Page 23 of Ironhold, Trial Two

I can feel them, all of them. I can feel the ones that are little more than balls of anger and hunger. I can sense the ones thatare afraid. There are others that don't know what's going on, or where they are. Those are the ones that have known nothing other than the beast pits of Ironhold.

I see Stefano there, the master of beasts at Ironhold. He is a solidly built man, in middle age, his dark beard flecked with grey, his eyes almost black. He is using a trace of healing magic to heal a wound on the side of a large snake. The problem is it's rearing up over him, ready to strike.

I silently command it not to, explaining to it that Stefano is there to help. The snake accepts the command, then slithers away once he's done.

“I thought it was going to have me for a moment there,” he says, looking over at me. I can see his eyes taking in the dirt and the blood. The chimera’s blood, not mine. “You survived your bout, then. That’s good.”

“I had to kill the chimera to do it,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

The beast would probably have been in Stefano's care.

Stefano nods. “That's the nature of things here. And those chimeras… they aren't natural things. They're created just to fight and kill. Dying on the sands is what they're built for. All they’re built for.”

It sounds like a clumsy attempt to make me feel better about killing the creature. Or maybe to make himself feel better. Stefano cares about his creatures. That's why he was willing to put himself in striking distance of a giant snake, just to heal it.

“But you shouldn't be here,” Stefano says. “You should be up in the colosseum enjoying the attentions of the nobles, drinking their wine and listening to them recount all the details of your fight as if you weren't there.”

I shake my head. “I can't face it, not yet.”

He shrugs. “Aye, that can happen. Well then, there's another down here as well. Maybe you should go see him.”

“Who?” I ask.

Stefano points, by way of an answer, to the far corners of the beast pens. There's a figure there, sitting by one of the pens, carefully patching up a wound. I'm surprised to see that it's Alaric.

“He comes here for healing,” Stefano says. “Not sure why he doesn't go to the normal healers. He keeps saying I do a better job, but that's not true. If he were a horse or a lion, maybe.”

I wonder if I should go over to him or leave him alone, but ultimately, my curiosity gets the better of me. I want to know what Alaric is doing down here. I'm surprised to find that a part of me also wants to make sure that he's all right. I don't think I've seen him injured before. He is normally so fast and so confident in his own abilities that it's easy to buy into his sense of invulnerability.

I head over and almost inevitably he sees me coming before I get there. For a second I think he might get up and walk off but he doesn't. Maybe it's because it's me.

“Let me see your wound,” I say, moving to sit beside him.

“Oh, it's nothing,” Alaric replies. “Stefano will take care of it.”

“You're just trying to make sure I don't see you hurt,” I say.

He forces a smile. “Well, it wouldn't do for you to think I had any weaknesses. It might diminish me in your, I assume considerable, estimation.”

There he goes again, using his arrogance as a kind of shield, pushing people back with it so that they never get past the layers of it to the real him.

“Do you ever get tired of showing off and putting up a false front to the world?” I ask.

“Who says it's false?” Alaric counters, looking almost comically affronted.

“I do,” I say. “Because otherwise you wouldn't be down here away from everyone else. You would be up with the nobles,being celebrated by them. You'd probably be off in some noble woman's bed by now.”

“Perhaps I'm saving all that for later,” Alaric counters. “Or maybe I'm saving myself for you. The mistress of beasts. The gladiator desired by the finest nobles.”

“Don't,” I say.

“Don't what?” Alaric replies.

I sigh. “Don’t make a joke of it all. That last bout was… hard. I had to kill a chimera. I had to feel the moment when it died under my hands. I had to stand there and take the praise of the crowd, even while I could feel the fear and the pain fading from it as it died.”

I'm half expecting Alaric to assume all of those things were good things. He has shown that he has no problem killing, and it's obvious he lives for the adulation of the crowd. But instead, his face takes him a more sober expression.

“I imagine that was hard for you," he says. "I wouldn't want to be able to feel what an opponent is feeling as they die. But with a chimera… Do you understand you had to do it, Lyra? That you didn’t have a choice?”

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