CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
I wake with a healer standing over me, although they are not using magic to heal me, which suggests that my life is not in immediate danger. The healers of Ironhold like to save their powers for those injured in the colosseum, making sure they will be able to fight again as quickly as possible.
I gasp and sit upbecause my last memory is of the fightI was having with Callus. Of him stalking me through the beast pens. Of him draining me almost to the point of death.
Of Alaric saving me, by killing him.
“Where am I?” I ask, looking around. But I can see the answer to that: I'm in the infirmary of the fortress, in there with a couple of injured gladiatorsand some healers. I feel weak and dizzy, barely possessing the strength to move.
I try to stand and the healer pushes me back down.
“Not unless you want to collapse,” he says. “You need to wait. You need to heal properly.”
But I don't want to lie there, don't want to simply weights and rest when I have so many questions I don't have answers to.
“What happened to Alaric?” I ask. “To Callus?”
I need to check that he's dead. I thought I saw the light fade from his eyes, but there's always a chance that someone got to him in time and healed him.
“You should worry more about yourself,” the healer says. “After what happened I wouldn't be surprised if you end up executed.”
“Executed?” The shock of that hits me all at once, because I realize just how serious the situation is. Callus is dead, obviously killed by violence, and the same rulethat has protected me from him will count against me and Alaric now: it is forbidden to kill one another outside of official bouts. Breaking that rule can see someone killed, in turn, as a way of maintaining discipline within the fortress. If we are not careful and lucky, both Alaric and myself might find ourselves executed.
“No,” I say. “It wasn't like that. Callus was the one trying to kill me! Where is Alaric?”
The healer doesn't answer, and this time I succeed in rising, pushing past his attempts to return me to lying down. I make it to the door and outinto the corridors of Ironhold.
“Wait!” The healer calls out. “You aren't allowed to just go!”
But I don't listen to him. I need to find Alaric. I need to know that he is still alive and safe. That he has not just been cut down immediately by the guards or dragged to an impaling spike to suffer an agonizing death.
I make my way through the corridors of Ironhold, passing by the flickering torches. It must be the early hours of the morning, with the majority of people still asleep. I don't even know how I got to the infirmary, but that's not important right now. What matters is that Alaric is in danger, and I must see him.
Right now all our arguments seem petty by comparison to what’s happening. I accused him of not caring for me, but he has donesomething that no one else would have done for me. He hasn't just saved my life, he has potentially given up his own to do it. By killing Callus, he has put himself on the wrong side of a rule that appears to allow for no forgiveness.
I must speak with him. I must know why he did that, and I must try to find a way to help him. I keep going through Ironhold, heading deeper into the parts of the fortress reserved for the punishment of those gladiators who try to rebel against its rulesand its training.
These parts bring back unpleasant memories for mebecause I have been punished before. Vex once arranged for Arctus to attack me in the dining hall and ensured that Lord Darius would walk in in the middle of it. My punishment was agonizing, and I hadn't been the one to start the fight. That memory makes me worry here because it suggests that merely being attacked is not going to be enough of a defense against whatever accusations are levelled at me and Alaric.
I keep looking for him, checking each room as I go. Most are empty except forthe implements of punishment and torture, the whipping posts and the rows of canes, whips and hot irons, the racks and the sharpened hooks. This is not a place to spend anytime if I can avoid it, and the prospect of Alaric being in one of these rooms makes me shudder with fear.
Why did he kill Callus? Why was he there at allto be able to do it? The answers to both of those questions feel the same: because he loves me. Alaric has spent his time trying to hide his feelings, trying to spare me the pain that will come when he leaves or if one of us is killed, but when it came to it, he was prepared to kill to save me. Prepared to give up his life for me, because he must know the penalties for killing another gladiator like this.
I keep looking for him, and now I can hear feet somewhere behind me. I look around and I see both guards and trainers behind me, holding whatever weapons they've been able to grab, as if they fear I am some wild beast they will need all their efforts to subdue.
“There she is!” one calls out. “I told you she was trying to escape!”
“I'm not trying to escape,” I say. “I'm just trying to find Alaric.”
“Trying to get your story straight, are you?” one of the guards says. “Well, it's a bit late for that. He already told us what he did when he brought you back for healing.”
No, he can't have. He wouldn't have been foolish enough to simply tell the guards everything, would he? To admit openly to killing another gladiator? There must have been a better way for him to do this. He saved my life by bringing me to the healers, butcouldn't he have madeup a story about finding me collapsed?
But then what would have happened when they found Callus’ body? They would have seen the stab wounds and assumed that I inflicted them. I might have been blamed, and I can't imagine Alaric allowing that. But he had other options. He could have thrown Callus’ body into one of the beast pens. Pick the right creature, and there wouldn't be much left of him. Alaric could have pretended that Callus had simply fled after attacking me.
I realize how cold that line of thinking is, but it is something that might have saved Alaric, and I would do almost anything to achieve that aim. And it's exactly the kind of cold, carefully considered the solution that I would have expected Alaric to come up with. As it is, he clearly wasn't thinking about anything but getting me to safety. He was right about one thing: our feelings have made Ironhold vastly more dangerous for both of us.
But they're also the reason I'm alive right now, and my heart aches with the need to make sure that Alaric is all right.
“Where is he?” I ask them. “What have you done with him?”
“It's yourself you should worry about,” one of the guards says.
The group of them moves in, moving cautiously. They grab for me, and I try to wrench three of them because I don't know what they're planning, but there are too many of them. I cannot break free of their grips, in spite of all my training, and I do not have my powers. I wish I did. I wish I could summon every beast of the fortress to my side. But I cannot.
It means they can drag me through the corridors easily, forcing me to one of the rooms. It is a circular well of a room, with grates high aboveand flickering torches around the edges. There are chains hanging from the ceiling, and they fastenmy wrists into manacles there at the center of the room, so that I must stand on tiptoes or hang all my weight from my arms.
I am tense, my heart racing. I know how vulnerable I am at this moment. They could attack me in a hundred different ways, and I could do nothing about it. They could use any of the implements of punishment, do whatever they wished with me and I could not stop them. Once more, I'm forced to feel helpless in this place.
But instead of doing anything they leave, abandoning me there alone, forcing me to stand and wait, wondering what my fate is going to be. Has it already been decided? Are they merely waiting until they are given the command to drag me to an impaling spike? Are they forcing me to wait until Alaric has been executed?
I do not know and not knowing makes it worse. I stand therefor what feels like an eternity, my chains creating a torment all of their own, because I must choose between either the effort of standing on my toes, or the efforts oftaking my weight through my arms. Even at full strength this would have been difficult, but now, drained as I am, it isalmost unbearable.
Maybe they are justhoping that this will soften me upfor the moment when they question me. Maybe they still want to hearmy side of events, but the very fact they have locked me in chains suggests that they do not see me as a victim in this. I am being treated as a prisoner, a perpetrator awaiting punishment.
And it seems I must wait almost forever. I cannot rest in my current positionwhen rest is probably the thing I need most. I cannot do anything, and a few attempts to wrench at my bonds suggests that I am not going to be able to break free of them. Calling for help is unlikely to achieve anything.
All I can do is stand there and contemplate my fateand that of Alaric. He saved my life; there is no doubting that. And he must have known the price of doing so. But he killed Callus without hesitation. He did that for meso that I would survive. I owe him my life.
I lose all sense of time as I stand there, but eventually I see the red light of dawnstarting to creep in through the grateso far above. I am tired and thirsty, and my arms ache with the effort of holding me up. I am more or less hanging in my chains now, limp, without the strength to do more.
It is then that I hear the sound of the door opening. Lord Darius steps inside, accompanied by a pair of trainers, who stand to either side of me, getting me down, but ensuring that my wrists are still manacled in front of me.
“If I had my way,” he says, “everyone involved in this debacle would already beimpaled on a spike, just to make sure that the discipline of my fortress holds. But that isn't the way things work when one of you is a noble and the other has the emperor himself for a patron. So I had to send a message down to the city, and now it seems that the emperor wishes to see you. I hope you're persuasive, Lyra, because I'm not sure what you can say that will get you out of this one.”