Page 13

After my victory, I only need a little time among the healers. I have suffered no major wounds this time, nothing that requires their talents to help me. I do, however, need a minute or two sitting alone to make sure that I have let the last of the abilities I have borrowed from the beasts flow out of me. I can feel my heartbeat slowing a little and I don’t know if it is because the adrenaline rush of the fight is fading, or because some aggressive animal essence is leaving me.

But I don’t get to sit there for long.

“Move,”

one of the trainers snaps at me. “You’re wanted up above in the receiving rooms.”

I force myself to head up to the space reserved for meeting with the nobles. I can feel the eyes on me as I enter that space, and I wonder what I must look like to them. It is normal that we come into the receiving rooms without cleaning up after our fights. The nobles like to see a little blood, like to convince themselves that, because they can touch the dried blood on someone's arm, it is almost the same as being in the colosseum themselves.

But I have sand covering much of my skin, thanks to Zax’s efforts. It's not just that though. They look at me with a kind of new level of awe, because they have just seen me take down three people at once, without being wounded in return.

One of those people enters the receiving room. Cesca hurries in, looking as though she doesn't want to be there. She looks embarrassed by what has happened to her, what I did to her.

“You-”

she begins moving towards me.

“You were going to stab me in the back,”

I say, looking at her levelly. “I stopped you without killing you. Do you object to me doing that, Cesca? Should I have killed you instead, the way you were going to kill me?”

She looks even more embarrassed as she is forced to shake her head. She hurries past me, heading for the couple she was with before, but they turn away from her. She's learning that the nobles here are interested in us for exactly as long as we are useful to them.

A servant is waiting to show me through to the same side room I met Vex in before. He is standing there with a cloak thrown over his arm. He tosses it to me as soon as I get in there.

“Put this on,” he says.

“What for?” I ask.

“For one thing, it will do something to disguise the sand on you. For another I would rather you weren't recognized on the short trip we're about to take.”

I'm instantly suspicious. Why would Vex want to take me anywhere? As my patron, I know he can take me out of the games when I am not fighting, as long as he has me back at Ironhold by evening. But where would he want to take me?

There are some potentially disturbing possibilities. Maybe Vex has decided that trying to get me to talk about the spectral covenant isn't going to work, so he's going to take me somewhere quiet where he can question me more forcefully. Maybe he has decided to make me disappear. In theory, he could put me on a slaver’s cart heading away from the city, and it would merely look as though I'd run off.

Those possibilities don't seem likely, but it's hard to trust that Vex is doing this for any reason that isn't designed to harm me.

“Put on the cloak,”

Vex insists.

I do it. It’s not as though I can refuse the instruction. Vex is still my patron, which means he has a measure of control over me, and I will be punished if I do not obey. The way Vex is doing this only makes me more suspicious, though.

I shroud myself in the cloak, then follow him as he leads me from the colosseum. He has the hood of his own cloak up as we make our way through the crowd. He leads the way through the city on foot, when I might have expected a fine noble to have a palanquin or a chariot. There are many people inside the arena, but there are almost as many gathered around it, in a kind of grand market for the holy day.

The first place Vex leads me is a gruesome one. He takes me to a spot where half a dozen people have been tied to posts and disemboweled, left there with signs around their necks proclaiming them to be traitors. I am used to death, to the violence of the arena, but this still makes me want to retch.

“Why bring me here?”

I ask him.

“Do you know what these people did?” Vex asks.

“The signs say that they're traitors,” I say.

“But do you know what they did to be called traitors?” Vex asks.

I shake my head.

“They dared to suggest that some imperial officials were hoarding grain for themselves,”

Vex says. He gestures for me to keep moving as he leads the way further through the city.

I see a child huddled by the side of the road, looking slender and sick. Even as I watch, a woman who must be her mother shuffles her out of sight.

We are not on the main streets now, not on the ones that are decorated for the processions of the holy days. I can see the spots where houses have been looted.

“There are gangs in the city,”

Vex says. “The emperor does nothing to contain them unless they hurt the wrong noble.”

I don't mention that Bella and her friends think the gangs are on their side. Vex continues to lead the way through the city. He heads down to the docks with me, and I can see the lines of people there. Vex leads me to them. I can see the desperation in their eyes.

“Are they leaving the city?” I ask.

Vex laughs briefly and bitterly. “Hardly. These are the ones who need to beg for food. The ones who can't afford the inflated prices in the markets. They wait for every shipment, and descend on it.”

As he says it a woman reaches out to me. She has a child by her side who looks half-starved. "Please. Spare any coin you can.”

The movement dislodges my hood, revealing my face in the sunlight. Around me, people blink and turn to stare at me.

“You’re Lyra,”

the woman says. “Lyra, the mistress of beasts.”

I wince at the name.

“You're mistaken,”

Vex says, but that doesn't make things any better.

“No, it's her,”

a man says. “I saw her fight in the Champions Trials. Lyra! It’s Lyra, everyone!”

People are starting to look my way.

“Help us!”

a woman calls out. “They're holding back the food. They had it, but they just want to make a fortune on it once the prices go up.”

“Help us!”

a man calls. “Anyone who speaks out about it is executed.”

“The officials do what they want,”

a woman says.

They start to crowd around me, each telling me the things that the city and its officials have done to them as if I might be able to help them somehow. As if I am able to change their lives. I have been shown to them as a hero and so it seems obvious to them that I should be able to do something.

“Damn it,”

Vex mutters. He pulls the hood back over my head. “We're getting out of here; keep moving.”

He starts to push his way through the crowd, one hand clamped on my arm so that he will not lose me. People crowd around but they give way the moment Vex’s daggers take to the air, forming a ring of deadly steel around us, propelled by the telekinetic talents that saw him succeed in the colosseum.

“You don't need to do that, Vex,”

I say, as he pulls me through the crowd.

“Of course I do. Do you think I'm going to trust that the poor will hold back on their own account?”

We make it clear, and Vex brings his daggers back to him.

“Why show me all that?”

I demand, as we continue to walk.

“So you can see what's at stake in the city. The emperor has suborned the games to entertain the masses. He wishes to distract them from their troubles. And when that doesn't work, he has them killed.”

He's moving quickly, so I almost have to run to keep pace.

“And you're trying to tell me that you care about the masses?”

I ask. I know Vex better than that.

“I care about the games. I care about the fact the emperor is ruining the city. And I know you will care about this. The time has come for a different emperor.”

“Emperor Vex?” I guess.

“Someone from my faction at least,”

Vex says. “We would change things in the city. We would make sure it was run in a more orderly way. Officials would not flout the rules. The games would be run according to the old ways. And if you were a part of it, things would be better.”

Perhaps he's even right. That's the scariest thing, that there's a chance I find myself agreeing with Vex.

“Think on it more,”

Vex says. “I will return you to the colosseum now, but consider your position. The emperor offers nothing but endless violence as he tries to hold onto his city. And my guess is that any other faction trying to take it from him will unleash war on the street. Wouldn't it be better to wrest it from his grasp cleanly? To hand it to someone who will restore Aetheria to glory?”

I want to tell him that his dreams of power are simple megalomania, but I can't. Not now that I've seen the faces of the hungry, seen the bodies of the executed. I thought that Vex was trying to trap me, but it's clear now that he's as serious about rebellion as the other groups.

The question is not now whether I get involved, but how and on whose side.