by Jayne Faith
His face was an unreadable mask, but his eyes lingered on me before he turned to climb the stairs up to the throne. The Priestess and Akantha stayed on the floor at the foot of the throne platform.
At Lord Toric’s signal, Akantha turned to the audience. She made a brief welcoming statement and then gestured up at the wall. Our rankings were displayed. Same as before, I was in second behind Kalindi.
Akantha’s voice seemed to reach my ears across a great distance, and I barely registered her enthusiastic preamble to the Tournament challenge. My heart was racing, and my stomach churning with anger, fear, and adrenaline.
When Akantha moved away from her spot at the foot of the throne platform, my attention sharpened. It was time. I cast a look up at Lord Toric, but his gaze was trained over my head. His jaw muscles worked, and he gripped the armrests of the throne with tensed hands.
I did not feel any disappointment that he was avoiding me. The alien Lord could do nothing for me, and I knew that despite his stoic face, it was torturing him.
As Akantha began herding us through the throne room—apparently we would enter the challenge from some other location—Orion pitched into me, throwing me off balance.
I grabbed his arm to steady both of us and looked questioningly up into his face. He was blinking as if he was having trouble focusing his eyes. His head bobbed forward, and he gave it a hard shake, which sent him off balance again.
My heart jumped into my throat. Something was wrong with Orion.
“Oh no,” I whispered as dread poured through me in a dark, cold surge.
His guide had not tried to persuade him to sabotage me. Instead he’d been drugged, as I was supposed to be.
My hands began to shake and then my entire body. My dry throat worked convulsively to try to force back the bile rising up.
It was my fault; he’d been drugged because of his alliance with me.
I dug my fingernails into his arm, trying to bring him out of his heavy-lidded fog. “Stay awake,” I hissed, disregarding the risk of Akantha’s punishment.
My mind seemed to zip and freeze at the same time as I tried desperately to think of something, anything to do to help Orion.
He began to list and stumble so badly I had to sling one of his arms around my shoulders. He outweighed me by a lot, and I struggled to keep him upright.
Amet, Orion’s closest competition among the men, noticed Orion’s struggle and went to his other side to help. I gave him a grateful nod.
By the time Akantha finally stopped, several of the other Obligates had noticed that Amet and I were practically carrying Orion. Some of them shifted nervously, but others crossed their arms or gave us cold looks.
Akantha looked straight at me as the portal formed and began to brighten.
“He’s been drugged,” I said. I didn’t care if she punished me, if it meant saving Orion from the challenge. “There’s no way he can compete.”
She gave a long sigh and pulled a sympathetic face, and then she shook her head and made a tsk sound. “And he was at the top of the ranks of favor. What a shame.”
My eyes began to stream from the blinding light of the portal. Akantha moved well away from the portal, which had fully formed.
“Ah, the game of survival,” she said almost fondly. “This challenge is a simple one. All you have to do it make it to the other side.” She nodded at Meribel, who was nearest the portal. When she just stared at Akantha wide-eyed, she brandished her silver wand. “What are you waiting for? Go!”
Meribel jumped and hurried through, and the Obligates ahead of me began disappearing into the light of the portal, too. When Amet, Orion, and I neared the front, I gave Akantha a pleading look and opened my mouth to beg her to reconsider. Before I could utter a word, she stabbed at me with the wand. I dodged reflexively, but the wand brushed my upper arm. I screamed as it burned right through my shirt sleeve and pain exploded in a white-hot stripe across my skin.
A push from behind sent me stumbling with Orion through the portal. Forcing back a whimper of agony, I frantically tried to blink away the dark blotches floating in my vision.
“It’s a game board,” Amet said nearby.
My breaths ragged, I tried to take it all in at once. We appeared to have stepped onto the edge of a floating platform. It did indeed look like a giant checkerboard. There were white and red squares, but they seemed distributed at random instead of the usual alternating pattern.
We were moving. All the Obligates stood on one of the white squares, and it was starting to sink below the rest of the board.
Some of the Obligates screamed or shouted, and one of the young men teetered and caught his balance with one foot on a neighboring red square.
With a whoosh of air, the red square slid away out of sight.
I was too far away to reach out a hand, and I watched in horror as his arms wind-milled and his eyes grew huge. No one else tried to help him. He tipped and then disappeared down into the hole left by the red square.
Orion mumbled something next to me, and I leaned over.
“White is . . .” His words trailed off into an unintelligible mumble.
“What?” I squinted, trying to focus.
“The white squares are safe,” he said with obvious effort.
I repeated his words to myself, silently mouthing them.
The floor jolted, and then one end began to tip.
“Oh no, oh no,” I whirled frantically. “We have to get off this thing.”
Amet had let go of Orion. I braced my shoulder under his arm. “You have to help me,” I said urgently to Orion. “We’re going to the white one on the diagonal.”
Working uphill against the tilt of the square under our feet, I dragged him ahead and to the right.
The Obligates behind us were trying to get off the tipping platform, too. Someone shoved us from behind, and Orion went sprawling. I half-turned, but wasn’t sure who had pushed us.
I watched Kalindi’s blonde hair flying out behind her as she sped across two red squares on light feet. The two red squares disappeared into the void below an instant after her feet were clear of them. She made it to a white one and paused to look around.
I frowned as I watched her purposely touch two neighboring red squares with one toe from the safety of a white square. The red ones she touched vanished like the others.
My heart gripped into a tight fist. She was eliminating the possible paths for the rest of us to get across.
But I had more immediate problems. Orion had stood up, but he was pitching unsteadily and seemed unaware of his surroundings.
“Orion!” I ran to him and yanked him back just before he stumbled drunkenly onto a red square.
Two more Obligates had joined us on our white square, and it was starting to sink.
I dragged Orion with me to the corner of our square and hopped to another white one that was diagonal to ours. I turned and reached for both his wrists to pull him over.
One of his shoes dragged across a neighboring red square, and I heaved backward to keep him from falling into the resulting hole.
We fell in a heap onto the white surface.
Cheytan followed us, and our square immediately began to descend and tip.
My heart was pounding like a hammer in my ears. Orion was getting worse. And it seemed the farther we progressed across the board the less weight the safe squares would hold.
Britta looked as if she was about to try to get onto our square as well.
“No, we already have too much weight!” I shouted at her.
With an agile, athletic twist of her body, she changed course and raced across a red square to land on a safe white one.
“You can’t follow us,” I said through gritted teeth to Cheytan as I gathered Orion’s limp arms and pulled him to his feet. Cold sweat was beading on my forehead and dripping down my temples from the effort of trying to move him.
Cheytan glared at me and then hopped to a neighboring white square, the only safe one adjacent
to ours.
“Go!” I shouted at her. “Move off so we can get on!”
She ignored me, taking her time looking around and watching the other Obligates.
Our square was tipping more rapidly now, and I had no choice but to take Orion and follow Cheytan.
She whirled on us. “So now you’re following me? Get off my square!”
She shoved me hard on the shoulder, the one that had been burned by Akantha’s wand. I winced and cried out. If not for Orion’s weight anchoring me, I would have stumbled back onto a red square.
Cheytan skipped across a red square to another white one, but again our white square was tipping. I felt like debris on a dustpan, ready to get deposited into the trash bin below. Only, I doubted there was anything down there to catch us.
Orion and I were surrounded by red squares and gaping voids where red squares used to be.
“Leave me,” he mumbled. “I’m not going to make it.” He could barely hold his eyelids up, and he was leaning so heavily on me my legs were shaking with the effort of holding up both of us.
“I am not leaving you,” I said fiercely through gritted teeth. “But we’re going to have to run.”
The shortest path to safety was straight ahead, across a red square.
Orion was taking shuddering breaths.
“Ready? Go!” I dug my nails into his skin as hard as I could, hoping the pain would rouse him a little from his fog, and ran out onto the red square.
He was moving faster than I expected but clumsily. When we neared the edge of the white square, I darted behind him and shoved his lower back as hard as I could.
He flailed forward onto the white square, landing on his chest with his arms splayed out.
Half a step away from safety, the ground vanished beneath my feet.
Pure panic bolted through me as my legs kicked the air. My arms and chin hit something hard, and my teeth clamped down painfully on my tongue.
I wasn’t falling. My arms and my chin had hit the edge of the white square, and I was dangling over the side.
Fueled by terror and adrenaline, I swung a leg up to the white square and shimmied onto it.
I lay next to Orion, my chest heaving. Stars still danced in my eyes from the impact of my chin against the floor, and every muscle of my body was weak and quaking from exertion and the pure fright of nearly plunging to my death. The searing burn on my arm pulsed so painfully I felt sick to my stomach. Tears of pain and fear blurred my vision.
I felt Orion’s hand weakly grip mine and then release it. He mumbled something. It sounded like, “Thank you, Maya.”
I squeezed my eyes closed for a moment, trying to clear them, and rolled to my side just in time to see Orion dragging himself onto a red square.
With tears and sweat stinging my eyes, I scrambled on all fours toward him.
“NO!” The scream tore from my throat.
The surface beneath him slid away in a blur, and he disappeared down into the void.
19
Toric
FOR THE SECOND challenge of the tournament, Calisto’s royalty, nobles, and other noted guests gathered in a banquet hall of the palace for a viewing party that included a brunch buffet. I overheard more than one remark about how odd it was to have a Tournament viewing party at such an early hour of the day. Usually these events started in late afternoon or evening, with drink and revelry lasting through the night. Several guests wondered aloud why the challenge had been planned first thing in the morning.
I knew the answer. It was Akantha. She couldn’t waste a moment in resuming the Tournament after the nationwide period of fasting and meditation came to an end.
“Toric, are you sure you aren’t ill?” my sister Cassi asked for the third time with a gentle touch to my forearm and her eyes wide and sincere.
She was one of the few who would even notice that I was unable to completely mask my distress and heartache. I shook my head, unable to form a response, and lifted a tumbler of bergamine juice to my lips to stall. When the juice hit my knotted stomach and seemed to sour there, I grimaced and set down the cup.
Since I’d watched Maya leave the throne room, my entire body had felt bound by invisible razor-edged cords that cinched ever tighter. I wanted to spring from my chair and run to the most remote edge of the world where I could scream at the stars in private. Instead, I had to sit still and act the figurehead.
As always, the many wall monitors offered several different views of the Tournament action. The challenge was being projected on a delay because it took a half hour or so for the guests to move from the throne room to the banquet hall. Knowing what I saw on the monitors was not in real-time only added to my torment.
The game of survival, as the challenge was called, was a cruel one. It wasn’t used during every Tournament—the exact challenges were left to the discretion of the Mistress of Tournament—and I couldn’t help noticing how Akantha appeared to be relishing it so deeply she could barely contain her glee.
When a shout went up, my heart lurched and I peered up at a monitor from under drawn brows.
I saw a flash of Maya’s dark hair—she was still alive—and I resumed breathing.
I sat in agony, only glancing up when the crowd reacted to a death or a particularly intense moment of action. In between, I tried to calm myself by reciting focus phrases I used during meditation.
When shouts went up, I caught a shot of Maya hanging off the edge of a white square. I hid my hands under the table and dug my fingers into the sides of my thighs, my heart in my throat, as I watched her pull herself up. When she made it to safety, I tipped my head down to hide my profound relief.
But a moment later when the entire room gasped, my eyes shot up to the wall again. A tight shot was trained on Maya’s tear-streaked face, which was twisted in an expression of such heartbreak it was all I could do to keep from crying out.
“What happened?” I mumbled to Cassi.
But there was no need for her to respond. The broadcast had already switched to a slow motion replay. Sorrow welled up through me as I watched Orion, the young man who had been looking out for Maya and who reminded me so much of Victor, crawl away from Maya and safety, and disappear when the red square beneath him slid away.
I took a shuddering breath. “Why did he do that?” I asked Cassi.
She pursed her lips and shook her head. “He must have been sick. He could barely stand. It was due to Maya that he made it even that far. He was worsening, but she wouldn’t leave him. He obviously sacrificed himself for her.”
Unable to keep my composure, I bowed my head and pressed my fingers over my closed eyes.
“Toric, people are watching,” Cassi said softly.
I forced my gaze up, stretched my lips into what I hoped looked something like a pleasant expression, and nodded at my sister as if she’d just said something amusing.
But inside, my heart ached for Maya. She’d obviously been determined to save Orion.
A few of the Offered had already made it to the other side of the game board by the time Maya successfully reached the end of the challenge.
With venom in my gaze and hate filling my heart, I watched Akantha set down her drink, rise, and walk toward the exit. It was time for her to open the portal and bring the survivors back to the palace. She waved to friends and said a few words to some of the nobles she passed, a broad smile on her face.
“Try to take heart,” Cassi said. “The bravery and humanity she demonstrated puts her far and above every other competitor. No one can dispute that she’s the winner.”
I glanced sharply at Cassi. By “she,” my sister could only mean Maya. Cassi, too, was watching Akantha with a look that was far from delighted.
Cassi was right. Maya was the champion of this challenge, and she would move into first place overall. But as I looked at her stricken face on the monitor, I could tell even without the benefit of feeling her energy that something in her had changed. Her eyes had hardened, and the softness had dis
appeared from her face.
Some of the darkness I’d detected in her when she’d first stepped foot onto Calisto was beginning to surface.
There was a short delay while Akantha got into position and activated the portal.
The view on the monitor switched from the checkered surface of the challenge to an interior shot in the palace. I recognized the room; it was on the same floor as the banquet hall.
Akantha stood regally near a portal pad.
The first Offered emerged from the blinding light of the portal, a young man. Then Kalindi, the young woman who’d been in first place going into the challenge.
My heart tapped as I watched the survivors come through the portal. Even though I knew Maya had survived, I couldn’t unclench my hands until I saw her pass safely back in the palace.
When she finally appeared, I let out a slow breath and sat back in my chair.
Just as I turned to let my sister know I wouldn’t be staying at the banquet much longer, alarmed cries went up in the hall.
“Oh my goodness!” Cassi said.
I followed her gaze to the wall monitor just in time to see Maya throw herself at Akantha. The Mistress of Tournament, obviously caught off guard, lost her balance and wheeled backward to crash against the wall.
Maya snatched the stinger, the small silver wand used to punish the Offered, from Akantha’s hand. As if driving a dagger at the Mistress of Tournament, Maya lifted her arm and stabbed downward. There was no audio accompanying the broadcast, but by the way Maya’s face contorted, I could imagine her cry of rage.
It looked like she’d aimed for Akantha’s bare neck, but she dodged and Maya caught the Mistress of Tournament on the upper arm instead.
The stinger activated and Akantha’s entire body jolted as she threw her head back in a silent scream of pain.
Two guards stormed into the frame—Tullock and Calvin, who had been waiting for Maya because she was still under guard by my order—and pulled Maya away. She struggled, trying to go after Akantha again. When she couldn’t break away, she pulled her arm from Calvin’s grip long enough to hurl the stinger at Akantha. She turned her head and ducked, but the small silver object hit her temple and then dropped to the floor and skittered out of the frame.
