29. TWENTY-NINE #2
The burns and lacerations in Calver’s back screamed as he wrestled Kian to the ground.
The man beat at him as he stretched for the dowaga.
No throwing the match. No taking the loss.
He was fucking tired of everything—including losing.
Calver’s fingers clasped around wood, and he pulled the weapon back.
He could have leveled it over Kian’s throat.
It would have won him the match. Instead, he tapped it against Kian’s side.
Trokus’s whistle blew. “Point!”
Kian’s brow furrowed, but the small victory felt flat. Calver wanted to fight him as a dowagist, not a grappler. He didn’t want any more excuses. He didn’t want any more regrets. He was so tired of having to redeem himself. If he’d done things right the first time, there would be nothing to redeem.
Kian’s second passed him another dowaga. Now they faced one another as equals.
The whistle blew. Calver set his jaw. This time he pushed past the pain and advanced to strike the first blow.
The crowd roared, nearly two thousand heads screaming out in appreciation.
Blow met blow. Parry met parry. Frustration mounted on Kian’s brow until Calver snaked his wooden blade into a series of deft twists, catching the claw of Kian’s dowaga and sending it wide.
He would leave tonight, but he wouldn’t leave quietly. On his way out, he’d steal this crown.
He smashed Kian in the jaw, kicked him in the solar plexus, and brought him to the ground, wooden blade at his throat. Kian’s hand shot into the air, and the crowd erupted. The whistle blew on the round.
Relief flooded Calver. His eyes locked on Kian’s.
Their chests both heaved, Calver’s from effort, Kian’s from outrage, too.
Calver then did a thing his instincts warred over: he held out a hand.
The honorable thing, the very thought of which made his skin slither.
Just months ago, he wouldn’t have believed he’d ever willingly touch another person again.
Kian took it. “If only your etiquette with a blade extended to your etiquette as a man. The Red Wing is wanting for talent that isn’t treacherous.” On his feet, the sergeant turned his back.
A sudden hush fell over the ring, not so different from the sounds of shifting sand.
The recruits parted to let a man pass through.
Flecks of white peppered his cropped hair, and while he resembled the sergeant beside him, his eyes were soft, not hard—as if they had weathered alongside the lines in his face.
The gladiolus pin of high command glinted on his shoulder in the moonlight.
Kian dropped to one knee, head bowed. “I can explain—”
“There’s no need.”
Kian’s father. Second in command of the Red Wing. Thyatira’s right hand.
Calver dropped the wooden dowaga and stepped backward.
No one could be blamed for his taking it, but he could certainly face additional repercussions for using it.
He’d been so close to getting out—still had to get out, if anyone in this caravan was to make it to Seraphinden alive.
But it would only work if he left in discretion.
He had no choice but to act with full compliance.
“Pick up the weapon.” The Major General’s voice lacked his son’s anger. It was as curious as it was commanding, reminding Calver again of Calisto. He swallowed his nerves and squatted, the motion barely tolerable, eyes trained on the Senior Mastico. He rose with the wooden dowaga loose at his side.
“I would like a match.”
Trokus clapped his hands together nervously. “With all due respect, Major General, the rally maintains a full schedule, and the rules forbid swapping contestants between rounds.”
“Then I am requesting you change the rules.” His eyes were locked on Calver. “Entertain me. I want to understand how a nameless man takes down a Mastico.”
He was past the point of faking incompetence now: he’d worn his pride until it snagged him on a hook.
Calver could have just thrown the match and been on with his night.
He hadn’t seen his ego in fourteen years, and now it chose to show up?
Fates curse his luck—and Fates curse that fucking dishwasher.
Niklaus was visible in the crowd. Whatever prestigious tutoring he’d received, it had not extended to masking one’s feelings from their enemies.
His hands were clapped to his face, jaw jutting in a grimace, brows seeking refuge in his hairline.
As if Calver didn’t already know the situation was an utter disaster.
Calver rolled his shoulders and nodded.
“Ahm.” Trokus tapped his fingers together. “Proceed?”
The whistle blew.
There were no cheers, only hushed whispers behind hands as Calver faced off with the elder Mastico.
The Major General advanced, watching Calver’s movement with unwavering focus.
Their wooden blades clacked in a flurry of lashes, and then they matched step in a series of sequential maneuvers as familiar to Calver as the wood knots in Fankalo’s door.
The memories for each counter were so ingrained into Calver’s muscles, they came with the ease of walking.
He was spellbound as they shifted through each stance in the progression like dancers on a stage of night and sand.
Calisto’s warm-up. The same Calver had practiced in tandem with Pim every day between the ages of six and twelve.
Move by move. Block by block. The crowd faded.
There were only the wooden curves of the dowaga and the ritual habit so deeply conditioned that it took him a near minute to realize the trap he’d fallen into: exposing who he was.
Calver extricated himself from the dance, casting his dowaga to the sand. Chest heaving, he stepped—stumbled, really—back from the Major General until he was at the perimeter of the ring. Awestruck faces stared back at him.
Instinct said, “Run”. Curiosity said, “Finish”. Calver had already proven he couldn’t obey his own thoughts. He did neither. He froze on the fated spot.
Emotion took hold of every feature on Mastico’s face. Even at a distance, Calver could see the tears in his eyes.
Run. Run. Run.
“You’re Thadinar Curtaim’s boy, aren’t you?”
Calver turned. He pushed his way through the crowd. He didn’t know where he was going, but it had to be a better place than the legacy he’d never escaped. He sped up.
A hand caught his shoulder. Arms wrapped around him.
A stone lodged in Calver’s throat. His skin snaked with fire. Every impulse told him to fight—fight for his life.
But these were the arms of comfort, not capture. The Major General whispered under his breath, “You look just like him. The last time I saw you, you hardly came past my knee… How are you alive?”
Mastico’s grief became his own. It was the question he wouldn’t answer, even if he could speak. It was the truth he had dived head-first into the void to run from all his life. He was alive—against all odds and intents—he was alive because he gave up. Again and again and again.
“I looked for you, after it all happened. I assumed the worst and…” Mastico sniffed and stepped away.
He looked at the soldiers surrounding them.
Stiffened, then nodded. His voice regained its air of authority.
“Come with me.” Then he said, in a whisper only Calver could hear, “Perhaps we can both give each other some answers.”
One did not disobey the pull of destiny. Calver followed the general through the Jiradeshi night, away from his freedom, away from his purpose, and into the waiting maw of truth.