Jaime screamed through tunics and steel plates.
They did the same to his ankles, too, linking them together with a short chain. A collar fastened around his neck last. It smelled of iron—of blood. So tight, he fought for air.
The soldier handed the leading chain to the Archpriestess.
Strategos Reizo, the King’s chief military official, burst in behind his men.
“The Prince! He is—”
His eyes widened and he pulled up short.
“You have him already?”
The Archpriestess seized a soldier’s short spear and slammed it down on the wound in Jaime’s calf.
He crashed to the ground, biting down a scream.
In his ear, she whispered: “Just in time for the Greatsporting. Thou art the grand prize, didst thee hear?”
He stared up at her, eyes wet with pain, his shackles digging into his back.
“I’ll burn you.”
“Thou hast no idea what shall befall thee by the end of tonight,” she said.
His brother’s murderer tossed the leading chain to the head guard.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“Faster, boy!” a burly soldier snapped.
The chain yanked again, jerking his throat. Pain surged into his head. Jaime stumbled, fell in a fit for air.
The soldiers around him laughed.
“Hail, the Prince of Jaypes,” the first one sneered.
Blinking.
Slowly.
Once, twice.
What am I doing here? It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. I don’t understand, Lord Jaypes. Everything, all the deaths—what for? Was there any purpose to it?
Not a dream.
Thud. Thud.
He couldn’t feel his chest anymore.
I don’t understand.
A final set of doors appeared ahead. Reizo knocked. No answer. He knocked more frantically on the painted gilt, blaring out, “Your Holiness!”
Still no answer.
“Holiness, I understand you are occupied. Please forgive, it is urgent. I present to you: The Prince of Jaypes!”
The silence that followed was unbearably long.
. . . one, two, three four . . .
A low voice:
“Bring him inside.”
Strategos Reizo peered at Jaime, gesturing his head at the doors.
Come along.
Jaime obeyed without a fight. The soldiers sealed the doors shut behind him. The Hall of the Ascaerii stole away his jitters.
It resembled a Jaypan temple, held up by four great colonnades. Their capitals were bell-shaped swirls of acanthus leaves. The Air Emblem swept across the mosaic ground, embedded in Jaypan silver. Maybe they’re from Mount Alairus’s old mines. Winking like stars, even in the firelight and shadow.
And yet, it smelled like withered ivy in here. The statues guarding the painted walls—Thollos, Lybera, Agmon, Kleio, the first of Jaypes’s monarchs—stared at him with hollow eyes.
And there, between the center columns, stood the King of Jaypes.
His back faced Jaime.
Rich robes of damask—cut in the Jaypan toga-style—fell to his knees. A silk sash blazed crimson down one shoulder. The Legend of the Four was in his hands.
Head pricking upright, the King lowered it onto empty the altar, took a jeweled knife in its place.
The silence was so overpowering, Jaime forgot how to count.
Ushion Ottega turned to face him.
Jaime was tall now—taller than Usheon—but the King held himself like a mighty mountain, shoulders pressed outward. His presence alone felt like a great beacon blistering against Jaime’s avai.
Yet unlike the high lords Jaime was used to, only the slightest scent clung to his skin. Cassia. A clean smell. Despite that his black hair was neatly cropped and oiled, nothing could hide his sagging eyes, the gauntness of his cheekbones. No crown on his head, no golden cuffs on his arms or wrists.
In another lifetime, he might have been very handsome.
It struck Jaime: he saw no resemblance of himself in this man.
Yet he blurted the first word that came through his lips.
“Papá—”
As soon as he spoke, someone echoed him.
“Papá!”
Two figures raced through a side door and clung to the King. Girls, both several years younger than Jaime. They had Usheon’s long, round face and black eyes.
No one ever told him the King had other children in Jaypes. Impulsive envy burned his skin.
I’m your true blood, not them.
Usheon’s left arm slid around the girls’ waists. They looked at Jaime with fearful, teary eyes. The more he tried to diminish them as lower bloods, the more he felt, perversely, like a villain.
“Leave us,” the King said.
He kissed the little girls. Reizo hesitated, but bowed low and took the children through the doors.
And they were alone.
“So tell me. Why do you wish to overthrow your father?”
His Moderna was accented, but articulate.
Jaime’s aggression deflated. The answers he had rehearsed in his mind, all of the grandiose rhetoric he learned from Achuros’s books, suddenly empty air.
One, two, three, four.
He took a breath.
“You’ve murdered the sons of Jaypes. You’ve destroyed thousands of families. You stared this war the day you decided to invade the Kingdom of Air. Lord Jaypes sent a banestorm over all of us because you broke the Sacred Codex.”
“Is that how you justify yourself?”
Jaime’s eyes flashed, fear dissipating. “If you have to ask, then you don’t know about Hilaris. Do you know that name?”
No answer.
“Hilaris? My foster brother? Even Lord Gaiyus loved him—a monster loved him. I didn’t realize how much I did, too, until I was forced to watch him burn in your fire. He was just a mountain woman’s son. But you wouldn’t know what that was like because—” He clenched his jaws. “Because, you were never there.”
Silence.
The King turned aside, brushing his thumb over an old burn scar on his right jawbone. Burn scar. How was it possible a Fire Sage could have a burn scar?
“You are wrong. Countless nights I lay awake, thinking about your mother. About you. In the beginning, I believed there was a way to find you and make peace with your god’s prophecy. After she fell on her own blade—”
“You killed her—”
“You were the last memory I had of her. But the rebels hid you and held onto you tightly. The more I fought for you, the more they fought; and when I crushed them, then you fought me in their place.”
Jaime closed his eyes.
Liar. He’s always wanted you dead. He killed Mother. Everyone said so. Why would he destroy Townfold if he cared about you?
“Now, here we are, you and I.”
Usheon rubbed the silver pommel of the knife.
“My bondlords demand your execution. For a time, I reminded them you were my son, but the damage you have done to this Kingdom far exceeds mere treason. If I should pardon you, then I may as well pardon every criminal who challenges a Sage-King’s divinity.”
Jaime bared his teeth. “That’s holy of you—”
“Yet I am King. Bow before me, boy, and relinquish your rights as Crown Prince. Then I will let you live.”
“As a slave? So you and your Court can display me like an amphora, burn more children, behead more statues of Lord Jaypes, make me watch until we’re all obliterated?” Jaime pointed his wrists at The Legend. “You’re no Sage if you think that banestorm outside won’t destroy us as long as you’re King.”
“So be it.”
“I challenge you to a Duel.”
“You are in no position to invoke the Sacred Codex. And who shall strike me down if I refuse you, your god?”
“Let’s end this war then. Now.”
Usheon’s grip tightened over the knife. He stepped forward. His father’s breath fell on the sweat soaking Jaime’s scalp.
Jaime clenched his jaws, preparing himself—
But standing so close to the King, Jaime saw it: grief broke over his eyes like water diluting ink, briefly.
He won’t kill me.
He can’t.
Jaime closed his gaping mouth.
But Usheon’s expression turned cold again, impregnable. He shouted for the guards. They surged inside, their hands tight their spears, ready to hack Jaime apart.
“Lock him in a cell. And hand him this.” Usheon extended the knife to them. “Spare the King from another death. Let him choose his own fate.”
The guards took hold of his neck chain and wrenched him out.
I don’t understand.
This wasn’t the monster the people of Jaypes had sculpted into his mind. If he peeled away all the fronts, he would see his real, raw papá underneath. I did see him, for a second. And he knew, from the ten minutes of being inside that chamber, that Usheon was a good papá to those little girls.
His chest hurt.
In another lifetime, I would’ve stood in their place.
Before the King’s soldiers came to Mount Alairus, Jaime would have wanted that more than anything in the world.
In an adjacent corridor, a sunburnt Colosseum worker approached them. A straw hat clung around his chin, shielding his face. The soldiers only gave him a second glance, but when the worker passed them, the guard on the right groaned and fell to the ground.
“What in the gods—”
The other three guards swiveled around—a knife stuck out of their colleague’s back. Jaime froze.
The stranger drew his sword. Slashed at the Jaypan holding his leading chain. Startled cries echoed the hallway.
The guard lifted his shortsword to parry him, but the stranger flitted aside. In four strokes, two more bodies were on the ground.
The last guard held up his hands, puffing hard.
And he fled the corridor.
Jaime gawked as the stranger bent over the portliest guard, wrenched a set of keys from his belt, and shoved it into his iron collar. One by one, the rest of his chains clanked to the floor.
“Arrys?” Jaime cried.
The stranger tipped his hat. “Good evening, Prince.”
“What about Mount Alairus?” he cried. “The people—”
“There was great fire,” Arrys began, but their reunion was cut short by a furious bellow.
Jaime hastily grabbed Arrys’s arm for support.
“Um. We should probably run. There’s a Fire Sage behind us.”
Noises of marching beat against his eardrums, until it sounded like all of Jaypes’s royal lochoi had been crammed into the narrow corridors. His father’s shouts echoed against firelit stone.
“Baikan! Do not let him get outside!”
To their right, Reizo Kita burst in from a perpendicular hallway. Jaime’s calf-wound cramped. Arrys swooped in front of him, sword lashing out. His friend connected blades with the front lines.
The corridors sang like a kithara of steel.
Arrys’s wild hair lashed against the fervid V of his brows. In a flurry of slashes, four soldiers were on the ground.
Strategos Reizo cursed in Kaipponese, drawing his kendao. “Who by great rice maggots are you?”
Arrys responded with the double-motioning of his blade. His sword seemed to grin.
Jaime swallowed down the dryness in his throat.
Once, he overheard Nides Doupolous swear it was impossible for a sword to win against a polearm.
“If you lose your spear in battle,” Nides declared, “and you only have your shortsword left, you’re already a carcass.”
Surely a rogue teenage Larfene couldn’t beat the King’s righthand official, sword to kendao?
The Strategos swung first, a quick jab at Arrys’s unprotected hands. Arrys slipped to close-guard stance—and caught it with the flat of his blade. For a second, the kendao’s blade locked against the sword’s crossguard.
The bronze vase along the wall mirrored their firelit reflections.
Arrys slid forward along the length of the shaft. Bringing himself in, closer to Reizo. At any second, Arrys would cut past the lacquered plates of his armor, ending the duel.
Jaime clenched his fists.
Reizo made a small circular drop at the last second, disengaging. Thrust the butt-end at an angle, down at Arrys’s collarbone.
Arrys thrust up, beat it aside.
Reizo retreated backwards, but this gave him the advantage of distance again. His single-edged halberd came up perpendicular to his body.
Arrys backed away as well, assuming middle-guard position.
Jaime’s heart pulsed louder. For a second, the deadly opponents stared at each other.
Reizo’s weight fell forward, jabbing high. Arrys lifted his sword to parry—but Reizo’s was a clever feint. With Arrys’s guard down, Reizo pulled back, lunged low this time.
Arrys dropped to the floor, rolling aside to avoid the blade.
But that was a last resort defense. Now he was backed up against the wall. The chunky, black-eyed Kaipponese drew his kendao back, a buttery smile on his face, as he bided his energy for the final killing thrust.
No!
Jaime grabbed his fallen neck chain and whacked it across the Strategos’s butt.
Reizo roared and pivoted around. It was all Arrys needed to launch himself to his knees.
Now they were back in close-range again. But the Strategos sensed Arrys would get back up. He was already thrusting straight at the Larfene’s chest.
Arrys did the unexpected.
He threw himself forward, towards the blade—and gripped the polearm’s shaft with his hand.
Yanking.
Reizo cried out in surprise, his portly rolls tumbling from balance. Just as the Strategos came crashing into him, Arrys thrust his knee in a swift, upward cut.
Right in the larger man’s groin.
Reizo moaned and crumpled, his kendao falling with him. Jaime crawled out of the way. Arrys caught the polearm in mid-air and slammed the butt against the Kaipponese’s temple.
His eyes rolled to the back of his head.
Reizo Kita went out cold.
Their gazes met, Jaime breathing heavily, Arrys smiling through the sheen of his sweat. The Larfene sheathed his sword.
“I owe you another life,” Arrys panted.
Shivering, Jaime lifted up a hand. “Just help me out of here,” he breathed. “I have to get outside and make an announcement.”
Arrys pulled him to his feet, his bowman’s hands sandpapery against Jaime’s. They made a few limping strides together—
A fresh storm of soldiers appeared behind them. The door to the Arena was so tantalizingly close now.
Suddenly, the Archpriestess pulled up at the front, blocking out the light of the fires. Not even Arrys would be able to hold all of them back this time.
But his friend released him and drew his sword again.
“Go!”
Jaime’s eyes caught the Archpriestess’s, then they fell to the medallion on her chest.
I just need to grab it, and I’ll have Air again . . .
With Air, he would be able to fight off these soldiers and protect Arrys. But it would be risky—either he could turn around and grapple her for it, or run for the doors. He didn’t have time to do both.
Arrys clenched his teeth, clashing against swords as the rest of the Jaypans surrounded him.
“Go, I said!”
Jaime
shot the Archpriestess a hateful look and turned for the doors. She raised a current, but he sensed it before it hit. Ducked. A screaming tunnel of air battered the doors open.
He closed his eyes and collapsed flat onto the dirt.
The chatter of Jaypans circled through the Colosseum. Jaime was rising to his feet—
Another air current snatched his ankles, yanked him onto his back. A few eyes from the lower seating glanced down at him—then the soldiers came. Shoved him back to his feet. One held the chains Arrys had freed him from.
No!
“I am the Prince of Jaypes!” he yelled, but his lungs were weak. Airless. The Archpriestess was holding Reizo’s fallen kendao now. She rammed its butt against his head.
“Shut your mouth!” she hissed.
The world burst into a bright expanse of stars. He fell onto his chin. Somewhere behind him, heavy boots kicked up a cloud of dust.
Usheon Ottega marched past the six spearfighters of his King’s Guard. He whaled his men in Kaipponese, black eyes blazing. They cowered and bowed for forgiveness.
Arrys was gone.
Dead?
Too many dead, too many people gone. He knew what he had to do. The judders came back, he felt sick.
Jaime lifted his head up and tried one more time.
“I am Jamian, the Prince of Jaypes!”
And screamed this next part at the top of his lungs: “I CHALLENGE THE KING TO A DUEL!”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The world shimmered under the summer heat, watering Jaime’s eyes as he lifted them upward, tier by tier. The audience of New Jaypes nobles and statesmen nudged each other, demanding to know what they missed. A tiny part of him hoped they hadn’t heard.
All noise halted.
The King wouldn’t be able to refuse his challenge in front of them. The Duel was a sacred, gods-ordained ritual.
But then again, Usheon had already defiled the Sacred Codex by crowning himself King of Air.
Would he dare do it again, and risk his own political legitimacy, in front of his followers?
The Colosseum’s attention shifted to Usheon.
Sweat glinted off the King’s calloused face. He glanced at the courtiers on every level, at the high lords measuring their liege lord against his son, at the Jaypan soldiers that served in his royal lochoi, a hundred of them on the upper circuit with bows trained on Jaime. They served Usheon because he was, undisputedly, the greatest Sage in Jaypes. Would the direction of their spears and arrows shift if he refused Jaime’s call?
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