Page 40 of Ironhold, Trial Four

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Ravenna's name makes me struggle against the cords that tie my wrists to the iron ring, but they hold me tightly.

“Stop,” Lady Emin commands, and there was an echo of Ravenna’s power in her words. Maybe she is not as skilled as her daughter was when it comes to commanding people's minds, but there is some fragment of that skill in her, even so. I find myself stilling in response to her words.

She stares at me again, his eyes seeming like bottomless pits now. I feel as though I'm getting lost in those eyes, losing the sense of who I am and what I'm doing here.

“I wonder, did my daughter ever do this to you?” she asks, sitting back on the couch almost casually. “I know she liked to pick out new gladiators as her pets. Did she ever control your mind?”

“Yes,” I reply, the words coming out automatically. I can feel her control in me. It is not as subtle as Ravenna’s, and I get the feeling it is linked to her eyes. I force myself to look away, feeling that control break, if only for a moment.

“You worked it out then,” she says. “Not that it makes a lot of difference. You are quite helpless anyway. I could do anything I wanted with you. I'm sure I will, in time, if only because the guards seem to expect it. But, for now, I want to start by talking. I want you to understand why this is happening to you.”

I laugh bitterly. “This is happening because the emperor wants to find a way to hurt me.”

“You think this is all about you?” Lady Emin says. “As if you are someone important, someone worth the emperor caring about. Do you know how little he charged me to be your patron?”

“No,” I admit.

“Less than half of what it would have cost for a brand new gladiator, unproven in the colosseum. That is how little he thinks of you.”

Or how much he wanted Lady Emin to be the one to come here. I try to work out what the emperor’s aim is in doing this. Is it just because this is a way to hurt menow he feels I am not worth anything to him? Or is he also trying to mend fences with a noble family, all but giving me to themfor their revenge?

“Although I will admit I would have paid considerably more if required,” Lady Emin says. “My fortune was rising thanks to my daughter and… what is a little more coinon top of the investments I've already made in hurting you?”

That makes me look at her. “What investments?”

“Can't you guess?” She smiles to herself. “I knew you would be stupid, since you’re common born, and not even of the city, but I hadn't guessed quitehowstupid. Lyra, the beast whisperer from… where was it? Seatide?”

There's something about the way she says the name of my village that makes me certain she knows exactly where I come from. Why would she bother to know that unless… I take a guess. A horrible, terrible guess.

“You're the one behind the bandit attacks on my village,” I say.

Her smile widens. “Ah, eventually, even the fools can get it. Good, it would be so much less satisfying if I had to come out and tell you everything. Not that they were really bandits, you understand. Paid men are much more reliable than such thugs.”

She paid mercenaries to go to my village and snatch people away. To kill young women.

“Why?” I demand. “Why hurt them?”

“Because they mean something to you,” she replies, as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. She stretches like a cat. “I have made something of a study of all the ways to hurt someone.Some of them are physical, and I'm sure we'll get to those in time, even if I can't do anything too permanent to you here. Some of them I can achieve with the use of my gifts, paltry as they are compared to my daughter’s. And some… some are just about knowing where to apply appropriate pressure in people's lives.”

She sounds so satisfied with herself for having hurt me, for having killed some of the people of my village. Hatred wells up in me, and that only seems tofeed her satisfaction, as if she is drinking it like a fine wine.

“You took someone important from me,” Lady Emin says. “My daughter was precious to me, and not just because I'm her mother. She was going to be the way that my family rose still further within the empire. When she put her plan to me at first, I was against it. I knew her father would not have wanted ithad he still been alive. I did not want to risk her safety. But she showed me that she was powerful enough to stay safe in the colosseum. To control events.”

Ravenna was certainly powerful. She made her way through the games easily, partly because her powers allowed her to control her opponents long enough to kill them, partly because she managed to control even Lord Darius, picking up the fights she wanted. She manipulated the whole games from within, giving information to her noble friends, making them money and accruing favors.

“Then she ran into you,” Lady Emin says. “The beast whisperer. The one everybody was paying attention to. My daughter was supposed to be a champion. She was meant to show herself to the world, to make her power clear, and then to have her choice of the finest matches in the empire. She could have had high office, been the wife of a powerful man, controlled whole webs of noble obligation.”

“You sound as though that would have made you proud,” I say. I can't imagine why anybody would be proud of that. Ravenna’s manipulations used to make me uncomfortablejust thinking about them. And then she tried to make me a part of them.

“Of course it would,” Lady Emin says. “From the moment I knew what her talent was, I taught her to be more with it. I started off as barely more than a commoner. But I married the right manonce he looked deeply enough into my eyes. And then, when his fortune became more interesting than he was, he died.”

Meaning that she killed him.

“But thatonly took me so far. Ravenna could have taken our family to the gates of the imperial palace. Until you killed her.”

“She was plotting to kill me,” I retort, even though I know it won't do any good. “Her plan was to-”

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