Chapter 37: Ten Thousand Eyes

The arena was full an hour before sunset.

Aren had never seen so many people in one place, not in this life. Ten thousand of them filled every bench of the great white bowl, from the sand at the bottom to the servants’ walkway at the rim. Nobles in silk and velvet sat in the lower rows under painted canopies, with the merchants above them, and above the merchants everyone else: dockworkers and fishwives and stable boys and children on their fathers’ shoulders, all shouting and eating and happily waving little silver flags with the crescent moon of House Ashgrave. The noise was like the sea.

He stood at the edge of the sand with the black and silver sword case on his shoulder.

The servants’ place was a narrow strip of stone between the bottom row of benches and the sand, behind a low wooden rail. One other servant stood there with him, a broad, red-faced woman in a brown apron who had been hired to hold Leon Harrow’s water. She’d brought her own stool and a bag of apples.

"First final?" she asked him.

"Yes."

"Thought so. You look like you’re going to be sick." She offered him an apple, and when he shook his head she cheerfully bit into it herself. "Don’t worry, love. Nobody looks at us. Could set your hair on fire and they’d still be watching the girl."

’That’s exactly what I’m counting on.’

Behind him, close enough to touch, sat the nobles of the first row. He could clearly feel them looking at the back of his neck. The Servant. The one who carries her books.

Somewhere in the stands above, forty of Rook’s men were spread through the crowd. Somewhere in the city below, Tiller was sitting on the steps of the High Cathedral with a bag of nuts. And three seats to his left in the first row sat Aldous Penrose, with his weak chin and his clean hands and a humiliation that had not faded since the white circle, and Aren had seen him on the way in, and Aldous had certainly seen him too.

[Aldous Penrose. Hostility: 74%.]

"Careful with that case, Zero." Aldous pitched it just loud enough. "Wouldn’t want you to drop it."

A few people around him laughed, and Aren kept his eyes firmly on the sand.

’Says the man who dropped a sword in front of half the Academy. Bold choice.’

Leon Harrow came out first, from the tunnel on the western side.

The crowd cheered for him, not as loudly as they would for her, but loudly enough. He had won every duel of the Festival, and the city loved a winner. He walked to the center of the sand in plain grey practice armor with an ordinary sword at his hip. He didn’t wave. He simply stood with his hands at his sides and his polite face turned toward the eastern tunnel, and waited.

The woman with the apples stopped chewing. "Funny lad, that one," she said quietly. "Paid me in advance, very polite. Hasn’t touched his water once all week."

Aren looked hard at Leon and saw nothing, only a door with no handle.

Then the eastern tunnel opened, and the arena exploded.

Vivienne walked out into the last of the sunlight in silver armor with the crescent on its chest. Her face was calm and pale, and she completely ignored the crowd and the canopies and the ten thousand flags waving for her. She walked straight across the sand to where Aren stood and held out her hand without looking at him.

He opened the case and put the hilt of her sword into her palm.

Her fingers closed around it. For half a second they were closer than they had ever been, and he saw that her hand was shaking, just slightly, just once.

"Remember what I told you," she said, so low that only he could hear it.

"Every word, my lady."

She turned and walked steadily to the center of the sand.

A herald in Ashgrave silver climbed onto a platform at the edge of the arena and unrolled a scroll. "Lady Vivienne Ashgrave, heir of the Silver Moon! Against Leon Harrow, of House Harrow of the west! The final duel of the Autumn Festival, to yield or to fall!" He lowered the scroll. "Duelists, at the horn."

The sun touched the hills, and the horn sounded from the top of the arena, and Leon Harrow moved.

He fought exactly as he had fought the spear girl, like two people sharing one body. His sword went one way and his feet went another, and he was never where Vivienne aimed. Her crescents flew across the sand in silver storms, ten at a time, then twenty, and he walked between them as if he could see them before they formed.

"Look at him go!" someone behind Aren gasped. "Is he even trying?"

Then his sword touched her shoulder, lightly, almost gently, and Vivienne staggered.

Aren saw it from the edge of the sand, her face going even paler than it already was. Her next crescent came out smaller and slower, and Leon stepped inside it and touched her again, on the arm, and she dropped to one knee in the white sand.

Ten thousand people gasped at once.

"Get up!" a child screamed from somewhere high in the stands. "Get up, get up!"

She got up. She lifted her sword and threw everything she had at him, a wall of silver crescents that lit the whole arena like a second sunset. He walked through the edge of it and touched her a third time, on the chest, over the silver moon on her armor.

She fell hard.

This time it wasn’t to one knee. She went all the way down onto her side in the white sand, with her sword lying beside her and her silver braid spread out like spilled water.

The arena went completely silent.

Aren stood behind the low rail with the empty sword case in his hands, and every muscle in his body locked. Three paces of stone, a rail, and then the sand. He could be beside her in a heartbeat. He could put his hand on Leon Harrow’s chest and think one word, and whatever was inside that polite young man would stop.

If you step onto the sand, my Trial is broken. Even if I’m bleeding. Even if I fall. Even if I’m dying.

’Then don’t die. Please. I’m asking nicely.’

He stayed where he was.

Beside him the woman with the apples had both hands over her mouth. Behind him, in the first row, someone laughed softly.

"Well." Aldous Penrose sounded almost pleased. "So much for the Empress."

"Go on, Zero," another voice whispered, and a few people sniggered. "Run and help her. Aren’t you her servant?"

Leon Harrow walked slowly across the sand and stood over Vivienne. He lifted his sword.

His polite face was still turned toward her, quiet and empty, and for the first time Aren saw something move behind it. It was something old and patient, looking out through a young man’s eyes, and it was enjoying this.

[Warning: Unknown entity.][Rank: ???]

Aren’s hand tightened on the rail so hard that a splinter went into his palm.

’Three paces. Three paces, and she never forgives me, and she’s alive.’

He’d already shifted his weight onto his front foot when the light changed.

Above the arena, over the eastern hills, the full moon was rising, huge and white, and its light reached the sand.

Vivienne Ashgrave, lying on her side with her cheek in the white grains, opened her eyes.

She breathed in. It was nothing like the way she’d breathed before every crescent, holding it half a second too long and catching on the knot deep inside her. She breathed as the thin grey book had taught her, as she must have practiced every night in her tower for weeks, slow and deep and all the way down, like the tide coming in.

The moonlight came with it.

Aren watched it pour into her. It came down out of the sky like water into a bowl, silver and cold and endless, and this time it caught nowhere. It filled her, and kept filling her, until the white sand around her body began to glow.

The woman beside him lowered her hands. "Oh," she breathed. "Oh, look at that."

Very slowly, Aren moved his weight back onto his heels.

Vivienne’s hand closed around the hilt of the sword lying in the sand beside her.

She rose.