The Optasia stood exposed, a cage of steel bars like the skeleton of a great chair.
Foster moved forward, and Calder grabbed his arm. “Don’t Read it,” he warned.
“How else are you going to check it for anything?”
Calder didn’t really have an answer for that. “If you Read it, you activate it. And if there is still a problem, it would pass to you.”
Foster grumbled something into his beard, but didn’t keep moving forward.
If he was honest with himself, Calder was here for a break more than anything else. There was nothing he could do with the Optasia unless he was willing to use it fully, which still frightened him. Anything the Great Elders wanted him to do deserved serious consideration first.
All in all, they stood staring at the throne for a full ten minutes before Andel politely suggested they stop wasting their time and leave.
On their way out, they passed a goat-legged Imperial Guard shuffling a sheaf of papers in his hands. He didn’t even know to bow when Calder passed, muttering to himself and scribbling on the topmost page.
“What’s the worst that could happen to you?” Foster asked Calder.
“I could go insane and die.”
“Besides that.”
“It works perfectly, but I don’t know how to use it, so I end up cursing an Erinin orphanage and everyone inside it dies.”
Andel held the great bronze door of the building open so everyone could pass. While they did, he asked a question of his own. “How likely is that, do you think? The Guild Heads all verified that the Optasia should be in working condition.”
Calder relaxed, letting his Intent drift back through the building to the Emperor’s chambers. He wouldn’t be able to Read anything properly at this distance, but he was surprised by a flicker of something strange.
He paused as the door slid shut, trying to figure out the wisp of unusual Intent he’d just picked up. He couldn’t quite place it, but it felt like something…hidden.
After a minute or two of quiet Reading, he finally placed the feeling.
“Someone’s in there,” he said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Eventually, the arena killed everyone.
The contests of duelists and gladiators were governed by centuries of tradition, and here in northern Izyria, tradition weighed heavier than Imperial law. The Emperor himself, as the story went, gave in to the tradition of the ancient Izyrian tribes by dueling one by one for their support. Here, that story was told to reinforce one simple point: even the Emperor bowed to the rules of the ring.
So when Urzaia was condemned to the arena to die, they couldn’t just lop of his head and be done with it. There were procedures to follow, spectators to satisfy. Fathers who couldn’t feed their children bought tickets to the fights, and roared more loudly than the rest. As long as they were happy, the arena’s administrators made money. The more money the administrators made, the more trickled down to the Patrons whose fighters cut and bled on the sand. It was in everyone’s best interest to keep the drunken, unruly mob in the stands happy.
And Urzaia did.
The rough iron gate rattled as it rose, and he marched up the stairs of yellow stone like the Emperor on his way to a coronation. He wore his trademark mismatched armor: leather straps over his chest and one arm, a patch of chain mesh over his heart, and thick gauntlets on both hands. The haphazard mix of protection made the gold-scaled hide wrapped around his left arm seem almost commonplace. If anyone was looking for a Vessel, their eyes would first turn to his hatchets, his gauntlets, or perhaps his ornate belt-buckle carved in the image of a snake eating its own tail. His captors had delivered his Vessel to him only after ensuring he was wrapped in invested chains.
That was another rule of the arena: the fighter had to walk onto the sands at his best.
When his feet left stone and crunched on sunlit sand, the crowd roared. He beamed at them, basking in their cheers and in the sun on his flesh, and lifted his black hatchets to the sky. The sound swelled. Not a seat was empty on this fine summer’s day; it was a healthy crowd even for a blood match. Two sides would enter the arena, and only one would walk away. At most.
Urzaia fought once every three days, which was all his Patron would allow. Every three days, excluding emergencies and Imperial holidays, he fought. His life was the wager, without exception—the Emperor’s command insisted that he die on the sands.
He had defied that command for three years.
Urzaia walked with a hatchet in either hand, the power of his Vessel flowing from the upper half of his arm to the rest of his body, the song of the crowd surrounding him. His blood thrummed with life, until he felt drawn tight like a new bowstring. An opponent had cut his little toe off in the last match, but he’d taken an even trade out of the man’s skull. His wounds had healed by now, and he was back in fighting shape, though he’d have to watch his balance.
Thoughts like those flew through the back of his mind so that he was hardly aware of them. He was enjoying the moment too much to dwell on the future.
He may have been sentenced to die here, but the arena gave him a reason to live.
His opponent met him on the sand, a man whose scars twisted his face into an eternal snarl. He wore a wolf pelt with the beast’s head over his own like a hood, and he carried a sickle in each hand. He must have been trying to make a signature for himself, like Urzaia’s hatchets. It would help the audience to remember him.
The man might already be famous; Urzaia only remembered those who stood in the ring against him, and those were all dead men. He did know that the audience applause was significantly cooler than it had been for Urzaia, and there were a few jeers thrown in for good measure. This stretched Urzaia’s smile even wider.
“Only one of you?” Urzaia gestured to his opponent with one hatchet. “It is good to see a man in the arena at last!”
The crier’s voice boomed throughout the arena, enhanced by invested acoustics. “Once again, Imperial citizens, we have a blood match to slake your endless thirst!” He waited for the cheers to die down before continuing. “Clearly, you all know the man who splits his foes like logs for winter, the undefeated WOODSMAN!”
Wild cheers accompanied this announcement, as they always did the introduction of fighters. Urzaia simply couldn’t believe they were putting him up against a lone opponent. Every match thus far had been tilted against him in some way, designed to end in his death. He didn’t blame the administrators; that was how the arena should be. But for this man to pose a threat to him alone…was he some sort of legendary Soulbound? Perhaps a Guild Head had come in disguise.
“And against him, the tamer of beasts, the victor of a hundred contests under Patron Gametti, the man who is a full team unto himself…HOUNDMASTER!”
And Urzaia felt the heavy weight of disappointment once again. Of course they would send more teams against him, and he was foolish to expect otherwise. For his three hundredth match, they had surprised him by matching him against two teams. He shouldn’t have allowed himself to hope for one man who could threaten him.
He looked at the other iron grates behind the Houndmaster. Based on the man’s name, he was assuming there were some dogs or Kameira back there, but none of the gates moved. Were there invisible Kameira wolves surrounding him even now?
The thought cheered him a bit, and he swept a hatchet to one side experimentally. No sudden squeals suggested he’d bitten into invisible dog flesh.
When the crier finished his lines—a few more sentences about the glory of the Empire and the history of this arena in particular—and the bell at the top of the tower rang, Urzaia was still waiting for the hounds to show up.