CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Alaric starts forward and Marcus pushes me away from him, sending out a flash of lightning towards Alaric that he barely dodges.
“Stay back,” Marcus orders in a dangerous tone. “Do you think I'm going to stand here and let you attack me? How many of my people have you hurt? How many have you killed?”
“So now you care about people's lives?” Alaric shoots back. He lunges at Marcus, and Marcus avoids the attack only by inches.
“Stop this!” I cry out. Alaric draws back his blade for another attack, but I grab his arm. “Stop this, Alaric.”
“Of course you'd defend your lover,” Alaric says. I can see the pain on his face, carefully masked behind his arrogance, but I've learned how to look through those masks with him. “Or is it your fiancé now? I heard you say he'd proposed to you.”
He sounds so jealous, but this isn't just about jealousy. Alaric and Marcus want completely different things for the city.
“What Marcus is doing here is wrong,” I say. “But more violence isn't the answer.”
“Then what is?” Alaric demands. “Trying to do things within the law doesn't work, Lyra, because the law is designed for the benefit of people like him. The laws of Aetheria were intended to produce a place filled with noble privilege and violence. I should know.”
He should, given that he comes from a noble family, and has fought in the Colosseum.
“So the alternative is chaos?” Marcus says. “Because as far as I can see, that's all you offer, Alaric. I'm trying to produce a better, happier city, and you’ve tried to tear down my efforts with every step.”
“I’ve tried to stop you from corrupting Aetheria,” Alaric snaps. “From turning it back into something only a step away from the empire.”
“But it is still a step away,” Marcus insists.
“I give the people what they want, and because I'm the one doing it, I can stop the worst excesses of the empire from ever coming to pass. Someone like Selene Ravenscroft would make herself into an empress and make slaves of those without the power to stop her. The games would become a grand festival of slaughter, rather than a controlled trickle of blood.”
Alaric looks at him with contempt. “So your argument is that you're not as bad as she is? And all the while you build up your own power?”
“As you have,” Marcus snaps back. “An army of followers in the shadows, who ignore the laws of the city and just do as you say. You spend your time stoking unrest.”
“Sometimes there needs to be unrest!” Alaric replies.
Each of them seems to be looking at me as they offer their arguments, as if knowing that they'll never convince the other, but are trying to sway me to their side. Is it just because I’ve been in a relationship with each of them?
Or do they see me as somehow holding the balance of power in the city?
Which of them do I believe? Which of them do I trust more? Whose arguments are more persuasive?
More to the point, what do I believe? I feel as though I'm caught between the two of them, hating what Marcus is doing, but not liking the way Alaric lashes out from the shadows, either.
“Alaric, I don't condone what Marcus has done here,” I say.
“Deathmatches are something I hoped we could eliminate from the city.
And I know he takes advantage of the corruption of many of the wealthy.
But you're happy to work with the gangs, and to hurt people when it's to your advantage. The methods you've chosen are wrong.”
“Do you still think you can change things from within the system?” Alaric asks, making the very idea of it sound like a joke.
“If we don't change the system in the city, then all you will ever do is spend your time fighting against the full weight of it,” I argue. “You can protest and disrupt, but are you really helping people like this, Alaric? How many ordinary people have been hurt out there?”
“People working for him,” Alaric argues, pointing at Marcus. “People who chose to be a part of this.”
“Servants brought here because their employers wanted to attend a fight? People who don't have anything to do with the violence but are just trying to do their jobs?”
I can see I'm not convincing him. Marcus laughs, bitterly.
“There's no point trying to talk to him, Lyra. Alaric won't rest until he's burned Aetheria to the ground.”
“And you won't rest until you've made yourself an emperor,” Alaric retorts. The two of them have real anger in their eyes, and I worry that they're about to fight.
But we have bigger problems. I'm still connected to some of the birds outside because I suspect I might need their speed and grace if this turns into a physical conflict. Through their eyes, I catch a glimpse of figures approaching along the streets leading to the temple.
“There's no time for this,” I say. “The guards are coming. They must have heard the fighting. They're moving to surround the temple.”
I can see them spreading out in a ring of white and gold. There are enough of them that I doubt that even Alaric and his followers would be able to fight their way out.
Alaric curses, clearly realizing that we risk being trapped.
“Was this your plan?” Alaric asks, sounding paranoid as he stares at me. “Were you going to bring us all here then bring the guards down on us?”
“I didn't know this was going to happen,” I insist. “I didn't even know you were going to try to storm the event. And I wouldn't have warned you if I wanted you to be caught.”
“It's not as if Lyra and I are exactly safe right now either,” Marcus points out. “We're in the middle of an obviously illegal event. We would be arrested along with everybody else.”
At the very least, that would lead to questions in the senate.
Possibly, it would even result in imprisonment or punishment for us.
I could try to argue that I don't have anything to do with Marcus’s event, but then I would have to explain what I'm doing here.
If I tell people the truth and say I'm here with one of Alaric’s people, there are those on the senate who will assume that I'm a traitor.
If I say nothing, they'll assume that I'm here with Marcus, a part of the organization of the matches.
“Alaric,” I say. “For now, the best we can do is try to get as many people out of here as possible. All of us.”
Alaric looks as though he might refuse, but then he glances back towards the main temple area, obviously thinking about his people there.
“All right,” he says. “But how are we going to get them out?”
“There are ways out,” Marcus says. “Do you think I would run something like this in a place where there weren't escape routes? There are connections to the tunnels beneath the city.”
“Then we need to get people into those tunnels,” I say. I don't want to just abandon people if I can avoid it.
Marcus sighs, but then leads the way back into the main room.
“Guards!” he calls out. “The guards are coming. You need to run!”
People abandon their fights, turning to flee. Some of them head for the front exit, but others head for the rear of the temple, back towards a spot where a statue swings aside, revealing a set of stairs leading down. People start to pour down those stairs, and Marcus, Alaric, and I are among them.
Even as we do it, guards start coming through the front of the temple.
I'm not sure how many people are grabbed in those first few moments. Alaric’s people have left plenty incapacitated, and I'm sure there's more than a few of Alaric’s followers who've been hurt to the point where they can't run.
Everyone else scatters.
“Run!” I shout.
Alaric, Marcus and I take off down the tunnels, initially as part of a wave of people running from the guards, but then alone as the tunnels branch and people scatter down different paths, obviously reasoning that the guards can't follow all of them.
Marcus lights the way for us with a flicker of lightning while Alaric frantically works illusions behind us so that it looks as if rocks have fallen across the tunnels we're heading down.
“That should slow the guards for a while,” he says. “I hope my people got out.”
“If you didn't want to put them in danger, don't bring them to attack my businesses,” Marcus replies. “Thanks to you, probably several of my people have been seized. I don't know what the city will do with them.”
“No doubt you'll find a way to interfere on their behalf,” Alaric says. “Just as you'll probably push for the execution of any of my people who get caught.”
“The two of you need to stop fighting,” I say. “We need to work together if we're going to get out of here.”
I've let go of my control of the birds, but I reach for other animals. There are always creatures down here: rats and scuttling things, even a crocodile or two on the lower levels. Through their eyes, I start to get a sense of where I am.
“Work together?” Alaric says, with a note of disbelief. He shakes his head. “No. We've gone far enough together. Lyra… I'm not sure where you stand, but I know what he stands for and I won't go any further with him.”
“Just as I won't spend any longer with a traitor,” Marcus replies.
I stand caught between the two of them, each of them looking at me expectantly as if assuming that I will go with them. I clearly hesitated for too long, trying to work out what I should do because the truth is that I care about both of them.
“Can't you see that you're both talking about trying to help the city?” I say. “If you stopped fighting and worked with each other-”
“That's not going to happen,” Marcus says.
Alaric shakes his head. “That's one thing I can agree with him on. And maybe one day you'll see it, Lyra. There's no working with people like that.”
He takes off down one of the tunnels, almost immediately lost to sight.
Marcus gives me a last lingering look, then turns and goes his own way.
I could follow one of them, choose to go after Marcus or Alaric.
But the truth is I don't want to right now.
I feel as though I'm being torn apart inside by these men I care about, who each, in his own way, keeps finding ways to hurt me.
Instead, I pick my own tunnel, borrowing the ability to see in the dark from something that lives down in the depths and walking slowly beneath the city, determined to get back to the palace in my own way.