Page 3 of Ironhold, Trial Two

I watch the would-be gladiators try, and I watch them fail. Some fall at the first test, the running designed to sap their endurance beneath the harsh sun. I know they will have walked here from wherever they were taken. They will have spent days being urged on with the lash, given only water and bread. They will already be exhausted. This is not about how fit they are or how strong, but simply about their determination.

Some of them collapse on the sand. Those are dragged to the side by soldiers. They are the ones who will be taken from Ironhold when this is done. The soldiers look on almost mockingly. It makes me hate them even more. I know what it is like to be where the prisoners are, to be made to run and work.

They are forced to do exercises now, lifting stones, striking the posts with wooden weapons, climbing over obstacles again and again. The same things we do in training each morning to make us tougher, but these prisoners do not have our months of practice behind them. I can see some of the other gladiators there around them, some urging them on, others telling them that they are certain to fail. I see Vex, blonde haired and arrogant, noble robes over the top of his training gear, telling the recruits that they have no chance, pushing them, bullying them.

I can see one dark-haired young woman who looks too small and weak to be there, struggling with the rocks. I go to her.

“Keep going,” I say. “I know this is hard, but this is a test of determination, not of strength or skill. The only way you fail is if you give in.”

“And if I succeed I get to die in the colosseum,” she says, but she does not stop.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Cesca.”

“Well, Cesca, if you survive for five seasons, you are free,” I point out. “But if you fail here, you will be dragged off and sold. You might never be free, and your fate… it could be a lot worse than even a quick death on the sands. You must keep going.”

I see her nod, her face set in fresh determination. I hope I have done the right thing by talking to her. She keeps moving, keeps working. I can see some of the others dropping out. This is going to be a long day, filled with the desperate disappointment of failure, and the realization that succeeding leads only to more work and pain.

I know then that I don't want to be there, watching this. I don't want to see who will succeed and who will fail. I don't want to become invested in the new recruits. At the best of times, this is a place where we might lose someone at any moment, killed in an instant in the fights. But this… most of those who have arrived will not make it. Lord Darius only wants the best, and the fate of the others is not one I can think about.

I walk away from the training pits. I do not have to be here, and there is nothing I can do, in truth, to help anyone. I can shout encouragement, I can tell them that they must not give in, but I cannot give them any assistance beyond that. And even if I encourage them to succeed, am I not just pushing them closer to a possible death in the Colosseum? It is better to be elsewhere, better to keep training and see who my new comrades in arms will be.

I seek another practice space, this one indoors and grim, looking more like a dungeon than a place to improve my skills. It is a large, square-walled box of a place, with chains hanging down from the ceiling and a great across the ceiling rather than a stone roof. Only the practice posts within make it clear that this is a place for training rather than imprisonment and pain. The idea in this room is to move around it without touching the floor, attacking the practice posts in passing.

I am surprised to find that there is someone already in here, swinging casually from one chain to the next, slashing out the posts without ever losing his grip or his balance, making it all look easy.

Alaric Blackthorn is beautiful and graceful even doing this. Where someone like Rowan is powerfully built and muscular, Alaric is lithe and flexible, lean and fast, built like an acrobat or a dancer. He is taller than me, with dark hair falling to his shoulders, his features falling naturally into an expression laced with sarcasm and arrogance. He is wearing simple training gear, his chest bare except for a few scraps of armor, a single flash of bright cloth proclaiming his position within one of Aetheria’s noble families. Unlike me, there is no iron collar around his neck, but he still has the mark on one shoulder showing how far he is from completing his five seasons. Two stripes now run across it. The next season will be his third.

His dark eyes seem to dance with delight as he sees me, a smile gracing his features. I can never be sure whether Alaric cares about me. He claims that I am simply interesting, but he does not treat me with the cruelty of some of the other free gladiators. He is not Vex.

“Ah, Lyra, have you come to hang around with me?”

He laughs at his own witticism, hanging upside down for a moment from one of the chains to punctuate his point, then striking another of the posts as if to emphasize that he has not forgotten his training.

“I didn't know you were here,” I say.

“And if you had? Would that have made you avoid this place or come running to it?” Alaric likes to tease me. It seems he spends as much time poking and prodding at my emotions as he would confusing and tormenting an opponent in the Colosseum. I can never be certain whether he means any of it or not.

“I just needed to get away from the selections,” I say. “There's so little I can do there to help anyone. I don't like feeling that helpless.”

To my surprise, Alaric nods. “I understand, Lyra. It’s too many people. Some of them will be chosen to train and maybe die, some of them will be sent away to other fates. And you think that you should save everyone from the worst of it.”

“Don't mock me, Alaric,” I snap back. Can’t he see that this hurts me?

“What is the world for if not to mock it?” Alaric retorts. “We are not in control of the world. We cannot stop its cruelties. What role do we have except as jesters, clowning on the fringes?”

He swings casually among the chains again, turning this way and that.

“Do you actually believe that?” I ask.

“What you have to ask yourself, dear Lyra, is whether I actually believe anything . Telling what's real from what's false is hard work.”

Now he pulls one of his favorite tricks, making multiple images of himself appear around the room, clinging to different chains. They start to move back and forth, swinging this way and that, so it's hard to keep track of where the real Alaric is.

“You wanted to train to distract yourself, Lyra,” he says. “So let's see if you can find the real me without losing. But I will make it easy. You don't even have to use the chains.”

I sigh at the game, but at least it is a chance to do something, to work and distract myself from the thoughts of everything that is happening to the new recruits. Alaric seems to know that’s what I need at a time like this. And in a way, even this mockery is a kindness, giving me exactly what I require.

“So you stay away from the selection because you don't want the pain of it either?” I ask.

“Are you hoping to get me to talk and tell you my location?” Alaric asks. His voice seems to come from each of his illusions at once. “All right, yes. Maybe I don't like the idea of getting attached to any of them before I know they're going to stay. Like being given a new kitten, only for it to die. Or worse… there might be a beautiful young woman among them, and my heart might be so struck that I am in agony when it turns out she doesn't have the stamina for carrying rocks around and around.”

He clutches his hand to his chest in mock pain.

I start to hunt him through the chains. “You can’t protect yourself from every feeling?”

“Can’t I?”

Various Alarics swing towards me. I raise my trident to block an attack by one, only for it to pass straight through. It's an illusion.

“I forgot,” I say. “You don't feel anything for anybody, do you?”

“Oh, I can feel all kinds of things,” Alaric says. Another of his illusions swings through me. “From my perch up here, for example, it’s hard not to feel amusement, desire, all the usual things when it comes to you.”

That seems to be the extent of the emotional range he admits to, most of the time, but I know that this is an act, something he throws at the world to pretend that he doesn’t care. And then there’s the part where he says he desires me. It’s hard not to react to that, even though I know I shouldn’t. Alaric is impossible to ignore.

“The important thing is not to get too attached. Or to stop watching your back.”

I spin as he says it, seeing a version of him swinging towards me across the room. This time I extend my trident, butt first, and there's a satisfying impact as he swings into it. The illusions disappear and now we are sparring, me on the ground, him scrambling among the chains. Given how fast and deadly Alaric is, his disadvantage almost makes things even.

Even then, he somehow springs from one of the chains in a backflip that sends him over my head to land behind me, sword lightly touching my throat.

“You know, I should have thought to demand a forfeit for the loser,” he says. “There are so many delightful possibilities.”

“But thankfully, you tend to act first and think later,” I say. It’s all too easy to imagine the kind of forfeit he might have asked for, and I don’t want a part of his games. I’m almost certain of it.

He bows as if I have complimented him. “Always ready to puncture my ego, Lyra.”

“Someone has to.”

He shakes his head. “Strictly speaking, as a noble of Aetheria, mere commoners such as yourself are actively forbidden from doing it. I should be defending the honor of my noble family's name.”

“And why don't you?” I ask. Alaric seems happy for me to poke fun at him when I know he has fought duels over such things in the past.

“Perhaps some things are easier to hear from a beautiful woman than from others,” Alaric suggests. “Or perhaps I suspect that all of this may secretly be affection, a declaration of your need for me. In any case, I don't have time to teach you a proper lesson. I must get to the bathhouse to clean up. I am required down in the city, and I need to look my best.”

That catches me by surprise. “You get to leave Ironhold?”

There are rows of soldiers on the walls to prevent exactly that. I found out on my first day as a captive that those who try to run are killed. I saw a young man’s throat cut by the side of the road to prove it.

“Is it because you’re a free gladiator?” I ask. “I heard that some of them get to leave, but I wasn’t sure whether to believe it.”

Alaric shakes his head. “We are as committed to Ironhold as you, Lyra, until we serve out our seasons. But those who have successfully completed their first may find themselves… sponsored on visits to Aetheria by suitably high-born individuals."

“Sponsored?” I say. This is the first I have heard of gladiators being taken out of Ironhold, except to fight on the holy days of the city.

“They call it that,” Alaric says. “Mostly, it is similar to the time we spend with them after fighting. They wish to be seen with us, or they desire us. Occasionally, they want to build connections with us. It makes them feel more important to be seen next to a gladiator who has made a name for themselves.”

“They are important,” I point out. “They're nobles.”

Alaric smiles, as if he can't imagine most nobles being all that important. He comes from a very wealthy family, after all.

“So who's your sponsor?” I ask. “Some noble determined to bed you? Someone who wants to be seen next to the great Alaric Blackthorn?”

“One day you will call me that and sound as though you mean it,” Alaric says, with a sigh. “Maybe on that day, I might even let you know who my sponsor is. Probably not, though. Now, excuse me, Lyra. Unless you wanted to join me in the bathhouse?”

He already knows the answer to that. I let him go, thinking about this new thing I've learned. There is a way for me to leave Ironhold. But only if there is a noble who wants me to. And I know there is at least one noble who might be interested in that.