First, the Rules #2
“Yanor. The address was on the back of a serving note from the kitchen,” Esme said. Daphna licked their teeth in frustration at having missed a clue. “Someone in the network knows what Virya’s Belt is.”
“Shit,” Daphna said. “She’s new. We’ll have to move her now.” They looked sidelong to Samander, who nodded.
“She can go over west. We’ll move her tonight, don’t worry,” Samander said, not looking at Daph even as he tried to comfort them.
Esme was still hung up on the fact that she hadn’t even guessed they were involved. Somehow, that made her feel worse. She never would have known about the Lake, or Yanor’s pain, or Janos, or any of it.
“I’m sorry,” said Padrian. “I know we try not to keep secrets, but it was for the best. And you were happy with Mina, and Urias was busy with the city. You can’t have your hands in everything, Bast.”
Somehow, that stung the sharpest, but Esme pushed the pain away and stared out at the crowd again. “So, I assume you don’t want Janos on that throne any more than I do?” she asked.
“I want him skewered,” Samander said. His eyes flicked up to Isobel, gaze thick with hatred.
“But our hands are dirty already,” Padrian said over the railing, but then peeked back to Esme.
“We couldn’t raise suspicion by trying to throw the competition.
Luckily, you seem keen to dig into the grime.
” He blew a kiss to a drunk woman. She ate it and then choked on it and then actually vomited.
“Oh, I’m elbow deep in shit,” Esme scoffed.
“Do you have a plan for today?” Daphna asked. “This is the big one.”
Esme smirked. “If I’ve played my cards right, we’ll be picking bits of him out of the sand after this.”
Tagas smirked at her, knocking their shoulders together. “Then how about a celebratory breakfast? Think I know a place.”
Esme grinned. But before she could say anything else, horns blared overhead. The second trial was about to begin.
Esme and the others returned to their seats one by one, pretending not to have discussed anything. Down below, one of the two gates at each cardinal direction opened, and a rush of ten or so men spilled out into the small space before each maze opening.
No matter how many Valosias Esme sat through, she’d never not get sick of this part.
Most of the men lacked shirts, and their pants were a size too small.
Their skin was slick with sweat, with bruises clouding their sides and backs.
Musk hung around them like a plague, stinking all the way up to the Wraiths’ observation box.
They were packed together like pigs to slaughter, writhing in collective terror.
The Valosia was a celebration of Valos, the patron deity of Micrea.
He was purebred Micrean, pale and tall, with a straight nose and straighter golden hair.
He protected the purity of the Micrean people, and this contest was his cleansing ritual.
The men squirming in the arena were a dilution of the greatness of Micrea, splotches of rot that must be carved from the ripe fruit.
Foreigners. They were foreigners.
There were a million reasons why a family from Uhmer or Jingim or Thu Pak might find themselves rushing through the southern border in the dead of night—civil wars fought with weapons so fierce they blotted out whole villages in minutes, or religious reforms that ended in pits of dead.
Micrea didn’t care about those reasons, though.
The country was open only to trade, and only the wealthy from their three closest neighbors could immigrate legally.
Citizenship was eight thousand talons on its own, not to mention the expense of purchasing a house, the prices of which were ten percent higher for foreign-born buyers.
Then, there was the “accent tax,” as it was called—the extra few talons a shopkeeper might tack on to a price should their customer dare pronounce a word incorrectly.
In all, Micrea was a demeaning and demoralizing place.
And still, people threw themselves over barbed gates, navigated the Dire Strait in rowboats, ran blindly through the night with arrows whizzing by their ears, just to suffer within Micrea’s walls.
Esme sometimes struggled to hold both realities in her hands: that Micrea was a violent and dangerous country, that its rulers cared little for its citizens and its grandeur was built on the bones of massacred civilizations before it.
And that one could still push their way into Amaris with a talon and a plan, pick up work in a bar, and carve out a life for themselves.
That they could roll their eyes at the accent tax as they studied to rid themselves of their twang.
That they could work up enough money, maybe, to move into a bigger room, in a nicer part of the city.
That suffering was constant, but not fixed.
Esme sighed, lost in her thoughts, but then noticed a striking redhead moving in the crowd of men at the north entrance.
Janos.
She looked closer and found Bal, nearly invisible against his group of other black-haired and tan-skinned men, at the east entrance.
“Nobles, heirs, and favored lesssers!” Isobel yelled into a projection horn from her box.
“Today marks the sacred Valosia. This competition is meant to purify our great country. And, to make this ceremony even more sacred, our candidates for the crown shall compete for Valos’s Favor, bestowed not upon them by blood, but by sweat, sacrifice, and strength.
Those competitors who die today give up a life unearned.
Those who survive shall gain the highest of honors Valos can bestow! ”
With that, Isobel held up a piece of bright red paper and let it roll open.
Even from here, Esme could read the large black words scrawled at the top—“Micrean Appointment”—with the golden seal of Valos beside them.
Citizenship papers. Esme didn’t even have those.
With this Bond on her throat, she’d never needed them.
Another two realities to juggle. She was fighting against a place others clung to with all their might.
“Each of you has been hand-chosen by a Micrean family of worthy blood to take part in this competition,” Isobel called out, gesturing to the box of nobles slumped in their chairs. A few of them picked at their lips and rubbed anxious hands over their chins as they stared at their picks in the maze.
It wasn’t just that nobles “chose” men to fight for their freedom.
Micrea technically had no laws either condoning nor banning slavery.
They did, however, have extensive rules concerning the sanctity of private property, which allowed the owner of any chunk of land to detain those who would use that land without permission and proper payment.
There was no maximum sentence for that detention, no assurances for humane treatment.
If a lord found a non-citizen family setting up in a small cottage on the edge of his gluttonous plot of land, that noble was perfectly within his rights to enslave the family and work them without pay forever.
They were not chosen. They were kidnapped.
Those very laws were why most immigrants flocked to cities like Amaris, where such rules were rarely enforced.
Masked knights still prowled the streets there, true, eyeing anyone with an accent too winding or lock of hair too dark, but there were neutral zones throughout the city.
Still, Esme wondered if any of the men down there were day workers from the Foot she’d passed on a visit to Isla, the South Amaris Spider, or husbands to bakers from the Stomach who might know her Mina.
If any of them were fathers to daughters Gia’s age.
She looked up at Isobel’s observation box and found Mak’kon struggling to swallow, his eyes drifting down to Hallel as she peered excitedly over the edge of the box.
“But not only will the surviving men gain such coveted status, but the families who bought them shall take home the combined total of forty-five million talons!” Isobel announced the sickening sum to a roaring crowd.
Forty-five million? The nobles always waged bets for their champions, but this year’s total was absurd.
Someone had to be hoping to win big. No wonder the nobles were practically peeing themselves in nervousness.
“Now, this Valosia is a touch different than the previous ones,” Isobel cautioned, bringing her gaze down to the swirling maze.
“In the past, we have staged a tournament of smaller events. This year, there shall be just the one.” To this, the crowd booed.
“Oh, darling Amaris, do not fret. I promise ten times the show in this very hour than you have seen in all your years. Behold, the wonders of Valos!”
Isobel flung her hand out, and four massive tapestries unfurled over the south stands: one of a fierce eagle, another of a lion with tusks curling forward from its maw, a grotesque rat, and a stallion with glowing red eyes. A growling rumbled deep inside the arena.
Bal had been right.
“These four animals, transformed by the might of our great and powerful patron, shall pursue each group of men through the maze. They are deadly and intelligent and there will be few, if any, survivors.” Isobel grinned as the audience erupted into ear-splitting glee.
Esme and Tagas shared a look, then she passed one to Urias.
Those animals weren’t wonders of Valos; they were mutants of Magic.
Her stomach churned. This was much more dangerous than any Valosia before. How was her plan to work now?
“However, not all of them are as dangerous as the others. They are arranged ahead in order of ferocity. First and most deadly, the eagle, then the lion, then the rat, then the horse. In keeping with the tradition of the holiday, our valued betters will have the ability to choose which creature shall pursue which group of competitors.”
Esme sighed. Ojalla loved her.