“Kill them because they blindly follow your orders?” she asked. “That would make me just like you.”
Each day, he laughed as he led her down the mountain into the festive streets.
Each day, he stood beside her and held her arm and forced her to watch Eadamm’s humiliation, Eadamm’s torture.
On the seventh day, it was late afternoon before a slave came with the tunic and embroidered vest she had worn all those many nights ago, at the party where she’d looked at Jyrbian with lust and anticipation.
The castle had been rumbling with parties and celebrations all day. The execution was soon, she knew. And she knew Jyrbian would force her to watch, but she could feel nothing but relief that it would soon be over. At least Eadamm would be beyond Jyrbian’s reach, beyond pain.
The late afternoon sun shone brightly in the courtyard, making the cobblestones so warm that she could feel them through her boots.
Jyrbian was waiting for her as always, as was Kaede. She mounted without being prompted, but held back on the reins until Jyrbian turned back to her. “Why do I have to go to this?” she asked quietly.
He smiled and chided her, “Khallayne, you were here for the beginning. You can’t miss the end.”
The end was even more bizarre than what had gone before.
The coliseum was packed and surrounded by hundreds of Ogres who couldn’t get in. They wouldn’t have made it through the crowd without Jyrbian’s guards opening a path. The mood was ugly; there were mutterings and complaints because there wasn’t space for everybody.
Jyrbian and his entourage rode under the heavy stone arch into the coliseum. The sounds of the crowd muted. The whole coliseum became strangely quiet. They dismounted and were escorted to Jyrbian’s box, a private chamber that opened onto a huge balcony overlooking the stadium field. It was only then that she understood.
All around them, in other special boxes, were courtiers, packed into seats, hanging over the balconies, calling to each other and laughing.
To her horror, the majority of the seats were filled with slaves. They were interspersed with guards who brandished swords and pikes and bows.
The entertainment began. Dancers and jugglers and acrobats. Smartly trained horses and smartly trained soldiers went through their paces. Troops marched and saluted with perfect precision. Magicians magicked, pulling flowers out of thin air and juggling fireballs.
The Ogres clapped and cheered and drank. The slaves sat silently.
Then great torches were lit, and the real entertainment, what all the Ogres had come to see, began.
Eadamm was brought into the center of the coliseum.
Every slave in the place sat forward.
Shackles were attached to his arms with great ceremony. Horses backed into their traces.
Khallayne turned away. Jyrbian didn’t notice. His eyes were glued to the tableau, fists tapping his thighs. Kaede stood near him, brushing his arm, but he was unaware of her.
Khallayne saw Anel, in the center box, raise a red square of cloth, saw it fall, felt the sudden hush, heard sounds so horrible, she knew she would never be able to wipe them from her mind again. Whips cracked. Something creaked and snapped. Something tore.
She clapped her hands to her ears to shut out the raucous, frenzied cheering. Tears streamed down her face.
There was another burst of cheers, higher and louder than the first, then another, and she thought, “It’s over. It’s over.”
Eadamm had been drawn and quartered.
Then came a sound like nothing she’d ever heard in her life, like nothing she would ever hear again. It was dim at first, but building, surging, a hum that became a song that became a fire that became an explosion, rage and fear and horror too long suppressed, pain too long endured.
The slaves were rising up. The sound was their fury, all of them, as if someone had passed a signal. They were turning on their masters, on their guards.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Kaede screamed. Jyrbian shouted orders.
Though she knew, from his gestures, that he was marshalling his guards to rush them to safety, Khal-layne didn’t care. Now was her chance to escape!
She moved quickly, catching up her long skirts and pushing through the confused, frightened crowd toward the door. Guards were trying to block any attack. Their backs were to her.
She looked around. The drop to the ground was over three times her height. But then she would be on the field.
In the box next to Jyrbian’s, on the opposite side of the Ruling Council, there were fewer guards, more courtiers. Pandemonium. The box itself was lower to the ground. If she jumped, then the ground was only perhaps ten feet away.
She climbed onto a chair, kicking food and porcelain out of her way. For a moment, she wasn’t sure she could manage it. Then she heard Jyrbian shout her name, and she pushed.
She reached out as she fell. Her fingers caught on the rough stone, scraping, tearing nails and palms. Her body slammed into the wall. Her breath whooshed out of her, and she let go.
She fell the rest of the way and hit the ground hard. Stars danced before her eyes, and she felt sharp jabs of pain lancing on her left side. She rolled onto her back, gasping for breath. Above her, staring down, she could make out Jyrbian face. And Kaede’s.
She rolled to her hands and knees. She pushed up to her feet and stood. With a glance to make sure she Wasn’t being pursued, she slipped out from between the boxes and looked for an exit.
Most of the slaves had jumped from the stands onto the field and fled toward the city gate. Many were still in the stands, and what they were doing to their owners, to the guards, made her whimper. She hugged the wall, aiming for an exit. A few yards away was the tunnel used to transport slaves and animals onto the field.
She edged around the corner into the darkened tunnel and came face-to-face with a slave, a human whose head barely came up to her shoulders. He had carrot-orange hair and mean, little eyes twisted with hate, and blood spattered across the front of his ragged shirt.
He grinned at her, a Jyrbian grin, all teeth and loathing. He was carrying a stick, perhaps a piece of a lance or pike, jagged on both ends where it had been broken. In the darkness, it looked as if it had blood on it.
Before she could react, a woman’s voice interrupted the rise of the club.
“Stop!” A small slave woman ran toward them out of the darkness. “Not this one,” she told the man, stepping between Khallayne and her attacker.
He shoved her away and raised his club. “All Ogres die!” he snarled.
The slave grabbed a stick of wood and swung it, hitting the male squarely in the back of the head with a sickening thump.
“This way,” the human said without a glance for the crumpled man, jerking her head toward the dark tunnel.
Before she could turn, Khallayne caught her arm. “Laie?” There was no one else it could be. The kitchen slave who had helped her the night she and Lyrralt had taken the History, now thinner, harsher around the eyes, but with the same straw-colored hair and bluer-than-blue eyes.
The slave looked at her, a strange expression in her eyes. Khallayne felt guilty. The female obviously knew her. Why else had she saved her? “Laie, thank you.”
The slave looked around her, checking to see that no one observed them. “Hurry.” She turned and ran back down the dark tunnel.
Without any hesitation, Khallayne followed. With her longer stride, she caught up easily and followed Laie almost to the end of the tunnel, then through two turns and three different corridors.
Twice they were almost seen by other slaves, but each time they were able to slip back into the shadows, behind a door, until the danger was past. And once, Khallayne had time to work her spell of “distraction” so the running slaves passed them by.