Court of Fives (Page 109)

The cook chuckles as she trundles past, her assistants trailing like cowed goslings.

Mis, Gira, and Shorty are standing at the entrance to the baths, mouths agape. Talon waits apart from them. Even she has eyebrows raised in that princely style she affects without its seeming an act. Abruptly I wonder if she is related to him.

“A good wakening to you, Spider,” calls Tana from the shelter, with a false cheer that warns me she isn’t pleased, “although it looks as if you’ve not had much sleep over your Sevensday rest. Best take a few cups of tea with your morning porridge. I believe we shall have to run you hard today to remind you that you train here. Keep the rest of your business to yourself.”

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As we adversaries eat our morning porridge, not one person asks me what I did during my absence, but it is obvious by the way they whisper behind their hands that the news is spreading. When Kalliarkos shows up for training, flanked by Thynos and Inarsis, all talk ceases. People’s mouths might as well have been sewn up. Inarsis catches my eye and gives a subtle nod, but I know what it means: my family is installed at the inn as a temporary refuge.

Now I can breathe. Now I can truly enjoy our victory.

Once we are through menageries, Tana and Darios ride me all morning until I am so exhausted I can barely shift one foot in front of the next. On Trees I climb until my arms give out and my vision swims. Rivers defeats me as I splash a hundred times into the shallows and once scrape my knee so bloody it stings. I am so clumsy on Traps that everyone starts calling me “Dusty,” and in the maze of Pillars I keep mistaking my right hand for my left.

They whip me along, trying to make me cry. But why would I cry? My mother and sisters are free, my father did what he could for us, I am training to run the Fives, and a prince kissed me.

When the bell rings at last, I shuffle to the dining shelter. Not even Thynos and Inarsis can keep Kalliarkos from me. As exhausted as he looks, with shadows under his eyes and a fresh bruise on his chin from a fall on the court, he has a strut as he brings his platter over and sits beside me. His defiance brings a smile to my face although I am so tired it feels like the effort of grinning is the same as that of trying to hoist a massive stone.

He frowns. “Are you all right, Jes?”

“I’m about to fall asleep face-first into my soup.”

He nods gravely, leaning closer. “I’ll wipe off your face if you do. Promise.”

I stifle a giggle behind a hand but everyone hears it. Everyone sees. Everyone disapproves. I can practically smell it, as if flesh can exude castigation.

But Kalliarkos doesn’t care, and so neither do I.

I press the side of my foot against his under the table, where no one can see.

In a low voice he says, “Grandmother was very irritated with me for being out two nights running. But for once my mother spoke up. She said it meant I was behaving as a man should, not tied to their skirts. That was amusing, let me tell you.”

His light voice has such charm. The way he shares the little arrangements of the life he lives in the elaborate confines of Garon Palace makes me want to know everything.

The bell rings to mark the afternoon rest.

“Kal!” Thynos calls. A prince must rest in the safety of the palace.

With his sweetest grin as a promise he departs with his uncle.

Mis walks with me to the barracks, shaking her head. “You shouldn’t have done it. But he is very good-looking. There isn’t a single person in this whole stable he has taken a harsh word to, like he could, being a prince who could order any of us whipped or sent to the mines if the whim took him.”

“He’d never do that!”

“Oh, Jes, you sound like you’re in love. Tell me about it later!”

I collapse onto my cot and sleep like the dead. Or how I used to imagine the dead slept.

A hand shakes me awake. Talon stands over me. In the dim room her expression is unreadable. She taps her chest twice. I sit up in my underclothes, blearily trying to rub the leaden weight out of my eyes and limbs. The long slant of shadows through the shutter slats in my window and the silence suggest the others have already left for the afternoon session.

“Thank you,” I say, wondering why Mis did not wake me or if Gira and Shorty are mad or if Tana gave them orders to let me sleep. “Do you have another name than Talon that I can call you? Not if you don’t want to, but you can call me Jes. It’s short for Jessamy.”

She taps her chest again, points toward the outside, and leaves me sitting on my cot.

The first warning bell rings, calling adversaries to the training ground for the late afternoon session. With more haste than care I dress, gulp down water, and arrive on the court with drops still dribbling down my chin. I do not see Mis, Gira, or Shorty anywhere, nor any of the experienced adversaries. Even Talon has vanished. Elsewhere on the court, out of my sight, Tana calls out commands as she loops the adversaries through a drill. Only the beginners remain here. Darios works us through our menagerie with the look of a man who has given up on finding a single good thing in his dreary life, of which we are the last failing hope.