9

So it is that when I arrive at the City Fives Court a month later for my first trial as a Challenger I am wearing brown leggings, a brown tunic, and a brown mask. I’m not alone because Mis is making her first Novice run and Dusty is hoping for his first Novice victory.

We arrive in the Garon Palace procession, for naturally Lord Gargaron has decided to attend. The highborn are escorted away to the viewing terraces.

A Fives court is both the huge circular building with tiers of seating where trials are held, and the actual playing court in the center where five obstacles are set up. Tana escorts us to the adversary’s gate, a staircase that leads down to the undercourt below. Crowds of people line the approach, silent as unknown Novices arrive, and then cheering while tossing ribbons and rose petals under the feet of Illustrious who boast the colorful clothing Tana wanted me to wear.

Mis has chosen a glassy-white tunic and a splash of perfume on her feathered mask to go with her court name of Resin, a reminder of her family’s perfume business. Dusty wears red. He stalks beside Tana in a way that makes me grin, because at the stable he’s so funny, always joking and good-humored, and now he is putting on his court name of Wrath in the same way an actor puts on a mask to play a part.

The last time—the only other time—I entered the City Fives Court was for a trial I ran in secret in defiance of my father. That day no one took any notice of me, but now my dull clothes instantly draw attention because I am the only adversary not wearing brighter plumage.

“Spi-der! Spi-der!”

I descend into the undercourt as the chanting of my Fives name echoes after me. By the trickle of perspiration running down my spine I realize I am nervous.

The undercourt is a vast underground construction made up of two parts. The first is the area beneath the actual Fives court itself, sealed away from all people except the Fives administrators and engineers who devise a new version of the obstacles each week. The City Fives Court doesn’t have the truly elaborate structures of the Royal Fives Court, but the Royal Court hosts trials only four times a year as well as the occasional victory games. It can also be rebuilt each time, while the City Fives Court, where trials are held weekly, is rebuilt only once a year. No matter what variations the course architects create each week, the basic layout of the City Court will be the same for an entire year, which is an advantage for me because of my good memory for patterns.

The other part of the undercourt is the attiring hall, where adversaries with their attendants wait their turn to run. An adversary entered in the day’s trials can never see the court before the bell rings. That would be cheating.

Mis can’t stop pacing, so to help calm her I mirror her through a warm-up of menageries. My heartbeat slows. My mind steadies. When I clench my hands as part of bull I see how strong they are, ready for any challenge.

I can do this.

“Thanks, Jes,” Mis whispers.

A bell rings. Deep within the structure the winches start grinding, pulling the canvas off the court. A roar goes up as this week’s obstacles are revealed. Everyone sings the ritual opening song:

Shadows fall where pillars stand.

Traps spill sparks like grains of sand.

Seen atop the trees, you’re known.

Rivers flow to seas and home.

Rings around them, rings inside,

The tower at the heart abides.

A custodian calls the names of the first group, Mis’s among them.

I embrace her. “Keep your mind on the court. You’ll be fine.”

She hands over her entry chit and enters the ready cage with three other adversaries. I pace through another round of menageries with Dusty, staying warm and loose, and then he’s called.

Tana taps my arm a while later. “All the Novice trials are complete. Are you ready?”

“Yes,” I say. And I am.

My name is called for the first Challenger trial. I join my three competitors in the ready cage where we await the call to go to our respective start gates. It’s always smart to study the adversaries you’ll be running against. A lanky man with an aloof expression and the badge of a palace clan takes the green belt that means he’ll start on Trees. He looks strong and sure. A petite woman binds on the blue belt for Rivers. She looks almost dainty, even harmless, but small women like her have an advantage because they have less length and weight to move around than I do. The last adversary is a stocky older man with a few streaks of gray in his hair and scars at his knees and elbows, like he has recovered from a brutally injuring fall. He has the red belt for Traps, while I bind on the brown belt for Pillars. I like starting at Pillars, whose maze gives me a chance to work my intelligence. Maybe they will underestimate me, as I am easily the youngest of us four.

The woman ignores me, lost in her own mental preparations, but the two men study me, and I see one shape the word “Spider” with his lips.

A bell rings, and we are handed over to individual attendants who escort us down separate corridors to our respective start gates at the four corners of the court.

My attendant and I reach the start ladder that leads up to Pillars. The gate-custodian posted there gives me a friendly nod. I become a spear, poised and ready.

The bell rings, the sound clear and sharp. I leap up the ladder, the polished rungs flashing past as I scramble out into the hot sun. Glare fills my eyes, and I blink to cool the blaze. All around the court rise the stone tiers of seating, a huge circle of people shouting and cheering as they wait for us to make our moves.

A carved slab of wood that swings on hinges faces me, painted with a design of overlapping right angles to indicate this as the entrance to Pillars.

Shadows fall where pillars stand.

I ring the obstacle bell and push through to find myself facing myself, a girl dressed all in brown, and her brown face masked with brown. The maze is lined with mirrors, and the mirrors are reflecting mirrors, making it easy to miss turnings.

Unless you look for how the shadows fall.

It’s almost too easy.

I’m grinning as I climb up to the resting platform at the end of the obstacle. Sun drenches my face with heat. The grit of sawdust coats my lips. The crowd’s gestures help me identify where the other adversaries are: two in Trees and one in Traps. One person is already ahead of me.

Right now I have to choose whether to go on to Rivers, which means I will then continue on through Trees and Traps before Rings, or head into Traps and go the other way around through Trees and then Rivers.

I clamber down and run through the narrow passage to Traps.

As soon as I enter, exhilaration fills me. This Traps has three levels. No Challenger will take the lowest level, a mere arm’s length off the ground; that’s for Novices. The lanky young man wearing the green belt is working through the middle level, whose ropes and beams run along at the height of my head: challenging but not likely to be fatal should an adversary fall. The “trap” here on the lower and middle levels is a pole swing, a jump from the end of one beam to the beginning of another with a pole staked between that you have to swing around: you get momentum to help cover the gap, but momentum can also make it easy to overshoot the narrow beam.

But there is one more level, the highest of all.

Even if I don’t win, I have to make the best impression I can to ensnare the crowd’s affection by dazzling it. A murmuring buzz begins to build as I use my legs to power up a dangling rope, climbing past the middle level and straight to the top, three body heights off the ground. The wind teases across my face as I confront three challenges: a slack line, a beam split by a gap I’ll have to leap, and a taut rope. At the lowest level this would be fledgling work, but up here it’s possible for an adversary to fall to her death, adding spice to a trial.

Win, or die.

My father the baker’s son didn’t work his way up from his lowborn origins to become a general by not taking chances.

I cross the slack line with a series of tricks: a knees-up jump, a full turnaround spin, and an airborne somersault that lands me on the beam. The crowd roars its approval.

The beam is split into two parts with a gap between, and the flat top of the metal pole, the part you have to swing around on the lower levels, here functions as a stepping stone between the two halves of the beam. But I don’t use the pole as a step to bridge the gap. I back up five long steps and run. With a twist and a tuck, I spin over the pole, across the gap, and land solidly on the other side.

No training has prepared me for the howl of excitement that lifts from the crowd. Remembering how I saluted my father at the victory games, I straighten my shoulders and tap my chest twice in acknowledgment, and they howl even louder.

Then I tune out everything except the taut rope. Never look down to where death lies, far below. I breathe my racing thoughts into the calm pool of my innermost heart, and cross in ten swift steps.

Green Belt reaches the resting platform of Traps just after I do. I snap, “Kiss off, Adversary” before I vault down to the passage that leads to Trees. At the entry gate I shove open the door and step off to one side to study the obstacle, just in time, because my stocky red-belted opponent sprints past me to the first cluster of climbing posts.

The Fives song thrums in my head: Seen atop the trees, you’re known.

“Kiss off, Adversary,” Red Belt taunts before he swiftly finger-climbs up a set of boards to the top of the first feature. When I follow, the finger climb isn’t too grueling; I’ve done ten in a row to that height in training. But when I reach the top I see I can’t possibly beat Red Belt on this obstacle because it is nothing but strength-climbing up and down sets of posts arranged in various configurations between here and the resting platform above.

That’s when I notice the posts themselves happen to be set into the ground close enough together that the tops of each could function as ascending stepping stones. Instead of climbing up and down each set of posts, a bold adversary could leap from the top of one to the top of the next in the same way a person might cross a stream one stone to the next. Anything that ascends counts as a climb, surely.

A slip means disaster—a broken leg or a broken neck. This route will take utter focus to ignore everything except speed, angle, forward propulsion, and balance, so I am just the person to try it.

Toes pushing, I dig deep, bending lower with each spring as my leg muscles thrust me up in a zigzag set of leaps, forward one two three four five six seven eight nine ten.… I’m slowing, and the gap between the last post and the final resting platform is too wide.

So I don’t try for the platform. I leap into the wind as if I am the probing filament of a spider’s thread cast into the air. I catch the edge of the resting platform with my hands, torquing my legs side to side to bring me to a halt.

For several breaths I hang, arms brushing my ears, body dangling.

Drifts of noise swell past like waves. Swinging up to the resting platform, I roll twice and jump to my feet. For once after completing Trees, my legs throb instead of my arms. Stocky is way behind me now. I flip him the kiss-off gesture to shouts of “Spider!”

I climb down and race along the next passage to Rivers. Quickly I negotiate the moving stones and then climb onto the nearest platform that gives entry into Rings, the final obstacle, at whose heart lies the victory tower.

In this configuration of Rings, short walkways and short stairsteps slowly rotate to produce a maze of brief connections that touch and vanish, creating both dead ends and open paths on the road to victory.

A foot scrapes the ladder as Red Belt climbs up, looking like he wants to punch me.

“You cheated,” he says. “You didn’t climb in Trees.”

“I climbed the tops of the posts. Each one was higher than the last.” My grin taunts him. “It’s not your judgment to make, Adversary. Kiss off.”

A jump takes me into Rings, and I ride each turning segment as it connects to another, choosing my path to carve the best route through. Blue Belt is already working her way through Rings and at first she is closer to the tower, but a wrong step takes her onto a path that pushes her on a detour while I make no misstep as I work my way in. I throw in a few flips for show.

In my first trial as a Challenger I climb the ladder and grab the victor’s ribbon to the cheers—and a few intimidating boos—of the crowd. Facing the balcony where Garon Palace’s winged and horned fire dog symbol flies, I pull off my mask to let them see my face.

Sunlight pours over me together with the surging clamor of the audience, as strong as wings lifting me. Grinning, I fling wide my arms to embrace the moment. The cheers, and boos, grow louder. Only then do I descend, victor’s ribbon clutched in my hand.

Two of the adversaries await me by the ladder into the undercourt. Red Belt repeats his charge. “You cheated, and my stable will file a protest.” The small woman says, “That was bold, Spider. I liked what you did. But I’ll beat you next time.”

“Kiss off, Adversary,” I say to her with a smile, and she flicks the kiss-off hand gesture back at me in amused reply.

I climb down into the retiring court, the section of the attiring hall reserved for adversaries who have already run. An attendant hands me a cup of royal nectar. Besides the royal family, only adversaries who have just completed a trial are allowed this drink. The sweetness hits so hard my eyes water.

I won.

With controlled breaths I quiet my dizzy heart, then look around as a Garon steward approaches me. “I am to escort you,” she says.

I follow her through passages and stairs to the upper tiers. The steward shows a token to guards, who admit us into the area reserved for Patron lords. As I pass, sweaty and reeking, one mutters, “Well raced, Spider. No one saw that trick coming.”

We walk into the rear of the Garon balcony. Masked servants bring platters of food to the highborn. Lord Gargaron and Lady Menoë sit in the front row. Behind them sit less exalted members of the household, men separate from women, all strangers to me.

My gaze catches on a very pretty young woman dressed in the beribboned glitter of one whose fortune is her looks. I know Denya because she and my sister Amaya were friends, and closer than friends to judge by things said in my hearing. Denya’s father, like mine, was a captain in service to Lord Ottonor before the lord died. When Gargaron paid off part of the debt of Ottonor’s household in order to get my father, he took Denya as part of the payment owed him, to become his concubine.

A servant brushes past carrying a platter of spiced prawns sprinkled with paprika and kneels to offer these delicacies with a spry flourish to Denya. The servant wears a slim half-mask, a band of spangled fabric pulled across her eyes that does nothing to hide her lovely features and the luscious bow of her carmine-reddened lips.

My heart turns to stone. I open my mouth, then snap it shut as the servant turns her back on me to hide her very familiar face. Amaya can’t possibly be stupid enough to have taken work in the household of our greatest enemy who must believe she is dead!

“Spider!”

A voice cracks over me. Stiffly I turn to face the front of the balcony, where two Fives administrators stand at attention before Lord Gargaron. Beads of perspiration seep down the back of my neck as I come to parade rest before the two administrators, one middle-aged and one white-haired but still hale and strong.

“Your victory has been declared forfeit, Spider.” Oddly, Gargaron doesn’t seem angry. He’s not stroking his whip, and his fingers splay with utter relaxation on the armrests of his cushioned chair. “It has been explained to me that you did not complete Trees by climbing, as the rules demand. Therefore you will hand over your victor’s ribbon to the lord engineer. Go on.”

It is so hard to unclench my fingers from the prize, even if it is a slip of gold ribbon no longer than my forearm. My chest tightens with fear as I realize the danger I’ve put myself in. Being whipped by Gargaron would be a mercy compared to the other punishment that could be meted out: banishment from competition.

The middle-aged engineer yanks the ribbon from my grip.

Gargaron tilts his head to study me. “Had you a question or a comment, Spider?”

“I ascended the posts,” I say, trying to hide my nervousness from my potential executioner.

“What? No excuse?” Gargaron taps fingers on the armrest.

“I wanted to win, my lord. After considering the options, it was clearly the fastest way up. Since each post was a bit higher than the one before, it seemed to fit the definition of Trees: that you have to climb.”

Lady Menoë snaps open her fan and laughs behind it.

“What do you say, Lord Perikos?” Gargaron asks the older man, the lord administrator.

Lord Perikos’s face is adorned with the smile of a person enjoying the theatricals. In fact, he barely restrains an outright laugh. “We will inform the engineers to do a better job in subsequent trials by not leaving openings that may be misinterpreted by bold adversaries intent on giving the crowd an exhilarating spectacle.”

The lord engineer huffs like an offended bull. “We didn’t imagine someone would have the temerity… the audacity… to risk themselves by leaping up along the tops of the posts.”

I gesture toward the court, gaining courage from Lord Perikos’s amusement. “From up here it looks exactly like a stairstep challenge. If the engineers didn’t realize the posts could be used in the way I used them, then someone wasn’t thinking things through.”

The engineer sputters as Lord Perikos guffaws, then addresses Lord Gargaron. “Her sole penalty is to forfeit the victory. Henceforth she must follow the rules according to the regulations set down during the reign of Kliatemnos the Second. If she does not, she will be banned from the Fives.”

After the two men depart, Lady Menoë lowers her fan. Cunningly drawn wings unfurl from the corners of her eyes in the current cosmetic fashion.

“I like your spirit, Spider. You showed them for the fusty, rule-bound old donkeys they are. You will attend me this coming Firstday when I go to the palace to visit Queen Serenissima.”

“Yes, my lady.”

The crowd breaks into a flurry of cheers melded with derisive boos as a herald announces the retraction of my victory.

Gargaron studies the teeming multitude. “Go stand at the railing, Spider. Let them see you.”

I walk to the railing. With hands fixed behind my back I let the rush of sound wash over me as people see and acknowledge my presence. My father said that in battle, it is not just what you see but also what you hear that tells you the mood of your soldiers, of the enemy, of the day itself.

This is what I hear: A few might think me a cheater, but most people love what I did because I acted audaciously. If every adversary runs with caution then a stupor sets in. Tricks and impulsive chances give the Fives an intoxicating flavor. Skill matters, but daring and flair matter too.

I hope the Commoners in the crowd see a girl who outwitted the rules imposed by the Patron masters. That’s how I will capture their approval.

My gaze strays to the trial under way. In Trees a man with excellent grip strength hangs at ease one-handed as he seeks his next hold. The fickle crowd forgets me and cheers him.

“That’s enough, Jessamy. Go to the back and refresh yourself.” Gargaron’s sense of timing is impeccable, pulling me away from the railing as soon as he senses the crowd’s disinterest. “Come back after you’ve washed. You will watch the rest of the trials from the corner of the balcony. Many of our acquaintances will wander by over the rest of the afternoon to get a closer look at you.”

“Yes, my lord.” I retreat without turning my back on him or Lady Menoë.

As I pass the benches where the women sit, Denya gestures commandingly to the servant holding the prawns. “Go on and see to her, but leave those on the table for us to finish.”

A tent runs along the back of the balcony, divided by canvas walls into cubicles. The steward shows me to the farthest cubicle, where an old dog sleeps on a pillow, snoring. As soon as the steward leaves, Denya’s servant enters carrying a pitcher of water, a basin, soap, and a towel. She has cropped hair as Patron-born servant women do to mark their lowborn rank, and a deeper golden sheen on her cheeks like she has gotten too much sun. The short hair changes the look of her face more than anything, making her chin seem sharper. But I know it’s her. The moment she puts down the basin and pitcher, I grab her arm so hard she squeaks.

“What are you thinking?” I demand in a fierce whisper.

Amaya shakes off my grip. “Maybe the same thing you were thinking when you broke the rules in the trial you just ran. I know how to use cosmetics to hide what I am.”

“Barely passing as a Patron won’t protect you if Lord Gargaron recognizes you!”

“How would he? He only ever saw me once!”

Footsteps alert us. Amaya pours water into the basin. When a steward looks in to check on us, I am washing my face and hands.

“You are wanted on the balcony, Spider,” says the steward, although her expression suggests she doubts my suitability to venture out there.

“I can tidy up her hair,” says Amaya chirpily. “What a frightful mess it is!”

“Very well, Orchid. But hurry up.” The steward departs.

“Orchid?” I mutter.

“You don’t need to sneer at me like that.”

“I’m not sneering. I’m trying not to laugh.”

“I think ‘Orchid’ suits me! I always wondered why Father called our servants after plants and it turns out it’s something all the highborn palaces do. He must have learned of the custom in the army.” Her lips twitch. “It’s better than the first thing the senior steward wanted to name me.”

“Which was?”

“Jasmine, like you, Jessamy.”

We both snicker, then clap hands over our mouths as the dog lifts its head, too blind to tell who we are. There is nowhere for me to sit so I kneel on the ground as she tidies my hair with her usual ruthless efficiency. The truth is, having her here yanking at my curls is comforting. She’s the ally I’ve been missing, the one who knows everything that I can’t tell anyone else.

“Does Mother know you’re here?” I ask.

“I just told her I would get work, not where. Now that Polodos is saddled with the inn we need more money than what you sent to make a go of it.”

“So Ro-emnu did bring the coin.”

“Yes. The poet has quite fallen in love with Mother. I don’t mean in a romantic way; I mean like people do, wanting to ask her advice about how to court a lover or how best to earn a living in the market. What fish is healthiest to eat. Which herbs are best to relieve which malady. He can talk to her for hours about her life in the village. He questions her endlessly about the customs they observed there when she was a girl.”

“She barely told us about any of that!” It’s not fair Ro-emnu gets to see her when I can’t, that she’ll tell him stories she never told me. “He’s a dangerous man to have around, considering the king had him arrested once already for writing a play critical of the royal family.”

“Maybe so, but he’s helped Polodos and Maraya clean things up, and he brings friends to the inn to try to get a regular clientele started.”

“What kind of friends? The last thing we need is his activities drawing attention to Mother!”

“Easy for you to say, with a fancy roof over your head and all the food you can eat! We can scarcely afford bread for ourselves, much less stock meals and beer for customers. So you see I had to get work to help with expenses.”

“You didn’t have to get work here.”

“If you knew how unhappy Denya’s situation is, you wouldn’t criticize. At least with me as her personal servant, she has one person who cares about her in that awful place.”

A knot twists in my chest as I think of Gargaron’s whip. “Is he cruel to her?”

The hard tugs she gives as she tidies my hair betray her agitation. “He didn’t extract her from the wreckage of Lord Ottonor’s debts so they could discuss the latest philosophical tract from the Archives or who will win the horse races next week! I won’t leave her, Jes. And you can’t make me.”

A reluctant grin tugs at my mouth. “I know I can’t make you. You’re the stubbornest person I’ve ever met.” I chew on my lower lip. “It could actually be really useful for you to be in Garon Palace. As long as you aren’t caught.”

“You’re the one who almost got caught because you have as much subtlety as a bull! I’m much better at disguise and playacting than you are.”

My mind is already spinning this new obstacle. “As Denya’s handmaiden you’re well placed to overhear gossip at parties and in the servants’ quarters.”

“Exactly! I’ve been waiting to tell you that I heard a group of women and children were sent north a month ago to one of the country estates to work, but I don’t know which estate. It’s possible Bettany is with them.”

“She is with them,” I say, and Amaya grabs my wrist in excitement, then releases me and steps quickly away as we hear someone approaching.

The steward enters. “Lord Gargaron wishes you to attend him at once.”

What greets me on the balcony makes me want to run back to the privacy of the cubicle. The men chatting with Lord Gargaron trouble me with sly glances and leering smiles. Father would never have allowed us girls to be thrown into a situation like this one, where a Patron man would feel at ease sizing us up as if we were a platter of spicy prawns he is deciding if he is hungry enough to eat. Father’s strictures annoyed me once, but now I see how hard he worked to make us safe in a land where we have no legal standing.

I pretend I am a pillar, smooth and polished and without expression.

One of the lords speaks to Gargaron although he keeps glancing at me. “Of course they had to strip her of her victor’s ribbon, but I swear by all three gods she was astonishing to see, Gar. Some days the Fives are too dull to bear, but not with her here taking any kind of chance. I was sure she would fall and crack open her head!”

“I was sure she would not,” says Gargaron.

My chin lifts at the praise, and then I remember who he is and what he has done.

Another man addresses me directly without any of the modest courtesy an Efean man would have shown. “They say you are General Esladas’s mule daughter. You run like he fights, don’t you?”

I look at Gargaron, for I dare not speak without his permission. He nods.

“If you mean that as a compliment to my father’s ability to seek out an innovative solution in the heat of battle, my lord, then I thank you for the praise.”

The men exclaim. “She speaks our language perfectly! Amazing!”

The man who was sure I would crack open my head whispers in Gargaron’s ear, but Gargaron shakes his head and says, “Good Goat, man, show some patience. If she fulfills her promise there will be plenty of time to snatch her victor’s ribbons.”

A flush heats my cheeks. I don’t want them to guess that they repulse me. Gargaron knows they do, and that is bad enough.

But he’s playing a long game, just as I am.

Today the crowd will remember what I did, not who won. When I glance at Gargaron, I bind this thought tightly into my heart. However powerless I am, I am not nothing. He is not as safe from me as he thinks he is.

I remember what Ro-emnu said: Someone like you can fight for Efea in ways no Patron will ever see until it is too late.