Court of Fives (Court of Fives #1)

Talon has taken a seat at the other end of our table. It is obvious she is listening by the flicker of her eyes when Gira invites me along.

My mouth opens and closes. Except for Amaya’s excursions with Denya’s respectable family, my sisters and I are only allowed to go to the theater when Father is home to accompany us. The idea of going on my own with fellow adversaries hammers home how totally my life has changed. “I don’t know. My sister Amaya’s favorite is The General’s Valiant Daughter because of the doomed love story between the daughter’s brave maidservant and a handsome soldier who is a prince in disguise. She often goes with a friend but I’ve never seen it.”

“I wanted to see that new play, The Poet’s Curse,” says Mis. “But it never opened.”

Tana halts beside our table, shaking her head. “A good thing it did not open. The king’s own seal bearer closed the theater’s doors for good and all the actors were sent to the provinces. The man who wrote the play got arrested and thrown into the king’s prison for murder.”

Mis says, “The playwright killed someone?”

“He was charged with killing the reputation of the royal family by humiliating them in public. I heard a rumor that the play concerned a reprehensible story about the honorable and deified Serenissima the First, mistress of favorable winds and daughter of the great goddess Hayiyin who causes the water to rise and the grain to sprout.” Her glower cows us. “An appropriate theatrical entertainment would be one of the comedies playing on Trifle Street. Or that other old favorite, The General’s Valiant Daughter, as Jes mentioned. That should have enough swordplay, backstabbing, old enmities, and wicked bandits even for your low taste, Shorty.”

The training bell rings, and we hurry to line up for menageries. Kalliarkos doesn’t show up so it must be one of the days he has other duties. Lord Thynos and Inarsis separate me from the rest and push me through a grueling session on Trees. They make me climb, and climb, and climb. They show me a better method to work the blind shaft. They make me hang until my shoulders feel like they’re going to rip off. They make me pull my chin up to the bar and lower myself back down until my arms become more porridge than iron. Then they count while I stand on my hands with my feet resting on a pole.

After this brutal initiation, Inarsis races me and Dusty through Rivers five times to see how much my eye for pattern and speed gets thrown off by fatigue. By the fifth pass I’m not much better than Dusty, but I still beat him.

Then they race us on parallel ladders set horizontally across poles. We swing from hand to hand, side by side. Dusty with his lean strength beats me, which makes him crow out loud and flap his arms in mock triumph, and that makes me laugh helplessly as I drop to the ground in a heap. Thynos walks off as Inarsis calls over a pair of stable attendants to adjust the posts.

Dusty sits beside me, wiping chalk off his hands. “I’m utter glad to have another one like me here,” he says cheerfully. “Gets lonely being the only mule.”

“There’s not so few children born to Patron men and Commoner women,” I object. “Nor should it be shameful. That’s why I don’t like that word.”

“Heh. I don’t like it either. Is your mother here in Saryenia?”

“Yes. She raised us.” I glance at my hands but unlike Kalliarkos he doesn’t notice anything odd in my expression.

“Good fortune for you! In my village not only was I the only one, but my mother and grandmother are both dead. I’d no mother’s shield to protect me. I had only my uncle and he’s addicted to shadow-smoke. It was a glad day I was sent off to the city to work.”

“How did you come to run the Fives?”

His grin widens, like he is pleased by my attention. “Always ran it. The only place the boys who didn’t like me couldn’t beat me up. The dames would never allow fighting on the court. Said it disgraced the game.”

“Dames?”

“The grandmothers who oversee the village. Don’t you know anything? They run the warrens here too.”

“Dusty, you’re going again,” Inarsis interrupts as Thynos appears with Kalliarkos in tow. The spotless neatness of Kal’s Fives gear makes me shake my head.

“What?” Kalliarkos demands, smiling.

“I suppose servants clean and press your gear every night,” I say. He glances at his clothes with a look of such utter surprise that I laugh. “You’ve never even thought about it, have you?”

“Spider!” Thynos cuts in. “You sit out. You two lads, up the blind shaft.”