The crier shouted again, embellishing an entry for Urzaia, but Calder didn’t hear it. Even as Urzaia marched into the light, black axes held high, Calder’s mind was whirling.
What now?
The plan called for them to wait for Urzaia’s victory, because after more than five hundred victories in a row, only a fool would bet against one more. Then again, he wasn’t fighting men. He fought some sort of…horned bear creature four times his size. And if it was a Kameira, as Calder was certain it was, then it would have some power over nature. Judging from its name, it might be able to set Urzaia on fire. Waiting for the fight would be ridiculous; they had to rescue Urzaia as soon as possible. So what was the plan? Detonate an extra charge somewhere else, as a distraction, and then get Urzaia up to the victory stage?
He was still considering his options as the Greenwardens unclipped the Cinderbeast’s collar and hurriedly withdrew. The Kameira glanced from one side to the other, as though trying to figure out if it were really free, and then sniffed at the air. Smoke rose from its nostrils.
Finally, Calder put the clues together, and the bottom dropped out of his stomach. He’d never felt as stupid as he did in that moment.
Copper shields in front of the spectators. Magisters standing ready. Smoke drifting from its nostrils. Light and life, they’d called it the Cinderbeast.
It was going to breathe fire.
Kameira could use their powers in a thousand different ways; it might summon fire from the heavens, or throw fireballs somehow, but the point was that it set things on fire with its Intent. He was no alchemist, but he knew he didn’t want fire involved in a plan that relied on explosives.
He shot to his feet, shoving a bigger man down into his seat as he ran forward. He actually punched a boy five years younger in the jaw, feeling terrible about it, but the boy wouldn’t get out of the way. By the time anyone realized what he’d done and got upset about it, he’d already moved on.
Calder had started out ten yards from the stairs, but he still wasn’t fast enough. The Cinderbeast drew in a deep breath of air, filling its lungs, and exhaled a stream of pure flame.
The copper shields at the front of the seats lit up as they absorbed excess heat, and the crowd gasped in unison. So the Magisters had done their jobs, and the people were safe. The Greenwardens had done their jobs, and the Cinderbeast hadn’t gone on a berserk rampage. And Urzaia had done his job, because he’d obviously anticipated the fire and had somehow leaped completely over it, in an inhuman jump that would have shocked Calder at any other moment.
In fact, the only one who had failed to do his job was Calder.
Because those spare charges, those half a dozen alchemical charges with their unlit fuses, were still below in the arena waiting room. Only two iron grates away from the fire.
The flame flowed through the grates and into the room like a river, then faded. There was a bare instant, a frozen portrait of time, in which nothing happened. Calder almost started to believe that they were safe, and that he had time to figure out a way to stop this.
Then the coliseum echoed like a struck drum the size of a city, and smoke billowed out from the grate. It was all the way on the other side of the stadium, but Calder still trembled and lost his balance. The stone cracked all around, a black line racing up the stands.
And people scurried out of the way like an evacuating anthill as the arena seats slowly, ever so slowly, began to crumble.
On Calder’s side of the arena, he was in more danger of being crushed as panicked people desperately sought the closest escape—which, in his case, meant straight past him and toward the stairs. But, as the first woman to reach the door to the stairway found out, the entrance was locked. Jerri had sealed it with alchemical resin as soon as she’d managed to clear people out of the stairway.
So Calder found himself mashed against the base of the victor’s stage, losing breath by the second, as people struggled to smash in the door. The iron-banded wood bowed, and he prayed it would break so that the people behind him would stop pushing.
Something almost as good happened—the stone against his face suddenly slammed against him, and a deafening sound set his ears ringing.
Jerri had detonated the charges.
He wasn’t sure how she’d done it—he held the matches, and Petal had the backup set—but he almost wept with relief. The people backed off, leaving his lungs room to expand, as they fled from the door as though expecting it to explode.
In that brief moment of freedom, he glanced at the arena.
The Cinderbeast was in the stands.
As half of the arena slowly fell apart, the invested shields had fallen as well. Streams of fire chased spectators away, though they fell well short of the nearest—people had stampeded on instinct after the first explosion.
Through the fire and crumbling stone, Urzaia Woodsman ran toward the monster. Calder couldn’t see the man’s expression, and certainly couldn’t hear him, but he was sure the Champion was laughing.
Calder pushed his way back through the crowd, meeting surprisingly little resistance. People were fighting this way, but if he clambered over the seats, no one cared enough to stop him going the wrong way. It was his life to waste.
When he caught sight of Urzaia again, the gladiator was riding the Cinderbeast’s back like a horseman on an unruly mount. He struck with one of his hatchets, and the impact slammed the Kameira into the stone seats.
In the back of his mind, Calder wondered at that. When Urzaia fought the Houndmaster, his hatchet had sunk into the man’s chest. Now it was striking with enough impact to drive a giant Kameira into stone. If it could hit that hard before, wouldn’t it have blown the man’s corpse into the stands? And how did Urzaia’s body withstand the opposing force?
It wasn’t worth considering just now, but as a Reader, Calder was still curious.
He finally started to slow when he got close to Urzaia. He needed to be nearby when Urzaia was finished to lead the man out before he was recaptured, but Calder wasn’t foolish enough to interfere in a Champion’s fight.
Which was just as well, because there was nothing he could have done to help.
The Cinderbeast built up momentum, loping across the back of the stone seats and bucking its head to try and gore the Woodsman. It didn’t come close. When that failed, it swatted at Urzaia with its claws, but the Champion swung around its neck like a monkey on a branch, laughing the entire time.
When the Kameira blew a burst of fire at nothing in particular, Calder knew it had given up. Urzaia must have sensed the same thing, because he swung himself down and to the Cinderbeast’s side. He steadied himself on the ground, drawing his hatchets back.
Stone cracked under his feet, and Calder stared. No matter how fast the coliseum was tearing itself apart, the stone shouldn’t have softened. Could the fire have done something? Or maybe the Intent of thousands of desperate people…
As Urzaia slammed his weapons forward, Calder realized the truth. A handful of separate pieces clicked together in his mind.
The stone wasn’t that weak, Urzaia was just that heavy.
Rumor had it that the Sandborn Hydra, a Kameira actually native to the Izyrian desert around this very city, had the Intent to increase or decrease its own weight. The Blackwatch had commissioned some research into its unique properties as part of their work on The Testament, in the hopes of making the ship lighter without compromising hull strength. The research had come to nothing, as no one could locate a Sandborn Hydra for testing.
But according to legend, the Kameira’s hide was made of gold scales. Urzaia wore a golden hide around his upper arm.