He shall break the bonds that hold him,
light the end of Oppression’s Road for many,
and free the tortured peoples
from the evil grip of bondage.
For all that a clown twice his height made for an odd spectacle, it was even odder that Talid felt, for some reason, that he should recognize the man.
The three clowns behind the goliath, though, the ones with crossbows, Talid was sure he had never seen them.
As was his habit when guarding the upland bridge, he waved them through without a word, along with the kenku that followed, and the pair of halfling women wearing terrifying terra-cotta masks-one scowling, one smiling.
Cephas flew through the air over the canvas, tumbling. He wore a loose cloak over his armor so that his silver skin was not obvious, but he cast this off as he dived.
When he struck the arena floor, he struck as earthsouled. The crowd was small, but it roared.
Grinta the Pike was standing along one side of the canvas, leaning back against an extended bridge and keeping a pair of human men at a distance with her namesake weapon. If she was surprised to see him, she made no sign.
Instead, she made a quick pass with the pike, and the two mercenaries found themselves disarmed. They looked back and forth between the orc and Cephas with confusion and fear.
“Come on,” Grinta said to them, climbing onto the bridge as it retracted. “I have a feeling we’re about to see a better show than the one we were putting on.”
“Come out, Azad,” said Cephas. “Come out onto the canvas.”
He searched the stands and saw more people there. All the slaves and freedmen of Jazeerijah filed in, joining the handful of dozing goblins already present.
Azad answered from the gamemaster’s box, his response hesitant but still amplified enough to ring out across the canyon.
“Is that why you came back here, Cephas? You want me to fight you?”
The crowd buzzed at that, and Cephas caught the barest hint of the old bloodlust.
“No,” he shouted, answering Azad but speaking to all. “I have learned who you once were, Azad. I know that I bear the arms and armor you once wore, and that you were a mighty gladiator. But those days are long gone. I want something else. I want you to tell a story.”
Azad shook his head. “You took my book, Cephas. I don’t tell stories anymore.”
“This is a story that was never written down,” Cephas said, turning to address the crowd. “The story of the last fight of Azad the Free!”
“My last fight was long ago,” said Azad.
“Yes,” said Cephas. “Yes, that is the story I want to hear.”
In reply, Azad the Free sobbed.
It was a single, wracked cry; he swallowed it and cursed, but it rang across the canyon. The crowd grew silent.
Then, Azad said, “It is not a story. It is a lie. It was a lie.
“Marod told me he would send the deadliest fighter of the age against me to prove my glory forever. I thought he meant Shaneerah. I told him I would not fight her, but he said there was a woman even deadlier. He said she was a master of the feint and the hidden blow. He said she was impossible to predict. She was … She was a tired, ill woman who did not know how to hold a spear. But I did not know. I thought …”
“You thought it was a trick,” said Cephas. “And it was. But not the one you looked for. You were promised a glorious last battle, and instead you were used as a headsman’s axe, then rewarded with retirement all the same. And when you went to your reward, the woman’s son-”
“You could barely even speak,” said Azad. “You toddled around, hiding from everyone but the yikaria. Marod couldn’t stand the sight of you. And when he grew tired of having me at his table, he decided it would be amusing to give me a duty worthy of a household slave. I was to read his son to sleep.”
Cephas studied the canvas. This was so difficult, but he had come here for a reason.
“Azad, come out onto the canvas,” he said again.
The shattered old man at the lectern shook his head. “I will not fight you, Cephas,” he said.
Cephas held the flail up for all to see. He dropped it. “I did not come here to fight you, Azad. Or any of you.” He looked at the others. “I came here-we came here-to set you free.”
The slaves of the mote peered at one another, and at the Calishites, but stayed quiet. The voice that answered was Shaneerah’s. “You may take the slaves, earthsouled,” she said. “No, I offer even more. We will leave, my husband and I, and any others who want to come. But you are giving us nothing. My husband is Azad the Free. We are his freedmen. We have no chains you can break.”
Her voice carried strangely, and Cephas realized it was because she was moving as she spoke. She appeared behind the lectern and put one arm around her husband’s shoulder. Ninlilah and Ariella shadowed her.
Cephas said, “Not all chains are forged of steel, Shaneerah.”
Azad had withdrawn so far into himself that he reminded Cephas of those first bad months Cynda had before Elder Lin’s healing began to bring her back around. Shaneerah was the very opposite of Lin, her hate pure and undiminished.
“We have no chains you can break,” she repeated, and led her husband away.
Corvus joined Cephas at the podium as the last of the cables was drawn back in. Down in the canyon, Whitey and Melda supervised the newly freed slaves of Jazeerijah in rolling the canvas onto a wagon-mounted frame. The master clown believed there was enough of the sailcloth for a big top and two sizable side tents.
“Your formula didn’t get all the bloodstains out,” Cephas said, watching the work.
“Stains we can see and chains we can’t,” said Corvus. “Your cousins in Argentor will be impressed by all this symbolism.”
Cephas smiled with sadness, thinking of Sonnett’s and Lin’s disappointment with him. “More impressed than they are with my plans, anyway.”
Corvus clicked his tongue. It was not the sound he used for laughter, but a lower, hollower noise he had sounded more and more often in the last months. Cephas had still not decided exactly what it indicated, and he wondered if the kenku knew himself.
“They will not countenance violence, and we must not ask them to. But if you mean to take an active stance against slavery to complement Acham el Jhotos’s plans of centuries, and the Janessar plans of secrecy, then you must use the tools you have. My sword. Your flail.”
Cephas laughed. “I think I might make use of other tools of yours than just your short sword, old friend. I have arms and armor for this fight that the pashas cannot imagine.”
Light came up from below. The cookfires were being set among the wagons of the circus, and Whitey’s family and the other circus folk set aside their work.
Corvus stared out over the Island of the Free, where the freedmen who had not followed Shaneerah deeper into the mountains were pulling down the last of the old buildings under Tobin’s enthusiastic direction.
The twins and Ninlilah were spending the night with Grinta and her Bloody Moons, cementing their unlikely alliance, so it would be a quiet night in the canyon.
The kenku almost spoke aloud, but Ariella joined them, reaching her arm around Cephas.
So Corvus spoke to himself, and only to echo the earthsouled. “Arms and armor they cannot imagine, my friend. That they cannot imagine.”