On my second try I made it upright, staggered around in a drunken circle, and beheld my opponent. He was also crawling… or trying to. Most of his face was obscured with blood from the head-hit I’d given him. What I could see was purple from strangulation.
“Finish!” Petra screamed. Red spots flushed through her white makeup. She seemed to have changed sides. Not that I wanted her support. “Finish! Finish!”
The others took it up: “FINISH! FINISH! FINISH!”
Cla rolled over and looked up at me. If it was mercy he wanted, it wasn’t mine to give.
“FINISH! FINISH! FINISH!”
I picked up his spear…
He raised one hand and touched the heel of his palm to his forehead. “My prince.”
… and brought it down.
I’d like to tell you that I came back to my better self at the very end. To say I felt regret. It wouldn’t be true. There’s a dark well in everyone, I think, and it never goes dry. But you drink from it at your peril. That water is poison.
8
I was made to kneel before Elden, his bitch, and the other important members of his retinue.
“Well-fought, well-fought,” Elden said, but in an absent kind of way. He was indeed drooling from the sides of that slack mouth. Some pussy liquid—not tears—oozed from the corners of his huge eyes. “Bearers! I want my bearers! I’m tired and must rest until dinner!”
A quartet of gray men—deformed but brawny—came hurrying down one of the steep aisles bearing a palanquin with gold trim and purple velvet curtains.
I didn’t see him get into it, because I was gripped by the hair and pulled to my feet. I’m tall, but Red Molly towered over me. Looking up at her reminded me of looking up at the statue I’d climbed to watch for the monarchs coming home to roost. Her face was pasty and round and flat, like a great pie-plate dusted with flour. Her eyes were black.
“Today you fought an enemy,” she said. Her voice was a basso rumble, far from comforting but better than the locust-buzz of the night soldiers or the liquidity of Elden’s voice. “Next time you fight a friend. Should you survive, I’ll cut off your pizzle.” She lowered her voice. “And give it to Petra. To add to her collection.”
I’m sure that the hero of an action movie would have managed a smart comeback, but I looked into that wide face and those black eyes and couldn’t think of a fucking thing.
9
It was the Lord High himself who escorted me to the team room. I looked back once before stepping into the corridor, just in time to see the palanquin, curtains drawn, swaying up the steep aisle. I presumed Petra, she of the beauty mark, was inside with Flight Killer.
“You surprised me, Charlie,” Kellin said. Now that the pressure of his duties as the day’s master of ceremonies was over, he sounded relaxed, maybe even amused. “I thought Cla would have your head quicky-quick. Next time you’ll fight one of your friends. Not Iota, I think—we’ll save him. Perhaps little Jaya. How would you enjoy stopping her heart as you did Cla’s?”
I didn’t answer, just walked ahead of him down the sloping corridor, keeping as far from his high-voltage aura as possible. When we reached the door Kellin didn’t follow, only closed it behind me. Thirty-two of us had gone to the field. Now there were only fifteen to register surprise that it wasn’t Cla stepping in but Charlie, banged up but otherwise unhurt. No, make that only fourteen. Gully was unconscious.
For a moment they only looked at me. Then thirteen of them fell to their knees and put their palms to their foreheads. Doc Freed couldn’t kneel, but he gave the salute from where he sat against the wall.
“My prince,” Jaya said.
“My prince,” the others echoed.
I had never been so glad in my life that Empis was a land without closed-circuit TV.
10
We washed off the dirt and the blood. The horror of the day stayed. Eris got Freed’s pants down and cleansed the deep wound in his thigh as well as she could. Every now and then she’d pause in her labor to look at me. They were all looking at me. Finally, because it was creeping me out, I told them to stop. Then they made a business of not looking at me, which was as bad, maybe worse.
After ten or fifteen minutes, four night soldiers came in. The leader gestured with his limber stick for us to come. There were no grays, so Gully had to be carried. I moved to take his top half, but Ammit shouldered me aside. Gently. “Nah, nah. Me ’n the big boy will do it.” Presumably meaning Iota, since the other big boy was now so much cooling meat. “Help the doctor, if you would.”