Page 27 of Ironhold, Trial Four

“Is that because you're a member of the Order of Hunters?” I ask. “Or is there more to it than that? Did someone send you after me specifically?”

“So, you know about the order?” Callus says. “Which means you'renot just a filthy animal; you're connected to the rest of them.”

“What do you actually know about beast whisperers?” I demand.

He shrugs. I watch every movement he makes in case he's about to attack. “I know your kindare different from the rest of us. You bring back so much of the beasts you connect with that you are practically one of them. You're something evil that has crept into this world and spreads like a virus.”

“You actually believe that, don't you?” I say. “When everyone else has told me that beast whisperers are just one more type of magic, only banned because of the emperor’s vision.”

“You're nothing like everyone else, nothing like civilized decent people. Your kind are barely people at all,” Callus snarls at me. There's too much hatred here for it to be just the impersonal focus of an assassin, even the focused hatred of a fanatic.

“Why do you hate me and my kind so much?” I ask. “Why have you risked your life coming into the colosseum, just so you can attack me? Am I really worth it to you? Think this through, Callus. If we spend our time trying to kill one another, maybe one of us succeeds, butbothof us get distracted. We still have to fight in the arena, and you have five seasons ahead of you,trying to survive against the best gladiators of Aetheria. What is so important that the risk isworth it to you?”

Callus glares at me and for several seconds I don't think he's going to say anything. I've taken my best shot here to try to get information from him, because I know the only chance I have is if I rile him to the point where he blurts it out, but maybe he will just sit there in silenceuntil I leave him alone. Maybe he knows better than to tell me anything. After all, he's been trained by an order of assassins. Secrecy is presumably a big part of what they do. Or did.

I take a risk. “What happened to the Order of Hunters, Callus?”

I know I've hit a nerve now, because he starts to reach towards me, and I think I may have gone too far. But he looks around and pulls back.

“Your kind murdered us,” he snaps. “I'm the last one left. I was there the day the beast whisperers slaughtered us. I was just a boy, not that it would have mattered if they'd realized that I was alive. They came for us, sending beast after beast against us. Do you know what razor wings are?”

I shake my head.

“Great birds, bigger than any eagle, with feathers whose edges are sharp as knives. They can fling thosefeathers as they hunt. A whole flock of them came for our camp, killing indiscriminately, while the beast whisperers who controlled them stood on a hill nearby and watched. They didn't care that they were cutting down women and children, didn't care that these were ordinary people going about their lives, and that half the people in the camp weren't evenreal members of the order, just their families.”

I feel a moment of pity for Callus then, for all of the people who were killed like that. Do I believe that the spectral covenant or those like them could have been a part of something like that?Sadly, I do. Lady Elara has urged me to embrace cruelty, to fight back with all that I am.

“How did you survive?” I ask him.

“My father threw himself atop me,” Callus says, and his eyes have a haunted look, as if he is reliving the moment. “Even then I was wounded. I had to play dead, because other beasts came to finish off anyone who still lived. I saw children torn apart by wolves. There was a woman begging, and they killed her anyway. Your kind killed her.”

“I’m sorry for everything you’ve lost, Callus,” I say. “But I wasn't a part of any of that. A decade ago, I would have been just a girl.”

“Do you think that matters?” Callus says. “Do you think I care about your pity? From that day to this, I haven't allowed a single beast whisperer to survive. I had to learn to hunt by myself, with only the lessons I learned as a child to go by.”

“And you've been killing ever since?” I ask.

“Of course,” he says. “Some of them I ambush in the wild like the beasts they are. Some of them pretend they can live among real people, so I pretend too until I can get close to them. Then it looks as though they’ve just… died. With you it was more difficult because you're in here but when they gave me a chance to get to you I knew I couldn't pass it up.”

“Why do this?” I insist. “We don’t have to be enemies.”

Callus smiles. “You think you're going to makepeacewith me. All you're getting is a promise. I'm going to kill you, the same as I killed all the others. You're going to feel the life draining out of you, and then there will be nothing for you. And if you somehow avoid me… I'm going to hunt everyone you care about until you come to me and kneel, waiting to be drained.”

There's an edge of madness to his words, and that rage makes me take a step back from him. I know that there can't be anypeace between us now. There is no way for me to talk him down, to persuade him to give up on his mission. This will last until one of us is dead. My only choice is to make sure that it's him.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

There is no more time to focus on Callus, because it is time for us to go down to the colosseum for the next day of the games. We process down there, the crowds still thick on either side of the road as we make our way to the arena.

In there, I don't have long to wait before I learn the details of my bout today. It is to be a doubles bout, which I knew, and I am to be teamed with Zara. Our opponents are the difficult part. We are to fight a gladiator named Ercus, whose talent is for creating wind, But it is who he's teamed up with that is the problem.

He has been partnered with Cesca.

Zara looks briefly ashen faced at that. I know the two of them are close, friends at least, possibly more. Now they will have to fight. That is one of the cruelest parts of the colosseum: that it pits people against one another regardless of what they feel.

“We don't necessarily have to kill them to win the fight,“ I point out.

Zara nods. “But we also can't hold back, or we risk being killed. Can you summon creatures to help us.”

---