them.
“At least his last words were in the holy language,” Cephas said to Flamburnt. The short man watched the sword extricate itself and sail into Ariella’s waiting hand.
He ran.
Shan sat, waiting.
She had listened to Cephas talk about arena fighting to Tobin and the others during their journey across the Tethyrian highlands. She knew that the crowd played some role in the fighting, that their cheers or catcalls affected the morale of the gladiators.
Shan was not a gladiator.
For the twentieth time since the Calimien slaves turned her into this small room, she checked her equipment. The armor was not the equal of that she usually wore, but it was of good quality. Her style of fighting depended more on avoiding blades altogether, anyway, than the hack-and-slash Cephas and Tobin favored.
After she had considered and rejected a hundred or so blades in the outfitting rooms, a djinni had appeared, apparently an unprecedented occurrence to judge by the way the windsouled overseers bowed and scraped. The elemental dropped a package wrapped in oilcloth at her feet, then flew away. When she unrolled it, Shan found her own sword and parrying dagger.
These now hung at their customary places at her hip and over her shoulder. The scabbards were new, so she had rubbed fish oil into them to ensure smooth draws, after she had given up on making the Calishites understand she wanted tallow for the job.
They were afraid of her, although she had offered no resistance. They let her wander from room to room until she came to a kitchen and found the pot of oil.
She wished she had tried harder for the tallow. The fish oil would suffice, but the smell in the small ready room was driving her to distraction.
The fish oil conjured memories of a hill village far away, secreted above a brackish swamp that provided access to the sea. They traded with the halflings of the marshland, mutton and leather for dried fish and nuts and news of the wider world-and fish oil. Until this moment, she would have guessed it was the news she would come to curse the most.
News of the wider world meant glory and adventure, concepts she greeted with suspicion and that her sister greeted with wide-eyed wonder. Eventually, it meant the abbey and the deep training of the Defender’s Way, and then the wandering years the Way required. It meant word from the village of a monster that would come to steal hers and her sister’s voices. It was word of a halfling monastery razed by unknown enemies.
She shook her head. Damn that smell.
She checked again. The straps of the armor were tight. The draw of the weapons was smooth.
Shan did not know what she would face when the doors opened. Nor did she care, because she had no intention of fighting for the entertainment of the people outside, who must number in the thousands from the noise they raised.
Her plan was simple enough. She would scan the crowd for people who looked important. She would go to where they were and kill them until just a few remained. She would hold the last of them hostage and somehow make herself understood. They would bring Cynda. Then the two of them would leave this terrible place and go somewhere else. They would go to the next part of their lives.
The plan would have been even simpler if Mattias were alive. He would have found a way to sneak in and bring Cynda out undetected, or to swoop down from the air with Trill and pluck her out of her prison. If nothing else, he could have destroyed the arena.
If Corvus were there to direct her-and if she still trusted him-her role would have simply been to kill until someone told her to stop. Probably Cynda-it was almost always Cynda who found a way to stay Shan’s hand.
She checked her equipment again. Damn the smell of the oil.
Shahrokh was forced to dissipate the lower part of his body in order to pass through the door, but he in no way appeared diminished. Rage spilled from the djinni, elemental power radiating from him so strongly that Corvus would have been hard-pressed to stay conscious if he had been more sensitive to such emanations.
Even so, he felt buffeted by more than just the wind that blew from the towering djinni. Corvus was glad he had chosen to await Shahrokh from a reclined position, propped up against a pile of pillows and drinking tea.
Shahrokh opened his hand and tossed a familiar object into the room. The
“You will tell me where you have hidden the Book of Calim!” roared Shahrokh.
Corvus’s reply was calm. “Yes. I will.”
“Why is there a goliath on the sand?” asked the pasha of games. He turned to his aide. “I told you there will be no other matches!”
“There are none, Pasha, I swear it!” the aide cried. “Look! He is alone. There are none for him to fight!”
“Then what is he doing?” demanded el Arhapan.
The aide had no answer. He was as mystified as the pasha when the crowd roared-particularly because they roared with laughter.
Flamburnt was fast for a man of his particular size and shape, but he was no match for Cephas in his windsouled form. The ambassador made it no farther than the central veranda before the gladiator brought him down.
The firesouled had no fear in his eyes when he looked at Cephas. That emotion did not appear until he glanced back down the gallery-where Ariella was taking her leisure in joining them. Cephas shifted his weight, raising his knee from the man’s throat.
Flamburnt struggled but could not throw Cephas off. “You are the earthsouled son of el Arhapan,” he said, talking fast. “It is your death you lean over. I am a wizard of the highest degree and an initiate of the Sacred Hunter’s Lodge in the holy city of Memnon. The flames that devour your soul will be set by my hand!”
Corvus leaned closer. “These soul-scouring flames, you can call them up before I toss you over the side?”
“Perhaps a deal can be struck!” said Flamburnt. “Call off the swordmage and tell me what it is you need explained.”
Ariella had reached them. “Ask him why two Cabalists of Memnon or Airspur or wherever they’re from are skulking about a Calimien palace.”
Flamburnt spit his response. “We were to act as observers, to ensure that the djinn did not manage to lose their half of the Ritual of Return yet again. But of course they’ve managed just that!”
Cephas remembered the pronouncements of the elementals in the desert but decided he was more concerned with the lives of his friends than the plots of the insane. “I am told,” he said, “that this house has a foundation stone, though the words sound out of place in the sky. Do you know what that means?”
“Of course I do,” Flamburnt said, rolling his eyes. “The windsouled build these extravagances atop mystic air quarried from the cliffs of the Plane Below. The foundation stone is a sort of keystone in reverse-it is the means of gravitational defiance. Somewhere in the center of this manor is a chamber open to sky, containing an elemental matrix that’s both wind and earth.”
Both wind and earth, thought Cephas.
“I know that because I read it in a children’s primer, buffoon,” said Flamburnt. “Such knowledge hardly seems worth bargaining for.”
Cephas said, “If you say so.” He removed his weight from the man, letting Ariella take his place above the firesouled mage. “I know what to do,” he said to her.
Then, ignoring Flamburnt’s cries of protest, he flew.
The wizard known as the Spiritbreaker stood with his hand on the shoulder of his finest work. The halfling woman remained motionless, a short sword in one hand and a parrying knife in the other. Neither he nor the other
