Chapter Eight Let the Tournament Begin #2
Something vile twisted in my gut. “You never answered my question. Are you hurt?”
“What entitles you to a response?” Her veil rippled as she looked me up and down. “Or you do require recompense for meager services rendered, saving me from that poor merchant?” She sneered, then held out her empty palms. “The only god of men may be coin, but I’ve none to give.”
The words ricocheted in my helmet. “If I was going to ask for a token, it would hardly be silver or gold.”
“What, then? A Divination?”
I gave half a shrug. “A kiss would do fine.”
Her cool edifice was implacable. She stayed still a long while, watching me. “An unscrupulous thing for a guard to say to a queen.”
“No one ever accused me of being clever.”
“What’s your name, knave?”
“What’s yours?”
The muscles in her hands tightened. Not so implacable, then. I’d surprised her, though I didn’t know how, and for a moment neither of us did anything but look at the other’s mask, I at her veil, she at my helmet, and breathe.
Weasel Face appeared out of nothingness, a scowl etched onto her brow and a jousting lance swung over her shoulder.
Sybil’s gaze broke from my face.
“Pith, Coulson Faire is going to the dogs,” Weasel Face said. “The thief was a deranged vagabond. He dropped what he’d stolen, sneezed in my face, and scuttled away. Bloody waste of time.”
Above us, a thumping began, shaking the ceiling and stirring the hay. Applause sounded like rolling thunder.
The joust was beginning.
“We’re running late, Diviner.” Weasel Face peered at Sybil’s armor, still lying in the hay. “It would go faster if you’d take a squire.”
“I don’t want a new one.” Sybil reached for the lance, took it in her right hand.
And flinched.
Her fingers went white over on the grip at the base. It was not that she could not lift the thing—her arm made short work of that. No, it was something else. The pink stain on the fabric of her chemise had turned red.
She was bleeding.
My voice scraped out of me. “What the fuck is that?”
Sybil didn’t answer, her entire focus spent on holding the lance. For every second that she did, her skin paled and the lines of her body stiffened.
Weasel Face shoved past me and pushed the lance down. “That wound should have healed better than that by now, Diviner. If you cannot hold a lance without bleeding, there is no chance you could wield one while riding a horse.”
The realization that she was ill-equipped to compete unfurled over Sybil’s features.
Her head fell and her throat began to hitch, like she was holding back tears.
Whatever her intention, competing in the tournament had clearly been an iron encasement around her.
Without it, despair pressed over shoulders so fervently she stooped.
It stole my breath and scorched my cheeks with shame. I’d been feeling blindly in my chest for the teeth marks she’d left in my heart—I hadn’t considered how fractured hers might be.
Pith, I needed that loom stone. I took a wild step toward Weasel Face, but she was already moving.
She retrieved the padded shirt meant to be Sybil’s under armor, took a knife from her belt, and cut a long strip of linen from its hem.
“Here,” she said, handing it out to Sybil.
“You can still watch the joust from the king’s box. ”
“That I might be as the cathedral and Der ewige Mond—useful to my conquerors?” Seething, Sybil threw the lance down so hatefully it cracked, then ripped the linen from Weasel Face’s hand.
When she lifted her chemise, putting it between her teeth and tying the makeshift bandage around her abdomen, I finally saw it.
A stab wound, sitting beneath Sybil’s navel.
The skin around it was raised, shiny and angry.
Cauterized, I thought, except the wound hadn’t closed.
It was weeping blood, white fragments speckled within the red.
For a moment I didn’t know what I was looking at, only that my fists were clenched and my mouth hot with malice. Then I understood.
Stone.
There were tiny specks of limestone in her blood.
Sybil fastened the linen, hiding the wound away.
“The melee is next.” I could not prove it, but I could swear she was staring at the loom stone around Weasel Face’s neck.
“I’ll be needing a stonemason’s or blacksmith’s hammer.
The one you brought is for carpentry—the balance is all wrong.
” She picked up her silken robe, balling its cuff and the number VI in her fist, then shoved it back on, her wound hidden; she was a woman in white once more.
Above us, the noise in the arena grew louder.
“Guard.” Weasel Face pointed an armored finger in my face. “Help me get her into the stands. Don’t let anyone touch her.”
We moved in a line out of the stables, Weasel Face, then Sybil, then me.
The wide corridor was nearly empty now; all the horses and riders and squires bearing weapons had moved into the lists.
Only a few remained, tucked up behind a row of horses, peeking out as I stumbled past. A knight in dark armor—and a stout figure in pink robes.
Maude and the gargoyle peered at me, nodding at Weasel Face ahead, as if to say, Here we go.
My stomach churned; I was so nervous I considered puking. I faced Sybil’s back instead, blurting, “Another time, then, for that kiss.”
She said nothing. Then, just as we began to climb the arena stairs—“Fuck off, knave.”
The noise, I was prepared for. Hundreds of souls packed into the stands, with horses in the lists—it was bound to put a buzz in my ears. What I hadn’t expected was for all that clamor to go immediately silent the moment Sybil entered the arena.
We’d arrived through a narrow archway separate from the main entrance and were immediately confronted by stairs, then a walkway, then more stairs. Thousands of eyes watched us, whispers clinging like spiderwebs as we climbed.
“White, like limestone. They say when you look into them, the Omens might show you your future.”
“Yes, the other Diviners were all crushed by the rubble, apparently. Tragic.”
“I swear it! My cousin is a servant in the castle. He said the spear hit her right in the stomach. It took an entire day to clean the floor of blood.”
“It’s the wretched sprites’ fault, attacking the wedding like that. I say the pests should be shot down on sight, no matter where they linger.”
“I thought she’d be competing in the joust.”
“I thought she’d be prettier,” barked another. “Less bodied, more delicate—”
I cracked the man so hard over the mouth he fell out of his seat.
Sybil turned, a furrow drawing between her eyes as she glanced down at me. Then Weasel Face took her by the arm, slipped a finger into the loom stone, vanished, then reappeared several yards away, sparing Sybil the steps to climb.
The crowd gasped in awe.
I followed, huffing in my helmet, and we reached a wooden box that sat about eight feet above the arena.
It was walled off and lidded with a roof, protected by a banister and more damn purple flags.
There were guards there. Knights. Men and women in bright silks with jewels on their wrists and necks and ears—some even in their teeth.
In the heart of it, seated in a cushioned chair, was a young man, drinking wine from a goblet.
He had golden hair and armor to match, an easy smile and stark blue eyes.
When he saw Sybil, his chest swelled. He eyed her in a way that made my blood boil—like she was a wounded animal.
“Not competing after all, then?” He peered at her silk robe. “At least they got the stain out.”
I knew who he was. King Benedict Castor the Third. My friend.
My killer.
“What are you standing there for?” A knight with large white teeth barked in my face. “Go be with the others. Near Dedrick.”
As if I knew who the hell that was.
I squeezed next to a line of castle guards instead, five feet behind Weasel Face and the loom stone around her neck.
Meanwhile Sybil had taken her seat next to the king.
A cup of something foul smelling passed under my nose, handed from guard to guard until it reached Large Teeth, who gave it to Sybil.
“Heard you’re in pain,” he said, far too close to her ear.
Sybil snatched the cup and drained it without even looking at him.
The king rose to his feet, then waved to the crowd.
A great swell of noise echoed, and a slender man with thin, oily hair came to stand before him.
“An enormous success, sire.” He had silver teeth and carried a giant bowl filled with coins.
Hung over his arm like an eel was a gold silken sash.
“A record number of merchants in the field, and as you see—a full arena. Quite the boon for the hamlet. I’ve commissioned a heralding sash for today’s champion, just as you requested. ”
“Should I save time and put it on now?” The king lifted the bowl of gold from his hands and took a coin off the top. “It’s brilliant, Ormsby. Truly. This purse will be yours when I win.” He tossed the coin at the man with all the grace of a butcher flinging a piece of animal fat to the floor.
It was going to be a pleasure killing this asshole.
The man—Ormsby—bent to pick up the coin. When he did, the king put a hand on his shoulder, forcing him to his knees. “But never forget, it is not you who brings greatness to the hamlets, but me, my Diviner, and my stone objects.”
The king released him. Benedict placed the bowl of gold on his cushioned chair, then reached for a pouch on his belt and withdrew a different coin, limestone and oblong. He lifted it, winked at his fellow knights, tossed the coin—vanished.
A moment later he reappeared in the heart of the arena to rapturous applause. The king raised both hands in beckoning. “What joy is mine to compete in my home hamlet, the best hamlet, Coulson Faire.”
The clamor was deafening.