The pasty, thick-set man called Wieler pokes him from behind with his nightstick, and Arran turns around and glares.
“Let’s get something straight,” he says, pent-up anger and panic fraying at the edge. “I’m not one of your serva fighters you can bat around. I’m a free man, and I’m pretty good at what I do. Touch me with that thing again, you and I are going to have a problem.”
It’s almost a relief, letting some of it out. He got to Belamar too late to warn Selah about Palmar, and now she’s out there with him, none the wiser to the danger and completely unprotected. Finding Miro and getting out and away from Palmar as soon as possible is the only option left.
He’s needed somewhere to put this heat since long before the unending coach ride, and people talking about him like he wasn’t even there, and being forced anywhere in the vicinity of the man who tore apart his family like it’s nothing at all, and having to remind himself all the while that he chose to do this. He’s needed it since long before then, since the moment he watched Montana Satterfield disappear into the darkness of Amphitheater Messalina, bound to Griff in the long march back to Revenant headquarters.
It was the right thing to do, he does know that. Doesn’t mean he wouldn’t prefer to just hit something. Wieler, preferably.
The handler blinks at him now, then grunts his assent. Bullies respond to strength, and between that little speech and Montana’s surprisingly strong uppercut, Arran apparently fits the profile.
Wieler shows him to the long row of iron cells at the leftmost end of the pits, just where Theo said it would be. Most are shut tight and locked, spectators gathered to ogle at the men, women, and thremed on the other side. Servae, Arran realizes grimly, the state of them confirming anything the locked gates left in doubt. While toned and trained and on the whole a pretty terrifying bunch, that doesn’t make up for the grisly sight of missing limbs and burn scars, crushed hands and gouged eyes. Here and there are slighter figures, attending servae. Most show clear signs of malnourishment, even those who aren’t outright emaciated. No rations wasted on non-fighters, then. They’re not the ones who bring in the coins.
Three cell doors at the very end are wide open, however, revealing a connecting network amongst them once inside. That’s where the plebeian fighters are getting ready.
“First-timer, right?” Wieler asks, grabbing some kind of schedule off the rough concra wall. Arran nods, ignoring the whispers and threatening glare one man flexing on a bench is sending his way. “Okay. You’re on with Nameed over there, third match. Ground rules for opener fights: no weapons, no killing, you get five minutes to knock him out or you don’t get your cut.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. People don’t pay to see pleb boys rough each other up. Questions?”
“Yeah,” he says, eyeing the little corridor that seems to sneak its way from the open cells along behind the back of the closed ones. Theo told him to look for that. “There a toilet that way I can use?”
He doesn’t have much time, not if he’s supposed to change his mind before the third match and get Selah the hell away from Palmar. Wieler points him in the right direction down the dark, narrow hall carved into the bedrock, and the moment his back is turned, Arran is at the cell bars asking, “Miro? I’m looking for Miro Ontiveros.”
The first person to notice him, when he finally gets her attention, just shrugs. Doesn’t know who he’s talking about. He has better luck with the next, an older man with a nasty scar running down his neck that’s taken his whole ear off. Arran tries not to stare as he points him further along. Heart beating against his chest, he slides down the long, cramped hallway, passing gate after gate and savage Quiet, how many people are down here?
Quite suddenly and without warning, he thinks of Pina Bema, the corner-store owner a day late on rent.
Fabian, the cook at Breakwater, whose parents took out loans he inherited and could never hope to repay.
Tair, dumped on the steps of the Servile Children’s Asylum at only a few days old, just another mouth to feed.
Theo, who Griff said spent nine years down here, and Arran still doesn’t know why.
It doesn’t matter why. No one deserves this. The names and crimes spin through his head, and Arran passes face after anonymous face, exhausted and worn and scratched and burnt. The burdens on society. The ones left behind. Any moment of his life, that could have been him, and he’s never appreciated as clearly as he does now how much of a shield Dad’s money and name were for him. When you have influence, the rules don’t apply.
He can hear Dad’s voice now, clearly in his mind. We live for the many.
Not the few.
He can do that. That is what it is to be a Revenant. These are his people now.
Finally, at the second to last gate, he grabs a bald thremid’s shoulder and hisses, “I’m looking for Miro—”
“Yeah, I heard.”
The voice comes from somewhere to the right.
Miro Ontiveros is tall, taller even than Arran, which doesn’t really come as a surprise. He is a clavaspher player, after all. But his long braids have been buzzed to the root, and there’s a just-fading scar split across the bridge of his now-broken nose. That silver cuff clasped around his left ear. The wide, friendly face from Tair’s sketch is gone, replaced by one that’s seen far too much in too short a time. He eyes Arran from a wary distance, scanning him up and down before asking, “What do you want?”
“My name’s Arran. I’m here . . . I’m here for your sister. I came to bust you out.”
The distrust doesn’t leave his eyes. “You know Xochitl? She’s here?”
“No—I . . .” And here Arran’s mouth runs dry. He doesn’t like lying. He doesn’t like lying by omission. But there’s a time and place to grieve, and this isn’t it. He’ll mourn the man’s sister with him later. “She’s not, it’s just me and some friends. Is there a way out of there from your side?”
Miro shrugs, grimacing at the metal bars between them. “No. They lock us in during matches, meals, nighttime. Anything that’s not training, really.”
“All right,” says Arran, thinking very fast. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Theo said the cells were closed off, but not locked. “All right. I’ll try to find, I don’t know, a pin or something. Do you know how to pick a lock?”
“No. And even if I did, I wouldn’t.”
Arran stops. “What?”
“I don’t know you,” he says, his face hard. “I don’t know that you know Xo. And even if I did, I step out of line and my mima’s fragged. So I’m staying right where I am, thanks.”