Chapter Ten #2
Thane Stormwake's match, by contrast, stretched considerably longer, a brutal, grinding contest of raw strength that left both combatants bloodied before his opponent finally yielded, and Calla watched him leave the sand floor afterward with an unsettling satisfaction written plainly across his features, the particular satisfaction of a man who had not merely won but had genuinely enjoyed the process of grinding his opponent down.
Her own match, when the herald finally called her name, paired her against a young woman from House Coldwater, the same house that had produced Oda's partner in the trial of silence, a contestant Calla did not know well but who carried herself, taking the sand floor opposite Calla, with a nervous energy that suggested this was not a pairing she had particularly wanted either.
They circled each other for several tense moments, both testing the other's guard with careful, probing strikes that neither fully committed to, and Calla found, as the match settled into its rhythm, that Maren's weeks of rushed instruction had, against every worried expectation, given her something genuinely useful to draw upon, an instinct for reading her opponent's weight and balance that let her anticipate, more often than not, the shape of the next exchange before it fully arrived.
The match ended not through any decisive strike but through a moment of careful, controlled pressure, Calla working her opponent's blade wide with a defensive parry Maren had drilled into her relentlessly over the preceding days, and following through with a disarming twist that sent her opponent's weapon skittering across the sand, leaving the young woman standing empty handed and, after a brief, visible internal struggle, yielding the match with a nod that carried more respect than resentment.
Relief flooded through Calla's chest as she lowered her own blade, and it was only as she turned to leave the sand floor that she registered the herald calling the next match, her attention catching sharply on the names announced.
Odalys Windmere and Thane Stormwake.
Calla's stomach dropped, and she found herself moving instinctively toward the arena's edge nearest where Oda would enter, watching with a dread that made the earlier tension of her own match feel almost gentle by comparison as her friend took the sand floor opposite a man who had, moments before, left his own opponent bloodied and had clearly relished every moment of doing so.
The match began, and Calla watched, hands gripping the stone barrier hard enough to ache, as Oda proved considerably more skilled than her earlier flippancy had suggested, quick and precise where Thane was brutal and direct, drawing the larger contestant into exchanges that favored her speed rather than his strength.
For several long, tense minutes, the match hung in genuine balance, Oda's careful footwork keeping her consistently just beyond the reach of Thane's heavier strikes, and Calla allowed herself, briefly, the fragile hope that her friend might actually win this contest outright.
Then Thane changed his approach, abandoning the direct assaults that Oda had been successfully evading in favor of a sudden, brutal feint that caught her mid step, and Calla watched, heart in her throat, as the follow through strike connected with Oda's shoulder hard enough to spin her fully around, her own blade flying from her grip as she staggered, off balance, toward the sand.
She did not fall. Calla watched her friend catch herself, barely, one hand pressed against the sand for support, and for a moment it seemed the match might simply end there, a clear enough victory for Thane that further contest would have been unnecessary cruelty.
Instead, Thane advanced, his blade raised in a manner that carried, unmistakably, more intent than the trial's proper conclusion required, and Calla felt a surge of protective fury rise in her chest so sudden and so sharp that she nearly vaulted the barrier herself before some instinct held her back.
"Yield," the herald's voice called sharply, cutting across the tension, "the contest is decided, Stormwake, stand down."
For one horrible, suspended moment, Thane did not stand down, his blade still raised, his expression carrying the same unsettling satisfaction Calla had noted after his previous match, and then, abruptly, his whole body jerked backward as though seized by some invisible force, the trial's binding magic intervening precisely as Warden Thorne had promised it would, and he staggered back several steps, his blade wrenched from his grip and clattering harmlessly across the sand.
"The Concord judges this contest concluded," Thorne's voice announced, carrying a note of formal severity Calla had not heard from him before. "Contestant Stormwake, your conduct beyond the point of the contest will be noted in the Tally's record."
Oda rose slowly from the sand, cradling her injured shoulder, her face pale but her jaw set with a stubborn defiance that Calla recognized, watching it, as the same fierce spirit that had first drawn her to the other woman's friendship weeks before.
She made her way from the arena floor under her own power, waving off the healers who moved to assist her, and found Calla waiting anxiously at the barrier's edge the moment she'd cleared the sand.
"I'm fine," Oda said, before Calla could ask, though the tightness around her eyes told a somewhat different story.
"Bruised badly, probably. Nothing the healers can't manage.
But I want it noted, for the record, that I very much appreciate you looking ready to leap into that arena on my behalf a moment ago, even though it would have gotten us both disqualified rather spectacularly. "
"I wasn't thinking clearly."
"No," Oda agreed, with a tired but genuine smile that eased some of the fear still gripping Calla's chest, "you were thinking exactly clearly enough, which is precisely the problem.
That's twice now someone's been willing to risk real consequence on my behalf in this Tally, Calla Duskane.
First a prince at the sacrifice pool, now you at the barrier's edge.
I'm beginning to think you two make a rather dangerous habit of throwing caution aside for the people you've decided are worth the risk. "
Calla thought of Ademar kneeling at the pool's edge, of her own instinctive lurch toward the barrier moments before, and found, despite the lingering fear still coursing through her chest, a small, warm certainty settling alongside it, the recognition that whatever else this Tally was costing her, it had also, somewhere in the course of these past weeks, given her something she had not expected to find within High Reach's careful, calculating walls: people worth the risk, worth the caution thrown aside, worth whatever price the trials ahead still intended to demand.