2. Deep #2
“Right.” Rerdas sounded as if he tried for calm and wasn’t quite managing it.
“Let’s get upstairs.” He backed out of the cage, and Imalroc followed, gliding up the stairs past swarms of servants who all half-tripped over themselves to get a safe distance away from him.
He and Rerdas were left in an empty hallway.
“This door is my room, which means yours is just across, right here.” Rerdas pushed open a lacquered door and stepped inside.
Imalroc moved cautiously after him. The honeyed wood of the floor glowed with sunlight pouring in from tall, arched windows opposite the door.
A low couch rested beside one wall, with a silver tea set gleaming on the table in front of it.
On the far side of the room, an enormous bed stood heaped with pillows and a thick, downy coverlet.
Imalroc poked his head inside a handsome wardrobe.
Too bad all he could hang in here was a sword.
Rerdas fidgeted beside the door. Imalroc was too aware of the way the huntmaster watched him, waiting for his reaction. Deliberately, he turned away and went to one of the huge windows. It overlooked a manicured garden, with pathways curling around bushes and beneath fruit trees.
Rerdas flitted around the room and then approached. He settled a shoulder against the trim of the window and offered an anxious smile. “It’s not too bad, I hope.”
Imalroc said nothing. He kept his gaze firmly fixed out the window.
“Does it please you?” Rerdas asked softly.
He couldn’t resist looking at him then, even though it was a mistake, because the question reminded him that Rerdas wanted to please him, to satisfy—and that seeped through him like wine, summoning unwise thoughts and perilous memories of the huntmaster’s skin, his curls twisted through Imalroc’s fingers, his willing, vulnerable mouth.
Imalroc lunged away before he did something stupid. “It’s fine.” He circled the room. Gleaming windows and airy light whipped through his vision as he moved, but he would not let himself forget. A cage was a cage was a cage.
Rerdas trailed him. “Is there anything you’d prefer changed?”
He’d prefer Rerdas naked and on his knees.
Imalroc put his back to the huntmaster. “Have you heard anything about a fighter called Vativa?”
“She’s to be your opponent. I don’t think she’s ever fought in Kirinoll. Etiana hadn’t heard of her, but she’s going to get more information for you ahead of the fight.”
Good. Another reminder of what they were to each other. Imalroc was a battleboxer, Rerdas a handler, and…
The huntmaster stood framed in the sunlight, his jaw flexing as if he were trying very hard to keep his feelings to himself, but he chewed on his lower lip and his eyes brimmed with worry and hurt and something else.
He should know better than to let Imalroc see him like that.
A handler should never look at a battleboxer like that.
Imalroc stomped out his desire to cross the room and sweep Rerdas up in his arms.
“Imalroc?” Rerdas took a hesitant step closer. “Can we—”
“I want to walk the battlebox,” he blurted. Anything. Anything to get out of this room, where there were only the two of them and breathless little dazzles of hope that would wither away in the world outside.
“Of course,” Rerdas said quietly. “Let me tell Etiana where we’re going.”
Manolia, the house where the Toriems had taken rooms, was only a short walk from Lakara’s greatest battlebox. Rerdas led the way back toward the bridge but swung to the right before they reached it.
Imalroc stayed as far behind as he could without attracting attention.
At least the cold air drove certain cringe-worthy thoughts out of his body.
And then they slid around a corner, and he finally stopped thinking about Rerdas altogether.
Framed among the purple shadows and last golden streaks of sunlight, he caught his first glimpse of House Navona.
It was enormous. Three times the size of Iffroa, at least. The behemoth straddled the riverbank, its blood-red roof and white marble walls set in contrast to the restless blue of the river just beyond it.
“I suppose I’m not allowed to walk up to the front gate,” Rerdas murmured.
“I don’t know the traditions here,” Imalroc replied.
He reminded himself to keep his head bent, but his gaze kept flitting back up to a cluster of servants balanced perilously on the roof, unfurling massive silk banners on either side of the entrance.
Each banner depicted two ships circling a whirlpool against a sky filled with flames.
“Fair afternoon!” The cheerful greeting came from a woman ahead of them, astride a massive bay horse. She brought her snorting mount up alongside Rerdas. “You are Master Rerdas Toriem, are you not?”
“Yes, my lady,” Rerdas said.
The woman smiled. “I’ve no claim to nobility, sir. You may call me Mistress DeRosco. I cannot tell you how pleased I am that you’ve come to Lakara. At last, a chance for Kirinoll’s best to see Navona! You’ve come to walk the box, have you?”
“Yes. If you could tell us—” Before Rerdas got another word out, the woman leapt off her horse and peered at Imalroc.
He stared at his toes.
“Earthbound gods, you’ve brought him unchained! I didn’t realize he was so well-trained as that.” She leaned toward him.
He sank a bit lower in his knees, in case he ended up having to punch someone.
“Could you show us the appropriate entrance?” Rerdas asked quickly.
His words were all measured politeness, but Imalroc knew him well enough now to detect his tension.
The huntmaster didn’t want the woman getting any closer.
Something prickled in his chest. He had made it this far without needing to quail behind any handler’s shoulder for protection.
“Certainly! Come this way. It’s going to be quite a fight, you know. We’re commemorating the defeat of the FarNorth pirates at sea. And our homegrown champion will face you. A lovely fight,” she said.
Imalroc smothered the urge to roll his eyes. A lovely fight meant lovely admission prices for what would be an immense crowd. Of shitheads. But a shithead’s onyx was as good as anyone else’s.
Navona’s interior was just as grand as it appeared from outside the iron gates.
Mistress DeRosco led them through vast rooms, pointing out enormous frescos and tapestries honoring famous fights.
She led them up several staircases, and then to a hallway lined with identical doors, wide and squat and decorated with bronze filigree.
“Any of these leads into the highest level of seats. From here you can walk straight down into the box. I’m afraid I cannot accompany you, much to do with preparations, but the clearers can fetch anything you need or answer questions.”
“Thank you for your hospitality.” Rerdas bobbed his head in her direction. He reached for the nearest door and stepped through with Imalroc.
It was huge. Huge did not even begin to cover it. Imalroc stared in disbelief at the gargantuan oval so many levels below him. Never had he seen a battlebox of this size. He heard the door click shut behind him and drew level with Rerdas.
Rerdas stared directly down into the box. “What the fuck is that?”
Thick drifts of snowy sand covered the battlebox floor, and looming out of the very center was a tilted wooden structure. Imalroc knew what it was, but it was so preposterous he couldn’t bring himself to say it right away. “It’s a ship,” he muttered, testing the answer.
“What?”
“Look. It’s a half-sunk ship.” Despite his hatred for the bloodsport, as dearly as he would have loved to never set foot in another battlebox, he could not help but marvel a little at the sight of it. A full ship, blackened wood half submerged in sand.
“The defeat of the FarNorth pirates.” Rerdas echoed Madame DeRosco’s words. “This whole fight has a theme.”
Imalroc shook his head in disbelief and started down the steps. He whipped past rows of benches and the velvet-cushioned seats of the owners’ boxes. Rerdas followed him to the nearest set of narrow stairs that led directly down into the box.
The battlebox walls were three times his height and flecked with pale blue paint. Round portholes sat evenly spaced around the whole curving wall. Imalroc peered into one, staring into darkness. He could see nothing, but it smelled damp.
“What’re those for?” Rerdas asked, coming up beside him.
“Most likely spring-loaded pikes. They’re used to get fighters to move away from the walls.”
“I’ve seen spring-loaded pikes in Iffroa.” Rerdas frowned and bent toward one porthole. “But these seem a lot bigger.”
“Everything seems bigger here,” Imalroc muttered.
He examined the uneven sand drifts. He dug his foot into a thin area and stubbed his toe against something too hard and slick to be dirt.
Leaning down, he pushed his fingers through the thin layer of sand.
Something white flashed up at him, and he straightened with a grimace.
“The floor of this thing is tiled over.”
No house he’d fought in bothered to tile their battlebox. Tiles would be a problem during the fight. Wherever the sand thinned, he’d be on slippery footing. Not that floundering about in the thicker heaps would be much better.