Court of Fives Read online

  “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.”

  I settle on a pole rolled off to one side, glad for the rest.

  Watching Kalliarkos and Dusty, I try to find rivalry or friendship, but all I see is polite nods that could mean anything. Kalliarkos is really good on the blind shaft. It’s a pleasure to watch his blend of tension and strength as he nimbly climbs up various widths. He easily beats Dusty.

  The interaction between Lord Thynos and Inarsis interests me too. As they talk, discussing Kal’s technique or Dusty’s inefficient breathing, they touch each other on the arm or back without thought, in a way I have seen at Anise’s training stable where I observed that kind of casual contact between longtime friends or lovers. Once I saw my father talk to another man in a similar fashion, with an intimacy that had to do not with flesh but with trust; he told me later that he and the other captain had served in the Oyia campaign, where together they had faced death. Will I ever be able to truly trust Kalliarkos?

  After he finishes a climb and waits for Dusty, Kalliarkos catches my eye and tilts his head, as if he can tell I am thinking of him. He is sweaty from training, his hair slicked against his neck, his face glistening, and his damp leggings sticking to muscled thighs. I try not to grin but then I do, and he winks at me. I cover my mouth to stifle a giggle.

  Thynos thumps him hard on the back, gaze flicking between the two of us. “That’s enough, Kal. I think we can break for our meal now. You go back to the palace. Isn’t your poetry tutor waiting for you?”

  “My tutor didn’t come today. They’re all busy preparing for the wedding feast on Sixthday night.”

  Remembering how Father abandoned us hits like a kick in the belly. I clutch my arms across my body.

  Kalliarkos’s brow wrinkles with concern as he takes a step toward me. “Jes, are you all right?”

  “Kal, I told you to return to the palace.” Thynos stands with arms crossed. “Are you arguing with me?”

  Kalliarkos holds his uncle’s stare for just long enough to save face, but both Thynos and I can tell the moment before the prince gives way. Without looking at me, he stalks off with Inarsis dogging his heels like a guard.

  Thynos waits until they are out of sight before brushing his hands free of chalk and grit. “Dusty, take a break. Spider, at attention.”

  I stand as Dusty hurries off. Thynos paces around me, forcing me to turn to keep facing the ominous thunder of his frown. When he stops moving he rests two fingers just above my breastbone and increases the pressure until I take a step back.

  “With training and discipline you could go far, Spider. Don’t throw it away for something you can never have.”

  “I’m not doing anything illegal!”

  “I didn’t ask for your opinion. Go join your fellow adversaries.”

  I fumingly retreat to the dining shelter, where the others have already started eating.

  “How’d it go?” Gira asks, searching my face. “Dusty says you were run flat by Lord Thynos.”

  “I suppose I was,” I say, thinking of his words. Abruptly I’m cheered by his warning because it means he wants me to concentrate on the Fives.

  Tana pounds her cup on a table to get our attention. “Adversaries, tomorrow there will be no training. As members of Garon Palace we are required to attend the funeral procession for Lord Ottonor. Darios and I will be busy this afternoon to prepare, so you have the rest of the day off. Don’t get used to it.”

  “Whoo!” cries Mis, pumping her arms skyward as Gira, Shorty, and I laugh. “Let’s go to the Lantern Market. I need to buy a charm for my sister’s new baby.”

  I have never in my life been allowed to go to the Lantern Market but I’m too embarrassed to tell them that.

  “Can we just walk out into the city when we’re not training?” I ask, and from the way the others look at me, I can see I’ve puzzled them. “I mean, we don’t have to ask permission? Or have an escort?”

  “We’re not Patron girls to be shepherded around by an ill-wisher,” says Gira with a glance toward Talon, who sits at the far end of the table picking the pine nuts out of her stew and ignoring us. “We’re adversaries. As long as you keep your Garon badge on, no one will bother you. Anyway, Shorty and I are going to stay in for a change. You two have fun.”

  Walking out the open gate with Mis is like being blown by the wind of freedom. No one stops us. No one questions us. Our honor is our own to guard. All my life I have been either a dutiful daughter bowing to propriety or a disobedient girl flouting my father’s strict rules. Mis and I can stroll down the street with not a care in the world. She’s not like my sisters at all: she is easygoing and relaxed. As an adversary she’s not yet as good as Gira or Dusty but she’s coming along.

  “How did you get started running the Fives?” I ask.

  “My grandaunt ran them back when she was my age. The whole family goes all the time to trials. So they decided I might as well have a go at it. They paid my way in.”

  “How many siblings do you have, that you can train while they work?”

  “I’m youngest of eight, five girls and three boys.”

  How like Efeans! Five girls and only three boys! But I don’t say that aloud.

  “I have three years to prove myself. If I don’t make Challenger in that time, I’ll just go back to the family business.”

  “What business is that?”

  “Perfume. It’s how I got my Fives name. I reeked of the distilling factory when I got here.”

  I laugh. “Because your Fives name is Resin. I wondered.”

  “What about you, Jes? There’s a rumor going around that your father’s an officer in the army.” She hesitates, then goes on hastily as if she has already said the cruel thing out loud and now must apologize for it. “You know what they say: Patron eyes and Commoner skin.”

  We walk for a while in silence. I don’t know how much I can say, how much I want to say, how much is prudent to reveal.

  She finally says, “It’s just you have such a Patron way of talking and acting, like you’re kin in a lord’s household. But you can’t be.”

  I am a Patron, I want to say, and yet I know I am not. I cannot defend the people we girls all pretended we were.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I meant no insult by it.”

  “It’s all right, Mis. Yes, my father is in the army. And my mother is Efean. It’s hard to talk about.”

  “You have nothing to be ashamed of!” she says stoutly. “And if anyone says you do, you can just run their ass flat on the court.”

  We’re laughing as we reach the West Gate of the Lantern District. Two huge brass wheels are suspended from the underside of the gate, each hu
ng with a thousand ribbons fluttering in the breeze. According to the decree of the king and queen, all public entertainment must take place in the Lantern District. At night people congregate on the tiered stone seating of its many small amphitheaters. Whether Commoner or Patron, the people of Efea take their poetry and theater very seriously. The old epic plays can last until dawn if the audience keeps demanding new scenes be added or if they argue with the actors over their interpretation of a famous dialogue. I once saw a death scene repeated five times before the jeering audience was satisfied. The best-beloved playwrights and poets are as celebrated as any Illustrious.

  As Mis and I walk down the main street she points at the different banners advertising the many plays. “See that gap there? That’s where the banner for The Poet’s Curse was hanging, but they’ve taken it down.”

  The empty space in the row of banners looks suspicious. “What reprehensible story did The Poet’s Curse tell?” I ask.

  “Shhh! If the playwright was arrested, then we don’t want anyone to hear us talking about it! Come on, the market is this way.”

  It’s so strange not to have to bow to Father’s strictures. If I win prize money I can come here as often as I want with my sisters, when I find them. The day seems so glorious. Possibility opens everywhere around me, as if my five souls swell with well-being. What felt like bad fortune looks like good fortune if I turn it over and examine it from the other side.

  Because the theaters open only at night, during the day the Lantern District is called the Lantern Market because you can buy other pleasures there. At the street stalls a person can buy protective amulets; perfume; every sort of cosmetic; jewelry, cheap and expensive; and little gifts suitable for lovers. It is emphatically the kind of place a proper Patron girl would never, ever walk, even with an ill-wisher in attendance, and certainly never alone with a friend. I can’t stop staring. What goes on behind these closed gates is the sort of thing Father wished to protect his daughters from, because girls like us who aren’t really Patron or Commoner sometimes end up selling sexual favors. Such acts are the lowest thing a Patron woman can do. That it isn’t seen as shameful among the Efeans makes Patrons scorn Commoners even more.

  Mis browses along a lane with amulets meant for newborns: shell anklets to ward off sickness, polished stones to weight their souls to their flesh until they fully attach, and carved amulets as a shield against shadow-walking.

  Having no coin to spend, I am content to watch people. Because of Saryenia’s harbors, people come to this city from all over the many lands strung along the shores of the Three Seas: handsome Amarans so famed for their administrative skills that every kingdom seems to have a few serving in its officialdom; straw-haired Soldians who work as sailors all along the Three Seas; a pair of seafaring Tandi guildwomen taller than most men; bowlegged cavalrymen from the grasslands of Dey; veiled desert men; and more besides. Like ribbons they come in every variety, wide and narrow, bright and muted, precious and ordinary. Three different times a passing Efean man catches my eye and smiles, nothing more, leaving it up to me whether to call after him.

  “Jes? Sorry to take so long. I hope you weren’t bored.”

  “Loitering in the market is a splendid luxury better than any sumptuous feast or treasure chest of rich jewelry!”

  She laughs, thinking I am joking, although I’m sure Kalliarkos would understand. “I’m going on to see my family. Do you want to come with me? We’ll eat at dusk and then go back to the stable afterward.”

  Among Commoners, to be asked into the house is a way of saying you are trusted. Her merry expression offers me friendship. I grasp her hand. “My thanks, Mis. I do want to meet your family but today I need to go see about my mother.”

  “Of course you do! Next time.” She slaps me on the shoulder in a comradely way, and we part. The moment she can no longer see me I tuck my Garon badge under my clothes. I don’t want any random passerby to wonder why a servant of Garon Palace is walking where I’m about to go.

  By now it’s brutally hot so I keep to the shade side of streets as I make my way from the Lantern District, which lies at the base of the King’s Hill, over to the skirts of the Queen’s Hill. I’m sweating and thirsty by the time I reach the compound where my family once lived in amity and trust. What I hoped for I don’t know but the gates are shut and barred with thick locks. Around the back I climb up my usual escape route, creep past the cistern on the roof, and look down into the private courtyard and under the archways into the rooms beyond.

  All the furniture is gone. Even the marble pavement acquired at such expense by my father has been dug up to be sold off elsewhere. Nothing stirs except dust under the feet of a little flock of starlings probing for insects. They are the only family that lives here now.

  The sun beats on my head like the hammer of grief. If I just knew where they were I could be easy, I could truly flourish in my new place. Not knowing is a festering worm gnawing at my heart. Surely Mother will have left a message for me somewhere she knows I might go.

  Anise’s stable.

  The starlings take wing in a rush, circling the roof once and flying away toward the warrens. Maybe it is coincidence, but maybe it is a sign.

  I leave behind the house I grew up in and walk down off the wide avenues and sprawling compounds of the Patron-born into the close-packed, crowded lanes of the Commoners. I have walked this route many times on my way to Scorpion Fountain and Anise’s stable. There’s one little boy I see every time sitting on the steps of a shop that stinks of smoked fish. He has a clubfoot, but he’s well cared for, clean and neat and with a polished walking stick that he waves at me in greeting. I wave back. He’s not hidden like Maraya.

  I’ve walked right through the heat of the day and am glad for a drink at Scorpion Fountain with its curved spouts. By the time I reach Anise’s stable, a flock of fledglings and experienced adversaries is pacing through a warm-up of menageries on the stone forecourt. This Fives court is said to be the oldest in the city, its walls and ramps worn to a shine by generations of feet and hands working across it. The furnishings around the courtyard look strikingly poor to me now compared to the fancy new architecture of Garon Stable. No baths, no barracks, no dining shelter, no warehouses for extra equipment to change up the obstacles. Instead of a viewing terrace covered by an awning there is just a dingy set of steps up to the ancient compound wall from whose height Anise can walk all the way around the court.

  I know a lot of the people. I’ve exchanged casual remarks and friendly banter with many of them for years without becoming close enough to have to tell them who I really am. Now I pin the Garon badge where everyone can see it and, with a jaunty wave, saunter in. Anise cuts across the courtyard to meet me. She is taller than Mother, fat and powerful in the way of respected Efean women. Silver hair crowns her age. How old she is I do not know, and it is impossible to tell from her face because she has so few wrinkles.

  “Honored Lady,” I greet her. “I wanted to know if my mother perchance left a message for me here?”

  “No message. I’ve heard nothing from your honored mother.” She steers me into the shade by the gate, away from the others. “I heard your father now serves Garon Palace.”

  I am almost bouncing on my toes because I am so excited to let her know my news. “He’s been made a general. I’m training at their stable. I’m finally going to be a true adversary.”

  Her gaze drops to the Garon badge and then moves back up to my face. The silence draws out so long that I stop bouncing and wipe my forehead instead.

  “Did you send that boy to me?” Her tone flicks me like a whip’s tip snapped in my face.

  I flinch. “He wanted to know where I trained, that’s all.”

  “Mm-hm.” She taps a foot on the ground like she’s impatient with my stupidity. “Do you know his grandmother set up Garon Stable just for him?”

  I blink, startled by her cutting tone.

  “Do you know his maternal uncle is the Illustrious Southwi
nd?”

  “Yes.”

  “He made his reputation at Asander Stable and yet by one means or another was convinced to transfer to a fledgling stable without a single victory to its name. For Garon Palace to set sail on such a daunting venture means they think they can make some kind of brilliant profit from all this. What profit they make does not include folk like you and me. You are swimming in dangerous waters, Jessamy. Maybe you have been thrown into the Fire Sea without a raft, for which I am sorry, but do not involve me or mine.”

  I shrink back, head ducking. For four years she has trained and encouraged me, and now I just wish I could vanish into a hole in the ground. “I’m sorry, Honored Lady. I meant no harm.”

  “A polite and handsome lad, I’ll give him that. If he smiled at you I suppose it would have been hard to refuse.”

  I take in several sharp breaths rather than admit she is right. “I had to let him win at the trial. Giving him your name was my way of apologizing because he knew I lost on purpose. Anyway, he’s desperate. They won’t truly let him train like other adversaries. They want him to go into the army.” I’m babbling because I cannot bear the way Anise stares at me as if I’ve failed her.

  She lifts a scolding hand. “Don’t tell me secrets that aren’t yours to share.”

  Behind us the adversaries flow through the transition from the ambitious flight of the firebird to the creeping death of the tomb spider, the last of the forms.

  Taking hold of my hands, she turns them over to examine my calluses and scars. Then she looks up into my face. “I promised your mother I would do my best by you.”

  “My mother talked to you?”

  “Of course she talked to me. She would never have taken the risk that you might be harmed when you went out of the house on your own. You are the best I’ve trained, Jessamy. You have the intelligence, the stamina, the strength, and the flair, and most importantly you have the discipline and the fire. But as long as you train at Garon Palace, you must never come back here again.”

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