Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Thom stood up in the box.
He was in his mid-thirties and fit from a lifetime of working his own land alongside his people rather than directing them from a distance. He had the additional advantage of having spent years sparring regularly with Pedro.
He removed his coat and caught Verna's eye briefly before he left the box. She gave him a nod that she hoped conveyed more confidence than she felt. He returned it with the expression of a man who had made his peace with something and was getting on with it.
He came down to the arena floor without ceremony, and stood in the middle of the arena, waiting for his opponent to come through the archway.
The pit fighter was lean, not massive, the kind of fighter who worked by speed and angles rather than brute force. Verna suspected he would be harder to defeat than those who relied on their size.
Thom clearly read this, she could see by the way he positioned himself. He stood with his weight distributed in the way Pedro would have drilled into him in their training sessions.
The crowd watched in silence.
The first exchange was fast and inconclusive. Thom moved well, not with the fighter's instinct that made watching Kalen's bouts look like something choreographed, but as a man who practised regularly. He gave ground when he needed to, didn't overcommit, and kept his guard up.
The fighter came at him twice in quick succession on the twenty count and Thom took the first one on the arm rather than the face. He avoided the second blow almost cleanly, catching the edge of it across his cheekbone. He went back two steps and waited.
The people cheered.
"Has he been practising? He’s doing well," Marie said quietly beside her, with the tone of a woman who had been expecting to watch something much worse.
"Pedro's been teaching him," Verna said. "For months."
"Smart man."
On the thirty count the fighter changed his approach, going low rather than high, and Thom was half a beat slow reading it and took a solid hit to his ribs that doubled him up.
Everyone sucked in a breath. He straightened, slower than before, and Verna saw him make the decision not to go down, the deliberate physical act of will that was different from simply staying upright because you could.
He remained straight because he decided to.
The fighter came again and Thom did something that Verna suspected was pure Pedro, a move that had no elegance in it whatsoever.
He flung his arms around the man's waist at close range in a grip that prevented the quick footwork the fighter relied on, and hung on grimly.
It turned the remaining twenty counts into a wrestling match rather than a boxing one.
The fighter tried to get free and Thom held on with the stubborn determination of a farmer who had spent his life getting difficult things done through sheer persistence. The count ran out with both of them still standing. It was a victory that nobody could argue with.
The crowd found its voice.
It wasn't the roar they'd given some of the champions over the previous two days, but it was warm, genuine and tinged with relief. The people were obviously elated to see something go the way they wanted.
Thom disengaged from the fighter and stood up straight, accepting the noise with a dignified bow. Instead of going to the healer’s room, he walked back up to the box and lowered himself into his seat carefully. He was breathing through his nose, his cheekbone bore a bruise, and he rubbed his hip.
He winked at Verna. "Pedro sends his regards."
She almost laughed despite everything. "Are you alright?" she asked.
"I'll be considerably better in an hour," he said. "After a few wines." He reached for a cup on the table at the back of the box and took a large gulp.
Carlton leaned across and shook his hand, then lowered his voice. "Well, I’m glad that bastard show is over with. The emperor lost more than a few friends today." He turned to his wife. "I’d better go to see how Finn is getting on, love."
He had just climbed to his feet when the herald struck his staff again.
By the way he looked around in confusion, Carlton clearly had no idea what was coming, but Verna knew.
She had been watching Borgine since Thom climbed back up the stairs.
The emperor hadn’t looked put out at all that Thom had outwitted the pit fighter.
He had been of no consequence whatsoever.
Nor had the poor unfortunate sons of the Great Houses.
This whole show today had been orchestrated for one reason, and one only.
The herald looked up from his scroll and called out across the arena.
"I call the House of Eclipsia."
His words brought a collective gasp across the amphitheatre.
For a while nothing happened. Then the ripple went out and the stands erupted, a collective noise of shock and outrage that built from the upper tiers downward until it filled every corner of the stone bowl.
Cries of protest came from every direction. A woman's voice somewhere in the upper stands shouting something that was lost in the general noise but whose feeling was clear enough. From the lower tiers, the working people of Castine who had filled those seats for three days, booed out their anger.
In the boxes, the people of the Houses were on their feet.
Thom was already standing, his wine forgotten, his face set. Carlton had frozen halfway out of his chair. Marie was gripping the rail with both hands, staring at the imperial box with an expression that had gone well past polite disapproval.
Verna rose from her seat, calmer now the time she had dreaded was here. She smoothed her gown and touched the laurel wreath in her hair for courage.
Then she looked across at Borgine, who was on his feet as well.
They stared at each other, the emperor in his purple robes and her, dressed in her deep blue silk gown the colour of the Meridian Sea. The noise dropped away to silence by degrees as the people realised that something important was about to happen.
Borgine raised his hand and the herald struck the floor for quiet.
"Lady Verna," Borgine called out, his voice echoing through the stands.
He had the practiced projection of a man who had been speaking to large rooms for twenty-five years.
"The house of Eclipsia finds itself in a unique position today.
" He spread his hands in the gesture of a benevolent ruler like he had done all week.
"You have no sons, no brothers or husband to send into the arena. "
He paused.
"The emperor is not without mercy," he said.
"Therefore, I will make you a generous offer.
" He smiled across at her. "If you pledge to marry my eldest son, Bain, the house of Eclipsia will be excused from fighting in the arena.
The competition will then be concluded. A simple yes is all that is required and the celebrations can begin. "
The arena waited.
Verna looked at him, then down at his wife. She avoided Verna’s eye. Then she glanced at Bain in the box beside his father, who was watching her with the same certainty he had brought to the dinner, the absolute confidence of a man who believed she had no choice.
She looked back at Borgine.
"Before I give you my answer," she said, raising her voice to carry across the vast space. "I want to remind this arena of something that the emperor appears to have forgotten."
A murmur came from the stands.
"I am Verna, Lady of the Eclipsian House, which is older than even the royal House.
My father was Derek, the emperor's own nephew.
" She paused. "Which makes me by blood, a royal of this empire.
" She looked around the stands, at the packed tiers, at the ten thousand faces turned toward her.
"The emperor threatens to send a woman of his own family line into the arena to fight a common pit fighter.
And he would do that in front of the entire city, for the entertainment of the afternoon. "
She turned back at Borgine. "Why would you do that, My Lord? I ask the question because I would genuinely like to know the answer."
The audience remained silent, waiting for him to speak.
Borgine's pleasant expression vanished that told her he was rattled. "The lady's bloodline is noted. I have generously given you a way out, Lady Verna. Pledge your marriage to the imperial house. That is the emperor's offer."
Verna gazed at him for a long moment, then curled her lip.
"Borgine," she said, dropping the title with a deliberateness that produced an audible intake of breath from the boxes on either side of her, "I have watched you rule this empire for twenty years after my grandfather died and I have held my tongue. I am done keeping quiet."
The arena was completely silent.
"What you have done here today," she said, "is not a trial of courage.
You have brought the sons of the Great Houses into this arena and had them beaten by professionals for your own entertainment.
" Her voice was steady and clear and she made no effort to soften it.
"You have frightened mothers and injured young men who had no choice but to comply because you hold their families' lands over their heads like a weapon.
That is not what an emperor is, that is a tyrant. "
The silence was now profound.
"You have become cruel," she said. "I don't know when it happened, and perhaps you don't either, but it’s a fact.
The empire should have better leadership than this.
These people," she gestured briefly at the stands around her, "deserve better than a man who uses his power to frighten and humiliate and then calls it a test of courage. "
She looked at him across the rail.
"I would rather go into that arena," she said, and her voice was very quiet now but the silence was such that it carried perfectly, "and face whatever you send into it, than pledge myself to your son.
I would rather die on this sand than marry Bain.
And I say that not as a dramatic gesture but as the simple truth. "
She looked at Bain.
Borgine stared at her. His expression had turned to hatred. He turned on Bain.
It happened so fast that even Bain, who was sitting directly beside him, didn't have time to prepare for it. Borgine whirled on his son with the suddenness of a man whose fury had found a closer target and was taking it.
"Where have you been while this woman was building her defences, her alliances and her legal arguments?
I'll tell you where." His voice rose. "In every brothel in the lower city, if the reports that reach me are accurate.
" He was shaking now. "I gave you one task.
Court the woman and make her amenable to your suit.
Three years and the sum total of your effort is one dinner conversation that she apparently ran circles around you before the soup was cleared. "
Bain had gone very still, the way people went when a storm was directly overhead and moving.
"Father—" he began.
"Don't," Borgine said.
"If you would just let me—"
"I said, don't." Borgine turned away from him with the contempt of a man dismissing something he had finished with.
His face had gone the colour of his robe when he looked at Verna. "You’ve made your choice, Verna. You’ll face the trial. You’ve decided your own fate, and I respect that decision."
Verna nodded and said one word, "Coward," before she began to walk from the box. She ignored Thom’s vehement protests, and the tears streaming down Maria’s cheeks. Gathering her skirt in one hand, she walked down the step to the arena.
"You chose this," Borgine screamed out.
When she reached the centre of the arena, the people began to boo. It became louder, reverberating around the stands like a tidal wave.
Borgine ignored them and waved his hand.
The heavy door at the far end of the arena, the one that had been closed for all three days of the competition, began to swing outward.
When it was fully opened, snuffling could be heard, followed by an animal roaring. A moment later, something huge came out of the shadows and stood at the entrance, blinking in the sunlight.
Verna gaped at it. It was the biggest bear she’d ever seen.
It was dark brown, nearly black across the great sloping shoulders that rose higher than a tall man.
Its head was enormous, broad across the forehead, with dark eyes that held a depth more unsettling than the claws.
The iron collar around its neck was the circumference of a cartwheel, bolted together and attached to a chain as thick as a man's wrist.
Verna knew what it was.
A war bear from the frontier campaigns.
They came from the deep forest lands beyond the Kathran mountains, where people who lived there used them as weapons. They were raised from cubs alongside the warriors who would one day fight beside them, fed on the same food, and housed in the same compounds.
Borgine’s army had managed to capture it, and kept it in an iron cage on the palace grounds.
She’d heard the bears weren’t mindless, that they remembered and recognised. They had a deep, patient attention that missed very little and forgot almost nothing.
This one moved onto the sand as soon as the handlers released the chains. It stood for a moment and looked around at the ten thousand people in the tiered seats, then at Verna standing alone in the centre of the sand.
It bared its teeth and began to lumber toward her.