CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE LYRA
Chaos follows as Kai falls, the people in the crowds shouting and shoving, fighting among themselves and calling out Glacius’ name.
“Glacius! Glacius!”
“The fight is at an end!” Marcus calls out, as I rush out onto the sands of the colosseum, not that it makes much of a difference now. At this point, with Kai already lying still and dead in the middle of the arena, there’s nothing more I can do.
Healers are rushing out towards him, but I know just from looking at him that it’s too late. I saw the blow that defeated him, and I know the icicle Glacius conjured would have pierced his heart, leaving him only seconds to live. Kai is gone now, his body lying broken and still on the ground.
I rush forwards, emotions running through me faster than I can keep up with them. I feel pain at Kai’s death, at the loss of someone who seemed so similar to me in many ways. I feel shame, that I wasn’t able to keep him safe, and that I allowed the games to go ahead at all.
And I feel anger. Anger at myself, anger at everyone who pushed for this moment, anger at Glacius. I rush up to him, that anger blazing in my eyes, and he takes a step back as I approach. Is he afraid of what I’ll do now? Should he be?
A part of me is already reaching out to the creatures around the arena.
I can feel the birds there and the small animals, the same ones through whose eyes I was looking before.
I could so easily bring them down to attack Glacius.
I could set them on the crowd whose bloodlust fueled this moment of death in the colosseum.
I could do all of it, and the worst thing is that a part of me wants to.
The part of me that makes me the strongest of the beast whisperers is also just a step away from being wild and deadly.
“You killed him,” I snarl. “This was supposed to be a different kind of match, an exhibition, not a death fight.”
“I had no choice,” Glacius says. “You saw him. He was going to kill me if I didn’t kill him first.”
“You could have stepped back,” I insist. “You could have called for an end to the fight. You could have conceded.”
“Concede? To him?” Glacius says, in an offended tone.
I’ve heard that tone before among gladiators, heard both aspects of his excuses from them.
In Ironhold, we all knew that we had no choice.
We fought or we died, it was that simple.
I tried to stand by and refuse to fight, but even I reacted when someone was trying to kill me.
At the same time, most of the gladiators hated the thought of losing anyway.
They wanted to be the strongest and the toughest. They wanted the world to know it.
Above me, a flock of birds is swirling, waiting for me to decide what to do next.
“Lyra!” Marcus is on the sands now, rushing over to me even as the healers lift Kai’s limp and lifeless body, carrying it from the arena floor. “Lyra, you need to stop.”
He puts his hand on my shoulder, a jolt of lightning running through me. It's enough to shock me out of my endless anger, my need to seek revenge on behalf of a young man who wouldn't believe me when I told him that the games were too dangerous for him.
I stare at Marcus, then at Glacius.
“I know this isn't what we intended,” Marcus says. “But we need to finish this properly.”
He goes over to Glacius, who's still bleeding from the wounds Kai inflicted. Marcus raises the other man's arm.
“Ladies and gentlemen your victor: Glacius!”
The crowd roars in response, and I see a renewed look of triumph on Glacius’ face as he stands there with his arm raised. If he regrets Kai’s death, he's doing a good job of hiding it. I stalk from the arena floor, heading up through it, and Marcus is just a pace or two behind me.
“Lyra, wait for me.”
“Why announce his victory like that?” I demand, rounding on him.
“Because it's the best way to keep the crowd from turning violent,” Marcus says. “You might think that Kai’s death was wrong, but how many other deaths would you have on your conscience if we didn't proclaim Glacius victorious?”
He has a point. I could hear the crowd. They clearly loved the violence of the last match far more than any of those that went before.
The death roused them, stirring up their anger and their passions.
If I had struck down Glacius, or even just declared his victory invalid because he killed his opponent, I might have started a riot that would have claimed far more lives.
I still hate it.
“He was meant to be safe,” I say. “Kai wasn't meant to die, Marcus.”
Tears are falling from my eyes, grief and sorrow mingling in me for a young man I barely knew.
I met Kai once, but his death touches me as if he were a close friend.
Back in Ironhold, we gladiators grew inured to death, knowing that it could come for those close to us at any time.
The shock of Kai’s death, the fact that I was meant to be the one protecting him from such a fate, only makes the impact of his passing worse for me.
Marcus puts his arms around me. “There was nothing you could have done. You took so many steps to keep everyone safe here. You even came back last night. Because of you, almost all of the gladiators here have been safe.”
“Almost isn't good enough,” I reply.
Marcus keeps his arm around me as he leads me through to the receiving rooms. There are plenty of nobles and senators there. They burst into a round of applause as we enter the room.
“An excellent set of games,” Domitian says. “Very successful. We're still tallying the final counts, but we suspect it's brought in a fortune with the city's coffers.”
I want to snarl at him, want to tell him that he's making money on the life of a young man, and this isn't the moment for counting his profits.
But Marcus speaks before I can.
“That's one piece of good news, at least. And I think we can say that the games have been a success in general, notwithstanding the tragic accident in the last fight.”
An accident? There was nothing accidental about what Glacius and Kai were trying to do to one another.
“Perhaps because of it,” Domitian says. “Did you hear the way the crowd responded to the death? They can tell the difference between a fake contest and a real one.”
“Are you really thinking like that?” I demand, looking around the room at the satisfied faces of so many of the senators. They're pleased with the way the games have turned out.
“It proved to be a most satisfying experience for many of the nobles,” Olivia says.
“And it gave the people an outlet for their more violent impulses,” Octavio adds.
“You should be ashamed of yourselves,” I snap at them, and Marcus puts his arm around me once more, ushering me from the room.
“You're just trying to make sure I don't cause a scene now,” I say.
“You're upset,” he replies. “I understand that, but you're also a senator of the city, and you can't afford to burn too many bridges. If you pick fights with everyone in there, Lyra, there won't be anyone left to work with, politically.”
“Is politics the only thing you can think of right now?” I demand. “You should be thinking of the young gladiator who died.”
“I will honor his loss,” Marcus says. He steps back from me. “But that doesn't change the fact that on a practical level, the games were largely a success.”
“A young man died!” Why doesn't he seem to think that part is important?
“And that is a tragedy,” Marcus says. “His death hurts me, and it damages these first games in the reformed era. But he brought it on himself, Lyra. He chose to make it into a lethal bout, when it was never meant to be, and both of us worked hard to ensure that it wouldn't be.”
“We should stop the games,” I say. “The experiment hasn't worked.”
Marcus shakes his head. “You know as well as I do that it has worked in every way except this one. Yes, we need to work on the safety of the bouts. We need to find ways to stop the fighters from circumventing the protections we put in place, but everything else about this has worked. The city is safer and wealthier because of today. The Republic of Aetheria it is more stable with the games than without them.”
Of course he's going to be proud of what he's done here. I just can't feel the same pride. Not when I know that a young man's body is currently being taken to a slab in the healers’ rooms. Not when I heard the crowd rejoicing in his death.
I've brought death back to Aetheria’s colosseum, and I'm ashamed.
Worse, I don’t think I can undo the things I’ve done. The other senators clearly love the games now. They’ve seen the benefits they bring. I suspect the new games of Aetheria are here to stay.
I just hope they won’t become like the old ones.