Court of Fives (Court of Fives #1)

I can’t die in the mines. I have to help Mother. I can’t abandon her as Father did.

Every night when we went to bed she sang an Efean charm over us to keep night-walking shadows and their fingers of illness off our vulnerable little bodies. She would never sing it in front of anyone else, not even the servants and especially not Father. It was her secret mother’s gift to us, she always said. The charm would lose its power if any ears but hers and ours heard it. As I drift off to sleep the memory of her voice whispers in my mind:

Sea and stone and wind and seed

Sky above them, pay me heed.

Let no wandering shadow’s kiss

Harm my girls or steal their strength.

Let their shadows safely roam

On night’s dark path, then bring them home.

I dream in snatches: a bird-haunted ship on the water rolling amid stormy seas; a lamp’s blazing wick being doused by the pinch of a finger; a baby born with no spark of life in its flesh…

I bolt upright, my heart pounding, my face soaked in sweat. What am I still doing here? I am invisible to these people. I can run away and find Mother. Father made his choice; let him live with it. I don’t have to obey him anymore.

I tug on my clothes. The other women are moving as they start to wake up. Outside, afternoon shadows stretch across the training court. I stroll past, then veer toward the open gate. The same guards stand there, still bored and now sweating profusely. The moment they see me they cross their spears in my path.

“We have orders not to allow you out until we get word that you’ve passed muster.”

“Just seeing if there’s a view.” I force an ingratiating smile. “I’ve never been up this high on the King’s Hill before.”

The street is angled to create a spectacular view. On a clear day like today the closest of the smoking islands of the Fire Sea can be seen on the western horizon, but the most prominent sight is the peninsula between the harbors, the City of the Dead. From this height it looks rather like a squat tree, with its narrow trunk connected to the land and its spread branches marked by paths winding past white stone tombs. The paths flow up toward the crown of the hill at the peninsula’s center. The temple is a long, narrow building stretched like a wall across the “trunk” to control all access into and out of the tombs.

“Very impressive!” I say brightly before I turn to go back. My jaw hurts from smiling.

Tana and the elderly trainer sip tea in the dining shelter. I drink at the basin and splash water on my face to cool down my flushed cheeks. Slowly my bleary thoughts focus on the only thing that matters now: I have to pass muster. Everything depends on that.

The other adversaries are on the forecourt warming up with a round of menageries. I find a space at the back and step into the rhythm. The dance unfolds through a changing pattern whose movements are named after animals: cat, ibis, elephant, snake, dog, falcon, bull, wasp, jackal, butterfly, gazelle, crocodile, horse, gull, monkey, scorpion, horned lion, crane, sea dragon, firebird, tomb spider.

My arms and legs are stiff as I begin, but as I arch like a cat, sway like an elephant’s trunk, stretch my arms wide as a falcon’s wings, I loosen up. My feet tread the coarse stone pavement as the bull paces his field. The linen headband I’ve tied around my head grows damp as I become the lazy but explosive crocodile. Sweat trickles down my scorpion’s curved back. My arms flex and extend as I stalk the proud path of the horned lion.

Within the discipline of the menageries my despair drains away and my resolve creeps back into my heart.

Anise taught us that every training ground, like every person, has a unique soul. I seek the soul of this place through my dusty, callused feet, the taste of the air on my tongue, and the pitch of my beating heart. This training ground feels fresh and unformed, still discovering itself, not like Anise’s whose stones felt old and patient. I think I could belong here. I think this ground likes me.

As we finish up, still in unison, Tana and the old man, called Darios, arrive.

Tana whistles to me. “Girl, you start on Trees. Lord Kalliarkos, if you will, on Rivers.” She points to the two fledgling boys. “Pillars. Traps. Take your places.”

“Is there chalk?” I ask.

She raises an eyebrow, as if she had not expected me to ask that question or perhaps any question. “Chalk at each gate.”

Everyone else retreats to the viewing terrace, not bothering to hide their anticipatory smiles. Kalliarkos catches my eye and smiles to reassure me, and when I hear laughter from the spectators’ benches I am sorry I looked at him.

I shake off their amusement as I trot around the outside of the court to find the crooked crossed hatch-mark that is the symbol for Trees. A bowl of chalk sits on the ground by the curtained gate. I tighten my slippers and my fingerless gloves before dusting my palms and the soles of my slippers with chalk.