The Empire's Ruin, page 32
If the stranger was taken aback by the outburst, he didn’t show it. Instead, he raised a hand.
“Focus on my finger.”
Bien glared at him.
“Look at my finger,” he said again. “Follow it with your eyes.”
“Why?”
“You took some good blows to the head. Both of you. This is a way to see if your brain is bruised.”
“What are you,” Ruc asked, “some kind of surgeon? The doctor?”
That hint of a smile again, as though the notion were amusing. “There are surgeons here,” the man replied, “but I’m not one of them. I’m a prisoner, like you.” He gestured down to where a skull-sized iron ball lay on the ground, chained to a manacle around his ankle. “My name is Talal.”
Ruc studied the man’s wounds. “You’re new here, too.”
Talal nodded. “I walked that same gauntlet yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” Ruc squinted through his pain. Talal’s cuts and gashes looked older than a day. More like a week. Most had already stitched shut.
The other man followed his gaze, shrugged. “I guess they went easy on me.”
“Why are you helping us?” Bien asked warily.
“As I said, we’re all prisoners here. Like the two of you, I came … unwillingly. Surviving a place like this will be easier as a team.”
“A team?” Bien shook her head. “You don’t even know us. We could be anyone. We could be murderers.”
Talal chuckled, glanced back over his shoulder at the yard. Most of the Worthy had already gone back to their training, the new arrivals evidently forgotten. Just a few paces away, one man was hammering another into the mud with a short club.
“Given where we are,” he replied after a pause, “I was sort of hoping you might be murderers.”
The words were light, and he delivered them with an easy smile, but something about that level gaze gave Ruc the impression that Talal—whoever he was—saw more than he was letting on.
“Follow the finger.” He gestured once more to his hand.
He had Bien perform the simple task, then Ruc, then put them through half a dozen more drills before he was convinced that they’d escaped without any damage to the brain.
“You’re lucky,” he said, sitting back on his heels. “From what I hear, the man before me suffered a broken skull. Doesn’t remember his own name.”
“You’ve got a strange definition of lucky,” Ruc said.
Talal laughed.
Bien gestured to the iron ball and chain. “What did you do to earn that?”
“What did he do?” While they were talking, Goatface had approached on surprisingly quiet feet. The trainer rested a casual hand on Talal’s shoulder—a strangely paternal gesture. “What did he do? He flew a massive bird into the Purple Baths, set fire to that … venerable structure, then slaughtered dozens of our Greenshirts in his effort to escape.”
Bien, who had been leaning forward wearily on her knees, jerked back as though burned.
“Not dozens,” Talal demurred quietly.
“Dozens.” Goatface sounded almost proud. “I was … vouchsafed this information by Vang Vo herself!”
“Kettral,” Ruc said quietly.
He glanced around the yard. How many people had seen them talking to the Annurian? What price would they pay for that conversation in the coming days and weeks?
“But the high priests cut his throat on the steps of the Shipwreck,” Bien said. “A ‘message to the meddling imperial dogs.’”
She glared at the Kettral who, for his part, looked almost apologetic.
“They cut someone’s throat,” Goatface said, “just not his throat.” He clapped the soldier more vigorously on the shoulder, as though to indicate his continued corporeal existence. “The rest of his … what are they called? Team? Band? Assemblage?”
“Wing,” Talal replied quietly.
“The rest of his Wing fought their way out of the Baths and vanished.”
The Kettral shook his head. “Not all of them.”
“So who did the high priests execute?” Bien asked.
“Some … unfortunate hauled up from the prisons.” Goatface shrugged at their surprise. “A fiction our priests deemed necessary. People already whisper of the Kettral. After the Baths, the priests thought it wise to ensure those whispers grew no louder.”
Bien, open-mouthed, shook her head. “And so they staged it. They executed an innocent man.”
“Oh, hardly innocent.”
Ruc shook his head. “Why are you telling us?”
Goatface spread his arms wide, as though preparing for an embrace. “Because you are among the Worthy now! If you ever leave this place, it will be for the delta. If you survive the … what is the best word? Rigors of the delta, you will be raised to the priesthood when you return. Speaking here is like speaking among the dead.” He beamed, as though the sentiment ought to comfort them.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Ruc said. “If the priests are so afraid of the Kettral, why didn’t they kill him for real?”
Talal smiled, but made no effort to join the conversation.
“They were going to,” Goatface winked, “until Vo demanded him.”
Bien shook her head. “Why would Vang Vo want one of the Kettral among the Worthy?” She stole another glance at the man.
“She wants him among the Worthy,” Goatface replied, “to … adjudicate his worth.”
“I’d have thought she’d be frightened by the idea of an Annurian facing the Three.”
“Vang Vo?” The trainer’s bushy eyebrows climbed his forehead. “Frightened?”
“Put off, then,” Ruc said.
“Unbelievers are regularly … encouraged to join the Worthy.”
“Because no one ever expects them to survive. Most are just common soldiers. One of the Kettral, though…”
Goatface shrugged again.
“Annurian. Dombângan. Doesn’t matter to Vo. Some of the other high priests were less than … exuberant about the idea, but all that matters to Vang Vo is the fight, the faith.”
“Which is it?” Bien demanded.
“In here,” the trainer replied brightly, “the distinction between the two is academic.”
Ruc nodded slowly. Already the conversation had gone on too long. No wonder the Annurian had approached them looking for an alliance. Everyone else in the yard was probably already plotting to kill him.
“Thank you,” Ruc said carefully, nodding to the soldier as he rose gingerly to his feet, “for checking on us. I guess we’ll see you around the yard.”
“See him around the yard!” Goatface slapped his thigh. “Your interactions with our fine Annurian friend will be a great deal more … intimate than that.”
“What do you mean?” Bien asked.
Goatface blinked at her, as though he didn’t understand the question, then pressed the heel of his hand firmly against his forehead. “Of course. The two of you, devotees of such a … pacific goddess will not be aware of the intricacies of our worship. Talal is your third.”
“Third?” Bien asked.
The trainer nodded. “As the gods of the delta are three, so with the Worthy. Over the months to come you will train beside him, spar beside him, eat beside him, guard his back as he guards yours. When the holy days come, you will stand beside him in the Arena, and if you survive, it is with him that you will go into the delta to face your gods.”
Ruc had known, of course, in the back of his mind, that the Worthy always fought in groups of three. In all the madness of their capture, however, followed by the forced march to the Arena, it had not occurred to him to wonder about the person he and Bien would be grouped with.
“Why the three of us?” he asked warily. “Why not someone else?”
“Why…” Goatface mused, stroking his scraggly beard. “Why is a question … beyond my ken. The Worthy are grouped in the order they arrive, but as to why you arrived at the times you did?” He shook his head regretfully. “Fate? The hand of some … providence beyond mortal comprehension. Perhaps the Three can answer when you face them. Perhaps they have a more … profound plan.”
“Unlikely,” Ruc replied grimly.
Talal studied him a moment, then shrugged. “Relying on plans hasn’t worked out so well for me lately.”
Goatface laughed, then quickly sobered. “If you will allow me to offer some modest counsel.”
“In a matter of months, we’re going to be fighting for our lives in the Arena,” Ruc replied. “You’re our trainer. I’m hoping for a little bit more than modest counsel.”
“Quite so.” Goatface nodded. “Quite so. Well then, my first and best advice is this: embrace one another. You did not choose to come together, but here you are. Your choices now are between cooperation and … well … annihilation.” He stood up, clapped his hands together, nodded brusquely as though that were a vexing question settled. “Now then. Talal. Will you be so kind as to show our newest recruits around the premises? I would do so myself, but regrettably, regrettably, I must attend yet another … confabulation with Small Cao and the Nun in which we argue endlessly over the proper length of the ritual blades.”
When the trainer had trudged off across the yard—he moved more like some kind of crab than a man—Talal turned to Ruc and Bien. For what felt like a long time, the three stood silently, measuring one another.
“Well,” the Kettral said finally. “Given the choices, I’m inclined to lean toward cooperation rather than the alternative.”
To Ruc’s surprise, Bien exploded into laughter. It was a laughter just on the edge of hysteria, true, but any mirth was better than the weight of despair he’d felt settling over himself.
In a way, being linked to the Kettral was almost preposterously good luck. Most of the Worthy were religious fanatics, men and women who had joined up willingly, exactly the kind of people who had burned down Eira’s temple and slaughtered her priests. The thought of fighting beside them kindled a slow, hot fury inside him, one that if it caught would prove impossible to quench. Talal might have torched the Purple Baths, had proven himself a foe to the entire city, but he seemed to hold no antipathy for the servants of Eira. Better yet, if the stories Ruc had heard were any indication, the man was probably one of the deadliest people in the yard. It wouldn’t hurt to have him at their side when the time came to trade the wooden training weapons for bright bronze.
On the other hand, the identity of the Annurian made him a target. There would be those among the Worthy convinced—despite the sanction of Vang Vo—that the simple fact of the foreigner’s presence in the training yard was a sacrilege. Some would wait for the high holy days to try to plant a blade in his neck. Others might not. Worthy died in training all the time. Unless Ruc had vastly underestimated the charity of his fellow Dombângans, it would be days not weeks before someone arranged an “accident.” And if a couple of heretical Eiran priests also died in the process, well, so much the better to purify the ranks of the Worthy.
As he stared out over the yard, half a dozen warriors broke away from a larger group, and then, as though summoned by his bleak thoughts, began to approach, sauntering through the mud, practice weapons swinging loosely in their hands. Ruc couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it wasn’t hard to make out the ugly laughter. It took him a moment to recognize the man at the front—Rooster, the same warrior he had watched from the deck of the ship, the one who had so viciously taken apart his opponent as the crowd roared its approval.
Up close, the man was both smaller and more striking. A strip of dark hair—spiked with some kind of lacquer or animal fat and glistening in the sun—ran down the center of his shaved scalp. Around his neck he wore the sun-bleached skull of a rooster, and at his wrists and ankles, bracelets with silver bells that tinkled softly as he walked. There seemed to be no fat on him at all, only cords of muscle stringing his compact frame. He bore no signs of his earlier combat in the Arena; in fact, his brown skin shone as though he had just oiled himself after a long bath. He wore the expression of an artist well satisfied with his day’s work.
At his side strode a tall, lean woman. Like Rooster, she went shirtless in the heat of the day. A dozen necklaces of small, threaded vertebrae hung over her flat chest, rattling as she moved. The lobes of her ears were plugged with small circles of bone. Her eyes might have been carved from bone, too, for all the emotion they showed.
The Worthy behind them were a rougher lot, a walking collection of scar and scowl, crushed ears and chipped teeth, sunken knuckles and sneers. One man was the size of a barn door. Ruc barely glanced at him. It was obvious that wherever Rooster and the woman led, the rest would follow. Unfortunately, the two were leading them directly toward Ruc, Bien, and Talal.
“I guess beating us bloody wasn’t enough for the first day,” Ruc muttered.
Talal glanced over his shoulder. “There are rules about violence in the yard.”
“Rules!” Bien almost choked on the word. “All I’ve seen since stepping into this love-forsaken place is violence.”
“Well.” The Kettral shrugged. “There’s violence, and then there’s violence.”
Exactly what that meant, Ruc wasn’t sure, but there was no time to ask. Rooster was bearing down as though he planned to walk right through them. As he approached, however, he smiled and spread his arms. Ruc took a step back, but the man caught him up in a rough embrace, held him in those viselike arms a moment, then pulled away and kissed him, first on one cheek, then the other, then the lips.
“Welcome!” he declared, releasing Ruc finally, then bestowing the same treatment on Bien.
She tried to hold him off, to push him away, but her hands might as well have been the flapping of a thrush’s wings for all he noticed them.
“Welcome!” he said again, when he had finished kissing her. “I wanted to be the first to greet you after the gauntlet, but it seems our Annurian companion has beaten me to the punch.” He paused, then winked at Talal. “A figure of speech, of course.”
The Kettral didn’t respond. His face betrayed nothing, and, to Ruc’s surprise, his temperature didn’t rise. People talked about men and women who were cool under pressure, but Talal was quite literally cool. Judging from the soft yellow glow bathing his skin, he might have been sleeping, rather than facing down one of the yard’s more dangerous fighters.
Rooster held his gaze for a moment, then turned back to Ruc.
“I’m told,” he said, tapping with one finger at the lobe of his ear, “that you and your companion come to us from a slightly different religious tradition.”
“We are priests of Eira,” Bien said, stepping forward defiantly.
“Eira!” Rooster raised his eyebrows, then turned to the warriors behind him. “Gentlemen!” He inclined his head toward the woman with the necklace of vertebrae. “Gentlemen and, naturally, Snakebones. The rumors are true! We have among us today a pair of citizens who have dedicated their lives to love.”
He lingered on the last syllable, drawing it out, as though savoring the taste.
The men growled their lewd appreciation, while the woman he had called Snakebones stepped forward.
“Love,” she purred, studying Ruc. “Not enough love in this camp, if you ask me.”
She reached out, ran a hand over Ruc’s chest, then, whip-quick, snaked it down the front of his pants, squeezed his cock and balls appraisingly. His body reacted before his brain. As she was withdrawing the hand, he lashed out, caught her wrist, twisted, wrapped the arm up behind her body. The attack should have been incapacitating. She should have ended up doubled over, her hand cranked up behind her head, her shoulder straining at the socket. Instead, with a sick snap, that shoulder actually popped from the socket, and in a quarter heartbeat his leverage was lost. The woman whipped around, snatched back her arm. With her other palm, she slammed the shoulder back into place. Ruc had treated people with dislocated joints before, had seen them pass out from the pain. Snakebones didn’t pass out. She only grinned at him, white teeth flashing beneath those emotionless eyes.
Rooster crowed a long, joyful laugh. “Lesson number one, love boy!” He draped a casual arm over his companion’s shoulders. “We don’t call her Snakebones because of those necklaces. It’s because she’s not put together like the rest of us. Writhes like a snake in a fight.”
“Fighting’s not the only time,” the woman added. She turned to Bien, ran a tongue over her teeth. “What about you, sweetheart? Are you friendlier than your man?”
Bien’s jaw was tight, her eyes wide, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “Less so.”
Rooster shook his head. “I was given to understand that you Eira-huggers loved everyone. Part of the faith.”
“My faith suffered,” Bien replied grimly, “when my temple burned.”
“A shame.” Rooster frowned. “In here, a little love goes a long way. Share it with the right person—it might even mean the difference between living and dying.”
“The only way anyone lives through this place,” Ruc said, “is fighting.”
“To be sure,” Rooster agreed. “To be sure. But we’ve got some time before the killing begins in earnest. I guess it’s up to you how you spend the last months of your lives.” He waggled a cautionary finger. “Or if you do. There aren’t a lot of folks in here willing to extend the hand of friendship to a pair of Annurian whores.”
“Annurian whores,” Ruc repeated. “Doesn’t sound very friendly.”
Rooster shrugged. “I’ve got nothing against whores.”
“What about Annurians?” Talal asked mildly—the first words he’d spoken since the others approached.
Snakebones spat in the dirt. Rooster met the man’s gaze, then turned back to Ruc.
“Choose your friends wisely,” he said.
Ruc nodded. “I intend to.”
Rooster laughed, pursed his lips, blew Ruc a kiss, another to Bien, then turned on his heels. Snakebones lingered a moment longer, a smile playing on her lips, then followed.
