Court of Fives

by Kate Elliott

  My cheeks flame.

  “I knew I could make you blush again,” he says, his bright face all the laughter he needs. He is the sun, triumphant, and tonight, one way or another, he is going to be mine.

  “Leave her be, my lord,” says Darios, coming up to us. “She is already on the court in her mind and so should you be. Do you forget what this trial means to you?”

  Kalliarkos stiffens, releasing me as his expression closes up like the last brick set into the door of his tomb. “No, of course not.”

  I grab his hand despite Darios’s frowning presence. “May Fortune kiss you as I do.”

  Right out where everyone can see and wonder and speculate, I kiss him. It is only a brief touch, but it is my promise to him.

  “It already has.” He presses fingers to my cheek, the warmth of his skin and the intensity of his gaze its own kind of blossoming magic.

  Darios’s grimace pours vinegar over me. “If you will, my lord, let me guide you through another menageries.” He ushers Kalliarkos away to a warm-up circle, deliberately leaving me behind.

  But he can’t take our promises away. I find my own space, as I always have, and with a sure heart pace through cat, jackal, and crane.

  The second warning bell rings.

  “First trial!” calls a gate-custodian. “Spider, Garon Stable!”

  I tug my mask on, adjust it so the corners of the eyes fit perfectly, and enter the ready cage. My custodian hands me a brown belt that blends with my plain brown clothes. I start on Pillars. Good fortune for me.

  “First trial! Firecat, Kusom Stable.”

  A short, stocky, but exceedingly fit young woman in a silky jacket saunters in and accepts the blue belt. Her lack of height may hurt her on Trees but she’ll have balance and agility like I do and less height to fight against. She looks me up and down, unimpressed by my ordinary brown mask and my ordinary Fives gear, and she flicks a little finger against her chin, a kiss-off before the trial even begins. I’m so excited that she’s honored me with a taunt that I grin. This is what it truly means to be an adversary.

  “First trial! Sandstorm, Royal Stable!”

  A muscular young man struts in wearing a fancy jacket with the sea-phoenix badge. He’s got to be good to train at the Royal Stable, and by his cocky posture he is pretty sure he’s the best in this ready cage. A custodian gives him the red belt.

  I exhale a calming breath into my cupped hands. My thoughts drift to my mother and father, to the butterfly mask and the firebird rug and chair.

  The butterfly is a soul given substance. For all its seeming fragility its serenity is too powerful to be quenched.

  The firebird can fly vast distances, subsisting only on air and courage. It can mate with any flying creature, for its substance is not flesh but ambition.

  They were right for each other but Lord Gargaron tore them apart.

  He made an illegal and blasphemous arrangement with the priests in order to do so.

  “First trial! Beacon, Garon Stable!”

  Looking startled and angry, Kalliarkos bounces into the ready cage as if he is about to jump out of his skin. He fixes the green belt for Trees over his gold silk tunic. His fancy gold mask blazes like lightning. The spray of sunlight from the grille above makes him all gold except for his black hair and dark eyes. There is a lift to his chin and a squareness to his shoulders that he didn’t have before we rescued my family. Confidence limns him. He might be a legend walked out of the past, noble and handsome and upright in all manner of conduct as men of old Saro are said to have been, adhering to the code given to them by the gods in the most ancient times. He is a beacon, in truth.

  Then it hits: I am running against Kalliarkos.

  Has Princess Berenise paid off someone so her grandson can run in an easier trial?

  I meet his gaze. I nod, adversary to adversary, and he nods back as with a message in his eyes but I am too stunned to know what to say or do.

  We hear the cheering of the crowd as the first trial is announced. We hear our names spoken but no one chants them as they will chant Thynos’s Fives name when he is announced. You can take a name with you onto the court, but the crowd has to approve and anoint you. Most hopeful adversaries run trials without ever getting the crowd to sing out their names.

  “Come with me,” says my custodian, startling me.

  With a glance toward Kalliarkos’s retreating back as he goes his way, I follow my custodian up a ladder and down a tunnel to the small chamber where a gate-custodian awaits. I dust my hands with chalk and take my place at the foot of the ladder.

  The ugly truth sinks in: This isn’t Princess Berenise’s doing. This is what Lord Gargaron meant when he said I had to pass muster. He didn’t mean the first day at the stable. He wasn’t watching then because it didn’t make any difference how well the girl who let his nephew win performed in practice.

  This is the only trial that matters.

  Horns blare. The crowd quiets to a low rumble.

  Deep in the undercourt the start bell rings.

  The hatch opens.

  35

  As I reach the top of the ladder I scan the stands because I may never again see the Royal Court from the inside. The tiers of seating are splendidly caparisoned with so many ribbons flowing in the wind that they are a restless ocean of constant change. From this angle I can’t get a good look at the royal balcony, but the Garon Palace balcony with its horned and winged fire dog banner lies off to my right. Lord Gargaron is watching me.

  Pillars begins with a gate flanked by two large stone pillars. Here on the Royal Court each one is carved with a face, on the left the stern gaze of Kliatemnos the First and on the right the benevolent smile of Serenissima the First.

  Serenissima the Murderer.

  I ring the obstacle bell to mark that I’m going in. A set of rope stairs leads up into a maze whose path must be traced not by walking along the solid ground but by balancing above the ground on a series of narrow beams. A seed of suspicion blooms: What if a man who is head of a powerful princely household has bribed the officials to set up the court in a configuration that favors my strengths of balance and agility?

  No point in wondering. Although I hit two dead ends, I reorient myself and recover quickly. When I climb out of Pillars onto my first rest platform, the girl wearing the blue belt is already clambering down from Rivers and heading for Trees. I hear a bell ring as one adversary starts on his second obstacle. I am pretty sure the sound comes from Rivers, which means Kalliarkos has gotten through Trees and chosen to move north around the court.

  Do I want to run into him? I do not.

  A bell rings from Trees as Firecat gets going, although I cannot see her, since only the tallest poles jut up above the walls that separate the obstacles.

  I am not going to let Firecat or Sandstorm beat me. Dropping down, I head south.

  The moment I enter Traps I see in its multilayered architecture all my favorite elements: bars to swing from, slack ropes, stairstep beams, bridges with traps triggered if you put your weight on the wrong place. Right smack in the center Sandstorm is splayed awkwardly like an outstretched frog. He has slipped while crossing a rope bridge whose skewed balance keeps tipping him sideways.

  Traps always has two possible routes, one long and laborious and low to the ground, and one short and glorious with a lot of flying and balancing at dangerous heights. Kalliarkos and Firecat are already in their second obstacles, so I leap up to grasp a horizontal bar, use the momentum of my swing to catch the next higher bar with my knees, and swing up backward to yet a higher bar that skips me over a beam and up to the highest and most dangerous and thus shortest path.

  The noisy spectators, the wide blue sky, the dusty heat penetrating my throat: they spur me on as I balance and swing through rope and beam and bar and trap.

  More quickly than I expected I find myself poised on a narrow beam looking down on the tipping bridge, which I have to cross next. Sandstorm still clings there, upside down w
ith his back almost touching the ground and his jacket stained with sweat. From his furious look I realize he hoped the tipping bridge would be the bottleneck and that he could stop all of us from crossing by hanging there.

  Except there is another way across the gap for an adversary bold enough to make a leap from the narrow beam to a slightly less narrow platform, high enough up and far enough away that if you miss you will hurt and maybe kill yourself. I calculate how much speed and arc I will need to get across the gap, and then I catch his eye, him all helpless caught up in the wobbling rope ladder. His glare wishes me crashed on the ground all bloody and broken. His fingers are turning white as he clings to the rope bridge.

  “Kiss off, Adversary,” I call down. The blood flows high in me. “I’ll show you how a real adversary does it.”

  The height of my starting point gives me momentum and opportunity. I throw a somersault into my leap, knees tucked and unfolding as I hit a perfect landing, the kind that doesn’t even jar.

  The crowd roars.

  The rest of Traps flies past as if I truly have spun a web through it. The approbation of the crowd lifts my feet. I show off, which is always a danger because you’re more likely to miss, but I no longer care. I can’t fall.

  When I reach the resting platform I see no sign of Firecat, but I catch a glimpse of Kalliarkos clambering down from Rivers and therefore headed for Pillars. I drop to the dirt and run for Trees, hearing the chime of a gate bell. He’s still ahead of me.

  My plain brown mask has slipped a little, and as I pause to adjust it I risk a quick look at the royal balcony. It’s too high and far away for me to see faces clearly, but the king and queen lounge on a grand sofa under umbrellas held by servants. On a lower level of the balcony, at their feet, sits the man who won the victory at Maldine. I would know my father anywhere by the way he holds his back and head confidently upright. The honor shown him today takes my breath away. If only Mother were here to celebrate it with him.

  On Garon Palace’s balcony they stand silent, watching.

  I chalk my sweating hands again and enter Trees.

  Immediately I run into Firecat. To enter this configuration of Trees you have to jump up, catch hold of a bar, and swing up into a nest of climbing poles on a second level. Firecat is so short she’s having trouble reaching the bar.

  The crowd cheers and whistles as an exciting maneuver happens in Pillars or Traps.

  “Salutations, Adversary,” I say politely.

  She snarls at me. “Usually they offer a lower climbing entrance that eats up time. There’s no way I can jump that high. It’s like they want someone taller than me to win.”

  Because of betting scandals in which one adversary threw a trial to another in exchange for a share of the winnings, King Kliatemnos the Third proclaimed that any act of cooperation or interference among the adversaries will be punishable by expulsion. So I say nothing.

  The bar is so high it takes me four tries to catch it for long enough to draw up my knees to my belly and hook them over the bar. After that it is no trouble to get onto the second level and its tangle of climbing. Before I head in, I look down.

  “Kiss off, Adversary,” I say with a sympathetic shake of my head.

  For all her anger, she gives me a grudging smile and that flick of the finger to the chin.

  This configuration of Trees uses a great deal of technically difficult climbing up perpendicular faces with handholds, or hold-less climbing between posts like in the air shaft. Scraping my back against polished wood, feet braced in tension against a post set opposite, I work up several sets of blind shafts. After escaping the tomb it just doesn’t seem that hard.

  As I’m climbing up to the resting platform, shaking a cramp out of my left hand, a bell rings from the direction of Traps. Kalliarkos is still ahead of me. But he has to get past Sandstorm, who for all I know is still blocking the bottleneck of the tilting bridge.

  Will Kalliarkos dare to leap?

  Rivers runs dry. Stepping stones are scattered across a sandy pit instead of a watery channel. The trick is that there are false stones scattered through the true ones that look stable but won’t take weight. Anise taught us to look at all the clues: The way the sand is scuffed around certain stones tells me where others have slipped off. The sand around the stable stones lies unmarked. By taking time to examine the ground before I start, I make it across in one go. And because I want Father to see how good I really am, I add a flip at the very end, from the last stone to the “shore.”

  The crowd loves it, the terraces of spectators seething with excitement, cheering, chanting, and singing.

  Just as I climb up onto the platform that overlooks Rings, Kalliarkos climbs up on the opposite side. He is working on his breathing to steady himself. His gaze strikes mine, a blow hard enough to rock me back on my heels where I crouch. He is running the best Fives of his life, showing he has what it takes to be a real adversary.

  “You made good time through Traps,” I say in a low voice as I catch my breath. Even as I speak I study the layout of Rings: the pattern, the varying heights, the speed of the turning wooden rings, and the way they open and close paths that lead toward the victory tower.

  “I had to risk the high leap,” he says in answer. “You know what will happen if I lose.”

  I do know.

  Up in the seats, half the crowd is on its feet. Even my father is standing, shading his eyes for a better look. On the balcony of Garon Palace, Lord Gargaron is waiting to see if I pass muster.

  No step you take can be retraced. Yesterday cannot be revisited. That is what my father taught me.

  Lord Gargaron saw a girl cheat to let his nephew win. I see how he has trapped me.

  If I win, Kalliarkos becomes the puppet adversary his uncle means to play on the Fives court of palace intrigue, a poisonous scheme brewing in the heart of the kingdom. If I win, he will be thrust into a war between the nastiest and most ruthless people imaginable. They will rip him apart.

  If I lose, Gargaron will know I cheated because I am better than Kalliarkos on Rings. My father will suffer because of my rebellion. Whatever hope I have to help my mother and siblings and to find Bettany will be lost because I will be sold to the mines to die. And Gargaron will force Kalliarkos to march out with the army anyway because he’ll convince everyone that I lost to let the prince they all believe is my lover win. Because I did it once before.

  This is the choice my father had to make that terrible morning when Lord Gargaron came to our house, the choice that is no choice at all. Whatever promises Kalliarkos has made to me, he cannot keep them, no matter what he thinks.

  Lord Thynos tried to tell me: Our Kal can inherit two thrones.

  The world will never leave him alone. He is naïve to believe otherwise.

  The Rings spin, and he hesitates, trying to unravel a pattern that is complex and dizzying because you have to shift heights and speeds. The fastest way through is already completely clear to me. Just as Lord Gargaron knew it would be.

  So I make the break clean, as Father did, even though my heart is breaking.

  “Kiss off, Adversary.”

  As he recoils, surprised and dismayed, I leap into the spinning pattern. I throw in a few extra twists and tucks for flair. The crowd is dancing and singing to cheer me on, everyone on their feet. Deep in the crowd I hear a word rising as more voices take hold of it and lift it toward the heavens.

  “Spider! Spider!”

  My arms and legs burn with exhaustion as I climb the tower and grab the victor’s ribbon.

  Only then do I look down. Kalliarkos stands at the foot of the ladder, mask off, face stricken.

  “Jes,” he says in all bewilderment, although I cannot actually hear him. Everything he thought he had has been torn from him, and I had a hand in it.

  On the Garon balcony, people are waving banners to celebrate my victory. I have won a trial at the Royal Fives Court, in the victory games celebrating my father’s success at Maldine. I have lea
ped from Novice to Challenger in one trial. I worked so hard for this and dreamed of it for so long but I cannot take any pleasure in my triumph.

  I turn to face the royal balcony where the king and queen are applauding politely, yet it isn’t their notice I seek. My father stands at attention, looking right at me. I tap my chest twice, for I have fulfilled my orders. Across the distance, he taps his chest in answer.

  Only then do I pull off my mask.

  Let them see me for who I am, daughter of a Patron captain and a Commoner woman who loved and stayed loyal to each other until one man tore them apart for his own convenience. I need not choose loyalty to one parent over the other. I love them both and no one can take that from me.

  Let them see me, a child of Saro and a daughter of Efea. Let them remember my face because I am going to win again. I have walked beneath the City of the Dead and discovered a buried heart that is still beating and still powerful. My enemies have weapons and magic and riches and ships and all the might of kingdoms at their disposal. But they don’t have me.

  Below, Kalliarkos goes as blank of expression as a man who has woken up to find himself in a vipers’ pit and knows he cannot make a single twitch without being stung. Without looking at me he climbs down to the undercourt and into the pitiless maw of his uncle’s ambition.

  The crowd is still cheering and chanting my name.

  Jessamy Tonor is dead and buried in the tomb of Lord Ottonor with all the rest of his household and their hopes and dreams, turned to dust.

  Now I am Spider.

  And Lord Gargaron is going to be sorry that he left me free to spin my web of revenge.

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Andrea Spooner and Deirdre Jones guided me with ruthless compassion into the waters of YA writing. I learned a huge amount working with them.