14. Insult and Recompense #4
Alsot looked uncomfortably between the two of them. Umber arched an eyebrow at Hize and placed his hand on Rerdas’s shoulder.
The duke turned to the booker with a hopeful smile. “There’s a clear compromise here,” Umber said. “We can proceed with recompense, but the battleboxer’s handler will administer it. Master Toriem?”
Imalroc bit down savagely on his tongue. No. Please, no, he could not survive that. There was a horrible silence above. “That sounds reasonable,” Alsot supplied at last.
Imalroc strained around to look in desperation at the only person who mattered. Rerdas stood silently, face blank and so pale it looked as though he might faint.
“Absolutely not,” Etiana thundered. “I will not allow it. We will not be shoved about by this insufferable man.”
The booker tried to pat her hand. “Lady Toriem, please, it was unconscionable disrespect—”
“Where’s he going?” Rerdas asked sharply.
Imalroc watched Hize march away from the group in the handler’s pew. The crowd shuffled and benches creaked, everyone climbing back to their feet to see.
He closed his eyes. He knew exactly where his old tormentor was going. Hize was not the sort to await permission. The guards stirred at the edges of the box. Another gate opened, and he heard Hize’s voice.
“Give me that.” The handler was a few paces away, close enough that Imalroc could smell the powdery violet perfume he wore.
“He can’t just—” Etiana’s dismay was cut off by the unmistakable crack of a whip.
It sizzled through the air just behind him, but did not touch him yet. Hize liked to warm up first. Imalroc steeled his knees, refusing to collapse against the posts. He’d come out of this alive before.
Etiana argued above him, but none of her frantic words were clear. His pulse surged quickly enough to make him lightheaded. The whip ripped the air again. Imalroc’s hands were ice.
Again, another crackle, testing speed and strength.
This time it was close enough that it sang past his ear.
It had an almost musical ache to it. The last time he’d heard it, he had been chained in Hize’s pen, after the handler had arranged Briga’s death and was experimenting with everything he could think of to break him.
It had not worked then; it would not work now.
“Let us see how long you can stand, filth,” Hize said.
Imalroc turned and bit into his arm so that he would not scream before the skin split.
There was a heavy, unexpected thump in the sand behind him. The crowd roared.
“Don’t—fucking—touch—him!” He knew that voice. Rerdas was in the box. Imalroc’s eyes snapped open.
“Unhand me!” Hize shrieked. Then came another familiar but utterly impossible sound. The crunch of a fist meeting someone’s nose.
Imalroc twisted around as far as his manacled wrists would allow.
Hize staggered away from Rerdas, red spattered all over the front of his ornate topcoat. One pale hand fluttered above his nose. Rerdas placed himself directly between Hize and the posts, blocking his path to Imalroc.
Hize yowled, fumbling for the decorative rapier at his waist. It was halfway unsheathed when he got it caught in his beaded sash. Rerdas let his shoulder drop back, cocked his fist, and hit him again. Hize plowed into the sand, his glistening blue eyes gone wide.
It was like no dream his mind could ever have summoned. Laughter swelled in Imalroc’s chest, rising through him, and then his vision blurred with tears, and the sound that came loose was more like a sob. Rerdas was between him and the whip. He was safe.
“My lords! Stop, my lords! Sweet Eternals, this is completely undignified!” Booker Alsot screamed at them from the wall above.
The huntmaster hesitated, turning back toward where the booker, his cousin, and the duke were all yelling at him from the top of the wall. Melgreth Hize hauled himself back up and groped in the sand.
“Rerdas!” Imalroc cried hoarsely, “Get away from him. Get back!”
Rerdas turned back to the threat, but there was no time to dodge. He got his hand up. The whip slammed into the meat of his forearm with a vicious crack. Whatever sound of shock or pain he made was lost beneath the crowd’s thundering response.
Imalroc lurched toward him instinctively, but the bonds held fast and he was helpless. The noise from the audience was deafening. The box churned as soldiers charged onto the sand.
This was enlightened Kibo. Melgreth Hize could flay his battleboxers all he wanted, but he’d just used a whip on a free man. The crowd’s glee turned to outrage.
The crowd spilled into the handler’s pews, beating the walls until the whole battlebox pulsed like a drum.
The booker dragged Hize back. Two guards blocked a howling Etiana from reaching her cousin while Almes bleated behind her.
Umber leaned over the wall, roaring invectives at everyone in the box, a battlebox clearer tried to guide Rerdas out of the churn, and at last, someone wrenched the whip from Hize’s hands.
Imalroc sagged between the metal posts, tears of relief and rage disappearing in the black sand beneath.