Page 29 of Court of Talons
I glance to Nazar, who’s cutting up a garment of deep, dark green into cloth strips. My old hooded undercloak, I realize with a start, the one specially made to cover my enormous coils of hair. Now that mass is a tidy wig of ebony braids, and my undercloak is nothing but ribbons.
I couldn’t be happier about that.
Before I can speak, the priest looks up. “Do you know how you would win in the pits, Merritt?”
“Win?” I blink at him. “I’d win by not entering them.”
My response is met with a guffaw from Caleb. “Not enter them, are you mad? If you’re a soldier and you have the chance to fight, you take it. Even as a warrior knight with nothing any longer to prove, you should be ready. You wouldn’t get beaten up again like the first time. I can show you.”
He tosses his horse brush to the folded blankets and squares off against me in the small space of our camp. Instead ofrebuking him, Nazar stops his work and straightens. He watches as I jerk back, narrowly evading Caleb’s opening punch.
Irritation sparks through me. “I’m not trained to fight this way, Caleb.” In truth I’m not trained at all. Making war against posts driven into the ground only counts for so much.
“Of course you are,” he jibes. “You fight with stave and sword. What are stave and sword but extensions of your arms and fists? What are your arms and fists but extensions of your head and heart?”
His words sound so like Nazar that I glance over to the priest, who’s now regarding us both with greater interest. That glance is my undoing, as I see Caleb’s jab from the corner of my eye but can’t turn quickly enough to evade it. At the last minute, he pulls back, just tapping me lightly instead of walloping me, but I spin around anyway as he dances back.
“See? I do that with only one fist. You know how?”
“Because you’re fast.” I’m turning as well, my gaze not on his head, not on his nattering mouth, but on his stomach. That’s how you keep animals in check. Their torsos move before their legs do. If you can focus on their centers, you can capture them more quickly than if you follow their heads or their hooves.
“Not fast—well, I am fast, that’s true. But that’s not the whole of it. The whole of it is that I keep my center tight until I decide how to move.”
I smile with satisfaction. His trick isn’t so much a trick after all. He twitches to the left, and though his legs seem to angle right, I follow his body and attack his right shoulder, shoving him hard.
He breaks back quickly, too quickly, and I stumble forward, turning the fall into a somersault as he also regains his feet.
“Second mistake. You went for my strength, not my clear weakness.” He shrugs his left shoulder, his stump moving in itsshortened sleeve. “I’ve gotten used to this, but no one else has. It’s a misdirection.”
He shrugs again, and my heart twists, but in that moment, he barrels forward, his head down, his body leading with his injured arm. Unsure how to move, I falter, and a moment later, I’m on my back, the wind knocked out of me.
“Ha!” Caleb leaps off me and holds out his right hand. “Be glad I don’t have two stumps, or you’d already be dead.”
I let him pull me to my feet, but I can’t help the grin. “Have you been this obnoxious your whole life? Or merely since your injury?” It’s the first time I’ve broached the subject of his arm, and the blood rushes to my cheeks even as I lean down to dust myself off.
Fortunately, Caleb seems unfazed. “I’ll let you guess the answer to that.” He bows to Nazar as I straighten. But Nazar’s gaze is on me, not Caleb.
“Remember the truth of what you said to me,” he says. “Don’t enter the pits. It’s not your place.”
My place?I squint at him, then turn to meet Caleb’s wide eyes. “What are you staring at?”
“Nothing—nothing.” Caleb grins, his gaze shooting from me to Nazar. “The fights will be starting soon. We should go!”
Despite his excitement, Caleb picks his way almost casually through the crowds of the tournament fair, giving me the opportunity to look around more thoroughly. There are more women, I notice at once. Both old and very young, though not many my age. They’re setting up makeshift camps and stalls, selling everything from food to tools to decorative trappings for horses and armor. Weaving among the stalls are the tariff takers as well, easily identified by their gold-and-black sashes.
Gold and black. The colors of the First House. The Lord Protector does have his hand in everything, it seems.
“What happens if the tariff takers find someone who’s operating without paying their charge?” I ask as we turn into a thicker knot of people. The closer we get to the towering spectator stands, the more excitement hangs in the air.
“Doesn’t happen much,” Caleb says. “First time they run across a cheat, they shave his head and brand his scalp, then parade him around the field. Doesn’t happen at all after that, not in any organized way. There’s always someone looking to cut, cut, and cut the system, but the system only has to cut back once and you’re done.”
I nod. “And the tournaments always bring in all these people?”
“Like this big?” He rubs his face, considering. “The stands alone hold five thousand or so, but there’re thousands more that throng to the Tournament of Gold, here more for the spectacle of people and goods and food than the fighting. And that’s besides the people who actually live here year-round.”
Thousands more? “Where do they all come from?” I ask, aghast.
“The closer houses, mostly. The Second for sure, the Fourth and Seventh. The Fifth, too. Not so much the Eighth. The holdings of all those houses span the plains of the Protectorate, and everyone who can spare the time comes to the Tournament of Gold at least once in their lifetime. Some come every year.” He scratched his chin, looking around. “Still, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it this big. The last tournament to be close was three years ago. That one was big but nothing like this.” His smile turns rueful, and I catch the undercurrent of his words.