I suck in a breath. A terrible thing is about to happen.
“Stop. Stop, you fool,” I whisper. I know what it is like to have your pulse pounding in your ears and your breath surging in gasps and your entire being so fixed on the handhold you are reaching for that you don’t see the gaping chasm opening at your feet.
I grip the railing so hard it bruises my fingers.
Just as Green Boy leaps into the next ring, its nested smaller ring cuts inside the larger ring, which he is holding. The crowd shrieks as the ring crushes him. He falls, screaming. The roar of the spectators drowns the thump of his body onto the ground. From the angle of his neck and the sprawl of his limbs, anyone with eyes can tell he is dead.
Sucking in an oath, I push back and look around.
Even Amaya, who has not the slightest interest in the Fives, is clasping hands with Denya and staring avidly at the dead youth. It’s not that the spectators want adversaries to die. It’s just that it adds spice to the game, not to mention spatters of bright-red blood on the sandy ground like the spots on a tomb spider’s brown back.
As the crowd cheers, the red-belt-wearing girl climbs the ladder to take her triumph.
Kalliarkos is staring at me with the same narrow-eyed frown I saw when he pulled off his mask on the victory tower. He glances around Lord Ottonor’s retinue, spots my mother, and looks back at me. He walks to the railing next to me and glances at my feet in the five-toed foot-hugging leather game shoes I did not have the wit to change.
In a low voice he says, “Doma, I swear by the oracles that you remind me of someone who was wearing scuffed leather shoes exactly like those, down to the three lines of chalk smeared across the right foot.”
My gasp causes Kalliarkos to smile.
“I won’t tell if you don’t want me to. Where do you train?”
“I can’t say. They don’t know I run.” My cheeks burn.
“Any of them?” he demands, almost laughing.
“Shh! My sisters know. Not my father and mother.”
He studies the Patron men surrounding Lord Ottonor. “Which one is your father?”
My father happens to look our way at that moment, mouth tight and expression hard.
“Ah,” says Kalliarkos. “The hero of Maldine. I should have guessed.”
I want to know why he “should have guessed,” but it seems rude to ask a lord what he is thinking. No lord has ever spoken to me before today. Father will not like the attention he is showing me. I should want him to walk away but I don’t.
“You lost on purpose,” he says.
I stare down at the playing court, trying to ignore him so he’ll leave. Men roll the dead adversary onto a stretcher.
“It made me feel my victory was a cheat,” he adds.
“My apologies, my lord. It was not my intention to make you feel like a cheat.” It is hard not to snap, because I still feel the moment when I had to fall. I manage a calm tone. “But I can’t win.”
“That’s not true! You’re really very good.…” He trails off, tracing the polished wood of the railing with a finger. “Oh.”
“If I’d won, I’d have had to take off the mask. Then they would have seen.”
A smile teases his eyes, one that doesn’t quite touch his lips. “That must be frustrating, having to lose when you know you could have won.”
“It is—!” I break off. “Not that it wasn’t close, I mean.”
“That’s kind of you to say, but the truth is I didn’t see how the rings would turn into a tunnel. You would have beaten me.”
I bite my lower lip to stop myself from agreeing with him. Instead I gesture to the court. Men carry the stretcher off while the ground is sprinkled with sand and wood shavings and raked for the next run. “You have to get the timing of the rotation exactly right. If you don’t, the smaller rings turning inside the bigger ones will break your grip or crush your fingers. Like what happened with that adversary, may the gods judge him kindly.”
He doesn’t even look toward the court. Instead he leans toward me. “Rings is my weakness. I need to be good enough to make it out of Novice and into Challenger. That’s never going to happen if I can’t succeed at Rings. You saw it all, where it was and where it was going and how it would get there. How do you do that? Where do you train?”
“Kalliarkos,” calls Lord Gargaron, making no effort to keep his voice down. “Kalliarkos, pray pay attention when I speak to you. Lord Ottonor ran the Royal Court when he was your age, did you know? He could give you a piece of advice or two, well worth listening to if you ever want to be good enough to get past Novice and not just dabble at the Fives as it seems you do.”