Chapter 42 #2
She ruffled his hair. “I did, too, my darling.” Milonia glanced out at the growing threat of violence. “But it’s time to go.”
Kai knew it was time to end the session when the shadows inside the hissing vent began to breathe.
Gods. She needed food, water, and sleep.
Which meant they all did.
Around the arena, her warriors faltered. Blunted attacks. Sluggish footwork. Coughing into the crook of their elbows.
“Call it,” she told Otekah.
Otekah’s triple clap cracked through the hall. “Enough! Go home. Rest up and return tomorrow.”
Sparring units froze, weapons midair. More than a few sagged in relief.
Kai ascended the sloped ridge toward one of the stone statues, her limbs heavy. The Stormguard followed, glancing at the arena floor, murmuring low.
She fumbled with the clasps of her vambrace. Beside her, the Stormguard peeled off their gear, lines of exhaustion slicing through their faces.
They were her best, and they were near collapse.
She’d driven them too far.
“We’ll go easier tomorrow,” she told them. “I’m sorry—”
“No,” Niabi cut in. “We work until we know we can survive what is to come.”
The others nodded. Drakaa’s warning still rang in their bones.
“We’re all right,” Poloma said, then glanced down. Several warriors lay flat on their backs. Still. “Or not.”
Tiponi nudged her sister. “Does the air look misty to you?”
Kai squinted into the arena, tugging at her second vambrace. Tiponi was right—the air looked…
Green?
From the north and south exits, murmurs broke through the line of warriors waiting to exit.
One voice near the tunnel: “It’s locked.”
And at the other exit: “We’re locked in!”
A sudden burst of pale green air rushed from the vent.
Asudden wind snapped the banners to life—sharp, restless. But it did nothing to ease the suffocating heat pressing down on the courtyard. The crowd shifted closer to the gate, a veritable extension of the surrounding wall.
The guardsmen parted for Dimitrios, shields scraping against spears.
Every eye turned toward him, some with hope, more with suspicion, and far too many with hate.
Nikolas closed in on his back. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
“They will tear you apart, and then I’m going to have to order these men to intervene.”
Dimitrios turned to face his friend. “Order the men back.”
Nikolas blinked and sucked in a breath, prepared to argue.
Dimitrios waited with bated breath. This man had followed him all over the country for weeks. Stood by him, fought for him. The picture of loyalty. But Dimitrios was only a man. He wasn’t anyone’s king. Not yet. And Nikolas could turn any minute, for any reason, and do what he thought best.
Muscles flared through Nikolas’s jaw. He gave a stiff nod, then shouted the order across the courtyard.
Dimitrios cupped his friend’s shoulder. “Thank you.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Me too.”
He strode down the natural slope in the earth toward his people. Old men gripping swords too worn for battle. Women with braids wrapped around their heads, children on their hips. Young boys with dirt under their nails and stones in their hands, ready to fight with the rest.
Dimitrios locked eyes with two he knew by name. “Ermis. Danai. Good to see you both.”
Ermis, a middle-aged fisherman, had been happy to take Dimitrios and Selene out on his boat several months ago, showing them hidden coves. He’d later grilled fish over a fire and teased Dimitrios for his “soft palms,” while showing off hands roughened by nets and ropes.
Danai was the young widow they’d met in a village while traveling on a trade road.
She had been tending a feverish child at home when they begged for shelter from a sudden storm.
She took them in, but it was to a partially collapsed roof that offered little in terms of comfort.
Selene went right to work grinding herbs for the child’s fever, and Dimitrios patched her roof in the rain.
He shook Ermis’s hand and squeezed Danai’s shoulder, all through the barred gates. More names and faces appeared within the throng, and he greeted them all. All the people he was fighting for.
“My friends,” he finally said to the group as a whole. As those in front quieted to listen, silence rippled throughout. His steady voice carried into the heavy hush that followed. “I know you’re afraid. You’re afraid for your children. For your livelihoods.
“When many of us met,” he continued, “I promised peace. A break from the old ways. Since then, you’ve been told I caused everything that’s come to pass. That I have no claim to stand before you. That I am nothing but a man playing at being a king.”
Dimitrios took a breath, letting them see him—no shield or guard or crown. “You deserve to know the truth. You deserve to know who threatens you, and it isn’t me.”
For a breath, the words hung there, fragile.
A laugh erupted inside the crowd, sharp and bitter.
A shout followed. “Liar!”
Then another, louder. “Coward!”
Boots scuffed the packed earth, and the press of bodies against the gates rattled the iron. A stone bounced off the bars with a sharp clang. An old man spat through the gaps.
The anger spread like a flame in dry grass, turning faces red and tightening fists. Fear twisted into rage.
Dimitrios raised his hands for quiet, and the roar in the crowd swallowed his words. He searched for those familiar faces again, Ermis, Danai, the others—the surging crowd had swallowed them up. He’d lost them. These people came to see him fall, and now they smelled blood.
A stone struck near his feet. Another whistled past his ear.
“Dimitrios,” Nikolas said, his voice low and strained. “You tried. You need to retreat.”
Give up, he meant. Open the way to further violence. If he could just get them to listen.
Dimitrios raised his hands and voice one more time—
It wasn’t his voice that cracked through the violence.
It was hers.
Milonia stepped into the storm, a goddess who would not bow. “Enough!”
“No one panic!” Kai’s voice cut across the arena. She moved fast, boots slapping the packed dirt. “Keep your heads so we can figure out what’s going on.”
The order steadied her as much as it did them. The exits didn’t have locks. They never had.
“Do you smell that?” a male called out.
Others murmured in agreement. Even Kai thought the air smelled strange—acrid, bitter. And the coughing had increased.
Poloma knelt beside one of the prone warriors and held her wrist. She frowned. “Her heartbeat is slow.”
Half a dozen females or more had appeared to give in to exhaustion. At least, that’s what she’d assumed. But this one hadn’t stirred. Not even at Poloma’s touch. Not even a twitch.
What was happening?
At the south doors, a female tugged the handle again—hard. “They’re locked from the outside.”
“Check the east gate,” Kai ordered, already moving. “And the west tunnel.”
“It is the same there,” a male said.
“The oxbeast went through the tunnel not even an hour ago,” Niabi said, hands hooked to her hips. “It was open.”
“Those are locked as well,” someone reported.
“Force it open,” another shouted.
And from the north-side exit, metal struck the door.