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.
As commanded, Cadon and Nurge were standing nearby. They would only intervene if the man attempted to hurt her. She suspected he wouldn’t.
“You won’t,” Viper said.
“How do you know?”
“I don’t know.”
The man seemed to consider this, then said, “Why do you want to know my name?”
“Because numbers are boring. The people can’t cheer for a number. When you win the battle royale, I don’t want them screaming ‘Prisoner one-seven-nine-four-three!’”
“Two, not three.”
“See? No one can even remember that.”
“So you want them to scream ‘Gat’?”
“If that’s your name.”
“It is.”
“Was that so difficult?”
“Will the other prisoners get their names back?”
“Only if they earn them. There’s no point in learning someone’s name if they’re going to die the next day.”
Gat shook his head. “I don’t know what to make of you. I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish. You’re the Third Daughter to the empire. You could be doing anything. Why this?”
She ignored the question. “Let me ask you something, Gat. If you could have anything in the world, what would it be?”
He answered without hesitation: “Freedom.”
She nodded. “Do you think most of the prisoners in Zune would answer the same way?”
“Not most of them. All of them.”
“So why won’t you fight? According to my pitmasters, you are one of the favorites to win the battle royale. Freedom is at your fingertips and you’re throwing it all away for the chance at a swift execution? For what?”
Gat cupped his hands together and dipped them in the water. He scooped some up, sipping from his makeshift cup. “The cost of freedom is too high. I don’t want to kill anymore,” he eventually said.
“Maybe you don’t have to,” Viper said.
He raised an eyebrow in surprise.
During the day, Viper trained with Gat. He taught her to fight, not in the manner of the Calypsians like she’d learned as a child, with their whips and short knives, but like a Phanecian, after the method of phen ru, the martial art of attack. It was this unorthodox style that had allowed Gat to survive so long in the pits. Slowly, day by day, a change was wrought in the man, as if the memories of the blood he’d spilt were displaced by new memories.
At night, she watched the fights, hunting for potential new blood for her program. When she saw a fighter she liked, she had Cadon and Nurge bring them to the grand arena, where she learned their names and informed them they wouldn’t have to fight again. They started training immediately, learning to fight like Gat.
Gat seemed to embrace the role of trainer. He was like a new man.
A fortnight later, Cadon said, “May I be honest with you?”
“Always,” Viper said.
“This strategy will fail.”
Viper hid her amusement, though she was surprised the dull-headed guardsman had even realized there was a strategy. “Why?”
“You are charging more, but providing less entertainment. The best fighters are no longer fighting, and the oddsmakers are already asking questions. They are wondering when they will see them again, if ever. If you don’t reveal them soon, the people will stop coming to the pits.”
“An unexpectedly logical argument,” Viper said.
“Uh. Thank you?”
“And yet flawed. For you don’t know the entire picture. You have but a slice of a painting, a single eye, while I have seen what is hidden beneath the cloth covering. The masterpiece.”
That seemed to befuddle him sufficiently to stop talking altogether.
“I appreciate your concern,” she added. “But never fear. Everything is going as planned. The more the oddsmakers and their ilk long for the fighters I’m withholding, the more they’ll be willing to pay when I at last give them what they want.”
That seemed to placate the large man, who lumbered away, off to bully some prisoner no doubt.
The next day, Piston came to her, and Viper was surprised at how good it felt to see him. Whenever he was close by, she felt more alive. “Three of the new pits are complete,” he said. “Several others are almost finished as well.”
“You came to see me about business?”
“What else is there?”
“Have you missed me?”
He came closer, his hand hovering just shy of her face. “I have been busy carrying out your wishes.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I miss the sun when it is hidden behind dark clouds.”
“I am not Sun,” she growled, hating the analogy.
His hand touched her face, and she trembled at his touch. “No, you are not. You are the sun and the moon and the stars and the night and the day and the fire of dragons.”
She tried to keep her voice firm, low. “Do you desire the fire of dragons?”
“I desire you.”
“Perhaps someday,” she said, pulling away. “If you continue to please me.” She turned her back, waiting until she heard him leave before turning back around. She took a deep breath. I cannot get distracted. For all I know, this man could be a spy.
No, she’d keep him at arm’s length, distracting him with the renovation project until it was too late.
I must know for certain, she thought.
She revealed the new pits to the people that night. At the same time, she announced that their beloved fighter, who now had a name—Gat—would be the first to fight.
Despite Cadon’s fears, the people paid top dollar for the event, almost twice as much as the usual entry fee. Triple the usual number of bets were cast on the bout.
“If this is a trick…” Gat said, leaving the threat hanging in the air.
“What?” Viper said. “You’ll kill me? You’ll kill the spectators?”
He shook his head. His voice became low, sad, the version of him she hated. “I’ll kill myself.” She much preferred the strong, confident man who taught her and the others to fight.
She rested a hand on his bare shoulder, immediately wondering what made her do it, and at the same time wondering when she’d started feeling so comfortable with the man. He stared at her hand. “There’s no trick. This is what we’ve been training for. A new form of entertainment. Better for everyone.”
“You’re not worried the people will see right through it?”
“The people see what they want to see.”
“I hope you’re right.”
He left her, off to prepare for his first fight in months.
/> Gat moved around the shiny, new pit with an effortless grace, so fluid he might’ve been water rushing through a canyon.
Above where he fought, every new seat was filled, as well as all three luxury pavilions. There, the wealthy occupants dined on roast pyzon and tenderized duck liver while watching the fighters destroy each other.
Gat’s opponent, one of the fighters Viper had selected months back, was a solid man named Barr-et, a gray-skinned Dreadnoughter who’d been imprisoned for stealing jewelry. Viper had chosen him for this particular fight because she trusted him more than any of the others, save perhaps Gat. He’d bought into her plan quickly, embracing it with a vigor none of the others had, Gat included.
And now he was going to die, or at least appear to.
He was already “bleeding” from a dozen places, each from a well-placed kick or jab by the far superior warrior he was facing. Gat wasn’t uninjured either, limping slightly, his lip bloodied.
The crowd was going mad as the men circled each other slowly, playing it up like they’d practiced.
And then Gat struck with a flurry of attacks, raining first body blows and then head shots on his opponent. Barr-et pretended to try to block them, to fight back, but in reality this was the big finish, one they’d worked on for the last three days straight, the exact placement of each strike planned perfectly.
Barr-et went down. The crowd roared even louder. Gat dropped on top of his opponent, not stopping his blows until the man was motionless. Lifeless. Lying in a pool of blood.
Gat stood, slowly raising his hands over his head. The people cheered. They didn’t chant his name, as Viper had hoped, but it was enough. They had their champion. It was a start.
Right on cue, Cadon and Nurge rushed into the pit and carried Barr-et’s limp body into the tunnel leading away. Viper slipped from the back of the crowd and past Piston, who was guarding the entrance to the underground tunnels. Filled with energy, she took the stone steps two at time, bursting into the atrium usually used to allow winning fighters recover. Now, however, this room was used for staging and post-match debrief. First, she spotted Cadon, who came over to greet her, concern in his expression.