Chapter 10 #2
“He knew I’d refuse,” she snapped before regaining control of herself.
It would be a mistake to descend into arguing details with him.
“Send me the damn contract and I’ll make my notes.
” Pivoting on her heel she paced deliberately out of the room as if leaving the sands of the arena after a winning bout.
It took all her inner strength to say a pleasant farewell to the receptionist and maintain her mask as she descended the gravlift and arrived in the lobby.
Jamirr was waiting with the animals and had sense enough after one glance at her face not to say anything.
He preceded her out the door, using the pets to force the gathered reporters to retreat a bit.
The shouted questions were more pointed now and Samyra heard at least three people ask if she was planning to retire. “Is it true the arena management thinks you’re washed up?” someone yelled.
She ignored it all, making her way to the waiting groundcar and sliding inside.
Jamirr wrangled the great cat and the two canines into the backseat and closed the door behind himself.
The chauffeur took off smoothly and Samyra hit the privacy screen.
She sat trembling for the first few miles, while Tazur nuzzled her and tried to get into her lap.
“Mistress—” Jamirr began cautiously.
She raised one hand. “I literally can’t talk right now, I’m so angry.” And scared but she wasn’t going to tell him that. Samyra was hanging on by a thread and holding off the tears with great effort. She wasn’t going to break down in the damn car, not even in front of Jamirr.
The groundcar arrived at the compound and she climbed out and entered the house without a word, going straight to her quarters and slamming the door.
The hot tears were falling, making her blind as she fumbled her way to the bedroom and collapsed onto the bed, weeping so hard she could barely breathe.
Anger and embarrassment warred with fear.
How dare they treat me like this rang through her head followed by how am I going to survive this and how will my gladiator House survive this?
There were no comforting stacks of credits stashed in New Switzerland banks or anywhere else.
Yes her zoo was a luxury but beyond that maintaining a stable of gladiators was incredibly expensive.
Her team was good but too small to bring in huge profits.
She’d tried to build on a core of fighters and expand but year after year her efforts had failed for one reason or another.
The House of Kulcannon or Samyra’s Slayers as she styled them, existed primarily on her winnings and credits from her endorsements.
If the arena management was downgrading her, there’d inevitably be a reduction in outside income as well.
And she had to admit to herself the Lajaran’s Syndrome was progressing.
Much as she’d hated to hear Barbour say it, she wasn’t the fighter she used to be and she most likely wasn’t going to be able to win big enough and often enough this season to set herself and her House up to endure beyond her retirement.
Defeat was a bitter and unfamiliar taste in her mouth.
Samyra rolled onto her back, wiping her eyes and doing what she always did, shifting into planning mode, searching for ways around the current obstacles.
She’d been confident there’d be plenty of time to resolve her financial issues—all she’d needed was for her House to have one outstanding season—but now everything was crashing down on her at once.
Remembering what Barbour had said about Jamirr, she considered moving him into the featured spot on the roster.
The arena manager was right, the public would be avid to watch him fight.
He was good enough to win consistently and he’d triumph over the insufferable Tirion and upstart Mikal without much trouble.
Maybe a bit more specific training on the defenses and offenses the two men were known to use.
He’d ended up fighting four times during the special offseason tournament, at Kyden’s request when others were injured and had done well enough.
Leaving the bed and going into the bathroom to wash her face, Samyra gripped the edge of the gold veined marble counter so hard her knuckles went white and stared at herself in the mirror. He doesn’t want to fight. You told him he’d only have to appear in the arena on rare occasions.
But if I told him the truth, if I made him understand we just need one big season to save the House and enable my retirement…
.if he was a featured fighter and there were guarantees in the contract he could earn enough in prizes to buy his freedom this year and then we could be together as equals.
Neither of us ever having to fight again.
A voice in her head advised her to listen to herself because she was contemplating a manipulative and dangerous path when it came to Jamirr.
She chose to ignore the negative thought and focused on how best to explain this to Jamirr to obtain his help.
Shoving an unwilling fighter into the arena wouldn’t do anyone any good and might get him badly injured or killed.
The mere idea was like a knife to the heart.
“I love him,” she said out loud, testing the words and the emotion.
Hanging her head for a moment, she took a deep breath and forced herself to think twice about what she was proposing to do.
She could take Barbour’s final suggestion, retire now to save face, close her House and sell the remaining stable of gladiators to other masters, maybe even reduce the zoo to a few of her favorite animals…
Every fiber of her being revolted at the idea.
Samyra had never been a quitter and she refused to start now, or to take a path that labelled her as a loser.
Not while there was fight left in her body.
There were illicit meds that could mask the symptoms of Lajaran’s Syndrome although the side effects were cumulative and could be more disastrous than the disease itself.
She could use the meds sparingly, only as needed.
“It’s one fucking season,” she said to the mirror. “To go out the way I should, the way I deserve after all these years and give my House a stable footing financially.”
Jamirr knew things hadn’t gone the way Samyra expected at all on her visit to the arena manager.
Although she’d remained silent and gone straight to her quarters when they returned to the compound, he heard whispers and gossip enough as he went about his duties to get the gist of the situation.
She was a proud, fierce woman and he understood this setback would be a hard development for her to accept.
He wished he could have gotten her to confide in him during the groundcar commute.
Maybe there was nothing he could do to help but it couldn’t be good for her to keep all her emotions bottled up inside.
He was a safe audience if she’d only let herself trust him.
After dinner, he got his wish in a puzzling fashion.
Darryl appeared at the door of his room to inform him he’d been summoned to meet with the mistress in her office.
The formality of the summons surprised him.
He’d been hoping she’d appear at the zoo during the morning rounds and they could talk freely then.
Darryl escorted him silently to the office, where Samyra was seated at her desk, reviewing holo files of gladiators, and left him standing on the rug in front of her, at parade rest.
As soon as the door closed, she left her chair, took him by the hand and towed him outside to her private garden, where they sat on a bench beside a fish pond.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “I was concerned after you came out of your meeting today.”
“I won’t lie, it’s been a rough day.”
He could see by how red her eyes were she’d been crying and his heart sank. “How can I help?”
Eagerly she took his hand. “Exactly. I knew you’d want to help.”
“I need to understand what the problem is first. What did the arena manager say that was so distressing?”
She got to her feet as if unable to sit still and paced beside the pond as she repeated the conversation she’d had with Barbour.
Her gestures got bigger and bigger and her voice became more strident as she talked, shifting into outlining her ideas for saving the season and funding the House.
The details of her finances were shocking but he found he wasn’t actually all that surprised she’d poured everything into the House.
Samyra was all in on anything she undertook.
He rose and captured her in his arms. “Samyra, Samyra, take a breath. You’re talking so fast and going so deep into all these schemes and plans I’m having trouble following you. Did you actually say you were thinking of taking illegal drugs to suppress the Lajaran’s?”
“Only when I absolutely need them,” she said in a muffled voice, head on his chest, arms around his waist.
“We both know how bad an idea that is. And the rest of what you’ve said isn’t much more coherent.”
She raised her head and stared at him. “Will you fight at the top of my roster then? Not just when I need a wingman?”
That part of her wild planning had upset and distressed him the most so he sidestepped the issue for now.
“Put aside all the concerns about the gladiatorial House and the future of the zoo and whether you’ll have endorsement deals.
What do you, the woman Samyra, the woman who’s so important to me, what do you actually want?
Do you really want to fight one more season by taking drugs, going further into debt and taking risks with your gladiators?
” And forcing me to fight, he thought but didn’t say. Not yet.
“My father worked himself to the bone to establish this House,” she said. “I promised him I’d keep his dream alive and see us become renowned.”
“His dream,” Jamirr repeated.
“Mine too,” she insisted stubbornly.