Galdoni (23 page)

Blade shook his head and dropped the false,
light tone. When he spoke again, his voice was deep and menacing.
“Let me tell you something.” He stepped closer so that we were
almost toe to toe. “I’m fighting in the Arena, and I hope it’s your
puny body I get to crush beneath my mace.”

My muscles tensed at the hatred and venom in
his voice, but I forced myself to hold still. “I don’t care if you
throw away your own life or even mine, but don’t destroy the only
chance the rest of them have.”

He gave another cruel smile and then spit in
my face. I lost my carefully reined control and was about to swing
at him when the doors burst open and guards with whips and night
sticks ran through to encircle the Galdoni.

“
Enough talking,” the lead
guard said; his eyes swept past us as though we were below the
value of bugs and barely worth his notice. “Someone pulled the
alarm. No dinner or breakfast, and you’ll be doing drills all day
tomorrow.”

Several Galdoni protested, but the lash of
whips ended any talking.

“
Get to your cells and
don’t make another sound,” the guard snapped as though talking to a
group of disobedient dogs. “Or I’ll just shoot you and claim
self-defense.” He laughed. No one would be held accountable for the
death of a mere Galdoni. He turned away, chuckling at his own
joke.

“
Someone needs to teach
that man a lesson,” a Galdoni behind me muttered as we were herded
out of the Arena like a bunch of sheep.

“
And you’re going to do
it?” the Galdoni next to him stated. They both fell silent at the
crack of a whip just above their heads.

We walked slowly to our cells, Galdoni
breaking away when we passed their blocks. I was almost to mine
when a hand touched my wing. “Did you really mean what you said
back there?”

I glanced back to see a black and white
winged Galdoni a few years younger than me. At least five others
with him waited for my answer. I nodded. “It’s the way out of here,
and it will work.”

“
What if Blade fights?” he
pressed anxiously.

My stomach clenched, but I said the truth.
“Then I’ll kill him. No one will stand in the way of our
freedom.”

***

I sat on my pallet with my head in my hands
after a particularly brutal beating for pulling the alarm and also
for ‘conspiring’, even though they apparently had no idea what was
said during our little gathering. Thoughts and images of Brie
swirled through my weary mind. I could keep them at bay during the
training and grind of the day, but being alone in a cell brought
them back with a force strong enough to take my breath away.

I saw Brie’s eyes, beautiful and kind, the
color of mahogany with a hint of gold encircling the irises. I saw
my own reflection in her eyes, and wondered why she cared about
someone like me, a nobody Galdoni destined to die. I hated myself
for letting her care. I knew at the beginning that it would end in
the Arena, and I shouldn’t have let her know my true feelings; I
was so in love with her that every second away tore at my heart
with a thousand daggers.

I fought to keep the emotions at bay, to
pretend that my life out there didn’t exist. It felt like a dream
so much that I wanted it to be; the freedom and life I had
experienced there was more than someone like me could have ever
hoped for. But then I would hear the echo of her laugh, feel the
light touch of her hand on my arm, smell the whisper of her scent
on the air, and it was all I could do to keep from falling
apart.

I knew they watched me. That night I turned
to the camera. “I will come back to you, Brie,” I promised. “I love
you.” I held her eyes, knowing she watched me the way I would have
never let her leave my sight if she was the one behind the glass. I
then settled on the pallet and let sleep steal the pain from my
body in the same way that dreams of Brie eased the pain of my
soul.

***

The next day, I dedicated myself to fighting
whole-heartedly. I didn’t know if I would be fighting Blade or any
of his minions, but I wanted to be ready. I didn’t believe for a
second that the Academy would let us get away with not fighting. I
would have to be prepared to defend the other Galdoni if it came
down to that.

The Galdoni around me whispered questions
and passed information back and forth. I became the one they told
of their secret lives outside the Academy doors. Everyone had a
story, a hope, a dream, something they wished to return to or try
if they ever got out again. Listening to them made my own dreams
ache with even more intensity, but I listened because it gave them
hope.

“
I danced,” one
particularly large Galdoni whispered as he released me from a choke
hold and shoved me back against the ropes. I fought to hide an
incredulous smile when I spun back to face him. He was even bigger
than Goliath, or at least his twin in size, but the light in his
eyes told of a desire for the stage, for grace and beauty and all
the things that didn’t exist behind the Academy gates.

“
I cooked fillet mignon
with mushrooms drenched in a beef broth and cream sauce,” the
skinny, tall Galdoni who would have fit the image of a scholar had
he been human told me before he spun left in an attempt to hack off
my arm with his sword. “The vegetables were delectable, grated and
cooked until they were soft but still crisp.”

I vaulted a brick wall and landed beside a
small Galdoni with gray and white wings in the training yard.
“Snowboarding,” he said as we jumped over a low vault and scrambled
up a rope ladder.

“
What?” I asked, gasping
for air.

“
There’s nothing like the
hiss of snow under your board and the feeling of the flakes as they
race past your face.” He ducked under a running bridge and jumped
the next vault. “I felt so alive.”

“
You’ll be alive again,” I
promised him as I dodged spinning dummies with real
blades.

“
You really think not
fighting will work?” he wheezed when we reached the end of the
course. He bent over with his hands on his knees to catch his
breath.

I nodded, taking in huge gulps of air. I
didn’t mention that it was our only hope, or that it would probably
be the only attempt they would give me before guards killed me as
an example to the rest. In my mind, it just had to work.

Chapter Seventeen

“
Kill me now, weakling,”
Blade taunted behind his serrated sword.

He lunged and I parried, dancing back beyond
his reach. His sword caught mine across the middle and snapped
right through my blade; his next lunge barely missed my stomach. It
wasn’t the first time that I suspected they gave Blade better
weapons in the hopes that he would use the advantage to kill me.
Only through sheer will and speed did I manage to make it out of
the matches alive. I threw my half blade at him and glanced aside
to see two guards by the door exchange money.

That angered me more than Blade’s superior
weapons. I growled and ducked under Blade’s next move, a showy
swing for the amusement of the Galdoni who had stopped fighting
practice to watch us.

He grunted when I caught him around the
middle and forced him back against the chains. He beat my head with
the hilt of his sword, but couldn’t bring the large weapon around
to reach me. I ignored the battering and punched him as hard as I
could with a left, then a right. Though he wore protective padding,
I could hear the air that was forced from his lungs. I threw
another right and felt a satisfying snap as his ribs gave way.

Blade surprised me with a left foot sweep. I
stumbled back, but managed to keep on my feet. He took advantage of
the stumble to lunge again with his sword. I fell back a second too
slow and the blade cut through my padding and bit into my
chest.

Blade grinned wildly and lunged again, but I
was ready. I grasped the blade between my palms, careful to keep my
fingers free of the cutting edge, and fell backward. The movement
threw him off balance and he fell with me. I twisted as I hit the
ground. The tip of the sword drove into the cement floor inches
from my side. Blade let out a huff of air as the hilt jammed
painfully into his stomach. He fell to the side, gasping. I rolled
back to my feet and picked up the sword, then put the tip to his
throat.

“
Hold it!” one of the
guards called out. He pushed through the crowd of eager Galdoni,
many of whom urged me with little nods and gestures to end Blade’s
life and relieve us of his constant bullying. I wanted to kill him,
to end his life as badly as I had wanted to end Brie's
step-father's. The promise of bloodshed whispered through the stale
air, and the wound across my chest ached for retaliation. My vision
tinged in red.

I debated for a brief second. With Blade
gone, there would be few others who would dare to go against us and
fight in the Arena. A quote from one of the religious theory books
a professor had let me borrow in secret came to mind. ‘It is better
than that one man perish than a whole nation dwindle in unbelief.’
I had seen the sense of it at the time, but now that the decision
was mine, I hesitated. What right did I have to choose, and how
would Blade’s death make me any better than the gamblers who
thirsted for our blood?

Before the guards could reach me with their
whips and clubs, far too late for them to have stopped me anyway, I
dropped the sword and walked away. I couldn’t believe how close I
had come to becoming the animal we were made out to be. The blood
pounded in my ears, the thirst to kill rushing hot through my
veins. I crossed blindly over the ropes and walked to a corner of
the Arena. I sat on the padded floor and held my aching head in my
hands. A trickle of blood flowed from a gash in my hair from
Blade’s hilt, but I ignored it.

A few minutes later, the sounds of training
resumed. I forced down the blood thirsty adrenaline that pounded in
my veins and fought to regain what I had thought was my humanity
and self-control.

“
Here, drink.”

I lifted my head to see a pair of gnarled,
stained hands offer me a cup of water. I almost pushed it away, but
thirst burned in the back of my throat and I was reminded with an
ache of when I met Brie, afraid to trust someone I couldn't see,
the brush of her hand the only gentle thing I had ever felt.

I drank the water and set the cup aside. A
glance at the bearer showed a Galdoni I knew by sight but had never
spoken to. He was one of the oldest, a veteran of the Arena covered
in the scars of battle. He gave a wry smile and sat down in front
of me. It was then that I noticed the droop in his left wing from a
break that hadn’t been set right. My gut clenched when I realized
that he could no longer fly.

“
You should have killed
him,” the Galdoni said amiably. He stretched out his left leg
slowly like it pained him.

“
I know,” I
replied.

“
Why didn’t you?
Honor?”

I snorted in disgust. “There’s no honor
here.”

He gave me another slight smile. “You did
just prove yourself wrong, you know.”

I grimaced. “It wasn’t honor that kept me
from killing him. I didn’t want to turn into the monster the humans
make us out to be.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “They don’t
have to try very hard,” he said gently.

I followed his gaze and studied the room of
grunting, yelling, cursing Galdoni who grappled, sword fought, and
sparred like lions defending their pride. I sighed and rubbed my
eyes. “Maybe the humans are right to keep us out of their
society.”

The older Galdoni shrugged.
“Who says it’s
their
society? We’re alive, which means we have a place in
it.”

I gave a humorless laugh. “Not if they have
any say in the matter.”

He frowned at me then, his gray eyes
studying mine. “Then you lied to them? You really don’t think it’s
worth getting out of here?”

I pushed my palm against the side of my head
in an effort to close the wound that continued to drip. “I don’t
know anymore. Out there,” I gestured vaguely toward the walls, “It
seemed so straightforward, so simple. We’d been wronged, and we
deserved a chance to live our own lives.”

When I fell silent, he pressed, “And
now?”

I took a steeling breath. “And now sometimes
I see us the way they do. We were raised this way. Can we really
change?”

He patted me on the shoulder and pushed
himself slowly to his feet. “Anyone can change, Kale. And everyone
deserves the chance to do so.” His voice lowered so no one could
overhear us. “They’ll fight for you, boy. Or not fight, as the case
may be. The Galdoni need a leader and they look up to you. Lead
them the right way and you might really pull this off.”

He turned and walked away before I could
come up with a reply.

Chapter Eighteen

Goliath sat by me in the cafeteria along
with several other Galdoni who had started seeking us out wherever
we went. It felt strange to have a following, but comforting to
know that I wasn’t the only one who felt like we had to stand up
for ourselves. Goliath was silent while we ate, but I didn’t think
about it until David came running into the lunchroom.

“
Kale, Kale, I’m so sorry!”
he sobbed. He ran straight to our table and fell into a heap at my
feet. I stared at him in shock. His shirt was missing and his chest
and arms were covered in whip marks that streamed blood. His back
already bore purpling bruises that would be nearly black by the
time they were fully formed.

“
What happened?” I asked. I
fought to keep my voice calm. Goliath crouched next to him, a
hulking giant towering over the tiny red-headed Galdoni.