CHAPTER 26: ANCIENT CUSTOMS

  Azir was a noisy place that only grew noisier as the dimming sky darkened the overcooked city, though the scene outside their shared room was never too dark amid the few thousand flickering torches that kept every sprawling street and meandering alley eternally aglow. When sleep finally cast its rejuvenating spell upon three tired travelers, they slept longer and more deeply than they had since departing Sailor’s Rise, longer than they intended. But sleep was a diligent accountant, even for young men and women hellbent on denying it its due.

  Elias felt as if he had woken up in yet another new city the next morning. Compared to the spectacle of last night, Azir’s morning persona was brighter, certainly more sober, and considerably quieter. Quiet enough even for the crew’s earliest riser to savor a few moments of birdsong. It was almost ironic, he thought, that after a few days in the sky, it was the sound of a flying creature that embodied for him the comforts of solid ground.

  Not wanting the day to get away from them, Elias, Bertrand, and Briley ate breakfast at the inn in which they were staying, a free-for-all assortment of fruits and fresh bread. Bertrand kept reaching for the olives as they discussed their plan for tomorrow and how they would sell Sultan Atakan on The Two Worlds Trading Company. Elias suggested they casually mention their connection with young Mr. Fairweather’s father, an idea Bertrand was entirely uncomfortable with (though perhaps the sultan would still recognize the surname of one of his preferred contractors, Briley mentioned).

  “Then we stick to the basic facts,” Elias argued. “We’re cheap, our ship is fast, and we’re not entirely inexperienced.”

  “Not entirely.” It didn’t sound like an asset when Briley said it.

  “We use that to our advantage.” Bertrand swallowed an olive before expanding. “We have something to prove. This contract—small as it might be for some big company like the Graystones—it’s essential for us.”

  “Essential we don’t screw it up,” Briley added. “Same difference, I guess.”

  And so, with full stomachs and the foundations of a plan, the trio spent the remainder of their diminished morning speaking to traders near the port where they had parked The Sapphire Spirit. Briley refused to admit that approaching strangers made her uncomfortable, though she hardly needed to, whereas Bertrand broke ice as easily as he breathed. Azirians were a warm people, literally and figuratively, and welcomed his charming hellos with courteous smiles.

  Only one man looked them up and down, perhaps measuring his competition, but their mission proved successful, and Bertrand once again proved his worth. They adjusted what would have been their initial quote after hearing that, due to the current crisis in Belrania, prices were high—and theirs was too low.

  They had worked backward to arrive at their original number, basing it on ten days of travel, assuming they would be taking the safer route Saba Khali had mentioned, away from pirates. Add another couple of days in Azir, another in Sailor’s Rise to deliver the shipments, and you’re at about thirteen days, Briley wagered. Then you have salaries: not just for the three of them, but two crew members for a job like this. You need to feed them, she added, and lest one forget about the price of cobrium—that, too, was going up lately.

  Elias had at first worried that a thousand relics per delivery would be asking too much, but even after living in the Rise for three seasons, he still had a habit of underestimating the true value of things. Twelve hundred would be a good deal for the sultan, they were told.

  It would be a good deal for them too—not just enough to stay afloat, but enough to earn a real profit, to build a real business. Would it be enough to start collecting again, Elias wondered?

  Before leaving the port and doublechecking that no one had stolen their airship, Briley—finally speaking up—acquired one more piece of vital information: directions to the colosseum. “One more thing.” She stopped the woman from walking away. “Where might one acquire a telescope?”

  * * *

  The colosseum was by far the largest structure in Azir. Certainly, it was larger than any building in Sailor’s Rise. But calling it a building did not do the old wonder justice. The circular venue was a monolith of nature, round like the ring of a volcano, crafted by ancient hands if not primordial ones.

  Admission to the colosseum was a single relic per person, a rather modest fee considering one could spend their entire afternoon soaking up the bloodshed, assuming they had the stomach for it. But the colosseum was not a pageant for the rich. It was a panacea for the people. A few were leaving as Elias, Bertrand, and Briley paid their fares and made their way inside, though most were headed in alongside them. The best fights were booked later in the afternoon, Elias overheard someone say, when the crowd was its biggest.

  They found a fortunate row of unadorned stone seats that didn’t put the sun in their eyes and settled in for the spectacle. Elias was quite sure he had never seen so many people in a single place, their cheers echoing through the colosseum like the howl of a desert storm.

  The first fight they witnessed was almost over by the time they gazed down from their mid-level seats, and Bertrand already looked pale. There were only two men left standing, but another four littered the sand, feeding it their blood.

  One of the fighters was wielding a spear in one hand and nothing in the other, though clearly not by choice. His cracked wooden shield lay in splinters behind him, the arm that once wielded it hanging limply from his shoulder. He was wearing leather armor that matched the leather armor of two fallen comrades.

  In contrast, the other man wore nothing but a loincloth as he skipped around his opponent in paper-thin sandals, his only protection from the stinging hot stand. His weapon was a scimitar: much shorter than a spear, but much faster too. More importantly, he did not look injured, though his allies were similarly unmoving.

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  Elias wondered if the dressed-down warriors were, in fact, slaves. Much to his disgust, slavery was still allowed, if not exactly accommodated, within the borders of the Azirian Empire. He wondered if the slaves had been meant to lose.

  The better-equipped man was trying to keep his quick competitor at a safe distance, jabbing air with the tip of his reddened spear, each jab a little slower than the last, a little less precise, until fatigue—his real nemesis—finally lost the fight for him.

  The nimbler fighter flew forward, knocking his enemy’s spear back with one swing before slicing his uninjured shoulder with another. The armored man dropped his weapon and stumbled backward, landing hard on his ass and elbows, now utterly defenseless, defeated if not yet dead.

  The crowd roared. Their underdog had won, but one question remained: would he show him mercy?

  If the audience had a vote, it was assuredly not in the affirmative. Their threadbare champion stopped and, for a moment, stared up at them, at the few thousand citizens who loved him like a philanderer, if only he would give them their gratification. He lowered his sword, and then he lowered a hand toward the man that everyone, including the man himself by the look of him, had thought dead.

  Elias felt that he understood this. The fighter had given them everything they demanded, and he would take for himself the only asset even a slave still owned: a stranger’s mercy. The crowd relented, if unenthusiastically. A winner’s prize was his ability to choose, and certain customs were sacrosanct, no matter how barbarous their setting.

  Besides, the afternoon was only half over.

  After the next combatants entered the cleared arena, it took Elias a minute to realize that, much to his surprise, he recognize one of them. The youthful man’s long flaxen hair, his neat aesthetic—especially neat when compared to his opponent, a burly barbarian who appeared to have taken fashion cues from the Graystone Junkyard. And though Elias could not see their color from up here, the man’s striking emerald eyes: the other unforgettable detail about him.

  “Why does that guy look familiar?” Bertrand asked.

  “We saw him yesterday,” Elias confirmed, “with Constance”—Bertrand didn’t know the woman’s name, and Elias didn’t want to explain how he knew it—“with that Valshynarian lady from the ship.”

  “Do you think he’s Valshynarian too?” Bertrand squinted, hand over brow, as he leaned forward in his seat. “He looks Valshynarian. Oh, I bet this will be good.”

  “I thought you didn’t enjoy violence,” Briley commented.

  “Yeah, but, I mean, this is…” Bertrand lost his rebuttal in the rising choir of the crowd.

  While the Valshynarian fighter was not small, his bare-chested opponent looked twice his weight. The big man was covered in scars he wore like tattoos, as if death had tried and tried again—only to beat and break upon him likes waves on water. He did not need armor, the scars seemed to say. He was armor. He squeezed the greatest of great axes, ready to put on a show, strangling its worn wooden handle. It would only take one true strike.

  And how did his handsome adversary intend to fend against this skull-splitting fiend? With two skinny rapiers, naturally. The two men, and their choice in weaponry, could not have been more at odds.

  The fight began as fights are wont to do, with each man testing the other. The larger of them made long, wide swings, as if hoping to catch the Valshynarian not with speed but with his surprising reach.

  The Valshynarian, whom Elias was by default rooting for, seemed to reassess his footwork, measuring in his mind the physics of fighting a mountain. He dodged the great axe with ease, but he would need to get in close—close relative to his long-armed attacker, that is—if he wished to draw first blood.

  The big man swung rightward, and this time the Valshynarian leapt forward. His rapier drew a new scar for the old collection, right across his enemy’s ribcage. As blood ran down his torso, the bronze-skinned warrior tried to catch his attacker with an elbow on his way out, alas to no avail. The Valshynarian seized a second opportunity to add another cut across the man’s forearm.

  They were hardly fight-ending injuries, but the scales had suddenly shifted, and the energy of the audience likewise.

  The duel continued in this manner for many minutes: more quick cuts, each made with almost unnatural speed, with mechanical precision. In the beating afternoon sun, the stranger’s silver rapiers flashed and flickered like a distant mirage with each effortless flourish. Now it was the Valshynarian who was putting on a bit of a show, while his opponent had grown sullen and stiffly intense, perhaps realizing that the theatrical execution he signed up for had turned into an actual fight for his life.

  Elias could not help but recall the Five Great Schools that existed a generation before his time. The Silver Sanctum School had trained collectors of unparalleled speed, it was said. Fast as he was, the Valshynarian was holding back, Elias gradually concluded. It was why he appeared to have complete control, why each strike and every dodge was carried out so casually and yet so perfectly. He was taking it slow, lest they glimpse his true advantage. The Valshynar were collectors, and yet in public, their enigmatic reputation as the former was the perfect mask for the latter. The best way to conceal the world’s biggest secret, Jalander once opined, was to reveal only some of it.

  The bronze-skinned warrior was now half crimson, blood streaking down his limbs and torso from a dozen cuts. Perhaps no fatal blow would be required to call this one. He looked a few minutes away from falling unconscious.

  Elias may have underestimated him, however, failing to realize that even non-collectors could transcend the expectations of a mortal body.

  The attack came as a surprise, and that was probably the intent. The big man fell to one knee and dropped his great axe, its thick blade sticking in the sand. Elias could not tell whether he was forfeiting or merely unable to continue, but either outcome would suffice for the fight’s apparent winner, who turned to the crowd with another flourish—and, two seconds later, immense regret.

  Bloodied but not yet defeated, the now bare-handed fighter used the one foot he still had planted in the sand to propel his body forward, reaching far and grabbing with his rippling arm and his gorilla fingers the slender ankle of his opponent. He pulled him down like a rug from underneath.

  “Oh, no!” Bertrand yelled on Elias’s behalf. Briley was too entranced to say anything at all.

  The Valshynarian flipped over faster than a cat, no longer hiding his speed. The larger man loomed over him like a storm cloud, pinning his combatant’s right hand first, disabling one of two weapons. With his other rapier still unrestrained, the Valshynarian swung his blade between them, his adversary using his free forearm as a shield—after all, what was one more cut at this point?

  The big man was trying to pin both arms now with a bent knee, leaving him with one free hand to strangle his foe or simply beat the pretty face staring up at him into a satisfying pulp. The audience could not believe it, or perhaps they couldn’t believe they had ever doubted their familiar champion.

  But collectors are not only fast. They are strong, stronger than they appear. This one dropped his weapon and pushed aside the knee threatening to immobilize him, bringing them closer together. He headbutted the big man’s nose and, employing a knee of his own, got him in the groin. With a firmly planted foot and one free hand, the Valshynarian pushed off his heavy opponent, taking his turn on top—and his rapier along the way.

  And before his enemy could recover, he put the base of his blade against the thick neck of a dead man. Swift as a bullet, the quick collector sliced from hilt to tip, a spray of blood painting a crimson crown upon another colosseum victor. And for that, he too was loved.