32

As we adversaries eat our morning porridge, not one person asks me what I did during my absence, but it is obvious by the way they whisper behind their hands that the news is spreading. When Kalliarkos shows up for training, flanked by Thynos and Inarsis, all talk ceases. People’s mouths might as well have been sewn up. Inarsis catches my eye and gives a subtle nod, but I know what it means: my family is installed at the inn as a temporary refuge.

Now I can breathe. Now I can truly enjoy our victory.

Once we are through menageries, Tana and Darios ride me all morning until I am so exhausted I can barely shift one foot in front of the next. On Trees I climb until my arms give out and my vision swims. Rivers defeats me as I splash a hundred times into the shallows and once scrape my knee so bloody it stings. I am so clumsy on Traps that everyone starts calling me “Dusty,” and in the maze of Pillars I keep mistaking my right hand for my left.

They whip me along, trying to make me cry. But why would I cry? My mother and sisters are free, my father did what he could for us, I am training to run the Fives, and a prince kissed me.

When the bell rings at last, I shuffle to the dining shelter. Not even Thynos and Inarsis can keep Kalliarkos from me. As exhausted as he looks, with shadows under his eyes and a fresh bruise on his chin from a fall on the court, he has a strut as he brings his platter over and sits beside me. His defiance brings a smile to my face although I am so tired it feels like the effort of grinning is the same as that of trying to hoist a massive stone.

He frowns. “Are you all right, Jes?”

“I’m about to fall asleep face-first into my soup.”

He nods gravely, leaning closer. “I’ll wipe off your face if you do. Promise.”

I stifle a giggle behind a hand but everyone hears it. Everyone sees. Everyone disapproves. I can practically smell it, as if flesh can exude castigation.

But Kalliarkos doesn’t care, and so neither do I.

I press the side of my foot against his under the table, where no one can see.

In a low voice he says, “Grandmother was very irritated with me for being out two nights running. But for once my mother spoke up. She said it meant I was behaving as a man should, not tied to their skirts. That was amusing, let me tell you.”

His light voice has such charm. The way he shares the little arrangements of the life he lives in the elaborate confines of Garon Palace makes me want to know everything.

The bell rings to mark the afternoon rest.

“Kal!” Thynos calls. A prince must rest in the safety of the palace.

With his sweetest grin as a promise he departs with his uncle.

Mis walks with me to the barracks, shaking her head. “You shouldn’t have done it. But he is very good-looking. There isn’t a single person in this whole stable he has taken a harsh word to, like he could, being a prince who could order any of us whipped or sent to the mines if the whim took him.”

“He’d never do that!”

“Oh, Jes, you sound like you’re in love. Tell me about it later!”

I collapse onto my cot and sleep like the dead. Or how I used to imagine the dead slept.

A hand shakes me awake. Talon stands over me. In the dim room her expression is unreadable. She taps her chest twice. I sit up in my underclothes, blearily trying to rub the leaden weight out of my eyes and limbs. The long slant of shadows through the shutter slats in my window and the silence suggest the others have already left for the afternoon session.

“Thank you,” I say, wondering why Mis did not wake me or if Gira and Shorty are mad or if Tana gave them orders to let me sleep. “Do you have another name than Talon that I can call you? Not if you don’t want to, but you can call me Jes. It’s short for Jessamy.”

She taps her chest again, points toward the outside, and leaves me sitting on my cot.

The first warning bell rings, calling adversaries to the training ground for the late afternoon session. With more haste than care I dress, gulp down water, and arrive on the court with drops still dribbling down my chin. I do not see Mis, Gira, or Shorty anywhere, nor any of the experienced adversaries. Even Talon has vanished. Elsewhere on the court, out of my sight, Tana calls out commands as she loops the adversaries through a drill. Only the beginners remain here. Darios works us through our menagerie with the look of a man who has given up on finding a single good thing in his dreary life, of which we are the last failing hope.

How bad a sign is it that I have been cast back in with the beginners?

Darios whacks my butt with his baton. “Don’t let your mind wander. Don’t get above yourself.”

It is a warning. But I can’t explain to him that I am not a fool in a way that he’ll believe. Instead I shove everything else from my mind and let myself live within the menageries: cat, ibis, elephant, snake, dog, falcon, bull, wasp, jackal, butterfly, gazelle, crocodile, horse, gull, monkey, scorpion, horned lion, crane, sea dragon, firebird, tomb spider.

When I work that deeply I never notice anything going on around me. It is one of the reasons I am good. Only after we finish with the deathly menace of tomb spider and I have the leisure to wipe the sweat from my face do I see the people who have come to sit on the viewing terrace.

Three women sit in a row: one elderly, one of middle age, and one young like me. The elderly woman looks as brittle as a misfired iron blade; her back is as straight as if a rod holds her up. No ribbons adorn her silver hair; she wears it in a single braid. Her gold gown has the flare of fire sewn out of rippling silk. The woman in the middle is no longer young and not yet old. She has a plump round moon face and a placid expression and a way of sitting that makes it seem she has been there forever and will be there forever, perhaps having forgotten where she came from or meant to go.

The young woman is shifting in her seat and impatiently tapping her fingers together. Her hair is a tower of ribbons and arches spun out of thin braids woven with yet more golden ribbons, and it shakes and shimmers with each of her impatient movements. If not for the presence of the other two women, I think she would have run out of here already. She has a look of bored disgust on her beautiful face, or else ants are crawling all over her body beneath her clothes.

This is my father’s wife.

I cannot help but smirk. I have gotten the better bargain.

Above the women, with a more commanding view of the proceedings, Lord Gargaron sits beside men I do not know but who resemble him enough to be kinsmen: brothers, nephews, cousins. The youngest crows out a laugh and points to a sight elsewhere on the court that I cannot see from the ground. He has a voice like a bullfrog’s, oddly deep in so small a frame.

“There he is! Ha ha! Look at Kal swing along that horizontal ladder like a monkey! I thought you said he was no good, Uncle Gar.”

All the beginners turn to stare at the speaker. Upon realizing with horror that they aren’t to stare at the lords, they glance accusingly at me as if my torrid love affair with the princely son will get them whipped for their part in the conspiracy, and finally fix their gazes on their feet. It happens in such unison that I would laugh if I weren’t quivering because I hate Gargaron so much.

Yet it is hard to fight down the smile that wants to burst out of me. Gloating will give me away so I wear my obedient face, knowing I have saved them, beaten him, and won his nephew’s trust and heart besides.

Darios whistles. We hurriedly assemble in our ranks. Lord Thynos stands in the place of honor, befitting his Illustrious status. I am sent to stand with the Novices between Gira and Dusty. Kalliarkos takes a place on the other side of Gira now that he has decided to become a real adversary who devotes his life to the Fives and not a prince playing at being one.

Lord Gargaron and his kinsmen descend to stroll up and down our columns.

He stops in front of Kalliarkos. “Well, Nephew, the Exalted Princess your grandmother and I have agreed you will be allowed one last trial at Novice rank. I have enrolled you in the victory games at the Royal Fives Court tomorrow. Lose, and you go into the army at my bidding and under my aegis.”

“What if I win?” asks Kalliarkos, annoyance flickering in the corner of his mouth.

“What if you win?” echoes Lord Gargaron, the tone shaded so close to mockery that I tense. The frog-voiced boy honks a laugh. “That would be food for discussion, would it not?”

Only now do I notice that Talon is nowhere to be seen. Are they hiding her?

My distraction catches me up short. Lord Gargaron paces past me, halts, pauses, and turns back. When he glances at Kal and back to me, I know he has heard the rumor. He measures me with an insulting ugly frown. But I say nothing. I show nothing.

“They call you Spider now, so I hear.” His smile is thin and his voice is thin but he is a man whose power is as weighty as the City of the Dead crushing the past into rubble. “Tomorrow you will run the first trial, Spider. Appropriate for the daughter to run in the victory games held in her father’s honor, do you not think?”

He pauses.

I nod obediently although my mind spins a giddy whirl at the thought of running a trial at the Royal Fives Court. In front of my father! If I could crow aloud, I would. But I mustn’t forget that I am merely an adversary on the court and he is the one in the undercourt spinning the Rings.

“Remember, Spider. I will be watching to see if you pass muster.”