Chapter Twenty-Five A Death to Spite Bulls and Bears #2
The cloaked spectator ignored him, sprinting forth and piercing the spear into the back of the sannassan’s thigh.
No scream could the beast emit with Lythlet half-lodged in it, but its throat vibrated around her like an earthquake.
Its hand released her hair at last, and relief caressed her aching scalp as she stared down at the spectator, taking in their oddly familiar silhouette through her tear-blurred vision.
Lythlet froze, trying to suppress that flicker of hope.
She knew this trespasser, but she had imagined meeting him so often over the past few weeks, she no longer trusted herself.
Master Dothilos’s fury was palpable, the echoes of his baritone nearly shattering his speaking-trumpet. “Guards, loose your bolts at that spectator!”
Crossbows were raised, cocked, and loaded, metallic bolt tips glinting as they took aim at the intruder.
The spectator spun to the podium, reaching for the brooch clasping his cloak and snapping it. “I am no spectator!” The garment fluttered to the sand, and a swell of cheers erupted from the spectators, the clamor sweeping all around the arena.
Despite her current predicament with the sannassan, Lythlet burst into a smile.
It was Desil, panting, face red, unruly brown curls cascading free from the hood.
The sannassan, seemingly realizing it was running out of time, began pushing her into its mouth hurriedly.
Desil turned back to Lythlet. “Fight, you fool, fight! I swear upon the Sunsmith that I’ll chase you down this beast’s gullet if you don’t!”
He means it , she thought, wide-eyed. He really will throw himself in after me.
She sprang into action. Ripping the knife from her belt, she sliced the wrist of the massive hand holding her waist, working it back and forth until it detached from the rest of the arm.
With its one remaining hand, the sannassan tried to cram her into its mouth, but Desil pierced its shoulder, and the arm fell limp.
Meanwhile, Lythlet stabbed the sannassan’s yellow eye, twisting the knife around to scramble the beast’s brain.
It twitched like a lightning-struck creature, but its lips remained squeezed tight around her hips, holding her like a vise.
Desil climbed the beast’s back, and bracing himself by planting his feet apart, he sank his fingers into the sannassan’s nostrils and pulled the head back.
His biceps bulged with the effort, but soon he’d forced its jaw wide enough for her to pull herself out.
She fell onto the ground half-coated in saliva.
He pulled her to her feet. “We haven’t defeated it yet, have we?”
She shook her head. “We need to take care of the remaining two heads.”
“How?”
She had already concocted this idea before her suicide attempt; she just didn’t think she’d put it to use. “We make it take care of itself. I’ll yank off the green head, you handle the blue. Then pull its upper lip back as far as you can, Desil.”
As if some adhesive were keeping its heads on its shoulders, Lythlet struggled as she tugged at the green head, resorting to using her knife to cut it free.
Then, with a nod at Desil, they pried the beast’s yellow lips as far apart as they could.
She shoved the green head into its throat, reaching as far in as she possibly could, dropping it into the vat of acid.
Then he did the same with the blue head, depositing it into the beast’s own gullet, force-feeding it to itself.
The beast slumped on the ground, digesting itself helplessly.
The spectators burst into hoo-rahs , and Desil threw himself onto Lythlet, wrapping his arms around her and knocking her to the ground. “You’re a fool and a half, Lytha! What were you thinking? Why didn’t you fight?”
Sand stuck to her cheek, and it was perhaps only then it really sunk in that Desil was back.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” she said, not hearing his question.
“That’s a terrible reason to let yourself be eaten alive,” he cried.
His question finally registered. “I wanted to die a death that would spite both the bulls and the bears.”
“Also a terrible reason!”
“Ladies and gentlemen, another match won by the Rose and the Golden Thorn!” Master Dothilos announced, the spectators cheering even louder. He seemed restored to the glory of his glibness. “Except only one oath sworn today! Dare I determine this to be an illegal victory?”
Desil raised his head from the ground. “Damn you and your cockheaded oath, match-master,” he roared, pointing at the podium with a censorious finger. “You cannot play with our lives like this, you feckless bastard!”
Lythlet blinked, a bewildered curl to her lips. At least three of those words had never been uttered before by Desil for as long as she’d known him. Poetry in profanity , she thought, almost wanting to applaud him.
Master Dothilos, too, needed a moment to compose himself.
“Oh my,” he said with an incredulous smile, a hint of admiration dancing in his eyes, “it seems the Rose has grown a few thorns of his own! But, my dear boy, you shouldn’t interrupt me.
What I was about to say was: yes, this may indeed be an illegal victory—” he held up both hands to assuage the audience’s rising cries “— but have we not already bent a rule today by allowing the Golden Thorn to stand alone? What’s another bent rule in the face of such a legendary match from the Rose and the Golden Thorn?
Hoo-rah! Rise and take a bow, my champions! ”
· · ·
D ESIL CARRIED HER to the armory, hugging her tight to his chest. “You madwoman,” he kept muttering as he laid her on the bench.
He knelt beside her, looking exhausted. “I thought you’d forfeit the match straightaway, to be honest. But when you swore the oath, well, I figured you’d actually fight and not just let yourself be eaten.
You terrify me, Lytha. I can’t bear the thought of you dying, and here you are, happily throwing yourself into the jaws of a beast! ”
He palmed his own face, exhausted. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment, “for everything I said that day. I was being unfair to you—of course, you have every right to be proud of yourself after all you’ve been through.
I’ve just been feeling so lost with myself lately, I took it out on you.
I was wrong to put that burden on you. I may envy you, but I love you, and I’m proud to see you do well. ”
“I’m sorry, too,” she said, hurriedly. “I said some cruel things to you. And you were right, even if I didn’t want to admit it—I have been keeping much from you because I didn’t think you could help.
But it’s unfair of me to think that without even giving you the chance.
In the end, you are the one I trust the most in this world, and I think of you as my soulmate, my brother beyond mortal bonds.
Running through life without you by my side is, frankly speaking, quite miserable. ”
Her words made him smile. “I feel much the same. I spent the month in the cloisters of a shrine in Southwest. Would you believe I finally got started on my inking?”
She gawked as he turned and raised his linen shirt, revealing a small segment of an ornate black-ink vine drawn into a single ridge of his spine. “Goodness, you’ve always talked about doing it. How was it?”
“Unbelievably awful,” he confessed with a sheepish laugh.
“Felt like my skin was tearing apart. There’s a reason why I only have this little bit done after a whole month.
Every single session, I’d show up with all the scriptures memorized, the words clear as day in my head, ready to recite them to the shrine-master who’s wielding a tiny mallet and this wooden tool with a needle coming out of it—but the moment the needle jabbed my skin, my mind would go blank with pain, and the shrine-master would pause his tapping, waiting for me to continue to prove I’m worthy of the ink.
A single chapter of the Poetics was what got me this little vine—it’s going to take me ages to get half my back covered.
” He paused, glancing at her. “Throughout the ceremonies, I kept thinking that as meaningful as it was for me to finally get my inking started, the fact that you weren’t witnessing me recite at least a verse or two made the whole thing fall short of what I had been imagining all my life. ”
“What good is a victory hollowed out by loneliness? Nectar tastes sweeter when you share it with one you love,” she mused. She gave him a rueful smile. “I’ll be there for you at the next ceremony.”
He returned the smile, lowering his shirt and leaning toward her. “Lytha, do you know why the oath-swearing sign is what it is?” He made it then, crossing two fingers of his left hand over two fingers of his right.
She smiled. “Something from the Poetics?”
He nodded. “It’s because two together is always stronger than one alone.
If one falls, the other can help them up; if one is cold, the other can keep them warm.
A single thread is easily snapped, yet a cord twisted of many strands is not quickly broken.
That’s why—two fingers of your left bound to two fingers of your right, forming an unbreakable oath. ”
He held the back of her head, pressing their foreheads together. He remade the sign again, holding it in front of her chest.
“And that’s what I want my friendship to be for you. Something you can count on not just in good times, but in bad times, too. Even when the world overwhelms us, I’ll stand by your side and catch you when you fall.”
She smiled, eyes brimming with tears. She made an oath-swearing sign of her own and pressed the back of her fingers against his. “And I swear the same oath to you.”
There in the dim armory, surrounded by walls of weapons, hounded by echoes of spectators overhead, they clung together, a silent vow stitching the frayed ends of their friendship into a many-threaded cord.
· · ·
M ASTER D OTHILOS CAME then, unaccompanied.
The moment he crossed the threshold, he fixed Lythlet with a distraught look. Without so much as a glance in Desil’s direction, he chased him away with a flick of his fingers. “Boy, go wash up.”
Desil rose, glaring at him. “I’m not leaving Lythlet with you.”
Master Dothilos flung the flimsy jackpot pouch at his chest, snapping, “I said, go and wash up, boy!”
Desil stepped forward, fists curling by his side.
But Lythlet stayed his hand, squeezing his wrist. “It’s all right. He won’t hurt me here. I want to hear what he has to say.”
Casting misgiving eyes, Desil obeyed, heading to the alcove at the back. Cupping water with a pail, he washed himself facing them, keeping them in full view, though he wouldn’t be able to hear more than scraps of their conversation.
Master Dothilos and Lythlet stared at one another, neither saying anything. The effortless charisma he’d mustered at the end of the match was gone; he was now deep in contemplation.
At last Master Dothilos spoke, “I thought you had a plan. Even when you cast your spear aside, I thought you had a plan. Even when your feet were jammed down the beast’s throat, I thought you had a plan.
It was only when you looked at me did I realize you truly had no tricks up your sleeve, no cunning scheme to kill the beast. You only wanted to die. Why would you do that?”
“Because I understand the importance of cutting my losses early before they spiral out of control,” she said quietly. “I am ready to throw my life away if it means you’ll never have a reason to harm my father and mother.”
“That was just a petty threat, no more than that,” he snapped. Then he grimaced, looking aside. “I was caught up in the moment. Have the wisdom to know that for the future.”
She gazed tiredly at him. “Master Dothilos. You know me better than to think I’ll believe that. Men frequently make threats they wholly intend, only claiming they never meant a word of it when it rebounds on them.”
“Nothing I said will happen as long as you obey me. Do not throw your life away over petty matters, my dear girl.”
“I refuse to live and die on your terms as your cur, Master Dothilos. I will not choose apathy over justice, wealth over duty, wrath over mercy. And I know,” she said hurriedly as he opened his mouth, “that you’re about to reiterate these things are myths.
But I don’t agree, and I have no intention of living a life that neglects these things. ”
He shut his eyes, clearly frustrated, but knowing this was a fruitless path to take. “Believe what you want to believe then, Golden Thorn, but do not be so reckless with your one life.”
“You know what I desire then. If you want me to live, then grant me the freedom to live as I will. Promise me you will withdraw the threat of the Eza and leave me and my family be.”
He sucked in his breath between his teeth, her plea bitter to his taste.
“I will grant you a reprieve, then,” he said, “out of consideration for your fragile mental state. Perhaps introducing you to underworld matters alongside your conquessorial career was too much. I’ll leave you be until your final match—and then we shall resume. ”
“That’s not enough, Master Dothilos,” she said quietly.
He said nothing. The silence between them turned thick as molasses, and in the depths of it, hope bloomed.
He could only be quiet because he was considering her plea—his strange affection for her, the genuine kinship of the two browbeaten children found deep within their bitter psyches, was the fulcrum upon which her fate teetered.
Then his eyes darkened, and he stood with a scowl. As he left the room, he tossed back a contemptuous glare. “Do not cross the line, cur.”