“Today, these challengers will fight with a preselected opponent in the cage,” the high priest continues once the noise dies down. “Losing will mean death. Winning, on the other hand, will mean freedom.”
A few men jeer from the audience. My gaze falls on a figure on the periphery of the crowd, right next to Major Shayla. Captain Emil, his face stern.
Win the crowd, girl.
Ministers and courtiers are placing bets with a servant holding a long scroll of parchment. A hundred swarnas. Two hundred. Six hundred. The numbers blur in my head, lose meaning, when the acharya raises his arms in the air, parting the floor several feet from the king.
My skin crawls at the sound: a hiss followed by the screech of metal against metal. It reminds me of being trapped in the box again, except what emerges from the ground is even bigger. A giant golden cage, wrought out of bars more elaborate than the one that brought me into court.
Inside the cage is an animal I’d seen only once before as a child, its teeth gleaming at me in the moonlight, moments before my mother snatched me back into our house. A shadowlynx, with eyes the color of sand. Horns emerge from the top of its skull, two pointed spirals that rise in the air from behind its ears. They are exactly the shape of my seaglass dagger blades. My heart sinks, and I desperately wish I had my weapons with me. The giant feline bares its teeth at its opponent: the man who was standing next to me only a moment earlier, his shackles nowhere in sight, his hands gripping a spear and shield. A doorway opens—barely big enough to let him squeeze into the cage.
“You may want to close your eyes, serving girl,” someone shouts at me from the audience.
I keep them open and watch the man raise the spear in the air. The shadowlynx bares its teeth and then suddenly disappears from sight, except for its shadow, which shows up against the bars when the light falls over it. The man tenses but does not lower the spear. He lunges to the side. A yowl rends the air.
The man screams next, and it’s only when he turns his back that I see the three long scratches marring it. He lunges again, but this time, the shadowlynx is too quick. His spear hits only the bars. In the next moment or two, I wish I’d listened to the person who warned me to close my eyes. A few groans erupt behind me when the man’s throat twists sideways, fresh blood running down it. I know he’s dead before he even falls to the ground, before the shadowlynx appears before us again, licking its paws clean. The cage disappears into the ground once more.
King Lohar’s mouth purses. “Not very entertaining, was he? Bring out the next one, Acharya.”
“Yes, Ambarnaresh.”
The cage rises again, this time holding a much smaller creature. I feel myself stiffen. It’s the young woman I saw at the flesh market in Ambarvadi—the one who made butterflies emerge from her fingertips. Her opponent is a man twice her size, his body marked with knife scars. The type who could crush her neck with one hand.
There’s a grim look on his face. For a moment, I think he isn’t going to fight her, but then he raises his spiked mace high in the air. As if from a distance, I hear Juhi’s voice the way it was in the schoolroom, going over the different weapons used in the Three-Year War—“Ambari mace. Heavier than an atashban, but easier to wield. The spikes, if poisoned with snake venom, are even more effective.”
Not so much against this woman. Tiny creatures erupt from her fingers, and for a second, I think they’re butterflies again. The buzzing sound, however, tells me differently. Bees. Which she points at the man right after dodging his blow. Bees that cover his howling face, his arms, and his legs. This time, I can’t bear it. I look away, knowing he has died when the cage gets lowered into the ground again. A hand clamps around my arm, and I feel the shackles disappear from my wrists.
“You’re next,” the guard tells me.
This time, when the cage rises, I am not even surprised by what I see inside. Twelve feet in height, the biggest of any animal I’ve ever seen. The mammoth’s fur and tusks are caked with blood, and its eyes are veined red. I trudge ahead in a daze. My vision blurs around the edges. I pause several steps away from the cage and close my eyes for a split second, concentrating on the sounds, the smells. The mammoth raises its trunk and roars, and even from this distance, I can sense its agony, feel its anger.
I take off my dupatta with shaking hands and tie it around my torso like a sash.
“Pick a weapon,” the guard says.
I scan the table outside the cage, lined with an array of different weapons. Daggers and kitchen knives, swords and maces. I can’t tell if any of them have been enhanced with amplifiers or if they can be used in magical combat.
“Be quick about it!”
I grab the closest weapon at hand: a plain dagger that, though not fancy, looks serviceable. If I can get close enough to the mammoth’s eyes. The doors shut behind me with a clang. The cage, which looked enormous from the outside, seems to shrink now that I’m locked in it with a giant animal. A
