Page 11 of Eyes of Kings

CHAPTER 5

The walls of the coliseum block the worst of the wind, but they’re nothing against the relentless downpour. Calla doesn’t quite mind it. Droplets prick into her eyes, blurring the image of these Crescents before her. She almost enjoys this feeling—reduced to the mercy of the elements and still standing her ground. She swings her sword in an arc to the right. Then the left. By the time she’s brandished the figure-eight loop multiple times, there’s yet to be any movement down the line, and she yells, “Come on! I don’t have all day.”

The first Crescent charges, clutching the sword he’s plucked from the vaults. He’s holding it too tightly. Calla strikes hard, and the weapon flies out of his hands. The Crescent halts in his step, wide-eyed.

“You’re down,” Calla says. “Next!”

Over the morning, the number of Crescents guarding her had steadily increased. Three turned to ten, which turned to twenty, making an absurd tail after her while she walked. Clustering into a room when she was only stopping to get water. Calla grew fed up enough to steer them all through the north wing, then into the coliseum. Without the marketplace in operation, there’s plenty of open ground to spar. Only a few stalls remain by the farthest entrance, too big to dismantle in haste. Perhaps their owners will come back for the plywood and tarp. Or perhaps the stalls were abandoned before the rain. King Kasa raised theprice to peddle in the coliseum, and August didn’t lower it. As the royal advisor, Calla spent her time running after Anton and the crown. She never got around to checking on the woman selling jelly cake, whether she landed on her feet after her last day running the stall.

I will, Calla had promised.I will accuse the palace of wrongdoing. I will save San-Er. I will right the kingdom.

When the second Crescent lunges, she allows her to come farther. A bit better. Some training. The arena’s sand has muddied with the rain, and Calla’s boot slides widely when she moves to block. The Crescent charged with such gusto that she’s left her middle wide open for Calla to ram into.

“I thought we were sparring,” Calla yells when the Crescent collapses. “It feels like I’m just kicking all your asses!”

She lost her way. She fell victim to palace politics. Cared more about stopping Otta Avia than protecting the cities from such grappling. But what’s done is done. Calla has returned where she operates best: the battlefields, the arenas. She’s decided to test herprotection team, wanting to see how adept the Crescent Societies really are. Only then do they have some chance of claiming Talin, and then Calla will be better. Shewill.

It’s not until the third Crescent that someone finally decides to play dirty. The young man charges, two knives pulled. Calla raises her sword, and she feels a thrum—a pulse of qi, weakening her wrist. He strikes. Her grip on her weapon loosens; she dives and catches the pommel with her other hand.

Interesting.

Calla draws back. Evaluates.

The Crescents are not uniformly skilled. Their members clearly had enough collective competence to combat the Weisannas in that initial attack. Explosives planted, a secret entrance, a hostile takeover… By the time Calla came through, they had stationed themselves around their winnings. But if they’re going to march on August, they need soldiers. Competent forces who can swing a swordand throw a blade, because there will be hundreds of Weisannas, and August will place them in rows and rows and unending rows before she can get to him. She doesn’t want the newbies who swore fealty to the Crescent Societies weeks ago—she wants the legacy members who were born into it.

This Crescent brings his blade down, and Calla blocks.

“Not bad,” she says.

Lightning rips through the skies. Bright white and electric, aggressive enough to draw the young man’s attention away for a beat, and Calla sweeps her feet underneath him, sending him to the ground.

He rolls up immediately.

“Was that you?” he demands.

Calla, slowly, glances to the clouds. Thunder follows several seconds later, rumbling deeply through the twin cities.

“No,” she says. She isn’t sure, to tell the truth. She doesn’t know what shecoulddo if she were to make the ask. Gather up all the qi in the air. Launch it skyward.

She pulls her gaze back to the arena.

“Come on. Keep going.”

Calla runs through the line of Crescents. Half cannot hold their own in the slightest. A quarter are tolerable while exchanging blows with their blades. On the second turn, it is the same young man with the qi trick who finally spars with Calla long enough that her breath grows short. She is fighting with proper consideration. This time, no lightning shakes from the skies to distract him.

“What’s your name?” she asks between strikes.

He barely looks twenty. She would put him closer to the age she was when she left the Palace of Heavens.

“Levi.”

“Levi,” Calla says, blocking his blow on her left side. “How were you trained?”

“I sparred often with my siblings, Your Highness.”

A flicker of movement, in her periphery. Anton has come through one of the coliseum entrances. He’s hurrying toward her. As Calla draws back a few steps, she scoops up one of the fallen swords, left in the sand after a Crescent’s embarrassing performance. She throws the weapon to Anton the moment he nears, and rather unwillingly, he lunges forward to catch it.

“I need to speak to you,” Anton says.