Lohar turned his head, and their eyes met.
He bared his teeth a little and then looked forward again, and Vega knew that another attack would come. Maybe not today in the games, maybe not even soon, but Lohar would come for him again. It was just a matter of how patient the man could be.
Then the marching tone rang through the barracks, the gate slid aside, and they marched through the tunnel to the Arena. Vega tried to put all else from his mind, and failed miserably.
Chapter Ten
Alaina barely slept, and every time she started to drift off, she jerked awake, thinking she could hear footsteps outside her room, in the corridor, and thinking it was Nyssa. Even though her room had a door, she couldn’t lock it, and that reptilian girl made her skin crawl now that she knew Nyssa was out to do her harm. She didn’t really expect her to try and smother her in her sleep, but those were the images her mind conjured as she hovered in the limbo between sleeping and waking. When she heard the bell tones in the morning and the monitor in her room flickered to life with an alert to rise and anticipate the dresser slaves, she sat up, groggy and exhausted and agonized to find it had not all just been a nightmare.
But she didn’t have much time to drown in it.
Within minutes, a gaggle of slaves filed into the room, pulling her up off the bed and deftly removing her clothes. She was so tired she didn’t feel the same surge of discomfort and shame as the first time someone else had undressed her, in the baths. This morning she barely saw their faces, these snickering women, she just knew that Nyssa wasn’t among them and was grateful for that.
They touched images on the monitor and panels in the wall opened that Alaina hadn’t even realized were there. Sprays and spritzes and soft cloth rags appeared in the slaves’ hands and they rubbed her down and cleaned her skin, brushing her hair and then braiding it neatly back from her face. She expected another gauzy gown but this time they helped her into a full jump suit, skin tight, made of some kind of leather but heavier, almost like armor. Then they slid boots onto her feet and took her by the arms, walking her out of the little room and into the corridors of the slaves quarters. Through the pair of sliding, locked, double doors to the gate that led up to the main palace floors, and into the grand foyer she’d passed through with Lennai only the day before.
And Lennai was waiting for her in the foyer, dressed in a sumptuous gown of fiery orange and gold mimicking the wild color of her red hair. She had her hands clasped in front of her, and smiling as she watched Alaina marched towards her, the expression full of teeth.
“Well, you look practically ready to fight yourself,” Lennai cooed.
The slaves let go of Alaina and dispersed, and she stood looking back at the domina, eyelids heavy, but her focus sharpened slowly.
She wondered if they had coffee in space.
“Good morning, domina,” she said.
“Yes, I think it might be,” Lennai said, nodding. She gestured for Alaina to come forward and turned towards the palace doors. “Come on. You’ll have first meal with me, so you can see the Arena and get an understanding of it all, and then you’ll to the barracks to take care of my fighters.”
Alaina hesitated. “Are you sure that’s what you want of me, domina?”
Lennai arched an eyebrow. “You volunteered to be this tool,” she said, “when you broke the rules last night. You don’t seem pleased with being donara, so this is your opportunity to be something else. If you do well, perhaps I’ll select another donara and you can stay taking care of the cursii. You see? I’m being very selfless, trying to find a place for you that is pleasing.”
“Thank you, domina,” Alaina muttered.
“A true donara would be seated beside me during the games. You could have been given a place of honor, but your misbehavior landed you here. Remember that.”
“Yes, domina.”
“Now if you fail today,” Lennai went on, as they passed beneath the high, arching doorways, “that will put me in a very uncomfortable position. So do your best. Don’t disappoint me. And I will not disappoint you.”
“Yes, domina.”
Lennai stopped on the steps, turning to look at Alaina.
Alaina came up short, surprised.
“Vega is my favorite,” Lennai said plainly, her eyes meeting Alaina’s. “The cursu you helped last night. I favor him above all others and that’s no secret. He’s our best fighter, our bravest, and he brings this house much glory.”
“That’s...good,” Alaina said, confused.
“Glory,” Lennai went on. “That keeps the systems at peace. We wage wars in the Arena instead of across the stars. It’s much more civilized.”
Alaina didn’t think there was anything civilized about it, but she knew nothing she said was going to make a dent on Lennai. “Of course, domina.”
“So I don’t mind saying that if it comes down to it, I prefer you to treat Vega before all others. Understand?”
Alaina sure did, and she felt a twist of unexpected jealousy knot up her stomach. Lennai was clearly in love with the violet-eyed cursu Vega, and Alaina didn’t know exactly why that bothered her. Well, she knew why, but she didn’t like it. She didn’t bother telling Lennai that she probably would have tried to save Vega first anyway, because she felt like she owed him. She felt more than that, but the debt was all she could rationally acknowledge to herself just yet. The rest was too unsettling. All of this was unsettling.
This time, Alaina was invited through the curtains and into the small phaeton with Lennai, where she sat across from her as they traveled through the market to the Arena’s main entrance. Lennai talked the entire time and Alaina tried to retain as much of it as she could, but not only was it all so foreign, she was also distracted by thoughts of the bloodshed to come. It was akin to the anticipation she’d felt every night, climbing into the ambulance, knowing the calls would come. But this was also different, because suddenly her own life was on the line. And she had no idea how to treat alien wounds.
She stopped listening to Lennai entirely as the phaeton passed beneath the gigantic gated archways of the Arena proper. The phaeton’s curtains tittered aside in a breeze, and Alaina stared with wide eyes at the giant crowd amassed at one of the gate towers, lined up to enter the space. At the massive portcullis raised to allow the masters of the Arena to entire separate from the rabble, whole lanes of phaetons just like theirs, flanked by guards. She could hear music in the distance, growing louder as they proceeded down the lane, some kind of brass instruments trumpeting with great pomp for the start of the games.
Inside the Arena was a different matter.
Alaina had known it would be gigantic, but so far as she could tell, it could have been its own space station. Maybe it had been once, and the rest of this station with all its separate alien parts, had been built around it, attached piece by piece. Just inside the gate, they exited the phaetons and Alaina followed Lennai through a tall archway which she assumed was the entrance to the Errai section of the Arena itself. Each race had its own section for spectators, just like the station itself. And within each section, each of the great houses had its own smaller section. Alaina saw the red and gold of Chara as she followed Lennai through corridor after labyrinthine corridor, and then to a grand set of marble stairs to another locked gate, not unlike the one inside the Chara palace that separated the barracks from the slaves’ quarters.
Lennai left her at the top of the stairs with instructions to go down alone. This was the Chara fighting pit, where the cursii waited to fight, recovered, or where they died after the games.
At first blush, it was just like the baths. Naked people, well, aliens...everywhere, in all states of dress, all kinds of bodies, some slick with oil and others dusted with sand. Most in the process of being packed into various kinds of armor. Some looked like leather, some like metal, and still others looked to be of the same sturdy fabric Alaina herself wore. She had not been this close to the cursii before, none
of them except the one who had attacked her. And Vega.
There was such an abundance of old scars, new scars, and muscle. Even the women among them were rock solid, and bore the silvered, healed wounds of battle. Gates let in false sunshine, lining one whole wall of the underground pit, and behind that Alaina knew the Arena itself waited.
She could already hear the rumble of the crowd finding its seats. One of the guards in red and gold handed her a bag which, upon inspection, was full of unmarked medicines Alaina had no name for, and surgical tools she wasn’t even sure she was capable of using.
“Good luck,” the guard muttered, voice muffled beneath his helmet.
Chapter Eleven
A frisson of curiosity shivered through the cursii when the donara entered the pit. Vega looked up from where he was sitting in the sand across the room, already dressed and trying to meditate, and failing. The sight of her brought back all the shades of his homeworld he’d seen in her the night before, an awful homesickness rising in his heart that he’d been able to keep buried all these years. It made no sense that he should see the triumvirate sunrises in her hair or the morning mist in her eyes, but he did. And it drew his attention back to her again and again, no matter how he tried to redirect it.
He rubbed at his face and got to his feet, prowling towards the Arena gate to look at the sands and the gathering crowd instead of the girl. She was looking through the bag the guard gave her with a look of consternation on her face. Vega figured she was doomed. No use for it, and not his problem. On the other side of the Arena, he could see the Ankaa citizens settling in their seats, row after row of helmets.
Bathari popped up at his shoulder. “Saw the roster. You’re in the last fight.”
Vega nodded. He’d expected that. The domina was consigning him to only the final battle instead of having him fight up the lists, probably because he’d been injured the night before. It would delay his climb on the lists overall, but put him at the least amount of risk. He knew it was meant to be mercy, but it felt like a punishment.
Bathari went on, “They’re all gunning for you today, Vey. I’m sorry to say it. I didn’t want to say it, but you need to be ready. All your brothers are sore.”
“What have they to be sore about?” Vega muttered, scowling.
“The donara.” Bathari’s mouth quirked, head tilting so that his one tall antler cast a shadow across the sand. “Lohar told everyone you ruined it. That our domina is not going to give her to the highest victor anymore.”
Vega hissed out a breath. “Of course he did. Well, not that it matters, but I didn’t ruin fuckall. Lohar ruined his own fucking self.”
“His words were heard first, mate.”
“Fine.” Vega bent down, scooping up some sand, and started rubbing it over his hands. “Let them be pissed. Let them try to kill me. I’ll go through every one of them and win in the end anyway.”
Bathari sighed. “Or you could apologize. Soothe them?”
“I’ve nothing to apologize for.”
“That pride is going to get you in trouble, Vey. You’re a slave yet, remember, just like the rest of us.”
Vega glared at him, but said nothing. Bathari was, it seemed, his only friend, and there was nothing he might have said that wouldn’t have alienated him. Vega’s pride kept him alive. His pride kept him fighting. His certainty that he was not, in fact a slave, that he would not die a slave, was the secret of his strength. And he wouldn’t let it go, not for any man. He suspected Bathari would have gone on, but then the siren call came, the roar of the crowd followed, and the guards were shouting for them to find their weapons. The games had begun.
Chapter Twelve
It was mayhem in the pit like nothing Alaina had ever seen before, once the games started. The cursii fought in teams, against other races, against other houses, and then sometimes against each other. From the pit, Alaina couldn’t discern what disputes were being settled by each game, but sometimes there were specific weapons and sometimes there were vehicles involved, like chariots, but they hovered above the sand. There was a Master of Games whose voice was amplified through the Arena, but Alaina couldn’t hear him over the bellowing of the crowd, the war cries of the cursii on the sands, or the screams of the fallen as game after game was fought, and won, and lost.
She watched the first game through the gate, standing beside one of the guards. Errai versus Ankaa, House Chara versus a house whose name she couldn’t have pronounced on her own. House Chara won, but one of the cursu was stabbed with a shining metal spear right through the heart, and there was nothing Alaina could do for him at the end. They threw his body onto a hover-pallet and drew it down one of the dark tunnels, never to be seen or spoken of again. After the second game, Alaina got busy. More wounds, less of them mortal, and she tried to patch people up and clean blood the color of blueberry syrup if they were Jiayi, silver if they were Errai, and a clear, viscuous liquid if they were Ankaa.
She did the best she could without understanding the medicines in the bag or half the instruments, and at least she could say that she was saving more than she was losing. But she was losing some of them. And it never seemed to stop. She lost count of how many games were fought, of who was fighting who, and eventually gave herself over to the never-ending line of patients.
Until she heard a siren, different from the previous calls for the cursii to line up at the gate, and the guard muttered to her that it was the last fight. Alaina realized it must have been hours and hours, though it felt like days she’d been bent over alien after alien, learning their anatomy at the same time as trying to heal them. She looked up, watching the cursii find their place before the gate, and saw Vega among them. And the red-scaled Errai who’d attacked her, the one Vega had saved her from. Were they meant to fight on the same side? She finished stitching up the sliced shoulder of the Errai cursu she was treating, thrust her hands into the wash bowl to get the blood off and, went to the bars of the gate as it shut.
She watched Vega, specifically.
His armor was black like his scales, conformed to his body like a second skin, and he bore two blades on his back with jagged, brutal-looking edges. His dark hair was tied back from his face and though it became clear that the cursii from House Chara were all on one team, against a hulking group of Ankaa, Alaina could see that Vega wasn’t putting his back to the red-scaled cursu. Or any of his teammates, for that matter.
“What’s happening?” she asked the guard at the gate.
“A land dispute,” the guard said. “House Khuun claims House Chara invaded a planet already claimed. House Chara says there was no claim. The cursii will fight and whoever wins gets dominion of the planet.”
“What about the people who already live on the planet?” Alaina asked, frowning.
The guard shrugged. “They have no power here.” Then he indicated Vega. “The favored is in trouble with his brothers after last night. Watch, once it is plain they’ve won the game, they’ll turn on him.”
Alaina’s heart pounded. “Why? Why would they do that?”
The guard looked at her, and she could see him arch an eyebrow through the fore of his helmet. “To claim you.”
“But he hasn’t claimed me,” Alaina argued. “That’s wrong! He’s outnumbered three to one!”
The guard shrugged again, looking back out to the Arena. “Hope he’s ready for a fight, then.”
Alaina found herself curling her fingers around the bars of the gate, pressed against it, watching as the Master of Games counted down to the siren start. And then it wailed through the Arena like a blast. The ten cursii fighting drew their weapons, and the game began.
It happened in a blur, and Alaina couldn’t see it all through the gate. The crowd was so loud it was like thunder shook the whole Arena, rattling right to Alaina’s collar bone, clamoring in her ears, blocking everything else out.
She tried to keep Vega in her sights but they were all so fast. They moved and fought lik
e nothing Alaina had ever seen. Vega himself was liquid, a black slick of oil lashing in amongst the other cursii, blood splattering in so many colors as he moved from opponent to opponent. It was clear, despite the ferocity of the other cursii, that Vega was the strongest fighter among them. He dispatched the last of the Ankaa cursii and then Alaina could hear that the crowd of the Arena was chanting his name.
Ve-ga. Ve-ga. Ve-ga.
Vega lifted his blades, soaking in the sound of their cheering, and the crowd went wild in celebrating his triumph.
Then Alaina saw the red-scaled cursu lifted his weapon, something akin to an axe, and hurl it right at Vega.
She screamed. “VEGA, WATCH OUT!”
By some miracle, Vega seemed to hear her. He whirled towards the sound of her voice, saw the axe and ducked, lifting one of his blades in the same moment to meet the flying axe head. The ring of metal on metal sang through the Arena. The axe flew aside, deflected, and as Vega straightened the red-scaled cursu charged him.
Alaina watched, heart in her throat, as the other three cursii of House Chara followed the red-scaled cursu, lunging for Vega from all sides, weapons drawn. But Vega was a maelstrom in the middle, turning, deflecting, knocking hit after hit aside, even as the crowd screamed and Alaina heard the Master of Games call for them to cease. They did not.
The guard grabbed Alaina by the arm, hauling her back from the gate.
“No!” she cried. “Wait—”
But then the gate itself rose again, and so did several of the other gates, guards pouring through them to surround the fighting cursii. Sand kicked up, clouding the clump of them, and Alaina couldn’t see until it settled. The guards had the other cursii pinned to the ground and were disarming them, binding their hands, and one of the guards was helping Vega up from the sands to the wild, blood-crazed cheers of the Arena crowd. But Vega was limping badly, and Alaina could see the silvery Errai blood smearing his side. She could tell from the way he held himself that it was his. The other cursii were dragged out of the Arena and through another gate, probably off to suffer some kind of punishment for their rebellion, while the one guard helped Vega back to the pit.
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