Chapter One:

Beneath the towering stone walls of the ancient Blood Theater, the tents of the Deprived Warriors were arranged like rows of maize, numbering nearly a thousand. A fence made of a crude spiked wire and decorated with shattered weapons—battle axes, swords, and maces—had been erected around the camp during the night to keep commoners from interfering with the gladiators’ practice regimens, but scores of young boys who could not afford admission to the arena loitered around it anyhow, waiting to catch a glimpse of their favorite contestants.
To ensure order, forty Dreanalai—elite soldiers of the Imperial Guard—were posted at regular intervals along the fence’s rambling outline, regarding the crowds in statuesque silence. They wore golden eye-masks that reflected back the radiant glow of morning spilling across the river, and thigh-length white robes cinched at the waist with Scythe and Circle buckles, the symbol of the Pykrie. On their right shoulders, a red palm print signifying the Empress’s Hand marked them all as part of her personal army. Their captain, a stout, heavily-muscled man by the name of Barrak al’Kal stood by a small gap in the fence that served as a gateway for a steady stream of slave women.
Behind his mask, Barrak’s eyes exuded a dark shine of intelligence and ferocity. His nose was aquiline but ridged from repeated breaks, and his jaw was wide and cleft, lined with black stubble. As he surveyed the comings and goings of the slave women his head slowly swiveled from side to side, missing nothing.
The women were traveling back and forth between the camp and the nearby markets of the Ma’r, ferrying baskets of food and waste and laundry. For fear of being punished, they did not look at Barrak or any of the other Dreanalai as they neared the fence. Instead, they focused on the mud-coated stones a few paces ahead of their feet, bowing their heads in the manner that had earned them the nickname bentnecks.
Barrak visually inspected each of the bentnecks as they passed him, alert for signs of anything out of the ordinary, but he did not anticipate many problems. Bentnecks were not permitted to wear any clothing other than a band of cloth around their hips, so it would be difficult for any of the common boys jostling at the fence to try and masquerade as one of them. Besides that, guarding the tents of the Deprived Warriors was not really a task that required Dreanalai. Regular soldiers would have sufficed, but Barrak and his men had been given the duty as a punishment for presenting the Empress with a portrait inked in the blood of vanquished enemies for her twentieth birthday. In her own words, the Empress had considered the present ‘predictable’ and ‘ugly’. Barrak and his men had accepted this judgment without question and approached the task they’d been given with the same coldly intimidating vigilance that they would any other. The crowds of boys were behaving themselves however, staying back away from the guards and keeping relatively quiet. It was likely that Barrak’s presence alone had dissuaded any potential troublemakers.
For most commoners, the site of a Dreanalai Captain inspired a kind of fear akin to facing down death itself; the men who had proven themselves worthy to wear the golden mask were incredibly skilled warriors who could kill reflexively in a hundred different ways. Every one of them was a master of the art of Dreana, an ancient style of combat that involved two heavy, finely balanced blades called Vikes.
Dreana training was grueling, demanding equally as much mental discipline as it did physical. From the age of four for example, even before he could properly lift his Vike blades, Barrak had been required to keep them within reach of his hands at all hours of the day. If he was ever caught without them, the master that had taught him had used the blades to cut a finger-long horizontal slash in each of his biceps, leaving the scars as a mark of shame.
Barrak had only ever received one set of these scars—proof to all who saw them that he’d been a quick learner. For twenty-two years his Vikes had remained always at his side. At the moment they rested in an X shape in slings on his back, glinting ominously. To Barrack the weight of the swords was as familiar as the weight of his arms or legs, and he thought of them in exactly the same unconscious way, as though they were extensions of his body. As part of his training, he had been taught to feel no emotion when it came to using the blades; he had no lust to spill blood but he also had no fear or reservations about it. Like the thousands of other Dreanalai fighters that had donned the mask before him over the centuries, Barrak did whatever was necessary of him to fulfill the orders of the Empress. Even if it meant standing in the hot sun in a stinking section of the Blood Theater arcade for hours on end, playing chaperone to a bunch of commoners.
That didn’t mean he was a complete automaton, though. In the privacy of his mind Barrak had a few choice words to sum up how he felt about the Empress, most of them foul enough to get him executed if he ever voiced them aloud. But an Empress was an Empress and a Dreanalai was a Dreanalai— he did not have to admire the woman to fear and obey her.
One of the Bentneck girls stumbled as she approached the gateway and fell to the ground at Barrak’s feet. He stared down at her, tilting his masked head in curiosity. The girl had fallen on her hands and knees, and beneath the splayed fingers of one of her palms he immediately spotted a scrap of scarlet silk.
With a single, fluid sweep of his arm Barrak drew one of his Vikes and stabbed the gleaming point between the girl’s fingers, neatly skewering the ribbon of cloth. It happened so fast that his arm was already still by the time the ring of the blade sliding from the sheath was audible.
“What’s this?” He asked the slave, lifting her chin with the toe of his boot. She was ugly by Pykrie standards, bronze-skinned with sun-yellow hair, small breasts, and thin, bloodless lips. Judging by the almond-shape of her eyes she was an Elayan—a race of nomadic people who roamed in a desert called the Scorched Fields far to the southeast of Pykrie Ma’r. It was difficult to guess the age of Elayan women because their faces resisted the ravages of time, but Barrak put her at about nineteen. Her shoulders were bony and one of her irises was the color of desert sand while the other was a milky, blind gray. A puckered scar ran down her cheek from her eyelid almost to her jaw. If the girl had been born with any chance at beauty, it had been permanently ruined by the slash of a crude blade; nevertheless Barrak did appreciate the intensity of her one good eye as it gazed steadily back at him. “Answer me, desert wolf,” he grunted. “What are you doing with this?”
Mouth trembling a little, the girl gripped his ankles and kissed the leather-bound grieves strapped to each of his shins.
“It is for the Skulls Child, Master,” she breathed. “He sent me for it otherwise I would not dare to hold it.”
Behind his mask, Barrak flinched slightly in surprise. Slowly, he withdrew the blade of his Vike from between the girl’s fingers and brought it up to the base of her good eye.
“Truly,” he said, “it is for the boy?” He turned his wrist, pressing the tip of the Vike against her skin. A tear of fright rolled down her cheek. Without at least one working eye, she would be useless to her owner, who would likely send her off to one of the meanest brothels in the heart of the Ma’r.
“He plans to wear it in his hair today, Master. If you do not see it there when he fights I have no doubt that you will come to find me.”
Barrak watched the girl’s face intently, searching it for signs of deceit. He saw anger and frustration behind her fear—it was difficult to hide that kind of thing from a Dreanalai—and took it as a sign that she was telling the truth. He also recognized the shade of red she held as the color of the Skull Child’s squalla, so it made sense that he’d have requested it for his hair.
Barrak returned his Vike to its sheath. Once he’d made up his mind, he did not reconsider or think upon it any further; only when he was not on duty did he have the luxury of second-guessing himself. “Go on, then,” he said. He reached down with a gauntleted wrist and dragged the girl to her feet. “Tell the boy that Barrak Al’Kal of the Dreanalai has a thousand Spiga wagered on him, so it would be good of him not to die today.”
“Thank you, Master,” said the girl. “I will tell him.” Barrak gave her back a nudge toward the gate and watched her scurry off through the maze of tents inside. When she disappeared he scowled, wondering if he’d just been outsmarted by a bentneck child.
Twenty yards away down the wire fence, one of Barrak’s men raised his hand to his mask and tapped the corner of his eye in a gesture that was particular to the Dreanalai. Literally translated, it meant something like ‘I have seen your weakness’.
The man grinned wide enough to show off two rows of twisted teeth nearly as black as his eyes. Barrak grinned back at him. Then, without any warning he plucked a small dagger from his sash and hurled it at the man, who reacted just quickly enough to stop the point with his palm. He grunted as the blade pierced cleanly through his hand.
The soldier forced a laugh as the sea of boys watching him moaned empathetically.
“I’ll take it as a gift, then?” He held the hand with the blood-streaked blade jutting out of it up to the sun for inspection. Barrak shrugged.



Though the sun was fully ablaze in the sky, Skulls Child was still abed in the cool gloom of his tent, not yet ready to rouse himself. He lay on his back with his hands folded behind his head, staring at the tent flaps in anticipation of seeing them part.
For a boy of seventeen he was well-built—lithe as a hound and equipped from head to toe with sinewy muscles that rippled beneath his skin—but he certainly did not look like he ought to be the most talked about gladiator in the Empire. He was still too fresh-faced and youthful; his limbs were conspicuously absent of scars, and his hair was braided…much too long for a warrior’s. The length of it however, was not nearly as strange as the color. In all of the Empire there was not a single known race or tribe with hair the shade of the ocean, but the Skull Child’s was just that, a mystifying blend of blue and black, which meant that it was impossible to determine what people he had descended from. His eyes were golden-hued like an Elayan’s and had the same shape, but his cheeks and jaw were too pronounced to be a nomad’s. The desert peoples tended to have more subtle, fluid features, like the bentneck girl, Ashka’s.
She’d be returning any moment, Skulls Child suspected. She had woken him at dawn, insisting that he go down to the practice stalls and begin preparing for the Melee, so to be rid of her he’d sent her on a pointless errand to find a ribbon for his now infamous braids. Without it, he had told her, he’d have no luck and would not be able to fight. Silk wasn’t exactly and easy thing for a slave girl to procure so the chore had bought him an hour’s rest, but knowing Ashka she’d have found a way by now. She was a resourceful creature.
As children, Elayan girls were taught nine ways to find water in the desert; after that they were exiled from the tribe until the time of their first menses. Their survival during that time was entirely up to them. Those who could not fend for themselves did not last long; those that lived to return were undoubtedly some of the strongest, most resilient women in all of the Southlands. When Skulls Child was a boy, before he’d been found by Imperial Scouts and enslaved as a gladiator, he had been raised by a tribe of Elayans that had found him left for dead in the desert as a baby. He knew their women well, their language and their peculiar customs. That was why Polnek, the hog-bellied master of Skulls Child’s squalla, had gifted the girl to him.
In all of the better-known squallas, the top gladiators were given personal servants and other rewards—casks of fine wine, delicacies, weapons, and furs—as incentives to continue fighting to the best of their ability. Skulls Child had been given Ashka when he was only thirteen, the year of his first Skull match, and thus far, he had yet to lose her. For that matter, he had yet to lose a fight. In a Skull Match—a one-on-one battle to the death that a gladiator could opt to enter into voluntarily—the risk was life, and the reward was freedom, that is, for any warrior who could make it to thirty consecutive wins.
In the history of the Pykrie, only two gladiators had ever won their freedom this way, one was the ancient hero Tyrafor who was long dead, and the other was a Crathean warrior who still lived, a giant of a man by the name of Huroth. There were many Pykrie throughout the empire however, who believed that Skulls Child would be the third gladiator to retire in this fashion, and of the seventy-thousand citizens gathering in the arena at that very moment for Maladesta, at least a third of them had come to watch him and him alone.
Unlike the Dreanalai, gladiators received no formal training; instead they competed as brawlers do using whatever tricks or techniques they managed to pick up over the years. For the most part they relied on brute strength, but Skulls Child was different. When the Empress’s scouts had taken him at the age of eleven he had already known how to wield a blade and a spear more skillfully than most veteran gladiators, and from the moment he was first forced to do battle in the arena, pitted against boys two and three years older than he was, he had exhibited a sense of poise and confidence never before witnessed in a fighter his age. As he’d grown his distinctively animalistic way of launching himself at his enemies had become increasingly deadly and sophisticated, evolving into a method of fighting that was the equal of any of the ancient combat arts, save perhaps that of the Dreanalai.
In five years, Skulls Child had killed twenty-nine opponents in twenty-nine Skull matches. Each one of these victories was marked on his skin by a tattoo of a black skull, about the size of a hen’s egg. The first two had been inked into the back of his left hand and wrist on his thirteenth birthday—earning him his arena name—and each one thereafter had been placed in succession so that a trail of hollow-eyed, grinning skulls wound their way up the back of his arm, across the span of his shoulders, and down the other arm all the way to the wrist. He was missing only one last skull. If he could attain it during Maladesta, by the end of the week he’d be a free man. If he could not, he’d most certainly be dead.
For the past month he’d thought of nothing else. Over and over again in his mind he had tried to envision the outcome of these next three days, and his insides had been clenched in knots in anticipation, eagerness, and fear. He could not, however, and would not allow any of what he was feeling to show, not even when he was totally alone, because of all the things he had learned from the Elayan hunters that had raised him, the most useful piece of knowledge they’d imparted to him was that fear was his greatest weapon; when the dune serpents feared the hunter more than the hunter feared the dune serpents, they hesitated, and their hesitation got them killed.
It was no different with a man. The reputation that Skulls Child had cultivated around himself made the other gladiators he faced think of him as an immortal, an otherworldly demon who felt no pain. They trembled and lost the ability to think clearly when they faced him, and in most cases that had made the task of dispatching them easy—sometimes, too easy. But Maladesta was nothing like the trivial contests in backwater regions of the empire that he’d triumphed in thus far; these next few days were the ultimate event; one that Skulls Child’s squalla had never before been ranked high enough to participate in. Anyone he fought man-to-man here, assuming he even made it to that stage of the contest, was sure to be a worthy adversary. It was even possible, he had to admit, that he might be bested.
At that thought he threw off the deerskin that had been covering his torso and stood. Since he slept in the nude, all of his skulls were on display as he walked to a back corner of the tent where the girl Ashka had left a clean commode for him. He relieved himself and began reaching for his small clothes when he heard a rustling behind him. Shifting his motion, he grabbed his spear from where it lay propped against one of the tent poles and spun, bringing the point to a halt just a hairsbreadth from the intruder’s exposed breastbone.
“Devil’s ass, girl,” he hissed.
“Put that down,” the girl growled back at him, tossing a handful of silk in his direction. Her good eye smoldered with anger. Skulls Child caught the ribbon without thinking and dropped the spear to the blanket-covered floor. “You are a fool to be abed still,” she continued. “An arrogant fool. There are men out there who fight like shadows.”
Skulls Child laughed. “Have you seen them?” He took a seat on a simple, three-legged stool and stretched out his legs. By his feet there was a sizable wooden trunk, on top of which rested a few rusting Spiga coins, a bronze lamp, a sinister-looking jet black box, and a polished short-sword. Taking the sword by the hilt, he tilted it so that the sunbeam streaming from the now open tent flap bounced from the blade and caught the girl in the eyes. “Tell me then, what kind of shadows am I up against? Will they not scatter before the light of my steel?”
Squinting and blinded, the girl ducked to the side and kicked at him, aiming to plant her foot in the middle of his chest. Effortlessly, Skulls Child caught her ankle and held it. The girl snarled, hopping on one heel to keep her balance.
“I hear a dead man’s laughter.” Skulls Child yanked, pulling her into his lap. Wrapping his arms around her entire upper body, he pinned her back to his chest and crushed the struggle out of her.
“And what if you’re right about that? What if I do go the river today?” The girl tensed in his arms.
“If you go the river,” she said, tightly, “I will be sent to the Ma’r to be used as flesh. And I will curse your true name every hour of every day until I die.”
“Easy, girl. Polnek will keep you on. Another gladiator will have you.”
“None but the worst, you know it. I am an ugly blind heathen to them.” He bit her earlobe, playfully, watching a flush come to her cheeks in a tall reflecting glass that stood at the rear of the tent. Except for her scar she was Elayan perfection—long and trim with bronze legs taut enough to press the air from a man’s ribs and a heart-shaped face that any nomad would cross a desert for—ten times over. Skulls Child dropped his hand to the swell of her hip and kissed her neck.
“If you are ugly to them,” he whispered. “They must be far blinder than you, Asha’lanaka.” He twisted her yellow hair around his fist and tugged it to his nostrils, breathing in the hot, dry, earthy scent of her. “Now tell me. Before I lose my purpose. What have you seen?”
The girl closed her eyes, remembering. “Most of them are nothing. Cratheans who swing and hack. Suunidai who dance and stab. Byrathi who use their fists to surprise—But the white robed men that fight with two swords,” she shook her head, flinching with concern, “they are….very dangerous.” Skulls Child nodded into her neck.
“The guards you mean—the ones who wear the golden masks?”
“Yes.”
“They are Dreanalai, Ashka. They do not fight in the arena.”
“Never?”
“Never.” The girl relaxed a little, letting out a pent up breath.
“One of them asked me to tell you that it would be good of you not to die today. His name is Barrak al’Kal. He has a thousand Spiga wagered on you.” Skulls Child let out a bark of laughter.
“A thousand!” He shook his head. “The man is a fool. Not even old Huroth was worth such a wager.”
“This man was not a fool. Perhaps The Graystar spoke to him.”
“Or perhaps he is very rich. Either way, I’d hate to disappoint him. Come now. Let’s get me clothed.”
“As you wish,” the girl spat. Reluctantly, she tugged free of his embrace and began to relocate the objects perched on the lid of his trunk. Skulls Child had two full sets of armor, but today he would wear the finer of them for the first time. Polnek had bequeathed the assembly to him a fortnight before, to be used here, at Maladesta.
The girl’s face darkened with emotion as she removed the supple grieves and cuirass from the linen sacks that encased them. She laid each of them out on the floor for inspection, examining every stitch and strap as though they were her own handiwork. As she did so, Skulls Child had to crush back a large feeling of anxiety that welled up in his chest. He thought of limbs being torn from their sockets and clavicles being rent in two. He thought of the men he’d killed, and how their staring, eyeless visages stretched the length of his back, destined to haunt him for the rest of his life. But even that did not fully chill the other feeling. Besides his freedom, there were only two things in the world that Skulls Child cared about. And his spear, his armor, and his sword were not among them.
Once Ashka was satisfied that his armaments were in working order, she pulled his tunic from a second trunk by the base of his bed and helped him dress and don his boots. When she was through clasping his cuirass and grieves she reached for a silver trimmed helm that rested on a stand by the reflecting glass. Skulls Child stopped her.
“Not yet,” he said, holding out the ribbon of red silk that she had brought him. “Help me with this.” Aska nodded, taking the cloth. “And these. Skulls Child picked up the strange black box that had been sitting on his trunk. Aska gave him a querulous look as she took it from him and examined the contents. It contained iron needles, a dozen or so of them. She reached into the box to extract one. “Careful girl!” Skulls Child barked. “They are poisoned.” Ashka froze.
“Ah,” she said, smiling.

In the section of the Blood Theater’s first floor gallery that had been appointed to the squalla of the Scarlet Axe, Squalla Master Polnek sat in a huge pillowed chair in front of a long wooden table, surrounded by racks of second-rate weapons and armor. The slabs of old gray stone that made up the floor were strewn with straw and piles of dried dung, and the blocks that made up the ceiling vaults were streaked with soot and pitted by time. This was the true arena—the staging floor where the various squallas prepared for battle. From where Polnek was positioned, he could see directly across the gallery and out a series of archways to the arena itself, where teams of pale-skinned foreign slaves were raking the dirt in preparation for the day’s bloodshed.
A cacophony of sound filled the entire complex; from the practice stalls located in the arena’s subfloors a constant clang of metal on metal echoed upward through the stairwells, and from the rows upon rows of stadium seats overhead, the roar of the crowds rumbled down through the walls like thunder. Eager for the day’s events to begin, many of the commoners in the stands were already booing and hurling the debris of their breakfast down onto the slaves, who bore the onslaught without showing any signs of acknowledgement.
Half-a-dozen young bentneck girls and Polnek’s two personal guards, Eekle and Pyte, lingered with him around the remains of an extensive meal, seated on footstools.
Polnek was hugely fat with an exposed gut that hung over the top of his breaches. The line of his jaw was echoed twice more in folds of flesh beneath his chin and his watery blue eyes were deeply sunken in moist, sallow nests of skin. Little hair remained on his head but what was left was mouse brown and greasy, sticking out in clumps from behind his ears.
Despite his unfortunate looks however, Polnek was in an excellent mood, and could not stop smiling or patting his furry stomach in satisfaction.
“Go on boys,” he gestured to Eekle and Pyte, who were both enormous, fearsomely muscular warriors. At a single glance it was obvious that the two of them had shared a mother, but since their heads were both shaven bald and their faces were identically grim, it was difficult to know which of them was the elder. “Eat, eat.” Polnek chuckled, giddily.
Eekle, who could be distinguished from his brother by the large gold hoop he wore in his nose, hesitantly reached for a haunch of venison. “Go on,” Polnek encouraged. “Take all you want, it’s free, all free.” He nodded emphatically as he spoke, as though affirming his own statement.
“Most generous of you, Master,” Eekle grunted, hungrily stuffing the meat into his mouth. His brother reached for a hunk of white cheese and followed suit.
“Hmph!” Polnek grunted. “It’s nothing to me now, Eekle. Gone are the days of rationing and nibbling on hardtack. Look—just look at this!” In his plump fingers he held a square of fine blue paper which he waved over the table spread, laughing long and deep so that his belly visibly shook. “The Empress Diomedra Naxes,” he began, hardly glancing at the paper as though he was reciting from memory, “hereby extends as a welcoming gift to Squalla Master Mully Polnek—” Polnek paused for a moment to allow the full import of his name having been evoked by the Empress to sink in, “discretionary use of her kitchens and larder for the duration of Maladesta, in the hope that he will honor her generosity by providing the people of Pykrie M’ar with a gladiatorial spectacle to be remembered through the ages.” Polnek brought the square of paper to his lips and kissed it, repeatedly. “This is how a real Squalla Master eats, Eekle. This is how the Scarlet Axe eats from now on, from the Empress’s own kitchens!”
Erupting into a fit of giggles, Polnek pounded the table with his fist and shed an actual tear of joy. “I tell you—I tell you I think I’m in love with that boy, that wonderful boy, who came to us as though The Graystar herself has ordained an end to old Polnek’s miseries! Where is he now? I tell you, I’d kiss him. I’d kiss him on his arse!” Letting loose one final burst of laughter, Polnek reached for a cup of wine so strong its color was bright purple and took a healthy swallow. Then he wiped his chin and sweating forehead with the flaxen hair of the bentneck girl seated closest to him. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen years old.
“That reminds me,” he sighed, suddenly turning business-like, “how is our Skull Child looking this morning? Tip-top I suppose?”
Eekle and Pyte simultaneously cast their eyes downward, evading the question. Polnek’s jubilant expression soured.
“What?” he demanded. “What is it? Did he take a wound?”
“Not exactly, Master,” mumbled Pyte.
“Not exactly?” Polnek smashed his fist into the table, hard enough this time to send plates skittering to the floor. “No, no, no!” he shouted. “I won’t have it! Out with it—if it’s bad news, out with it!”
Eekle pulled the bone he’d been gnawing on from his mouth and set it down on the table. He coughed and cleared his throat.
“No one has seen him yet, Master. He’s not in the practice stalls. I think—I think he’s still abed.”
Polnek’s eyes popped out of their sweaty sockets and his face colored an alarming shade of red.
“Still abed! But it’s, it’s Mala—it’s today! Devil’s arse—it’s now!” He rocked forward and back a few times to gain momentum and launched himself to his feet. “I tell you, it’s that Elayan sand slut. I never should have given him that girl. Where’s Burgess? Burgess! Burgess dammit!”
Polnek continued to shout until finally the flaxen-haired bentneck girl took it upon herself to run off and find the man in question—a retired former-member of the Imperial Guard who now served as Polnek’s head trainer. Moments later, a hunchbacked and grizzled old codger with a long white beard came shuffling out of the mouth of a corridor that led down to the practice stalls. He leaned hard on a crooked walking stick and trembled as though his body was weak, but his bright blue eyes regarded Polnek with a lucid mixture of curiosity and impatience.
“What in hell is it, Polnek?” he said. “I’m in the middle of getting them ready.”
Polnek wagged his finger accusingly. “He’s abed. He’s still in bed! You’re telling me you’ve be down there all morning and you didn’t notice that the only sword of ours that makes any difference is nowhere to be found?”
“I noticed,” said Burgess, sighing in his gravelly voice.
“So?” Burgess glanced at Eekle and Pyte, rolling his eyes like he thought Polnek was daft. “What exactly would you have me do? Go down to his tent and drag him out?”
“Exactly!” Polnek bellowed. He raised one of his beefy hands and pointed in the direction of the warriors’ tents. “Go! Now!”
“That won’t be necessary.” A calm, amused voice spoke from behind Polnek. The fat man whirled in surprise, his face going white, and smiled stiffly at Skulls Child, who had just entered the gallery. He lingered in an archway with his polished silver helm under his arm and his blue-black hair falling behind his shoulders in two neat, scarlet-tied braids.
“Ah!” Polnek, exclaimed, “there you are my boy!” He threw his hands high. Skulls Child walked to the far end of the table to take a seat on an overturned bucket. Eekle and Pyte nodded at him respectfully while the blushing bentneck girls scurried to make room.
“May I?” he said, reaching for a hunk of bread. He spotted Burgess leaning on his cane in the corner and winked at him. “Morning Burgess.” Polnek collapsed back into his seat.
“Eat, eat,” he waved, forcing a look of graciousness. Skulls Child thanked him and bit into the bread. He ate leisurely but heartily, pulling everything within his reach into his mouth. As he began on his second plate, Polnek coughed. Skulls Child looked up at him with a string of grapes hanging from his mouth.
“Something caught in your throat?” said the boy. The Squalla Master scowled.
“The sun is high now, Child. Don’t you think this time might be better spent warming up that sword arm of yours?”
“Nah. The best preparation for a day like today is ‘food and bed and clearing the head’, isn’t that right Burgess?” The old man shrugged.
“I’ve been known to say that, yes.” Polnek glared at the man. “But an hour of stretching wouldn’t hurt,” he added.
Skulls Child swallowed a few more grapes, then nodded, pushing his plate away from him. “Fair enough.” He took his helm from where he’d set it down on the corner of the table and stood. “To the stalls.” Polnek audibly sighed his relief.
“But where are your weapons?”
“My squire has already brought them down.” Skulls Child smirked.
“Your squire?”
“The Elayan sand slut.” Polnek’s face turned ashen.
“Forgive me,” he stammered, “a vile thing to say wasn’t it? Uttered by a vile old man in the heat of his concern for his squalla’s welfare—”
“Relax, Polnek.” Skulls Child wandered over toward Burgess, who was already retreating down the corridor that had brought him up. “If I took offense to every stupid thing that came out of your mouth, I’d never get a moment’s peace now would I?”
One of the bentneck girls giggled and Pyte snorted, half-choking on a piece of melon. Polnek’s piggish eyes narrowed.
“If you weren’t my only chance at winning Maladesta I’d have you flogged and dragged behind a horse. You know that, right?” Skulls Child laughed.
“Of course, Mully. But you’d have to find somebody willing to come after me first.” He waved toward Eekle and Pyte. “How about you two?”
Eekle and Pyte simultaneously shook their heads.


In the crowd of boys lined up along the fence that surrounded the tents of the Deprived Warriors, there was one figure that was not a commoner, and did not belong. He wore the hooded, deep blue cloak of a Spectral Pyromancer, and his face was completely concealed in the shadows within. His hands were stark white and unnaturally thin, protruding from the folds of his sleeves like the bones of a walking skeleton.
Druids rarely ever left the Conflagration Spire, the temple adjacent to the palace that housed their order, and when they did, it was never to go down into the Ma’r, but no one—not even the Dreanalai—dared question this one or any other. What druids did and where they went was their business. The boys around him anxiously parted as he moved silently to the front row, where everyone was jostling to get a look at the guard that had caught a dagger with his palm.
“Stand aside,” the Pyromancer rasped as he reached the front. A lanky blond farmhand of about nineteen who had not noticed him practically jumped to get out of his way.
“Forgive me, Blessed One,” he stammered, cowering as though he expected to be struck down on the spot. The Pyromancer however, glided past him without pause and approached the Dreanalai guard, who had some time ago pulled the dagger from his hand and bandaged the wound with a strip of cloth.
A stone’s throw farther down the fence, Barrak al’Kal watched alertly.
“May I be of service to you, flameshaper?” the guard asked. His face remained stonily inexpressive behind his mask, but a note of tension crept into his voice as the druid extended his hand and took him by the wrist.
“Open your palm,” he breathed. Pyromancers rarely ever spoke above a whisper. They didn’t have to.
Hesitating only slightly, Maffy opened his palm and allowed the druid to unwind the bandage. Underneath, the jagged cut in his palm immediately oozed out a thick pulse of blood that ran in rivulets down his fingers. The Pyromancer made a cup shape with his fingers and thumb as though he was holding an invisible egg. A small, intensely bright blue ball of flame began to burn there and when it was as wide around as a plum he let it go so that it dropped into Maffy’s palm.
The guard gasped, giving an indication that the blue fire burned fiercely enough to reduce a lesser man to unstructured screams of agony, but the wound healed almost instantly as the flames broke apart over it. When the cut was gone, the Pyromancer released his grip. Maffy flexed his fingers appreciatively.
“Thank you.”
“Thank The Graystar, soldier. I am only a conduit of her power.” The Pyromancer laughed, and though Maffy thought he might have detected a note of sarcasm, he nevertheless he bowed his head in assent. The druid made a mysterious sign in the air with his left hand. “The goddess wishes me to seek out the warrior named by this sign—” he said, turning the hand over to expose his own palm, which was marked by what looked to be a grinning skull, except that it was inked in shifting blue fire that burned just beneath the skin. “Do you know the one?”
Maffy nodded, recognizing the skull immediately as the symbol of a Skull Match victor.
“He is called the Skulls Child. He is a favorite for Maladesta.”
“Take me to him,” said the druid.
“All right.” Maffy turned toward Barrak and whistled. “The druid requests that I escort him on an errand, Captain,” he shouted, displaying none of his former cheekiness. Barrak nodded grimly and waved a dismissal. Maffy returned his attention to the Pyromancer. “This way,” he said. Spinning on his heel he led the druid through the gate into the tent compound.
Compared to a few hours before the camp was all but deserted; the warriors had by now all gone inside the arena to warm up or convene with their squallas. Only their bentneck servants remained behind to witness the unusual sight of a Dreanalai and a Pyromancer walking side by side. Most of them did not even notice the odd pair, but a few watched them curiously, pausing in the middle of washing out cook pots, dousing fires, mending spare tunics and painting shields.
Though the majority of the girls were less than pretty, all of them were fit from long hours of lugging heavy armaments, and under more ordinary circumstances Maffy would have been glad for an excuse to take a stroll amongst the tents and survey their exposed wares. At that moment however, having the Pyromancer at his side was making him too uneasy to enjoy himself.
There was something chilling about all druids, but Spectrals were known to be the most shadowy and devious of the lot—to make matters worse, this one seemed to him especially fearsome. Maffy had come into close contact with Pyromancers of every order in the course of his service to the Empress—Spectral, Astral, and Corporeal; he’d seen them light candles with a snap of their fingers, move boulders with a flick of their wrists, and bend lions to their will with nothing more than a look, but he’d never seen any of them knit a man’s flesh so effortlessly. By all accounts, healing was supposed to be exceptionally difficult and exhausting for all but the most accomplished and talented druids of any faction.
Throughout the Empire there were rumors that the Pyromancers were getting stronger, and that more and more children were being born with the fire gift. It was said by crones and soothsayers in even the remotest corners of the Southlands that the powers of the old world were reawaking, and that an era of great violence and change was coming. Maffy had never really put much stock in the stories, but it was hard to ignore the display of sorcery that he’d just witnessed and the palpably ominous sensation that it elicited from his gut. It did seem that the druids had gotten stronger in his lifetime.
After they’d passed a few hundred tents they came to the ovular base of the arena. Beneath the reliefs depicting Maladesta battles of yesteryear, banners waving over a dozen or so arched entrances staggered a hundred paces apart announced which squalla occupied which section of the gallery. Commoners were not allowed on this side of the complex during an event. To reach the southern sections of the stands the crowds were forced to funnel into the arena via one of the entrances on the northern side of the arcade and circle around, which meant that this side was eerily desolate.
Maffy scanned the squalla banners swiftly, looking past symbols that depicted objects like a broken scabbard and a motley suit of armor until he came to a blood red axe.
“There,” he said to the druid, pointing toward the banner of The Scarlet Axe.
When they reached the entrance, Maffy led them into a cavernous, completely empty hallway. At the far end, the corridor led directly into the first rows of the arena stands and the ocean of teeming bodies that filled them. The roar of the crowds echoed around them like the wings of a million wasps. Initially, Maffy thought he must have made a mistake and missed a turn, but as they came near to the stands he spotted a small version of The Scarlet Axe flag hanging over the opening of a narrow doorway. Ducking inside, he and the druid proceeded down a short passage that opened into a lofty, barrel vaulted storeroom. The room faced into the floor of the arena and was filled with columns, old weaponry, broken chariots, dried heaps of dung, and a wooden table with the remains of a lavish meal spread out atop it. Seeing no one, Maffy continued past the table until he spotted a winding stone staircase leading down. The clanging of swords coming up from below was unmistakable.
At the bottom of the staircase, they ran into a scrawny, grimy boy with a leaky water bucket.
“Ay, watch it,” said the boy, slopping some of the water onto Maffy’s boots. His hair was a shaggy brown mess that hung in his eyes so that he could hardly see. He had to wipe it off his brow with the back of his hand to get a look at them. When he saw Maffy’s Vike handles protruding from their harnesses and the druid’s blue robe he sucked in his breath and nearly fell over. “Devil’s teats!” he swore. “I’m a dead dog, then, aren’t I?”
“The Skulls Child, boy,” said Maffy, impatiently. “Where is he?”
With a pale, shaky arm the boy pointed down a hallway lined with barred cells that looked as though they had originally served as cages or holding pens. The grunts of warriors and the barked orders of their trainers emanated from within, mingling with the clash of steel to form the distinctively chaotic music of a squalla at practice. “Last stall on the right,” he said.
“Okay. Keep moving.” Maffy gave the kid a shove and sent him scampering off. The druid laughed, a harsh sound low in the throat.
“Stop,” he said. The boy froze. “Turn around.” As though his limbs were being pulled by invisible strings, the boy awkwardly did as he was told. The druid bent slightly at the waist and lowered his shadow-masked face close to the boy’s. “When you tell a lie to a Dreanalai,” he whispered, “you need only to bury the truth deep in your heart. But to tell one to my kind, child, I’m afraid you’d have to cut your heart out and bury it in the darkest part of the netherworld.” The druid straightened, chuckling softly. “The warrior is this way,” he said to Maffy, pointing in an opposite and much quieter direction.
Without waiting for a response, the Pyromancer swept off down the damp and dungeon-like passage, his robes rustling behind him. Maffy glanced at the boy before following.
“Explain yourself,” he said.
The kid stared at his feet, clearly terrified.
“Skulls Child is my friend,” he croaked. “I thought I should warn him.” Maffy nodded, then backhanded him in the face, smashing his nose and sending his bucket flying. “Very noble of you.” he said. The boy crumpled to the hay-strewn floor, sobbing quietly. “But not very smart.” Maffy scowled and left him there.

Skulls Child unleashed one last sequence of blows on the sparring dummy with a wooden blade and took a seat on a crude bench next to Burgess, who handed him a rag. He had not been working very rigorously, swinging the practice sword only hard enough to get his heart going, but the stall was tiny with a very low ceiling and it had heated up quickly, causing him to break a sweat. He wiped his face and tossed the rag to the floor, leaving his arms and the menacing tattoos along them slick and shining.
“How am I doing?” he said to Burgess. The old man snorted wryly, scratching at his white-bearded cheek with the handle of his walking stick.
“Not terrible. How do you feel?” Skulls Child rubbed at his neck muscles, sighing.
“Not terrible.”
“I’m going to start you at the back of the formation—” Burgess began, but before he could continue Skulls Child stiffened and reached for his real sword which was propped against the wall at the end of the bench. Burgess glanced at him quizzically and Skulls Child jerked his chin towards the cell doorway. Burgess cocked his head to the side and listened, hearing soft footsteps.
Maffy and the druid entered the stall together and stopped, only a few feet away from the warrior and the old guardsman. Skulls Child froze with his hand on the grip of his sword. His bright, sand-hued eyes looked first at the mark of the Empress’s Hand on the shoulder of the Dreanalai’s tunic and then at the faceless Druid. Slowly, he relaxed his grip and let the sword fall back against the wall.
“Wise choice, gladiator,” said the Dreanalai, whose handsome, high-boned features were framed by dark cherubic curls and only marred by the decaying state of his teeth. The Pyromancer took a step forward and produced a glass vial from inside his robes. Inside the vial was a small puffball of pure white dander.
“I need his blood,” he murmured to Maffy. “Saturate this for me.” He dangled the vial in the air and shook it until the Dreanalai took it from him. Hesitating only a moment at the realization that the famed Skulls Child was little more than a nomad boy, he slid one of his Vikes from its sheath and rested the tip on the floor. “Hold out your arm warrior,” he ordered. “If you want to keep it, I suggest you hold it still.”
The Skulls Child’s eyes darkened with fury, but he extended his arm without protest, flexing so that the veins in his forearm bulged. Maffy lifted his Vike and was lowering the point to the skin when the hunchbacked codger suddenly raised his cane and blocked the cut.
“Please,” he said, “he must fight within the hour. You cannot drain his blood now. Come back afterward if you must.” His voice held a firm edge of authority, a remnant of his long years as an Imperial Guard.
Maffy opened his mouth to berate the old man, but before he had a chance to form the words the druid calmly gripped the end of the cane and sent a spiraling thread of blue flame up its length, turning it to cinders in two beats of the heart. Smoldering ash crumbled through Burgess’s fingers.
“If I so choose old one and I will take every last drop.”
Clenching his singed hands, Burgess sank back against the wall, the muscles in his jaw pulsing with pain and anger.
Maffy turned his wrist and his blade bit into the Skull Child’s flesh. No sign of emotion traversed the warrior’s brow, no pain or fear entered his eyes. He stared up at the Dreanalai with an unflinching gaze, as though he was committing the face to memory. For some reason this simple act of tacit defiance infuriated the Dreanalai, who was accustomed to being feared by those beneath him—especially a teenaged whelp of a fighter. He gave the blade a slight twist as he removed it, designed to tear the edges of the wound and inflict more pain. When the blood rose to the surface, he held the dander to the cut and waited for the crimson stain to blossom throughout the puffball.
“I’ve heard it said that you fight gracefully,” he spoke as they waited, his eyes fixated on Skulls Child’s. “Like a Dreana master, even some say.” He laughed. “Can it be true, I wonder? With your farmer’s blade and this broken old fool for a trainer?” Skulls Child said nothing, but Burgess froze, knowing where the taunt was headed.
“The forms are in his head and heart, Dreanalai, he has never needed any training. You will you prove yourself fool if you choose to underestimate him.”
“Is that so?” Maffy stashed the now blood-soaked puffball back into the vial and handed it to the druid. Then he slid his second Vike from its sheath. In a flurry of controlled movements he spun and sheared the head and arms off of the wooden dummy. The severed appendages dropped to the stones with a clatter and lay in a heap. Turning back around, he whirled both blades in circular arcs that brought the points level with Burgess and Skull Childs’ throats. “You know nothing of the forms old man. It is disrespectful of you even to speak of them. Shall I teach the two of you a lesson in humility?” He laughed and with the toe of his boot nudged Skulls Child’s sword toward him. “Come on gladiator, let’s have a little spar.”
Skulls Child made no move to take his weapon. Instead, he glanced warily at the druid, whom he could feel was watching him intently, waiting to see how he would react.
“Are you afraid, Child?” Maffy asked, pressing the tip of his Vike into the hollow at the gladiator’s clavicle.
“Enough,” said the druid, so quietly that the order was almost unintelligible. “My objective here is met. The boy is not to be harmed.”
Maffy shrugged, stowing his blades back in their sheaths with a nonchalance that was not reflected in his eyes.
“Another time then,” he said. The druid flitted from the room without another word. Before following him, Maffy shook his head pityingly at Skulls Child and touched his fingertips to the corner of his golden eye mask in the gesture of shame.
Burgess’s face flushed with indignation.
“That buffoon is no true Dreanalai,” he muttered once the man was out of earshot. “The Order must be growing lax.” Skulls Child picked up his discarded sweat rag from the floor and used a strip of it to tie off the cut in his arm.
“What does the druid want with my blood, Burgess?” he asked. The old man raised an eyebrow.
“You don’t know?” Skulls Child shook his head. Burgess nodded slowly, chiding himself for forgetting that for all his talent on the battlefield the boy still knew next to nothing about the world. “That is how they test for the fire gift.”
Skulls Child laughed.
“The fire gift? What do you think old man, do I have the blood of Pyromancer then?” Burgess dragged himself to his feet, bones creaking. He stood a little unsteadily without his walking stick.
“If there’s anything special in your bloodline, boy, it’s Dreanalai, not druid. That I’m sure of. The Pyromancer is playing a game most likely—some political intrigue we will never fathom—and you just happen to fill a part in it.”
“Am I in danger then, you think?” Burgess’s laugh transformed into a coughing fit. He pounded his chest and hacked until it subsided.
“When have you ever not been in danger? We’ll keep our eyes open as always. Come on. Let’s go up, now.”
“Is it time?” Skulls Child stood and collected his things. Burgess eyed him from head to toe.
“Are you dizzy?” he asked.
“A little. It will pass.”
“We’ll get you some water.”
On the way out of the stalls Burgess began calling for the water boy, whose name was Bucket, or at least, that’s what all the gladiators of the Scarlet Axe called him.
“I’m here,” said the boy, who had been hiding in a vacant cell near the base of the stairs. He poked his head out into the hallway and upon seeing that Burgess and Skulls Child were relatively unharmed, regarded them with a look of the utmost relief. “Are they gone?” he asked, wiping hair out of his eyes and peering around.
“Yes,” said Burgess. “I think so.” He took the boy’s chin in his hand to get a look at his bloodied face. “Your nose is broken. What’d you do boy, start a fight with Dreanalai?—You can’t be that stupid, can you?” Bucket did not answer, his cheeks flushing with embarrassment. “Get us some water, then go see the bentneck girls and have them straighten it out.”
“I’ll be all right,” said the boy, wincing, “What did they want?”
“Mind your business,” said Burgess. “We’ll be in the box. Meet us there.”
The holding box was just that—a large rectangular loggia on the threshold of the arena floor that housed the members of the Scarlet Axe as they waited to be called into the tournament. Each of the twelve squallas had its own box, and though they were all roofed so that the arena crowds could not see them or hurl projectiles, the thin planks did nothing to stop the noise, which was deafening.
Polnek sat in his throne-like chair, which the two giants Eekle and Pyte had brought from the storage room table and setup on a makeshift dias in the middle of the box. He’d cleaned himself up somewhat, slicking back his hair with water and donning a leather vest that covered at least some of his hairy paunch, and was now surveying his band of warriors, who were kneeling in front of him in somewhat orderly rows. None of them wore quite the same armor or colors—some had polished and ornately worked sets while others wore pieces so dented and crude it looked like they were wearing old cook pots—but all of them had a shield and a spear and a scarlet stripe painted down the back of their helms. Eekle and Pyte walked through the rows of men with buckets full of red tincture, using horsehair brushes to touch up and brighten the identifying streaks wherever they’d gotten a bit faded.
All told, there were about a hundred warriors gathered in the box, and more stragglers were emerging in a constant trickle from the stairway to the practice stalls. Burgess and Skulls Child arrived on the heels of two bentneck girls as they made their way to Polnek with a tray of fruit and wine. “There you are at last!” he exclaimed, when he spotted Burgess, “thank the Graystar—I thought you’d abandoned me!” Thinking he was speaking to them, the bentneck girls rushed to bring him the tray and one of them stumbled, nearly sending the whole thing tumbling to the ground. “No, no, no!” Polnek scowled, waving them away.