“Where will you go?”
“Don’t profess to care.” Viper pretended to sound hurt, like her previous bravado had been an act, and now she was revealing her true feelings. It wasn’t difficult.
Her sister’s tone softened. “Sister, I don’t fault you for trying to defeat me. I know how you’ve always envied me.” The nerve of this woman! “And I’m sorry if you are melancholy by Mother’s death and my victory.” Melancholy? Mother’s death destroyed me, you vile scorpion!
Viper managed to hold her tongue, hanging her head, maintaining the façade.
Sun sighed. “What would you have me do, sister?”
Viper looked up, letting her hair fall across her face to hide the twinkling she knew was now in her eyes. “Give me Zune.”
The empress had not refused her. How could she? Not only would she be rid of Viper, but Sun would be relieved of responsibility for the city that had long been considered the thorn in Calyp’s proverbial side.
What have I gotten myself into? Viper wondered now, as the city of her childhood grew smaller and smaller behind her.
“Am I a scorpion-squashed fool?” she asked, turning toward one of her guanero. Cadon was his name, a brash, uncouth bruiser with a tendency toward violent outbursts. And those were his appealing attributes. Viper had carefully selected him, as she knew her sister wouldn’t put up a fight. She also knew she could manipulate the bland-faced man in more ways than one.
“If you’re a fool, then I’m a guanik’s arse!” the man said, slapping his leg.
Yes, Viper thought. Yes, you are. But you are my guanik’s arse to tan as I please.
She didn’t know the other two as well, Nurge and Piston. Instead, she’d had Cadon select the other two to accompany them, assuming he’d choose others like him.
Nurge was definitely in the oaf category, his hands like sledgehammers and almost always curled into fists, as if they were stuck that way. His steed seemed to sag in the center under his enormous weight.
Piston, on the other hand, Viper wasn’t sure of. He was tall and lean, his skin exceptionally dark even for a Calypsian, and interspersed with pale scars of various sizes and shapes. There was a grace to him the other two guanero could never hope to emulate. He spoke little and didn’t laugh at his comrades’ crude japes.
Viper was surprised to find herself staring at him. She would have to tread carefully around a man as handsome as he, lest she find herself smitten.
I don’t have time for men, she thought. I have an empire to overthrow.
Zune was a strange city. Most Calypsians would consider it a dirty, backward, violent place, and yet they traveled by the thousands each year to watch the fights.
Most wouldn’t admit how much they enjoyed their time in the City of Blood.
To Viper, however, Zune was interesting. The sprawling, crowded city was a place of second chances and power. Those who controlled the fighting pits had the power, the ability to entertain the empire and use some of the most violent characters in the realm to do so. The fighting pits also granted criminals, war prisoners, and deviants a second chance. A new life, one filled with cheering crowds, pain, and, for most of them, death.
But not all. The strongest fought on, day after day, in the hopes of moving up and eventually fighting in the battle royale, the annual event that drew half of Calyp to the northeasternmost city.
The winner won their freedom.
Viper and her guanero moved through the city, past the shops selling various forms of simpre, a strong drink favored by most southerners, past half-naked children playing with sharp objects, running along streets littered with broken glass, past brothels and dark-eyed men and sharp-eyed women. They even passed an old man with a rag twisted atop his head who was attempting to charm a snake.
Yes, to Viper the city of Zune was her second chance. And I will make it mine.
Their first stop was at a tavern. Though they had plenty of provisions left, Viper wanted her presence to be felt amongst the common people. Cadon moved through the establishment, shouting orders to the proprietor, herding angry and confused customers out the door. Nurge was equally belligerent, while Piston worked silently.
Viper ordered them to stop once half the space was cleared. The remaining customers could stay, watching as she dined like a commoner, on hard bread and sour soup, throwing back the hottest peppers available, something neither of her sisters had ever been able to so much as lick.
The people would marvel at her, and eventually leave and spread rumors of the Third Daughter’s unexpected appearance in their city.
It was for this exact reason that Viper hadn’t sent advance word of her arrival nor purpose.
Zune wasn’t the kind of city where outsiders were welcomed. No, it was a city that understood only one thing: strength.
I will conquer you, she thought as they left the tavern. In one hand she held a half-eaten pepper, and in the other a bottle of a cinnamon-spiced type of simpre, which she would drink as they rode on.
The people stared at her as she rode. Some wore dumbfounded expressions, but they eventually morphed into smiles. The Third Daughter is eating peppers and drinking simpre! they whispered. Children ran behind her, laughing and showing off.
They reached their next stop: the pits.
The fighting pits took up half the city. Hidden behind a wall to prevent fighters from escaping and to ensure spectators were unable to watch without paying, the pits were nestled along the half of the city that hugged the sea. In the event that the prisoners somehow managed to fight their way out of the pits and past the pitmasters, and then climb the enormous stone wall, they would still be forced to swim, hoping none of the ocean’s dangerous predators mistook them for monk seals.
Viper rode up to the gates, kicking her guanik’s ribs so it would snap its jaws and flash its rows of razor-sharp teeth.
“Whoa!” one of the people at the gate said. He was a squat round-bellied man with jowls that shook when he talked. Or walked. Or did much of anything. Before Viper had left Calypso, she had asked one of the royal artists to paint her a picture of this very man so she would recognize him on site.
Danube, she thought. Pitlord. For years he’d filled his belly off the blood of the fighters. It was common knowledge that the vile man skimmed profits from the very fighting pits he was charged with overseeing. Until now, no one cared, so long as the entertainment flowed as swiftly as the waters of the Spear.
“Do you know who I am?” Viper asked without introduction.
The man nodded, his mouth flopping open.
“Good. Do you always man the gates personally?”
“I—you—what?” the man said, his face turning from pale to pink to red in short succession.
“Do you have a hearing problem?”
“I—no—I don’t think so. No.”
“Good. Then you should listen to my next words very carefully, for they are for your ears. The empire appreciates your sixteen years of service in Zune.”
The man’s eyebrows shot up. “I—well—thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Now you are hereby relieved of your duties.”
“I—excuse me?”
“You’re certain your ability to hear is well?”
Cadon sniggered.
“I—I don’t understand.”
“Ah, so it’s not your hearing that is the problem. It’s your wits. Let me explain in simpler terms.” She paused, pointing out into the city. “Go. Now. If I must repeat myself again I will do so with my guanik’s teeth wrapped around your fat skull.”
With a yelp, the man scurried away, his long robes flapping around his bulbous body like a thick second skin.
“That was easy,” Viper said. “Nurge, follow him. See that he doesn’t make off with any of his gold, if he has any left.”
Cadon smirked. Nurge grinned, and then slipped away to follow the now-unemployed bulge of a man. Piston said, “Trust me, the hard part is yet to come.”
Something about the way he said
it made Viper think he spoke from experience.
They left their mounts to be watered and fed. From there, they walked along the edges of the small outer pits, occasionally stopping to watch one of the fights. In one pit a young narrow-eyed Phanecian-looking girl was victorious when she clamped her teeth around the throat of an old man who could barely walk. In another pit a one-armed man used a staff with impressive skill to batter a much younger opponent until he bled out in the dirt. Each pit seemed to contain more violence than the last.
People screamed from the stands, cheering on whichever fighter they’d bet on. Almost anyone could place a bet on these fights as the minimum wage was only a single wooden Scorpion, the lowest monetary denomination in all of Calyp.
They continued onto the next ring of pits, which were larger and fewer in number. As a fighter won a certain number of matches in the outer rings, typically nine, they moved to these pits to face more worthy opponents. Here, the skill was superior, the fights generally longer-lasting, the stakes higher. To bet on these matches, you needed to have more coin, at least two silver Dragons per bout.
The pattern continued as they moved inward, each circular ring bearing larger pits in fewer number, until they reached the dead center. The final pit was massive, easily twice the size of the grand arena in Calypso. It was here that the annual battle royale would take place. It was said the surrounding platforms had a hundred levels, each of which could hold a thousand people or more.
A hundred thousand citizens of Calyp, Viper thought. Here is where I will win the empire back.
The thought filled her with excitement and purpose. To think, she’d considered letting Sun kill her during their fight. To think, she’d almost wanted her to.
Now, a fortnight later, everything looked different, shiny and new.
This is my world, she thought. All I have to do is clamp my hands around its throat and squeeze until it submits.
Zune was old and crumbling, the coppery smell of blood laced with sewer water tinging the air. There was great poverty and great wealth, with little in between, the stark gap showcased as pristine mansions cast enormous shadows over ruined buildings housing hundreds of squatters. In this city, Viper quickly realized, there was great hope and infinite sorrow. Zune was a city of extremes.
And Viper loved it.
In her first fortnight as Pitlord, she focused on the finances, which were in disarray, with hidden accounts, missing funds, sizeable unpaid debts, and meager salaries for the pitmasters, with most of the profits funneling directly into Danube’s rather large pockets.
Nurge had caught the rotund man as he was cleaning out his large estate, tossing fine silk garments into a box and loading up a wagon. Unfortunately, as Viper had expected, the man had already spent most of the money he’d stolen, with little left over. Still, they seized his assets, including his estate, sending him scurrying from the city with naught but the clothes on his back, like the scorpion that he was. Rather than auctioning off the land and houses to the highest bidder, Viper instead opened it up to her pitmasters, most of whom accepted her invitation to live in the beautiful quarters, surrounded by servants that answered their every beck and call. She also increased their salaries fivefold, and cut her own salary completely. Coin wasn’t a problem for her: Before she’d departed Calypso, she’d claimed her inheritance, a large stipend which would be brought to her six times a year under royal guard.
Already her pitmasters seemed happier in their new circumstances. She spent time with them each morning, japing with them and even occasionally flirting. They were hard men, accustomed to dealing with dangerous criminals and watching as their blood was spilled, but that didn’t make them immune to her feminine charms.
“You are a woman of many talents,” Piston said one day, after the pitmasters had been dismissed to carry out their daily duties. The lean, dark-eyed man didn’t speak often, but when he did Viper couldn’t help but pay attention. There was something deadly about the way he looked at her. It only made her more interested in him.
“We’ve barely scratched the surface of what I’m going to do to Zune,” she said, looking away, feigning disinterest.
“I look forward to seeing what you have in mind. The pitmasters love you. But that won’t win you the empire.”
She glanced at him sharply. Behind those dark eyes she could sense an intellect that even she had underestimated. But could she trust him with the full truth? It was too soon to know, and she wouldn’t put it past her sister to plant a spy in her midst. “The empire?” she said. “Surely you jest. The empire is my dear sister’s. She won it fairly.” The reminder still stung a little. Why couldn’t I have been stronger?
Doesn’t matter. The past is the past. The next time I meet her, I will be stronger.
“Victory is never permanent,” Piston said, as if reading her mind.
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Viper said. “I’m but a young woman trying to find her place in the world.”
Piston laughed, and she found it to be contagious, a smile curling her lips. Was it really the first time she’d heard him laugh? Yes. She wanted to make him laugh again.
“What’s next?” Piston asked.
“Stoneworkers,” she said. When he raised his eyebrows, she clarified. “Assemble a team of the best stoneworkers in the city. Commission them to repair the fighting pits, one at a time, starting with the outer ones and moving toward the center. The grandstands, too. Build more luxury seating. Zune is well past due for an upgrade.”
“You will lose income during the repairs,” he said.
She shook her head. “No, I won’t, because I will charge more for entry into the remaining pits. And once the pits have been repaired, I will charge even more.”
“What if people won’t pay the higher entry fees?”
She had already considered this. “They will pay. This place is an addiction to them.”
He smiled, nodding. Without another word, Piston strode off.
The first phase of her plan was off to a strong start.
Time for phase two, she thought.
Viper found Cadon and Nurge in the underground atrium dealing with a problem. One of the prisoners was refusing to fight.
It wasn’t an unusual problem. According to her pitmasters, the solution was typically to threaten execution. Anyone facing immediate certain death would generally choose to fight for their life instead.
But this was an unusual case. The man refusing to fight had been in the pits for half the year already, a remarkable achievement. Most fighters were eventually defeated, which meant they died, but this man had defeated hundreds of opponents already, and was well on his way to a position in the battle royale, which gave him a genuine chance at freedom. A chance he was now throwing out the window by refusing to fight.
He sat on the ground, his back to the wall, his face downcast, hidden by long strings of dark hair that fell to his knees. His skin was too light for him to be of Calypsian descent, his eyes too narrow. A Phanecian then. His skin was already laced with long red stripes, welling with blood. One of the pitmasters raised his whip, bringing it down with a sharp crack! The fighter flinched, but didn’t change position, continuing to hide his eyes as another line of red appeared.
“Let me, you weakling,” Cadon said, grabbing the whip from the pitmaster.
Cadon, muscles bulging, raised the whip.
“Stop,” Viper said.
His hand froze in the air. “My lady,” Cadon growled. “This man refuses to fight. He must be punished.”
Viper ignored her guardsman, staring at the bleeding man. The tendrils of hair parted slightly, revealing sharp green eyes looking back at her.
She approached him. “What is your name?” she asked.
“Prisoner one-seven-nine-four-two,” he said.
“Your real name. The one given to you by your parents.”
He didn’t respond. A drop of blood trickled down his shoulder to his elbow, quivering on the edge of his
skin before dripping off.
Viper said, “I will name you if you’d prefer. That’s what a woman does with her dogs, isn’t it? Or you can tell me your name and be the first prisoner to join my new program.”
Finally, the man looked up, pushing the hair away from his eyes, tucking the strands behind his ears. She was surprised to find his face mostly unscarred, save for a long raised line running from the corner of his left eye to his temple. “What program? This is a place of death. We fight, someone dies. Eventually it is your turn.”
Instead of answering, Viper said, “Why won’t you fight? Do you fear death?”
The man laughed, though there was no true amusement in the sound, nor did it reach his eyes, which continued to bore into Viper’s. “I cannot be killed in the pits,” he said. “It is my curse to bear.”
“Curse? Most would consider not dying to be a blessing from the gods.”
“The gods do not exist but in the minds of men. Else they would’ve come down and destroyed us all already.”
It was Viper’s turn to laugh.
“Now can I hit him?” Cadon asked.
“No. You will bring this man to the grand pit. Until I say otherwise, he will not fight.”
“But, your—”
“Do it.”
Cadon fingered the handle of the whip, as if considering whether to take a quick swing, but then handed it back to the pitmaster. “Get up, you dog,” he said to the man, and he and Nurge hefted him to his feet, dragging him away.
The man’s eyes never left Viper’s as he was forced into one of the underground tunnels running beneath the pits.
“Your name?” Viper asked again, for the tenth time.
When the man didn’t respond, she dumped a bucket of water on his head.
“I could make something up, you know,” he said, wiping water out of his eyes. He was already drenched from head to toe, his skin slick and slightly less brown than before—the water had washed away much of the dirt and grime and blood. He now kneeled on the stones in a puddle of water as deep as his thumb.