I couldn’t see Rirth in his cage, but I narrowed my eyes in that direction. “Whose side are you on?”
Rirth chuckled and asked Garroway, “What’s a Buver like you doing locked in a cage like us?”
Overhead, the gala grew increasingly louder. Voices rose, most of them merry and refined. Jostling and clanking goblets spilled droplets of wine through the grates overhead, down into our cages.
“I am meant to fight one of you three and kill you,” Garroway said, returning another disarming smile. “Master’s orders.”
“We are all just pawns on a gameboard we don’t control,” I muttered.
“Quite right. Half the time we can’t even see the board clearly or all its possible moves.”
I fell silent. I had nothing more to say to Garroway Kuffich, especially if he was going to be an enemy.
A few minutes later, the door to the room opened. Three white-robed acolytes entered, walked past mine and Rirth’s cages, and retrieved Kemini. From another part of the room, a separate cage clicked open.
The hulking brute towered over the acolytes as they led him out of his cage.
“Good luck, big guy,” Rirth said as the huge young man exited.
“Don’t need it,” Kemini answered, patting his hip where his axe hung. “Have this.”
Anxiety had me chewing my lip. Before long, I stared overhead and noticed Kemini’s large boots on the grates. Master Lukain’s voice rose above the quieting din of partygoers.
“If it pleases my Lord Ashfen and his guests, I give you the first of my Grimson warriors.” His voice was lilting and cheery, belying every disposition I knew of the stern, violent grayskin.
“He becomes a jester in a court of monsters,” I sighed, shaking my head in shame.
“As you said, we are all just pawns,” Garroway answered. “Born to play a part.”
“You don’t seem bothered by it.”
“Bothered by it?” He chuckled. “Lass, I was born into it. It’s all I’ve ever known.”
All I’ve ever known too, if I’m being honest. Only my court has always been in Nuhav, and before Lukain, my kings have all been human wretches.
A jarringclangof metal rang out and startled me from my thoughts. My neck hollowed as I tensed and whipped my head up to the grate.
Kemini grunted, swinging his axe against a shorter opponent. The conversations between the gala attendees had shifted into pleased shouting and jeering as they watched my Holdmate fight for his life.
Upstairs was an arena. Prizefighters matched against each other for the entertainment of our bloodthirsty slavemasters. They cared not one whit about the outcome, only how much it might impact their purse if their particular fighter didn’t win.
This life was wrong. It was brutal. The stark realization of what Lukain Pierken was offering us was finally coming into dire focus.
I couldn’t catch every glint of steel or movement overhead, staring mostly at shuffling feet and angled bodies. Kemini’s opponent was smaller and quicker, yet I knew Kemini would not tire easily.
“What are you doing fighting here?” Rirth asked Garroway, probably to avoid the anxiety of watching the match. “I thought these bouts were for vampires to watch humans struggle, as sport. You’re not a human.”
“I’m hardly a vampire, either,” Garroway answered. “I go where I’m told, lad. Same as you.”
A grunt stole our focus and the conversation died as our eyes went heavenward. Something warm dripped down the slats through the darkness and trickled across my forehead.
I gasped at the warmth, the sticky viscosity, the coppery scent. My hand came away red, smearing blood across my face.
Light applause sounded from the audience.
More grunts, and the sickening sound of flesh and muscle being stabbed into over and over again. Then the thudding sound of a body hitting the ground. A heavy body.
My mouth fell open and my eyes widened as a face slammed against the slats, facing down into my cage with wide-open, unseeing eyes. An expression of eternal anguish and pain twisted the dead man’s slack face.
