Page 12 of Witchshadow
“Not yet.” Vivia matched his grim expression. What she had done two months ago, she had done with no pleasure—but she had also jumped in too quickly. As desperate as she’d been for food, for weapons, the bounty had not been worth the price.
Sometimes little foxes were run into holes with nowhere to hide, while other times they had to turn and face the danger before it was too late for themselves, for their cubs, for everything they’d ever loved.
If that moment ever came,thenVivia would raise the Fox flag.
“The Nubrevnan iris will do,” she told Sotar, referring to the banner now flapping against the mast: a blue iris on a checkered field. “For now, we are the Royal Navy, and I pray that is enough to get us through.”
FIVE
Stacia Sotar had endured her fair share of bad smells, but the Pirate Republic of Saldonica was a new winner. It beat all the various spots in Lovats: Hawk’s Way where boats dumped trash; the Skulks where too many people had been forced into squalid, single-room homes; and even the Cisterns that were literally filled with the capital’s shit.
Saldonica smelled worse.
Maybe because the sailors and raiders and gamblers who made up this makeshift port thought baths were for cowards, or maybe because sulfur seeped up from the swamps all around, leaving even the cleanest person unable to escape the stink of rotten eggs. Or maybe it was because all those smells were compounded when one entered Baile’s Slaughter Ring. Built in the ruins of some forgotten fortress, the base of the arena was ancient stone, the rest wooden scaffolding that stretched upward. Eight towers. Thousands of seats, and so very little breeze to sweep away the stench.
Ryber held a bundle of dried lavender beneath her nose. Stix regretted not buying one of her own when they’d set off for the Ring that morning. In her defense, it hadn’t smelledthisbadly in the Baedyed district where they were staying. In fact, their little inn was surprisingly immaculate for a port run by pirates.
Except for the rotten eggs, of course.
The wooden bench beneath Stix rattled. A rat scuttled over her boot—the fourteenth of that day—disturbed by the stochastic drumroll of feet as viewers watched the day’s winner depart. Once a year, a massive, violent fight filled the ring, drawing people from across the continent. Baile’s Slaughter Ring, it was called, with hundreds of prisoners pitted against each other.
Stix was glad she’d missed that event, and she was glad that today’s more standard fight featured a willing participant who entered the Ring for coin and glory. Not that it changed the fact that hundreds of prisonerswere currently trapped beneath the Ring, waiting for next year’s Slaughter and guilty only of working on a ship when raiders had come.
The day’s winner, a Stonewitch called the Hammer, pumped his arms in victory as he strode off the dusty Ring floor. One of his arms was made of stone, though he didn’t always wear the stone limb outside the Ring. Sometimes he didn’t wear it inside either, for whatever the Hammer fought, the Hammer clobbered. He was the Ring’s reigning champion, and the money that changed hands over his fights was enough to feed Stix’s old crew for a month. Ten of Stix’s old crews.
Today, he had destroyed a horde of crocodiles, each as long as a galley and almost as wide too.
Despite her new spectacles, Stix had to squint to watch him depart with any sort of clarity. He aimed for one of the three wooden boxes that led out of the Ring. And though Stix couldn’t quite discern the woman waiting for him on the other side of the open door, she knew who it was: the reason she had come here today.
Stix nudged Ryber beside her, and Ryber nodded. She had far keener eyes and a Sightwitch’s gift:Once seen, never forgotten. Once heard, never lost.“Let’s go,” Ryber murmured, and as one, she and Stix pushed to their feet. A single plait pulled free from the rest of Ryber’s braids—at least the tenth that day, though she tried to keep them pulled back. The heat in Saldonica was just too intense for any human to deal with long hair. Stix kept her own pulled into a low bun.
Ryber’s skin was a cooler brown than Stix’s, reminding Stix of a burnished silver mirror she’d loved as a child. And although coltish in her figure, Ryber had muscles hidden beneath her loose tunic and breeches. Meanwhile, behind her magically silver eyes, she had the sharpest mind Stix had ever encountered.
They had spent a week in the Pirate Republic trying to find a way into the Ring. Not because Stix or Ryber cared about the fights below (Stix had wagered on one fight with the Hammer, gained a tiny fortune, and never wagered again), but because it was the only way for them to gain access to what restedbeneaththe Ring: ruins from a thousand years ago. Ruins that called to Stix with voices that never seemed to relent.Come this way, keep coming.Stix had followed those voices across the Witchlands because it was the only way she knew to make them shut up.
And that was all Stix wanted—silence. No more screaming memories that weren’t her own. No more doing as the voices commanded. No morefollowing them like a fish on a line. Once she had done what they desired, seen whatever it was they wanted her to see, then she could leave this rotten Hagfish hole and go home again. Back to Vivia’s side, back to where she belonged.
She and Ryber pushed past spectators who groused and swore and shoved at them to move faster. Quit blocking the view. Get out of the thrice-damned way. It set Stix’s teeth on edge. Even the rowdiest of Nubrevnans—with whom Stix had spent plenty of evenings at the Cleaved Man—seemed an orderly lot compared to these people.
Stix missed them. She missed Vivia even more.
When they reached the end of the bench, Ryber led the way up a rickety set of stairs to the exclusive seating area. There the Masters of the Ring kept private boxes. Thus far, none of the Masters had been willing to sponsor Stix. She’d used every trick in her Waterwichery arsenal trying to convince them, from creating fog on the spot to freezing water in their mouths. But all they’d done was glower and say,Too powerful. How’re we supposed to design a fight for you when all it takes is a single snap and you’ve frozen everything?
Stix had been forced to admit they had a point. There wasn’t much sport for someone with total control over water—and the truth was that Stixwasunbeatable. She had never encountered a waterfall she couldn’t scale, a wave she couldn’t ride, an opponent she couldn’t decimate.
Her father had always told her such natural power made her overconfident, that one day,You will meet someone you cannot match.And in the end, he’d been right: the voices had snuck up on Stix, unexpected. Unfathomable.
Now here she was, over a month since they’d arrived, still battling against them. Still losing every day.
The raiders that guarded the highest scaffolding let Stix through at the flicker of a gold coin, and she and Ryber strode quickly down the covered walkway. Banners and curtains trailed at the corner of Stix’s vision; the crowd’s roars thrummed in her ears, blessedly muffled this high.
The smell was muffled too, thank Noden, with salty ocean wind to lick over the wooden planks.
Soon Stix and Ryber reached the final private box on the walkway, where the final Master of the Ring awaited. The only one Stix had yet to meet. She doled out four gold coins each to the two guards here. Two for letting her in and two for alerting her that the final Master had returned to town. Then the tallest guard called in an alto voice, “Visitors,” and prodded Stix and Ryber through the doorway.
Though not as resplendent as some of the other decks Stix had visited, the space was still draped in fine rugs and cushions. Wind kicked over the waist-high railings, flapping at two strips of jagged-edged red cloth. It carried bidding and laughter and roars of anticipation for the next fight—and it carried moisture that sang to Stix’s magic. A harmony of humidity, of distant sea spray off the bay, of brackish droplets from the marsh.
On a long chair lay Admiral Kahina Léon.
