with a ladder that has no rungs. Hanging from a wooden bar I have to jump it up four pairs of posts.

  I’ve trained on the “jumping bar” but rarely managed a complete set. The first try I miss getting the bar into the hooks and fall, butt to sawdust. The second I get up two posts but miss my timing and crash, rolling to avoid a clumsy stumble. The wooden bar hits my face. My nose hurts but is not broken. What if I can’t do this?

  In the mines, you’re whipped if you don’t work. People get whipped to death.

  I get back up.

  The third time I focus on how the swing of my legs gives me lift. Sheer grit propels me. When I reach the fourth set of posts and lurch onto the resting platform, I collapse, panting. My arms feel like they’re going to break apart, my nose throbs, and my hands won’t open because they are cramping.

  In the mines, overwork, rockfalls, or bad air will kill you no matter how obedient and hardworking you are. No person sold to the mines comes out alive.

  I breathe through the first few moves of the menagerie called cat, all slow stretches.

  Finally I stop shaking, uncurl my hands, and go on. I enter Rivers rather than Traps next because I’m betting they’ll have rigged Traps for strength too. The spectators watch in silence, brushed by flows of murmuring as one of the others manages a neat trick, nothing I can see.

  I get through Rivers well enough but I know I am far behind when I hear an adversary enter the maze of Pillars behind me. I am pretty sure it is Lord Thynos. I scramble hard, refusing to let him pass me, and in fact I catch a glimpse of him in the maze as I climb the resting platform and then dash for Traps.

  When I brush past the gate, I see Talon on the ground rubbing her ankle. Daggers would have a friendlier impact than the piercing stab of her gaze. I stare back at her in a way I ought not.

  No one on the court will ever intimidate me. Never. This is the only place I am truly myself.

  A trainer’s whistle shrills. A crease of fierce anger lights Talon’s face so startlingly that the whole world seems to shift under my feet like I’m seeing a vengeful spirit instead of a person. Darios has pulled her from the run and she’s furious.

  I’ve allowed myself to become distracted. Focus. Focus. Focus.

  The first task in this Traps is another jumping ladder, this one higher than the last. It’s the only way to reach the beams and ropes. My courage plummets.

  Think first, Anise taught us.

  Don’t see what everyone else sees, Father would often say. See what they are missing.

  The rules of the Fives give each obstacle a specific restriction: In Trees you have to complete all the climbing tasks, although you are offered a choice between a short path with harder tasks and a longer path with easier ones. In Traps you have to get through the entire course without touching the ground; otherwise you have to go back and start over.

  So I race up the ramp, leap, and just catch the bar. I don’t jump the bar because it’s not required in Traps; that was Talon’s mistake. I hook a knee over and pull myself up so I can just climb the side post. It’s got no flair but it’s easy. The rest of the balances and bridges are simple except for the intimidating height, but the trap is sprung when I discover that the last trap needs the wooden jumping bar to fill it in. It’s easier to go back to the beginning and do it over again, this time bringing the wooden bar with me.

  I have just scrambled up the resting platform when Lord Thynos reaches the top of the victory tower and grabs one of the practice ribbons tied there. Inarsis is halfway up the ladder below him, calling up congenial curses whose crude nature makes me blush.

  Lord Thynos scans the obstacles to find me. The rush of adrenaline after a challenging run always makes me a little cocky, something else I never reveal at home. I wave mockingly, but in truth I have done better than I expected.

  He does not wave back.

  I have nothing to be ashamed of, yet when Tana releases me to go to the dining shelter while sending the other adversaries onto the course to train, I drag my feet. Just as I feared, Lord Thynos and Inarsis join me. They pepper me with questions.

  “Who trained you?”

  “Why did you go to Rivers instead of Traps after you finished Trees?”

  “Do you have a strategy for solving the maze?”

  “Which was the hardest task in this trial? Which was easiest? Where did you falter?”

  “My concentration,” I say. “I got distracted several times.”

  Tana appears. Lord Thynos and Inarsis rise.

  “She needs specifically to work on strength in addition to her regular training,” Lord Thynos says to Tana.

  The men then walk away and Tana returns to the training ground, leaving me alone.

  It takes that long for me to realize I have passed muster.

  I am an adversary training in a stable.

  I sit there with my mouth gaping like a fish for so long that my shoulders start to stiffen up. My whole life has been turned upside down, all the bad and the good churned together. Thoughts muddle around in my mind: Mother’s tears; the feel of the victor’s ribbon clutched in my hand; Amaya’s lovely cat mask that she threw in the flames; the way Father nods when he approves of something I have said or done.

  Talon limps in and sits down. She props her ankle up on a bench; it is wrapped in seaweed. In the kitchen, Cook and her assistants clatter around, preparing the evening meal. The sun sinks toward the west. The piping strains of a flute ensemble serenade us from over the palace wall, elegant and haunting.

  I collect my scattered souls, sucking in a big inhalation to calm myself. It is time to make an ally. “I’m called Jes.”

  Talon nods to acknowledge that I have spoken.

  “It’s a lovely practice ground. It feels new but it’s welcoming,” I
add.

  She makes no reply. Her complexion is flawless except for a smear of dirt on her chin. The mask of her expression tells me nothing.

  I try one more time. “How long have you been training here?”

  She looks away.

  We sit in awkward silence while the sounds of training drift on the air. Finally she unties her clubbed hair and combs it out through her fingers. It falls all the way to her buttocks, so thick and silky that I can’t help but admire its beauty. I would love to comb it like I do my sisters’ hair while we talk and argue and laugh about anything and everything, but it seems impossible to ask her after she has rebuked me. She keeps her gaze fixed on the roof of the bathhouse as she braids her hair into three tails and then braids those three tails. Only the mercenaries known as Shipwrights wear their hair this way. It looks strange on a Patron woman.

  The silence hangs so uncomfortably that I’m glad when the other adversaries crowd in to wash and line up for supper. I look around for Kalliarkos but he does not appear. Perhaps he has a court function to attend. No person can truly succeed as an adversary if they don’t devote their life to the Fives. He’s caught in the same way I was, between his dream and the pressure of those who command his life.

  Tana brings over a brass cup and hands it to me as the others stamp their feet and whistle. It’s hard not to strut.

  “You need a Fives name,” says Tana.

  “Oh. Uh… people usually call me Jes, short for Jessamy. The flower.”

  “No, no, you don’t get to choose your name,” she says with a laugh.

  By now everyone has begun shouting out suggestions. I am grateful so few are lewd.

  Just as they seem likely to vote on a stupid, sentimental name like Sailwing or Spinflower, Lord Thynos reappears with Inarsis. They are scrubbed clean and dressed in such silken lordly garb that they must be going straight to the palace. I can’t figure how a Commoner like Inarsis can accompany Lord Thynos as an equal.

  Lord Thynos says, “I have already named her.”

  Everyone shuts up. I’m so nervous I clasp my hands behind my back as Father’s soldiers do when at parade rest, but really my fingers are clutched in a death grip.

  “She’ll be called Spider, for the way she spins herself through the air.”

  The sun just then drops below the wall. Light turns to shadow all across the courtyard like evil tidings. A shiver of cold runs up my arms.

  Spider is an ill-omened name because it is a powerful name. The spider scouts protect our kingdom, and the magic that gives the metal beasts life is a secret known only to the magicians who serve the king. More dreadful yet, wickedly poisonous tomb spiders protect the City of the Dead from grave robbers and impious people who think to corrupt the oracles who guide us.

  Spiders may guard tomb and desert but they are not our friends.

  The other adversaries look down at the ground or up at the darkening sky, anywhere except at me. They are troubled and embarrassed too.

  I am suddenly certain that Thynos and Gargaron are engaged in a game I know nothing about, one that involves lords and palaces as far beyond my common reach as the stars in the sky.

  I incline my head to accept what I cannot change.

  Lord Thynos departs, Inarsis walking beside him. Once they’re gone the conversation jolts back to life as everyone mingles, relaxed and easy.

  “Jes! You want to sit with us?” Gira waves me over to her table. “This is Shorty, and Mis,” she adds, introducing the other two women.

  They smile. Nothing feels more natural than to sit down together with the three of them as all my life I have sat alongside my sisters. Missing Merry, Bett, and Amiable gnaws like a pain in my belly, and I desperately wish they were here, but the cheerful way Gira, Shorty, and Mis include me makes my grief easier to bear.

  Talon stays off by herself. The praise the adversaries throw my way is sparse, like a passing shower of rain, but I can tell they are glad to have me. People sing as they drink cups of passionflower juice and graze through bowls of nuts. I could learn to love this.

  After bathing I pick my own cubicle, one near the door. I’m issued Fives gear, a long, sleeveless linen sheath gown for everyday wear, undergarments, sandals, and a worn but serviceable set of formal clothes pressed and folded. An oil lamp. A bed with a linen sheet and a pillow. All the necessities for grooming, monthly bleeding, and washing. Exhausted, I stretch out on the bed.

  How swiftly fortune changes!

  Everything I took for granted has dissolved into mist and shadow. That which I never dared hope for has come true. Is there an oracle at the heart of the world who whispers a fortune into unhearing ears and we never know until it is too late? Or does fortune fall at random like ripe fruit dropping when a passing wind shakes it free?

  Tonight Father will lie down with his new bride and his new rank. He has made a fresh bed for his ambition that doesn’t include us.

  What will happen to Mother and my sisters must concern me above all else. Just as Kalliarkos said: dedicate myself to the Fives, and give my prize money to help my family build a new life. I can make this work. I’m sure of it.

  20

  I wake up the next morning as an adversary. No matter how many times I say the word to myself I have trouble believing it. The curtained cubicle with not a scrap of decoration and only a small chest of folded garments and necessaries is all the luxury I have ever desired, because I am now training at an official stable. Light as air, I float out to join my comrades.

  Gira and Shorty and Mis wave me over to sit with them for breakfast. Mugs of broth with flakes of green heal-all and bits of meat go down smoothly, a light breakfast before training.

  “Do you like the theater, Jes?” Gira asks. “We’re trying to decide which performance to see this week.”

  Shorty says, “I want to see The Hide of the Ox.”

  Mis groans. “Not that again. You’ve seen it ten times.”

  “A hundred times will be too few. All those battles and duels, and then everyone dies at the end.”

  “Everyone dies?” I exclaim with a look of shock.

  Mis screws up her face apologetically. “Oh, no, now you’ve ruined it for her!”

  Shorty is a nice woman who will never be a top-ranked adversary. I am pretty sure Tana is training her to be a trainer. Shorty smirks, lifting her chin. “Look at her eyebrows. She’s already seen it. She’s messing with us to get a squawk like she just did from you, Mis.”

  Everyone chortles.

  I set down my spoon. “Do you go often to the theater? It seems like staying out so late would interfere with training.”

  “With an attitude like that they’re going to love you,” says Gira with a laugh. “All work and no fun. We don’t train on Sevensday so most people go out on the town on Sixthday night. We three usually go to the Lantern District and see a play. You can join us if you want. What would you like to see?”

  Talon has taken a seat at the other end of our table. It is obvious she is listening by the flicker of her eyes when Gira invites me along.

  My mouth opens and closes. Except for Amaya’s excursions with Denya’s respectable family, my sisters and I are only allowed to go to the theater when Father is home to accompany us. The idea of going on my own with fellow adversaries hammers home how totally my life has changed. “I don’t know. My sister Amaya’s favorite is The General’s Valiant Daughter because of the doomed love story between the daughter’s brave maidservant and a handsome soldier who is a prince in disguise. She often goes with a friend but I’ve never seen it.”

  “I wanted to see that new play, The Poet’s Curse,” says Mis. “But it never opened.”

  Tana halts beside our table, shaking her head. “A good thing it did not open. The king’s own seal bearer closed the theater’s doors for good and all the actors were sent to the provinces. The man who wrote the play got arrested and thrown into the king’s prison for murder.”

  Mis says, “The playwright killed someone?�
�

  “He was charged with killing the reputation of the royal family by humiliating them in public. I heard a rumor that the play concerned a reprehensible story about the honorable and deified Serenissima the First, mistress of favorable winds and daughter of the great goddess Hayiyin who causes the water to rise and the grain to sprout.” Her glower cows us. “An appropriate theatrical entertainment would be one of the comedies playing on Trifle Street. Or that other old favorite, The General’s Valiant Daughter, as Jes mentioned. That should have enough swordplay, backstabbing, old enmities, and wicked bandits even for your low taste, Shorty.”

  The training bell rings, and we hurry to line up for menageries. Kalliarkos doesn’t show up so it must be one of the days he has other duties. Lord Thynos and Inarsis separate me from the rest and push me through a grueling session on Trees. They make me climb, and climb, and climb. They show me a better method to work the blind shaft. They make me hang until my shoulders feel like they’re going to rip off. They make me pull my chin up to the bar and lower myself back down until my arms become more porridge than iron. Then they count while I stand on my hands with my feet resting on a pole.

  After this brutal initiation, Inarsis races me and Dusty through Rivers five times to see how much my eye for pattern and speed gets thrown off by fatigue. By the fifth pass I’m not much better than Dusty, but I still beat him.

  Then they race us on parallel ladders set horizontally across poles. We swing from hand to hand, side by side. Dusty with his lean strength beats me, which makes him crow out loud and flap his arms in mock triumph, and that makes me laugh helplessly as I drop to the ground in a heap. Thynos walks off as Inarsis calls over a pair of stable attendants to adjust the posts.

  Dusty sits beside me, wiping chalk off his hands. “I’m utter glad to have another one like me here,” he says cheerfully. “Gets lonely being the only mule.”

  “There’s not so few children born to Patron men and Commoner women,” I object. “Nor should it be shameful. That’s why I don’t like that word.”