JAVAN STOOD BESIDE the arena with the other competitors. There were about forty-five prisoners preparing to enter the ring. His heart thudded in his ears while the aristocracy filed in. Guards flanked both the prisoners and the doors, swords out in case someone decided to make a run for it while the door was open. More guards stood watch on the upper levels, making sure any prisoners who were too old or too injured from the last round of competition stayed in their cells. The bars stayed up, as they did throughout the day, but the guards pacing the halls with their swords out discouraged anyone from breaking the warden’s rules.
Javan’s blood was on fire with nervous energy. Every physical contest he’d participated in at Milisatria had been a well-ordered test with clear boundaries and the expectation that every student would obey the ironclad rules against harming one another. This, on the other hand, was utter chaos. Water monsters. Competitors who may or may not have any weapons’ training. No rules against attacking other people. And a crowd ready to bet on the outcome. There were so many ways it could all go wrong.
Panic clawed at him, a jagged pulse of fear that tore through his veins. Javan clenched and unclenched his hands, shook out his arms, and paced in the small space between each guard, to the annoyance of those closest to him.
“Will you stop? You’re making my nerves worse,” the man who couldn’t swim said. Sweat beaded his brow and collected beneath the arms of his gray tunic.
Javan shrugged as if to say he was sorry, but didn’t stop. The jagged pulse of fear twisted within him. If he stood still, it would paralyze him. He needed to be loose and limber. Fighting a horde of bloodthirsty creatures was going to test the skills he’d learned at Milisatria to their limits. Fighting them with water up to his waist while trying to avoid the other prisoners?
Nearly impossible.
As soon as the thought hit, he banished it before the panic could consume him. Nothing was impossible. Nothing. Not even the daunting task of winning a tournament when he was already hundreds of points behind and when everything in the arena with him wanted him dead. He just had to work for it harder than anyone else. And he’d spent the last ten years doing exactly that.
Pacing, he scanned the crowds as they made their way to their seats, their sashes a bright slash of beauty in the drab stone interior of the prison. So far, he didn’t see anyone, student or parent, he’d met at Milisatria, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. And if he made enough of an impression—if he drew enough attention to himself—he’d have accomplished two huge steps forward in his plan to get out of Maqbara.
He’d have gained enough points to give himself a chance at qualifying for the final round. And if he was recognized by any families who knew him from the academy, he’d have alerted them to his predicament. They could call upon the king and tell him the truth. Hope churned through him, twining with the fear until he wasn’t sure which was worse.
As the judges for the match climbed onto the narrow wall that surrounded the arena and strapped themselves to support poles to keep from falling into the combat zone, someone bumped into Javan. Hard.
He turned to find Hashim glaring at him, his lip curled in derision.
“You’re meat. I’m going to see to it personally.” The midday sunlight glaring in from the skylights above traced the white scar tissue that crisscrossed Hashim’s face.
Javan shrugged. “You’re the crowd favorite, I hear. And currently in first place. If you want to give that up by taking a five-hundred-point deduction on my behalf, who am I to argue your strategy?”
Hashim spit on Javan’s boots as a sturdily built woman dressed in black walked out onto a platform on level one. The crowd fell quiet as she raised her hands. Her iron-gray hair was pulled back into a bun, and one dark eye glared down on the arena. The other side of her face was hidden beneath a bandage.
Moving away from Hashim, Javan stood next to the non-swimmer again and asked quietly, “Who is that?”
“The warden, you fool.”
Javan’s eyes narrowed as he stared up at the woman who ran Maqbara and forced her prisoners to fight, sometimes to their deaths, for her own profit. What kind of person dealt in death and violence to line her own coffers?
The same kind of person who bought a child of five and put her to work in the middle of Akram’s most violent criminals.
He found himself hoping she’d accidentally fall into the arena.
“Welcome to the second round of this year’s tournament!” Her voice was low and gravelly. “We have forty-six competitors still in the running for the prize.”
She swept the prisoners with a glance and frowned when her eye landed on Javan. For a long moment, she glared at him, her nostrils flaring as if finding a new competitor in the group was infuriating.
Finally, she said, “It seems we have forty-seven competitors. A new prisoner has joined our ranks. If you want to take a gamble on an untried young man, we will be accepting bets for another five minutes before combat starts. Odds on the favorites are listed at the betting table.” She gestured to her left, and Javan followed her movement to see a small table set up on the platform with a short, bespectacled woman sitting behind it, her quill flying over parchment as she recorded bets and collected coin.
Turning away, Javan paced again, his knees shaky, his palms clammy. Nausea burned the back of his throat as the realization hit that he was about to get into the water with the vicious, man-size worm he’d seen in the stalls, plus a bevy of other dangerous creatures.
This wasn’t sport. It was madness. It was also the only way he could win an audience with his father and save both himself and the king.
Over by the stalls, Sajda, Tarek, Batula, and several unhappy-looking guards were standing beside cisterns and barrels of water. A long wooden chute was mounted to a pole beside them. They could pour the contents of the barrels into the end closest to them. The other end dumped the creatures straight into the water inside the arena.
Sajda met his gaze once, but her expression looked carved out of stone, and he couldn’t find a hint of worry or compassion in her eyes.
Not that he needed it from someone who’d made it clear she disliked him and had only given him advice today out of respect for her relationship with Tarek. Besides, it was time to focus. He had a combat round to win.
The warden stepped to the front of the platform again and yelled, “Betting is closed. Competitors, take your stations.”
Hashim instantly elbowed his way to the front of the crowd, nine other competitors right behind him. Grabbing the side of the arena, he hauled himself up and over. He landed with a splash and immediately went for his weapon of choice—a short pole with a wickedly spiked ball at the end of its long chain.
Javan stepped away from the throng of prisoners who were being herded by the guards toward the same spot Hashim had used, each trying to scramble into the arena in time to find the weapon he or she wanted.
Gambling that the guards wouldn’t see him in time to stop him, Javan sized up his path, and then ran straight for the section of the wall directly between the competitors and the barrels full of beasts.
Someone shouted, but it was too late as Javan grabbed the edge of the short wall and leaped. Twisting in midair, he cleared the wall and landed with a splash. He dove forward, and water rushed over his head as he kicked his feet against the wall, propelling himself directly into the center of the arena where a pair of short swords were anchored to the floor with a stone. Several strong kicks later, and he was there. Shoving the stone aside, he grabbed the sword hilts, found his footing, and stood, his hands shaking as energy flooded his body.
The applause was deafening as he shook his hair out of his eyes and looked up.
All eyes in the arena were trained on him, though he caught several people glancing quickly at the palace steward, who stood alone in the royal box recording participation on his sheaf of parchment. A flurry of conversations erupted as the aristocracy realized the competitor who’d made the grand entrance into the ring was the new prisoner. He swept the crowd with his gaze, meeting their eyes and willing someone to recognize him.
Yl’ Haliq be merciful, please let someone recognize him.
As the rest of the competitors landed in the arena and rushed for weapons, Javan felt a chill on the back of his neck. He glanced at Sajda, fully expecting her to be treating him to her I’m-about-to-remove-your-vital-organs glare, but her expression was nothing but icy indifference. Craning his neck, he found himself locking gazes with the warden, who stood on the platform directly behind him.
He imagined there was something familiar in the way she was looking at him, and then shook it off. Of course there was something familiar. Sajda had given him the same treatment. Maybe this was where she’d learned how to intimidate others without saying a word.
Turning away from the warden, Javan swallowed a sudden lump in his throat and braced himself as two guards hefted a barrel and slowly tipped it into the wooden chute. The chute rattled and shook as a dozen venomous snakes slithered down its length and into the water. Javan’s knees shook as the jagged pulse of fear exploded into brilliant strands of terror. He forced himself to keep his feet planted when everything in him wanted to swim for the relative safety of a wall.
He couldn’t win if he played it safe.
The crowd roared with excitement as a prisoner close to the chute suddenly went underwater. Seconds later a steady stream of flesh-eating fish slid off the chute and into the water, and crimson bloomed where the prisoner had gone under.
Javan looked away as the two water dragons dove into the arena. He couldn’t watch the beasts entering the combat zone. He needed all his focus for the water.
Carefully scanning the area around him, he breathed deeply.
Fear out.
Courage in.
There. A pair of darting shadows whisked by his boots and began circling. Another big splash sounded from the chute as Javan held his breath and ducked under the water in a crouch.
The fish were plump silvery things with blue-tipped tails and yellow eyes. He watched carefully, timing their movements, and then drove his swords down as they came for his legs.
His swords each skewered a fish; but before he could stand, something large slammed into him and sent him sprawling.
He twisted, his back to the floor, and raked his sword tips across the belly of a water dragon. A few damaged scales spun into the water, but the moss-green lizard with the spiny ridges and thick fangs seemed unaffected.
As its thick, muscular body passed above him, Javan lunged to his feet. Something tore at his arm, and he stabbed a sword through another fish before flinging himself onto the fleeing dragon’s back.
The creature growled, a hoarse, guttural sound, and writhed beneath Javan’s grip. Its spiny tail whipped through the air, slicing into Javan’s back and sending an arc of water flying.
The water was turning murky with blood—from Javan and from other prisoners around him. The air was filled with cries of pain and rage and the thunderous clamor of the crowd above them.
Terror was a fire burning through Javan, screaming at him to get out of the water. To run because surely no punishment the warden could deliver was worse than the monsters that circled him now.
Ignoring the urge to run, Javan concentrated on the water dragon. The beast was nearly impossible to hold on to. It twisted, its dense body several handspans longer than Javan’s, and snapped its elongated snout toward Javan’s face. He flung his head back, wincing as the wet end of the creature’s nose scraped across his neck.
Panic flared, sending his heartbeat crashing against his ears. How did you kill a water dragon? The scales were impossible to penetrate with a sword.
The creature twisted again, and now Javan was holding the underbelly, which was just as well armored as the rest. Something brushed past his leg, and he prayed it wasn’t the lake crawler ready to swallow him whole or the worm with its distended jaw aiming for his exposed body.
Screams rose from a prisoner to his right, but Javan didn’t look. He had his hands full. The dragon was rolling like a barrel, its jaw coming perilously close to Javan’s arms. He loosened his grip and then grabbed on again as the lizard shot forward. The creature reared back and snapped at Javan’s head, and the prince found himself staring past a row of thick fangs to the soft flesh of the beast’s throat.
Yl’ Haliq preserve him, there was only one way to do this, and it was going to hurt.
As the dragon twisted and came at him again, Javan let go of its body with his left arm, aimed his sword, and shoved his arm into the beast’s mouth.
The blade bit deep, and the dragon’s jaw closed.
Agony blazed through Javan, raw and blistering, as the fangs sank into his arm. Raising the hilt of his other sword, he smashed it repeatedly against the lizard’s snout. The creature thrashed wildly, and Javan saw stars at the edge of his vision. But then the dragon’s jaw relaxed, and it gave one more feeble twist before going limp.
Trembling from the pain and the residual panic, Javan turned and caught the eye of the closest judge, a girl wearing a red tunic with a white sash, and heaved the body of the dragon toward her. She checked his armband and nodded once as he slid the two fish who’d stayed on his right sword into the water. He’d lost the other sword to the dragon’s throat. She wrote his score on the parchment she held while he turned to see what else he could kill.
The entire ring was in chaos.
Prisoners thrashed and fought—with beasts and with one another. The water was clouded with blood, guts, and scales.
Javan calculated quickly. He’d earned sixty points. That wasn’t nearly enough. He needed the lake crawler and the worm, if they were still alive.
Something bumped his boot, and he bent swiftly to stab whatever creature it was, only to nearly drive his sword through the man who’d told him he couldn’t swim. The man’s eyes bulged with panic, and bubbles escaped his lips as he frantically grabbed for the snake that was wrapped around his throat like a scarf, its fangs sunk into the first two fingers of the man’s right hand.
A small crowd of flesh-eating fish followed close behind, tearing at the man’s arms with their tiny teeth.
Javan struck, slicing his sword through the snake and severing its head. Then he snatched the front of the man’s tunic and hauled him to his feet. Tossing the snake’s lifeless body toward the judge on his left, Javan grabbed the man’s hand and dug the tip of his sword into the puncture wounds, cutting them wide open.
A shadow scuttled across the floor, and Javan dragged the man backward with him as the lake crawler drifted by, the gaping maw in its center nothing but a shadow slightly darker than the rest of its body.
Javan shuddered. This was madness, but there was only one way out of the horror that surrounded him. Only one way out of Maqbara and back to the destiny that was his.
He needed to kill the crawler and find the worm or he was going to lose his chance to gain an audience with his father. But the man he’d saved was shaking now, his teeth chattering as blood flowed from the holes in his arms and the cuts on his fingers.
Javan turned and waded toward the closest wall, dragging the man with him. “How long did the snake have its fangs in you?”
When the man didn’t answer, Javan swung around and snapped, “How long?”
“I don’t know.” The man’s voice shook. “Not long. I was holding its head, but then it got away from me and bit just before I bumped into you.”
Javan reached the wall and pushed the man against it just as the worm skimmed past them, someone’s legs dangling from its mouth. Horror crawled up the back of Javan’s throat.
“Sa’ Loham preserve us,” the man cried as he stared in horror.
Javan yanked the man’s injured hand toward him and looked at the veins on his arm. They looked normal, but he had no idea if venom left streaks of red moving toward the heart or not. And neither one of them had time for a lengthy discussion about the man’s options.
“We have to cut off anything that might have venom in it,” Javan said.
The man pulled his hand toward his chest.
“Lose your fingers or lose your life. Which is it?” Javan asked, his patience fraying. Even now the worm could be dead. The lake crawler too. And Javan couldn’t catch the tournament leaders if he was busy killing the last of the fish. “Choose!”
“Fingers,” the man said.
Javan pinned the man’s hand to the wall and removed his first two fingers with one quick slash of his sword. Blood gushed, and the man screamed.
Whipping his tunic over his head, Javan wrapped it tightly around the man’s hand. “Raise your arm above your head and stay close to the wall. It’s the best I can do for you now.”
Javan whirled back toward the competition in time to see Hashim and four other competitors charging straight for him.