Of Dawn and Darkness (The Elder Empire: Sea Book 2) (34 page)

Her eyes grew wide.

During their first encounter with the guards, they hadn’t been inspected. They had willingly divested themselves of weapons and moved along. Now, based on the search the guard was giving Urzaia, they wouldn’t have the room to hide a needle. Which meant that Petal needed to rid herself of six alchemical charges in a way that didn’t see anyone detained or detonated.

Petal started edging closer to the edge of Urzaia’s bunk, behind the supervisor’s back. The guard had finished patting Urzaia down, and was glancing up to check for his next target.

Before the man had a chance to notice Petal was gone, Andel spread his arms. “I didn’t smuggle weapons in to a gladiator who requested death-rites,” he said, and Calder was certain he only spoke to keep the men focused on him. He was better at this than he had any right to be, as a representative of the Imperial court.

For his part, Calder kept his eyes on the supervisor. Out of the corner of his vision, he saw Petal producing cigar boxes and sliding them under Urzaia’s bunk.

One of the boxes scraped over the stone floor, and Calder spoke up, desperate to cover the noise. “Ah! It’s...so...so great to see you, Urzaia, I’m sure you’ll make it out alive tomorrow.”

Urzaia chuckled, and Calder couldn’t tell if he was playing along or if the man was really just that relaxed. “I always have so far. I don’t see why tomorrow should be any different.”

Petal tossed one more charge under Urzaia’s bed, and then raised both of her small fists triumphantly.

A second later, the supervisor turned to her. “Get away from him. Over here.” He knelt to pat her down, businesslike and professional. “I hope you took the Pilgrim up on his rites, Woodsman. Tomorrow’s a big day.”

Calder had no idea who this man was, but he spoke as though he knew something Urzaia didn’t. In the meantime, his subordinate had finished with Andel and moved on to Calder. He was in for a disappointment, as Calder had nothing suspicious on him.

His shoelaces were invested weapons, and he could kill a man with them given enough time. But nothing suspicious.

Urzaia raised his eyebrows at the supervisors words. “If it is twelve men and I must fight without my hatchets, that is not a surprise. I have done that already.”

The supervisor snorted, but said nothing else. Seconds later, he stood. “We’re done. Woodsman, we’ll see you on the sand.”

The two guards marched the crew into the hall, leaving Urzaia alone.

With half a dozen alchemical munitions under his bed.

~~~

The crew had to rise before dawn to make it to the arena in time to ensure seats, which meant that Calder had a grand total of three hours sleep. None of the others were much better off, except for Jerri, who for some reason was looking forward to the day with endless enthusiasm.

“Jerri, since you’re chipper this morning, sound us off.”

“With pleasure! Petal, you’re first up.”

“Checking the charges,” Petal whispered.

“Foster?”

“Oversight,” he grunted. “I’m on the closest guard.”

“Andel?”

“Backup. I have a seat on the opposite side of the arena, and I will signal Foster if I notice something wrong.”

“Cheer up, Andel, all you have to do is watch the fight! I, on the other hand, will close off the staircase as soon as the match begins.” Calder pointed to himself and said, “And then what, Calder? Why, thank you for asking. Once the fight is over, I will be the one to detonate the charges.” Technically, Foster or Petal should be covering this job, but he didn’t feel right leaving it to someone else. In the worst-case scenario, he could take full blame for the plan.

The Emperor needed him alive, or the thousands of goldmarks he’d sunk into
The Testament
’s construction would go to waste. If Calder went before an Imperial court, he’d likely get off with nothing more than a swollen debt.

Which would be painful enough, but anyone else would be executed or imprisoned for life.

“And if something goes wrong?” Jerri asked, as though delighted by the prospect. She could roll out of bed bristling with energy. Calder, on the other hand, currently wanted to knife someone.

“Andel signals Foster, Foster signals Petal and me, I tell you,” Calder said. “Or we all notice and run.”

“What about the charges?” Petal asked, then shook her head. “The extra charges.” The ones they’d left with Urzaia.

“The arena can keep them,” Calder said. He and Andel had considered and discarded half a dozen different plans for retrieving them, but in the end, it was less dangerous to leave them where they were. They wouldn’t spontaneously explode, and unless someone was stupid enough to light them on fire just to see what would happen, they were no danger to anyone. The risk was that some guard would stumble on them and call off the fight, or increase security. So long as that didn’t happen, they were clear.

As soon as they bought their tickets and headed into the arena, Calder could tell something was wrong.

Seven Magisters waited in the arena—one for each section of spectator seating, and one in the Imperial box. They were in the process of attaching small bronze shields to the outside of each section, facing the arena.

“What are
those?”
Jerri whispered to him.

“Invested protections,” Calder whispered back. “They might be Awakened. If they think they have to protect the audience in addition to all the Intent already invested into the arena, then they’re preparing for something big.”

“What is it?”

“I’d need to get closer to be sure, which means we’d have to wait until the Magisters are gone.”

Only the Magisters didn’t leave. Petal scurried down the far staircase, checked both of the primary charges and the two backup charges, and then settled into a nearby seat. Andel grabbed his own seat at the end of the arena, Foster sat directly underneath a guard tower, and Calder and Jerri found seats together next to the victor’s stage.

When they first arrived, there were only a scattering of other spectators. Two hours later, the stadium looked full. Two hours after
that
, and Calder realized he’d been wrong before; only now did he understand what ‘full’ really meant. It was somehow even more crowded than it had been the last time he was here, as though they’d squeezed out all the air and replaced it with people.

At least it wasn’t as hot as it had been last summer, so he didn’t have to bake in the scent of sweat.

Jerri shot Calder a parting smile as she squeezed past him and a small family to slide into the staircase. The match would start soon, and when it did, she needed to clear the stairs as soon as possible.

If she didn’t, anyone in the way would die in their explosion.

Finally, after what felt like a night and a day of waiting, the crier made his way onto the arena sand. At the mere sight of him, the crowd lost all reason, and the coliseum shook with a sound like a berserk beast.

“LADIES, GENTLEMEN, AND GOOD CITIZENS OF AXCISS!” This time, the crier didn’t only rely on the acoustics of the stadium, but raised an invested horn to his lips. His words boomed out, easily cutting through the noise. “TODAY, WE HAVE A TREAT INDEED FOR YOU! ALL THESE YEARS, YOU’VE SEEN ONE MAN TRIUMPH AGAIN AND AGAIN OVER STAGGERING ODDS! ONE MAN—IZYRIA’S VERY OWN WOODSMAN!”

At the mention of Urzaia’s name, the crowd erupted again, until it sounded as though Calder stood in the middle of a great battlefield. It did nothing but give him a throbbing headache on top of a night’s worth of exhaustion.

“BUT I’M AFRAID, GOOD CITIZENS, THAT THE ODDS TODAY ARE TRULY IMPOSSIBLE. FOR TODAY THE WOODSMAN FACES NOT MEN, BUT A CREATURE FROM MYTH AND THE NIGHTMARES OF THE ELDERS THEMSELVES! A TERROR OF THE AION SEA! THE DREADED...CINDERBEAST!”

As his speech reached a crescendo, the biggest gate onto the sand slid open. Two Greenwardens, robed entirely in verdant leaves, marched out. They each hauled on a leash...attached to a massive Kameira. The Cinderbeast was coal-black, shaped like a hairless bear or a misshapen wolf, with two spiraling onyx horns above its eyes. Its tail, longer than one would expect, lashed like a whip.

Its eyes were red, swollen orbs, and even from here Calder could practically taste its mad Intent. It growled, scratching at the sand, but its collar was obviously invested. It did not strike at the Greenwardens holding its pair of leashes.

The crier shouted again, embellishing an entry for Urzaia, but Calder didn’t hear it. Even as Urzaia marched into the light, black axes held high, Calder’s mind was whirling.

What now?

The plan called for them to wait for Urzaia’s victory, because after more than five hundred victories in a row, only a fool would bet against one more. Then again, he wasn’t fighting men. He fought some sort of...horned bear creature four times his size. And if it was a Kameira, as Calder was certain it was, then it would have some power over nature. Judging from its name, it might be able to set Urzaia on fire. Waiting for the fight would be ridiculous; they had to rescue Urzaia as soon as possible. So what was the plan? Detonate an extra charge somewhere else, as a distraction, and then get Urzaia up to the victory stage?

He was still considering his options as the Greenwardens unclipped the Cinderbeast’s collar and hurriedly withdrew. The Kameira glanced from one side to the other, as though trying to figure out if it were really free, and then sniffed at the air. Smoke rose from its nostrils.

Finally, Calder put the clues together, and the bottom dropped out of his stomach. He’d never felt as stupid as he did in that moment.

Copper shields in front of the spectators. Magisters standing ready. Smoke drifting from its nostrils. Light and life, they’d called it the
Cinder
beast.

It was going to breathe fire.

Kameira could use their powers in a thousand different ways; it might summon fire from the heavens, or throw fireballs somehow, but the point was that it set things on fire with its Intent. He was no alchemist, but he knew he didn’t want fire involved in a plan that relied on explosives.

He shot to his feet, shoving a bigger man down into his seat as he ran forward. He actually punched a boy five years younger in the jaw, feeling terrible about it, but the boy wouldn’t
get out of the way
. By the time anyone realized what he’d done and got upset about it, he’d already moved on.

Calder had started out ten yards from the stairs, but he still wasn’t fast enough. The Cinderbeast drew in a deep breath of air, filling its lungs, and exhaled a stream of pure flame.

The copper shields at the front of the seats lit up as they absorbed excess heat, and the crowd gasped in unison. So the Magisters had done their jobs, and the people were safe. The Greenwardens had done their jobs, and the Cinderbeast hadn’t gone on a berserk rampage. And Urzaia had done his job, because he’d obviously anticipated the fire and had somehow leaped completely
over
it, in an inhuman jump that would have shocked Calder at any other moment.

In fact, the only one who had failed to do his job was Calder.

Because those spare charges, those half a dozen alchemical charges with their unlit fuses, were still below in the arena waiting room. Only two iron grates away from the fire.

The flame flowed through the grates and into the room like a river, then faded. There was a bare instant, a frozen portrait of time, in which nothing happened. Calder almost started to believe that they were safe, and that he had time to figure out a way to stop this.

Then the coliseum echoed like a struck drum the size of a city, and smoke billowed out from the grate. It was all the way on the other side of the stadium, but Calder still trembled and lost his balance. The stone cracked all around, a black line racing up the stands.

And people scurried out of the way like an evacuating anthill as the arena seats slowly, ever so slowly, began to crumble.

On Calder’s side of the arena, he was in more danger of being crushed as panicked people desperately sought the closest escape—which, in his case, meant straight past him and toward the stairs. But, as the first woman to reach the door to the stairway found out, the entrance was locked. Jerri had sealed it with alchemical resin as soon as she’d managed to clear people out of the stairway.

So Calder found himself mashed against the base of the victor’s stage, losing breath by the second, as people struggled to smash in the door. The iron-banded wood bowed, and he prayed it would break so that the people behind him would stop pushing.

Something almost as good happened—the stone against his face suddenly slammed against him, and a deafening sound set his ears ringing.

Jerri had detonated the charges.

He wasn’t sure how she’d done it—he held the matches, and Petal had the backup set—but he almost wept with relief. The people backed off, leaving his lungs room to expand, as they fled from the door as though expecting it to explode.

In that brief moment of freedom, he glanced at the arena.

The Cinderbeast was in the stands.

As half of the arena slowly fell apart, the invested shields had fallen as well. Streams of fire chased spectators away, though they fell well short of the nearest—people had stampeded on instinct after the first explosion.

Through the fire and crumbling stone, Urzaia Woodsman ran toward the monster. Calder couldn’t see the man’s expression, and certainly couldn’t hear him, but he was sure the Champion was laughing.

Calder pushed his way back through the crowd, meeting surprisingly little resistance. People were fighting this way, but if he clambered over the seats, no one cared enough to stop him going the wrong way. It was his life to waste.

When he caught sight of Urzaia again, the gladiator was riding the Cinderbeast’s back like a horseman on an unruly mount. He struck with one of his hatchets, and the impact slammed the Kameira into the stone seats.

In the back of his mind, Calder wondered at that. When Urzaia fought the Houndmaster, his hatchet had sunk into the man’s chest. Now it was striking with enough impact to drive a giant Kameira into stone. If it could hit that hard before, wouldn’t it have blown the man’s corpse into the stands? And how did Urzaia’s body withstand the opposing force?