by Jay Kristoff
“Four Daughters,” Matteo breathed. “Is that a . . . castle?”
Other parts of the floor split asunder, hidden platforms rising as the great mekwerk gears in the depths churned and rolled. Mia saw siege towers made of wood, a battering ram covered with a pavilion of thick hide, a heavy ballista, and two catapults stocked with barrels of burning pitch. Scarlet banners unfurled on the stone keep’s walls, set with the sigil of the old Kingdom of Vaan. Mia looked at the red crown daubed on her shield, the scarlet plumes on the helms around her.
“O, shit,” she breathed.
“ . . . What?” Matteo asked.
“They’re reenacting the Siege of Blackbridge,” she realized. “The battle between Itreya and Vaan that marked the beginning of King Francisco’s empire.” Mia tapped the red crown on Matteo’s shield, the scarlet plume on his helm. “We’re the Vaanians.”
The boy tilted his head. Mia inwardly sighed.
“The Vaanians lost, Matteo.”
“ . . . O, shit.”
The mekwerk gears slowly ground to a halt, all the pieces of the battle to come laid out on the field. The editorii’s voice rang across the sands.
“Behold! The troops of King Brandr VI, the besieged defenders of Vaan!”
The portcullis shifted, rolled up. Guards shoved Mia and her fellows, prodding them with spears until they emerged blinking into the sunslight. They were met with jeers, the mostly Itreyan crowd roaring with disapproval at the sight of their ancient foes.2 The guards marched the competitors across the arena floor, toward the open gates of the small keep. And ushering them inside, they sealed its doors behind them.
The keep stood perhaps twenty feet high, fifty feet square. Taller towers loomed on every corner, crenelated battlements crested the walls. From the inside, Mia saw the structure wasn’t stone at all, but a thick plaster facade reinforced with a heavy timber frame. The group milled about in confusion, most unsure what came next.
“Man the walls, for fucksakes!” someone hollered.
“Get up there, you bastards!”
Trumpets rang across the arena as Mia, Matteo and Sidonius scrambled up a wooden ladder and claimed their place on one of the towers. She saw two shortbows made of ashwood, two quivers full of arrows.
“Can either of you shoot?” she asked her fellows.
“I can,” Matteo replied.
Mia took up one bow and slung a quiver over her shoulders, handed the other to Matteo. She squeezed his hand as he took it, looked him in the eye.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “This is not where we die.”
The boy nodded. All around them, an ocean of people were on their feet in the stands. The arena walls stood fifteen feet high, boxes containing the marrowborn and politicians studded around the edges. In one, Mia saw Dona Leona, seated with other sanguila. She was dressed in a golden gown, her long auburn hair coiled around her brow like a victor’s laurel. But for all her beauty, the legacy of her name, her property had still wound up playing the roles of the conquered.
Not the politician your father is by half, Mi Domina.
In a great booth on the western edge, Mia saw a man she presumed was the city governor, surrounded by officials, administratii, pretty women in beautiful gowns. The games’ editorii stood at the edge of this booth, clad in a blood-red robe, the waist and sleeves trimmed with dozens of small golden daggers. A white capuchin monkey sat on his shoulder. He spoke into a long curling horn, his voice amplified by other horns around the arena’s edge.
“Citizens!” he cried. “Behold the noble legions of Itreya!”
A portcullis at the other end of the arena yawned wide, and the guards escorted in another cadre of competitors. They were armed and armored the same as Mia and her fellows, but the plumes on their helms were golden, the three eyes of Aa painted on their shields. The crowd roared in approval at the sight of them, stamping their feet and shaking the floor. Most of the group took up position by the wooden siege towers, others manned the ballista and catapults on the arena’s edge.
“The contest ends when only one color remains!” cried the editorii. “To the victors, the right to stand as full-fledged gladiatii upon the sands of the venatus! To the defeated, the eternal sleep of death! Let the Winnowing . . . begin!”
Roars from the crowd. Movement from the golden troops, dozens of them bracing against the base of the siege towers and pushing them forward. Mia looked about the red troops manning the walls, searching for a leader and finding none. Turning her eyes back to the approaching towers, she called above the mob.
“Any of you fine gentles serve in the legion?”
“Aye,” said a burly man on the tower opposite.
“You wouldn’t be experienced in siege warfare by any chance?”
“I was a fucking cook, lass.”
Mia looked at the approaching army. Down to the little sword in her hand.
“Well, shit,” she sighed.
“Archers, lay down fire on those incoming towers! I need six of you ready at the gate for that battering ram, the rest of you on the walls to repel their troops! Two men to a station, lock your shields and keep your backs to each other, clear?”
Mia raised an eyebrow, looked about to see who was shouting.
It was Sidonius. But not the smart-mouthed, lecherous Sid she’d kicked in the bollocks and punched in the jaw. This man was fierce as a whitedrake, his voice booming, radiating an aura of command that brooked no dissent.
“O, aye?” someone yelled. “And who the fuck are you?”
“Aye,” Mia murmured. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m the bastard who’s going to save your miserable lives!” Sid bellowed. “Unless one of you pathetic sheepfuckers have a better plan? Now see to your swords and send these bastards to the ’byss where they belong!”
Mia stared a moment longer, eyebrow raised. But seeing Sid was in no mood to argue, and being counted among the pathetic sheepfuckers with no better plan, she aimed her bow at the incoming towers. Matteo nocked an arrow beside her, speaking from the corner of his mouth as he smirked at Sid.
“Well, that was unexpect—”
The ballista bolt hit him like an anvil. Blood spattered Mia’s face as Matteo was flung off the tower with a “whufff,” toppling head first into the sand below. The boy hit the ground with a sickening crunch, two feet of steel and wood in his chest, neck twisted the entirely wrong way around.
“’Byss and blood,” Mia breathed.
A shattering boom shook the castle as one of the catapults flung a barrel of burning pitch. The projectile shattered on the wall, liquid fire raining down on the men and women inside. The crowd roared approval as the second catapult fired, the barrel smashing into the facade and setting the wooden gate ablaze. Men fell from the battlements covered in flaming oil, screaming as they tried to douse themselves on the sand. Mia and Sidonius ducked low, looking at each other with wide eyes.
“Four fucking Daughters,” the big man breathed.
“Suggestions, General?” Mia asked.
“Archers! Have at those towers!”
Mia and a few of her fellows rose up from cover, unleashed a volley into the approaching siege towers. Several of the gold troops fell, the crowd howling as a second volley dropped a handful more. Black smoke billowed from the rising flames, clawing at Mia’s eyes and throat as she fired again.
“Battering ram!” she shouted. “Coming hard.”
“Brace the doors!” Sidonius roared.
Half a dozen of the Golds rushed forward between the troop towers, the battering ram between them. Mia fired again, but the team were protected by a cover of thick hide. The walls shook as they hit the front gate, shaking further as another barrel of blazing oil hit one of the keep’s rear towers to the crowd’s delight. The explosion bloomed, bright and fierce, immolating another three Reds on the walls. They fell screaming, a fourth among them tumbling back with a ballista bolt through her chest.
“Those siege weapons are kill
ing us!” Mia shouted.
“Well, we’ve little to throw at them but harsh language!” Sidonius roared. “The Vaanians lost the siege of Blackbridge, little Crow! These dice are rigged!”
The gate boomed again as the ram struck home. Mia twisted up from cover, firing through the rolling smoke and putting an arrow through the foot of one of the battering team. It was all she could see of them under that blasted hide, but it had the desired effect; the man dropped howling, and Mia ducked a ballista bolt as she loosed another shot, her arrow striking him clean through the throat.
Another barrel exploded, the crowd now howling drunk with fury. The castle was ablaze, the gate coming off its hinges. The first siege tower struck the battlements, spilling half a dozen men onto the defenses with bloodthirsty cries. Sidonius charged along the wall and put his sword through a man’s belly with a roar. Mia rose without a sound, reaching out to one Gold’s shadow and fixing him in place, battering aside another man’s sword and slamming him off the wall with her shield before burying her blade in the first man’s chest. Blood spattered, warm and copperish on her lips. She’d wondered how she might use her gifts without the crowd getting wise, but in all the chaos and smoke and flame, nobody could see a thing of her shadowerking.
The gate shuddered again, the wood splitting. One more good thrust and they’d be home. Another Red sailed off the battlement with a ballista bolt through his belly, another barrel burst on the ground in front of the keep, spraying the walls with burning oil. It was all well and good to stay here and defend the walls—Mia cut down another Gold, slicing his belly wide open and spilling his guts across the deck as he fell screaming—but those catapults would eventually set the whole place ablaze.
Conquer your fear, and you can conquer the world.
She thought back to her lessons in the Hall of Masks with Shahiid Aalea. The assassin inside her rising to the fore. She could swing a sword with the best of them, she knew that true, but the advantage she truly had over the people fighting and dying around her was her training in the Red Church. Her wits. Her guile.
Don’t think like a gladiatii. Think like a Blade.
She looked at the faces around her. The face of the man she’d just killed, sealed inside his helm. And tearing the helm off the dead Gold’s head, she shoved her hand into his sundered guts, and pulled out a great, steaming handful. Pulling off her own headgear, she slammed on the golden-crested helmet and shouted to Sidonius.
“Don’t let them shoot me on the way back!”
Mia smeared blood down her neck and chest, slapped her handful of ruptured intestines against her belly, and taking a deep breath, dropped off the wall. She hit the sand outside the keep with a grunt, wobbled and fell onto her side. Black smoke boiled all around her, timbers breaking and folk roaring as the gate shattered. A boom echoed across the arena as another barrel exploded against the wall, Mia curling up tight to shield herself from the flaming globules of oil.
She rose to her feet, holding her fistful of torn guts against her own stomach. And with her sword dangling from her other hand, she staggered toward the first catapult.
The crowd paid her little mind—from the look of her wound across the arena, she was a dead girl walking. The crew on the catapult paid no heed either; her golden helm marked her as one of their own, but each of them was fighting to save their own skins. And so, nobody ran to help her or stop her as she staggered across the sand, blood and guts drenching her front, dripping at her feet.
She stumbled to sell it better, rising with a gasp. Closer now, the catapult and the three men manning it just a few feet away. She dragged herself up with a groan, limping ever closer. And a few feet from the team, she came to life, slinging her handful of guts into the first Gold’s face and plunging her gladius into his chest.
The man fell back with a cry. Before the other two could process what had happened, Mia had gutted one, his insides spraying across the sand as he fell with a bloodcurdling scream. The last fumbled for his blade but Mia smashed it aside, weaving left, right. And with a flash of her blade, she gifted him to the Maw.
“Hear me, Mother,” she whispered, snatching up one of the fallen men’s swords.
“Hear me now,” she breathed, sprinting toward the second catapult.
“This flesh your feast.”
One of the team saw her coming out of the smoke
“This blood your wine.”
opening his mouth, perhaps to cry warning
“Hold them close.”
but her blow severed his throat all the way to the bone, lodging in his spine. She tore it free, chopped another’s legs out from under him, hurling her second blade at the last man’s chest. The sword punched through flesh and ribs, knocking the man off his feet in a spray of red, and the second catapult fell silent.
The crowd began to notice something amiss. The Golds had broken through to the keep, a bloody brawl now erupting at the gate, upon the walls. But more and more were pointing at the short, pale girl, drenched in red among the now silent machines. She knelt by the bodies of those she’d killed, took off her helm and dipped the gold plume in the blood pooled on the sand, staining it red. And slamming it back on her head, she dashed with swords in hand, right at the ballista crew.
They saw her coming, swiveling the weapon and firing off a bolt at her. But smoke was rolling across the sands from the burning keep, and after all, she was only a little thing, fast and sharp as knives. Mia tumbled aside, rolling back up to her feet as one of the crew charged her down. He was a giant of a man; a Dweymeri with long saltlocks, two feet taller than she. Mia met his blades with her own, taking a glancing blow to her helm, and being so much shorter than him, slipped her blade lower than his shield could reach. His hamstring was sliced through to the bone, Mia grabbing a handful of his saltlocks as he fell to one knee. She twisted him around as the ballista fired at her again, shielding herself behind her foe as the bolt punched through his shield and into the chest beyond.
The crowd roared as she climbed up on the falling man’s shoulder and sprang at the two women crewing the machine, twisting the shadows at the first one’s feet as she sliced the second’s chest open. The woman fell with a scream, her own strike cutting deep into Mia’s arm, blood spraying. The girl staggered, crowd and pulse and thunder deafening in her ears as she hurled her second sword at the other woman’s head.
With her boots fixed to the floor, the woman could only fall backward to dodge the blow, landing on her backside in the dust. She cursed, eyes wide with fear as she pulled at her boots, still stuck fast in the sand. Mia loomed up over her, one arm hanging limp, drenched head to foot in blood, second sword raised.
“No,” the woman breathed. “I have a baby girl, I—”
No mothers.
No daughters.
Only enemies.
Her sword silenced the woman’s plea. The crowd around her bellowed. With a pained wince for her wounded arm, she loaded another bolt into the ballista, ratcheted back the drawline to fire another shot. But the battlements behind her were now clear, the only fighting seemed to be going on inside the keep walls.
Mia picked up a sword with a weary sigh. Her right arm was bleeding freely from a deep gash in her bicep, her head swimming. Adjusting her helm on her head and slinging a shield onto her wounded arm, she stalked back across the bloodied, burning sands to face whoever was left alive in there. The crowd were chanting, stamping their feet in time with her tread—though the girl wore the color of the enemy, the fancy of the reenactment had given way to a purer kind of bloodlust, and this small slip of a girl had just murdered almost a dozen people in a handful of minutes.
She stopped twenty feet before the gate in a veil of smoke, the stench of sundered bowel and burning blood. She saw four figures in the haze, marching toward her. Drawing a deep breath, picturing all she stood to lose if she failed, she raised her sword. And squinting through the smoke, she made out the color of their plumes.
Blood red.
Mia dropped her shield, laughing loud as she saw Sidonius, battered and bleeding among the men. Beyond them, Mia could see the bottleneck at the gate had become a slaughterhouse, golds and reds lying dead by the dozen. She saw Matteo among them, pretty eyes open wide and seeing nothing at all.
She tried to push the sorrow aside, knowing she had no use for it. This was her world now. Life and death, with just a sword stroke between them. And with every stroke, she stood one step closer to revenge.
No room for anything but enemies.
“Citizens!” cried the editorii. “Governor Valente presents to you, your victors!”
The crowd bellowed in answer, a fanfare of trumpets splitting the air. Smeared head to foot in blood, Mia limped forward, held out her hand to Sidonius. The big man grinned, clasped her forearm, then dragged her into a crushing hug.
“Come here, you magnificent little bitch,” he laughed.
“Let me go, you great fucking lump!” she grinned.
Sidonius raised the knuckles into the air, roared at the crowd. “Take that, you bastards! No man can kill me, you hear? NO MAN CAN KILL ME!”
Mia looked to the marrowborn boxes, saw Dona Leona on her feet applauding. Beside her stood Executus, his arms folded, glowering as always. But ever so slightly, the man inclined his head. The closest thing to praise he’d ever given.
She turned in a circle, taking in the ocean of faces, the blood-drunken cheers, the thundering feet. And for a tiny moment, she ceased being Mia Corvere, the orphaned girl, the darkin assassin, the embodiment of vengeance. She held her arms wide, dripping red onto the sand, and listened to the crowd roar in response. And just for a breath, she forgot what she had been.
Knowing only what she’d become.
Gladiatii.
1 A city situated in the Drakespine Mountains, Blackbridge was the site of one of the most infamous sieges in Itreyan history.Set on forging the greatest kingdom the world had seen, the Great Unifier, Francisco I, first set his sights on the Kingdom of Vaan. When word reached the Vaanian king, Brandr VI, that Francisco was marching his war walkers toward his kingdom, he sent two of his most loyal captains—Halfstad and Ulfr—to hold the line at Blackbridge.Nestled in a valley in the Drakespine, the city was shielded on all sides by great granite peaks, and accessible from the south by a single stone bridge for which the city was named. Halfstad, who was elderly at the time, gave command of the walls to his daughter, the shieldmaiden Eydis. Ulfr, a much younger man, commanded the guerilla troops that harried Francisco’s troops in the field. The siege was hard and tempers among the Vaanians were stretched, but still, they managed to fend off the Itreyan assault for six months. With wintersdeep setting in, Francisco’s great general, Valerian, declared Blackbridge to be impregnable.Sadly, the same could not be said of Halfstad’s daughter, Eydis.In the six months cooped up in the city, Eydis and Ulfr had grown rather fond of each other, you see. But when Eydis informed her father she was pregnant to his ally, old Halfstad took the news worse than anyone had expected. Declaring Ulfr had besmirched his daughter’s honor, he attacked his fellow hüslaird in the city square. Ulfr’s men leapt to their laird’s defense, Halfstad’s men joined the fray to protect their own, and before anybody knew what was happening, the Vaanian forces were venting six month’s frustration and murdering each other by the hundreds.Both hüslairds perished in the fracas. Blackbridge fell to the Itreyans shortly afterward, which opened the entire country for invasion. Within two years, Vaan became the first vassal state of the great Kingdom of Itreya.And if you can find me a better endorsement for the rhythm method, gentlefriends, I shall eat my pen.
