Set Fire to the Gods

by Sara Raasch

  “Stavos threatened Ignitus,” Ash said, talking fast. She hated even saying his name. “He said, Soon, Geoxus’ll make sure everyone gets what they deserve, even your lying god.”

  Rook, leaning against the wall, frowned. “Those were his exact words?”

  “A war insult.” Tor shrugged. “He thinks Geoxus will beat Ignitus.”

  “If that’s all he meant, he said it strangely,” Ash pressed. “Even your lying god, as if Ignitus was an afterthought. Hydra said that Ignitus is in some squabble with Biotus, Aera, and Geoxus. Maybe there’s a larger conflict, and it has to do with the thing Ignitus fears.”

  “And a meathead Deiman gladiator knows about it?” Tor’s eyes were wide with disbelief. “We aren’t even sure if the threat against Ignitus is credible.”

  Ash scanned the room, feeling a little manic, until she spotted an unlit candle and matchbox that had fallen out of Spark’s medical bag. “I know how we can find out.”

  This plan was idiotic.

  So it was a good thing her brain was foggy from the beating she’d taken; otherwise she might not have gone through with it.

  Ash grabbed a match from the box, lit the candle, and stared at the flame.

  Tor realized what she was doing. “Ash—stop! What are you—”

  “Great Ignitus,” she said to the igneia. “I need to speak with you. Now.”

  Tor seized her arm, but no one in the room dared say more with the fire burning.

  A long moment passed.

  “Ignitus,” Ash said again. “I know you can hear me. I failed you today, but I need to—”

  The room burned.

  Every crevice filled with a vibrant flash of blue light. Ash spun, instinct jarring her so hard she slammed into the table. Tor, Rook, Taro, and Spark fell to their knees, shielding their eyes from Ignitus’s extravagant entrance.

  The light faded to reveal their sour-faced god, his arms folded, his glare on Ash. The walls of the chamber bore scorch marks now; this stone was sandy and rough, not the sort of rock made by fire that Ignitus had dominion over. No, this was Crixion—everything was Geoxus’s.

  Ignitus looked down his long nose at Ash. “Yes. You did fail me.”

  Shock reverberated through her body. The candle had gone out, and she squeezed the dead wax to ground herself.

  “Great Ignitus,” Tor said, prostrate on the floor. “The first few fights always bring certain nerves. With time, she will—”

  “I didn’t lose because of nerves,” Ash cut him off. She ran her tongue along her lips. One had split; she tasted blood. “During the fight, Stavos taunted me. He said that this war will be different. That there is someone in Deimos who will give you what you deserve. Is it true, Great Ignitus? Could a person exist who might harm my god?”

  Tor sat back on his heels. Rook, Taro, and Spark eased upright.

  Ignitus’s scowl broke apart. It was so fleeting, his expression imitating a flash of lightning through the blackest clouds. His eyes widened and he sucked in a quick breath.

  He was concerned. And it was not the offended concern of his reputation being slighted.

  Ash’s question had made him worried.

  Ignitus huffed a laugh. “What a clever lie he told you. My brother’s efforts to undermine me have no bounds. Your concern is touching, Ash.” He lurched forward, intensity brightening his eyes, and again Ash found herself thinking of the wrinkles that had creased Geoxus’s eyes. Ignitus’s skin was smooth—but the hair at the back of his neck, the few gray-white strands, was still there. “In the future, do not let yourself get distracted by what is clearly a vicious, bold lie.”

  He snarled the last word. Ash suppressed a smile at his slip of emotion.

  Whatever threat Hydra had told Ignitus to leave her out of—it was real. Real enough that Ignitus feared it.

  “Of course, Great Ignitus,” she managed. “I will be more discerning in the next fight.”

  That brought a calculating squint to Ignitus’s face. “Yes. Your next fight. I look forward to seeing you shine with igneia tomorrow morning.”

  Ash’s stomach seized. “Tomorrow?”

  The other champions wouldn’t arrive for a few days. Tor had guessed that she would fight Brand first, the only other champion closer to Ignitus by birth. But if she was to fight tomorrow, then that meant she would fight one of the champions already here.

  “At dawn, you fight Rook Akela for advancement.” Ignitus nodded at Rook. “Give a good show, but try not to rough her up too much. After all”—his gaze went back to Ash, and he was furious now, his rage returned—“the first few fights always bring certain nerves.”

  With a sweep of his arm, Ignitus vanished, a column of blue fire launching up from the floor and dissipating into the ether.

  Ash staggered in his absence, her mouth open. Ignitus was punishing her for losing against Madoc by making her fight Rook.

  Even so, she smiled.

  Tor leaped up from the floor and grabbed her arms. “What were you thinking?”

  “Did you see that?” She stared at the place where Ignitus had been, now lit only by the glowing green stones. “Did you see his face?”

  “He’s angry.” Rook had stood as well, arms folded, the painted sunbursts on his skin now blurred and faded. “But don’t worry. We’ll figure out the fight tomorrow. I’ll help—”

  “No.” Ash panted, smiling still. “When I asked him about who might threaten him, Ignitus was worried. Which means Hydra’s message wasn’t a plea to leave her out of something frivolous or petty—it has weight. And Stavos might know of it. We have a lead that could bring him down.”

  The room fell silent.

  “Yes, he was worried,” Tor confirmed. Ash beamed up at him. He didn’t return her exuberance. “But you were reckless. You can’t only focus on this vague lead.”

  “Let’s make it less vague, then. We can push Stavos. Maybe Geoxus has something planned against Ignitus, like Hydra said in her message, some squabble between them. Maybe it could actually hurt Ignitus, whatever it is, and Stavos is part of it—he did take out Ignitus’s best gladiator illegally. He said—” She swallowed. “He said my god told me your mother would be an easy kill. Did Geoxus put him up to poisoning Char? Maybe—”

  Someone knocked. “Ignitus’s guards,” soldiers said from the hall, “here to escort the champions back to the palace.”

  Tor flinched, giving Ash a pained look. “Stop, Ash. You’re fighting Rook tomorrow. You’re so focused on bringing Ignitus down that you’re losing sight of the immediate consequences of your actions.”

  Ash wilted. “I’m not losing sight of anything. What more do we have to lose?”

  The guards knocked again. “Champions?”

  Tor’s face flared red. Before he could respond, Rook pressed close to them.

  “Ignitus seemed genuinely concerned, which means it’s possible that whoever or whatever he fears is in Deimos. We owe it to ourselves to pursue his weakness, Tor. We owe it to everyone we’re fighting for back home.” He swallowed, noticeably not saying his son’s name. “We owe it to Char too. You know we do.”

  “We’ll talk to Stavos, then?” Ash’s stomach suddenly shriveled into a knot. “We’ll find out if Geoxus told him to kill my mother?”

  She didn’t want to talk to Stavos.

  She wanted to slice his throat.

  “Geoxus is likely to have some kind of festivities after the first round fights,” Tor said to Rook. He was ignoring her. “Those events are always saturated with wine. We can wait until Ignitus is drunk and press him for information, a more solid lead.”

  “We have a lead,” Ash tried again. “If Geoxus used Stavos to kill Char, he could be—”

  “Stavos is a brute,” Tor snapped. “A fumbling idiot of a man. He is nothing, Ash. Do you hear me? I won’t waste any more energy talking about Char’s murderer. Stop. We’ll question Ignitus. That’s it.”

  Ash agreed with him; Stavos was all the things Tor said. But he could also
be the key to figuring out Ignitus’s weakness if he was involved in a larger plot.

  “Champions,” one of the guards called, impatient. “To the palace.”

  Spark gave an apologetic shrug and answered the door. She and Taro walked out into the group of waiting soldiers.

  Ash wilted under the sorrow in Tor’s eyes, the fury that was blinding him to a potential weakness of Ignitus’s. Or was Ash’s own fury blinding her?

  The only way to find out was to take the next step at whatever celebration Geoxus held after the first fights. Talk to Ignatus, yes—but they needed to talk to Stavos, too. Even if Ash had to do it herself.

  “All right,” she told Tor, her head dropping.

  Tor spun on his heels.

  Rook steered Ash for the door.

  “Thank you,” she whispered to Rook. “For defending me.”

  “Don’t thank me. You’re right about pursuing a lead, but you’re wrong too. I know you feel like you lost everything with your mother. But there’s always more Ignitus can take from you.” He looked at her somberly. “Always.”

  Ignitus and the Kulans had their usual wing on the twelfth floor of Geoxus’s palace. For the first time, Ash had her own room with a canopied bed, chairs and a table with a washbasin, and a balcony ringed by elegant marble statues. Tor and Rook had their own chambers farther down, on either side of Ignitus’s room, while Spark and Taro had a room in the hall just below.

  Ash lay in the same bed she’d shared with Char a handful of times. With everything that had happened, she’d thought that sleep would instantly seize her. But moonlight made the air a hazy, dreamlike blue, and Ash had to shut her eyes to hold on to her composure.

  Having Char had always let Ash ignore her loneliness. When her lack of friends threatened to swallow her whole, Ash had just looped her arm through her mother’s and listened to the lull of her voice until she stopped wanting so much.

  There was nothing now. No one in this room with her. No one to hold on to.

  Ash scrambled for memories, wet eyes squished shut.

  “If I had geoeia, I could build a staircase down the side of the palace,” Ash had told Char on a previous visit. She couldn’t remember how old she had been—young enough to still dream idly of escape. “We could run off into Crixion before Ignitus even knew we were gone!”

  Char had been lying on her back under the silky sheets, and Ash had watched her mother stare up at the canopy’s translucent drapes. “And where would we run to?” The question sounded broken at first, a sad reminder of the reality of their lives. But Char flipped onto her side and gave Ash a conspiratorial grin. “If we could live anywhere, where would you go, my love?”

  “The Apuit Islands!” Ash snuggled closer, planting her head under Char’s chin and fixing her arms around her mother’s waist. “I want to see a country that’s more water than land.”

  Char hummed, the noise vibrating in Ash’s ears. “Are you sure you wouldn’t want to go to Itza? I heard they have a type of flower that’s the size of a cottage and smells worse than animal dung!”

  Ash had gagged, and Char had laughed, and the two had fallen into silence, realizing that even if they could get out of Crixion, the blockade around Hydra’s Apuit Islands and Florus’s Itza wouldn’t let them pass. There was nowhere else to dream of going. There was nowhere that Ignatus could not find them.

  Clouds shifted outside the window now, letting stronger moonlight illuminate the room. Ash kicked off her sheets and shrank into a ball, hands over her ears, heartbeat thudding fast.

  There’s always more Ignitus can take from you, Rook had said.

  She knew he was right. But it didn’t feel that way. It felt like the worst had happened, so what more could Ignitus do? She had nothing left.

  But she did. She wanted to run practice drills with Tor. She wanted to ask Rook if he’d heard from Lynx. She wanted to listen to Taro and Spark banter about which was sweeter, Deiman persimmons or Kulan grapes. But Ignitus had guards in the hall to prevent anyone from trying to leave—which was an unnecessary and annoying display of his power.

  Ash groaned at the smoldering coals of fear in her belly. She would fight Rook, but it wouldn’t be like she was fighting an enemy. Not like Madoc, his bare shoulders heaving, his dark eyes fixed on her, glistening and afraid. He had had the upper hand; what could he have feared with his arm pressed to her throat?

  Ash pushed deeper into the mattress, willing her heartbeats to slow and her mind to empty of thoughts of loneliness, of Ignitus’s worry, of Madoc’s dark eyes. That pulse of innocent terror.

  She saw his mouth form her name. Ash.

  He became Ignitus, crouched over her, eyes pinched in sympathetic worry. Ash.

  Sleep pulled and ebbed, and she fell into it, down, down, her only escape.

  Char was at the edge of the fighting ring. Dried blood was smeared across her chest and coated her once pristine armor. Ash, her lips formed.

  In unison, Char at the edge, Madoc—Ignitus—close and heavy. Where would you go?

  The next morning, after Ash had readied herself—dressed in utilitarian reed armor now—and choked down a handful of breadsticks for breakfast, Kulan guards corralled her into a carriage and out of the palace’s complex.

  Other elimination fights would occur this week, on Ignitus’s side and on Geoxus’s, as well as dozens of lesser fights throughout the city to keep the crowds amused. But the current odd number of Kulan champions meant one wouldn’t fight until the rest of Ignitus’s gladiators arrived from their fights abroad. Maybe Tor would be in the stands when she and Rook fought, cheering for her, and she would know he forgave her for acting impetuously yesterday.

  The carriage crossed a narrow bridge. The Nien River glittered in the clear morning, diamonds in blue, before the western edge of Crixion swallowed her up.

  Ash didn’t know the city well enough to identify its neighborhoods, but they wound through an area that was dirtier than the palace’s complex, with clumsy buildings sagging into one another and strands of laundry stretched window to window. People crowded the streets in a flurry of excitement, all heading in the same direction: to the grand arena. Children in faux gladiator outfits brandished wooden shields and retractable rocks on strings; men and women jostled one another good-naturedly, slathered in silver paint with names written on their skin.

  JANN arched over one man’s brow. Another had RACLIN in script down his left arm.

  And Ash saw more than one person with MADOC scrawled on their bodies.

  When the Kulan carriage came into view, a few Deiman people even called out “Ash!” while others shouted “Rook!”

  She swallowed hard, her hands in fists on her knees. She hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to Rook about their fight. She needed to win if she was to have any hope of earning Ignitus’s trust and uncovering more about whatever it was he feared. But would Rook agree? She needed to beat him—but if he won, he would earn a fair amount of gold, money he could use to help Lynx.

  Suddenly Ash regretted all the time she had wasted. She needed to talk with Rook.

  A lurching left turn, and the carriage swung to a halt near Crixion’s largest arena. This area was clearly meant for gladiators, soldiers, and arena workers—it was shadowed and blocked off by a low stone wall. Beyond that wall, farther down the right side of the arena, Ash could see a line of Deiman citizens in stained togas and well-worn tunics.

  Some whooped into the air. Another person cried “Bets! Place your official bets here!”

  Ash’s eyes darted around the rest of the yard, but Rook wasn’t here. Maybe he would enter from another tunnel. Or maybe Ignitus had changed his mind and wouldn’t make her fight him.

  Guards swarmed her when Ash descended onto the dusty road, and she let them usher her into the arena.

  The passageway was unlit but for dawn’s rays in the entrance yard. It was a short chute of stone with a few closed doors and the golden sands of the arena’s fighting pit at the end.

 
A match raged within between nonchampion Deiman gladiators to warm up the crowd. Ash saw only part of their battle, two warriors hurling each other back and forth with stones.

  The crowd above stomped and cheered.

  Ash and her escorts reached the end of the hall as one of the Deiman fighters dropped to his knees. He lifted his hands, coated in bloodstained sand, and shouted his surrender.

  Most of the crowd booed at his weakness; some cheered for the victor. Regardless, their match was ended, and an announcer’s voice cut over the throng:

  “Two Kulan champions will take the ring!”

  Servants scurried out from other halls and deftly set up for the fight.

  Ash couldn’t breathe. This was it. Her first arena match. But she wasn’t fighting some feral stranger; it was Rook, who had always saved the best armor for Char, who had tried to make Ash a chocolate tart for her birthday one year but accidentally swapped salt for sugar. He’d been mortified, but Ash had laughed herself to tears.

  Ash curled her hands into sweaty fists and stepped out of the darkness.

  The arena’s stands were full. A few people milled about the stairways, searching for seats, while a vendor sold hot wine and meat on sticks. In the very center of the pit there was now a shallow brick bowl that held twigs coated with sticky-sweet ignition liquid—Ash could feel the extra intensity in the igneia—and flames crackled hungrily on the fuel. Next to it, a rack of weapons waited, knives and swords and a single shield.

  With a relieved sigh, Ash took a step toward the fire, her fingers reaching out to the heat. She had igneia for this fight. She had her fire. Everything would be fine, as long as—

  Rook entered the pit from the opposite tunnel.

  A trumpet cut through the audience’s murmuring. Silence fell.

  The final pieces of Ash’s resolve slipped through her fingers when blue flames filled a viewing box, so bright they pierced her eyes.

  Ignitus materialized out of his fire, flames curling away into his oiled hair, his draping orange-and-blue tunic. The box he had chosen was so close, he’d be able to see every bead of sweat on the gladiators’ bodies, and Ash could see just as much of him, his scowling look of anticipation.