Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Verna was up early and down the corridor to Kalen's room before Marleen was awake.
She knocked once and stepped inside.
Kalen was sitting on the end of the bed.
Not lying in it where any sensible person would be after the injuries she’d sustained from yesterday’s fights, but already dressed in her fighting leathers, working on the buckles of her vest with the tenderness of someone whose ribs were making their feelings known.
"You're up," Verna said.
"I'm always up early," Kalen said, without looking at her.
"How bad is it?"
"Manageable."
Verna looked at her properly in the morning light coming through the window.
The bruise along her jaw had deepened overnight to the particular purple-black that meant the worst of it was still coming out.
The swelling around her eye had gone down slightly, which was something.
The stitched cut on her cheekbone had closed cleanly.
When she stood up, her movements were cautious and she favoured the left side, which she was trying hard not to show.
Verna pursed her lips. What did Kalen think? That she couldn’t see the flinches?
She set the small bag she had brought on the table and opened it. The estate healer had sent her with several things for exactly this kind of morning after, the most important thing was a small dark bottle.
"Give me your hand," she said.
Kalen looked at the bottle with the expression of someone who didn’t like medicine.
"It's willow bark and meadowsweet with a little valerian," Verna said. "It'll take the edge off the pain without slowing your thinking. The healer makes it herself and it works well." She held out her hand. "Six drops."
Verna unstoppered the bottle and counted six drops onto a glass of water. Kalen looked at them briefly, then drank it without ceremony. She shuddered. "It tastes awful."
"Dreadfully so," Verna agreed with a slight grin. She handed her the bottle. "Put this in your pocket and take six drops again at midday." She checked the cheekbone cut, which was clean and closing as it should.
"The eye is better," she said.
"I can see properly out of it this morning. Yesterday I couldn't."
"Good." Verna stepped back and looked at her, this woman who had spent a day being systematically hit by the best fighters in the empire. Now she was sitting here at dawn, buckled up and ready to do whatever today required. "How are you feeling honestly?"
Kalen shrugged. "As if a horse had rolled on me." She held out her hands. "I’ll be flat out using these today."
Seeing the split knuckles and the swollen joints, Verna felt something move through her chest. "I'll have Marleen bring linen wrappings to support them."
"It's not necessary."
"Kalen."
"All right," Kalen said grudgingly.
Verna looked at her for one more moment, standing in the early morning light of the small inn room with her bruised face and her heart did strange things.
"Eat breakfast," she said finally. "Everything, not just the bread."
"Yes, my Lady Verna," Kalen said, with a ghost of the dryness that meant she was feeling well enough to be ironic, which was reassuring.
Verna took her bag and went back down the corridor to get dressed.
Marleen had laid out what today required.
The blue silk gown she’d made two years ago for exactly the kind of occasion where her house needed to be seen.
It was a deeper blue than her usual preference, the colour of the Meridian Sea in late afternoon, with gold trim at the cuffs and hem and along the fitted bodice.
It was not a gown that said she was attending a pleasant social occasion; it said she was the head of one of the oldest and most powerful houses on the coast.
She had only worn it once before.
"The laurel wreath?" Marleen asked, holding up the slender circlet of gold wire threaded with small worked leaves that had been in the family for three generations. It was technically a ceremonial piece, worn only for the most formal of house occasions.
Verna nodded. "Work it through the braids."
Marleen set to work on her hair. The braids were complex and close to the head, wound up and pinned, and when she threaded the gold laurel wreath through them, the effect was exactly what Verna had intended. Formal and powerful.
She studied herself in the glass when it was done.
She looked like the head of a great house. Like someone who had done away with subservience, embraced her royal birthright, and refused to allow herself to be pushed around by the emperor.
"It looks good," Marleen said, stepping back with the satisfaction of an artist assessing her craft.
"Thank you," Verna said. "Make sure Kalen gets the linen wrappings before she goes over."
Marleen's expression suggested she was aware of the challenges this instruction presented. "I'll do my best, My Lady."
"Tell her I said so," Verna said. "That usually helps."
She put on her fur-lined cloak over everything, pulled on her gloves, and went downstairs where her two guards were waiting in the Eclipsian blue and silver uniforms.
The arena was packed and louder than it had been on the previous days.
She could hear it from the street, a continuous roar that had a different quality from the excitement of the horse day or the grimmer noise of the fighting day.
This was anticipation, the sound of a crowd that had been talking about what it had seen for two days and had arrived this morning wanting more of it.
The stands were already packed when she reached the box.
The Carltons were there ahead of her, Marie in a deep green gown and Carlton in his house colours, and beside them a young man who could only be their son.
He had his mother's sharp eyes and his father's jaw and the particular bright alertness of a young person wanting excitement.
He stood when Verna came in and bowed with more formality than his age strictly required, which she found rather charming.
"Lady Verna," he said. "It's an honour. I've heard a great deal about your champion."
"Everyone has," Marie said drily, beside him. "Sit down, Finn."
He sat, looking only slightly abashed.
Thom arrived a few minutes later, taking his seat without ceremony. He was dressed vey smartly in his house colours. She gave him a small smile which he acknowledged with a nod.
The stands finished filling. The noise built until it was a continuous wall of sound bouncing off the stone amphitheatre. The sand below was freshly raked, glowing as it caught the morning sunrays.
The imperial box remained empty.
The competitors hadn't come through the arch yet either, which was unusual. On both previous days the champions had been in the arena before the emperor arrived. Today the arch doors were closed and the sand was bare, the crowd making the impatient noise of people who had been promised something.
Then the trumpets blared.
Borgine entered with his full procession, more ceremonial than either of the previous days, the guards in perfect formation and the herald striking the floor with more force than before.
The empress took her seat with her careful composure.
Bain came in behind her and settled beside his father.
Today there was something different about him, an alertness, a suppressed anticipation that Verna noticed immediately.
He knew what was coming today. And whatever it was, he was looking forward to it.
Borgine stood at the front of his box and looked out over the arena at the packed stands with the expression of a man who had been waiting for this moment all week and intended to savour the moment.
The crowd quietened, shushing itself into silence, until the arena held the breathless quiet of ten thousand people waiting for their emperor to speak.
Borgine let it sit for a moment longer, then he smiled and opened his mouth. His voice carried across the nearly silent arena, "Today, we come to the final trial."
He paused, looking around the stands with the unhurried pleasure of a man who knew he had everyone's attention.
"The first two days have shown us the skill of your champions.
Their strength, their courage, and their dedication to their houses.
" He spread his hands in a gesture of generous acknowledgement.
"But a house is not its champion alone. A house is its blood, its lineage, the men and women who carry its name. "
Something unpleasant lodged in Verna’s stomach as she listened with growing alarm.
"The final trial," Borgine continued to an audience now deathly silent, "is the Trial of Courage. Each house will send a blood member into this arena. Not a champion or a hired fighter, but a member of the family itself."
The silence that followed was different than before. It was one of ten thousand people absorbing something simultaneously and not believing what they had just heard.
Verna looked at Thom. He stared at her with an expression that he had heard the same thing she had and was arriving at the same conclusion.
She looked at the other boxes along the western stand.
She could see the heads of the other houses turning to each other, the quick urgent murmurs of worried people.
In the Hardy box, two young men in house colours were leaning together talking.
In the Velmart box, the family's youngest son was already sitting forward.
"Each blood member," Borgine went on as though he were announcing a pleasant afternoon's entertainment, "will face a single opponent in the arena. They do not need to win. They simply need to remain standing after the count of fifty."
He sat down.
The herald took over, announcing the order of the houses, reading from his scroll like he had been told to do, and was doing his professional best.
The Hardy house was first.