I know I should head up to the senate box to be seen or to the receiving rooms to talk to the great and the good of the city.My duties as a senator require it.I need to push for things that will help the slums.I need to be seen by those with influence.I need to try to find people who’ll help me stand against the worst aspects of the city, and help me to change them.
In other words, I need to do all the things I would usually do during the games, but I don't want to today.I don't want to go into the receiving rooms and play politics while knowing that everyone is here to see a death.
Besides, I'm not even sure they're the most useful things I can do.I need to find out more about what's going on in the city and more about what Selene has planned.She came back for a reason, and I want to know what that reason is.
So I head down to the preparation rooms.In them, I can see gladiators warming up.Sorrel is there, swinging his staff, making sure that his muscles are loose.There's a tension in his features that suggests the reality of what he's about to do has finally hit home.I wonder if I could go to him and talk him out of this, but I doubt that I could, and even trying to do it would distract him.I don't want to place doubts in his mind now, when those doubts might slow him down during the fight and leave him vulnerable.I won't do that to him.
But I'm more than happy to talk to Selene.I find her at the far end of the preparation areas, in a room of her own, with guards on the doors.Those guards allow me entry, and I stand there watching her.
She's dressed in scraps of scale armor that protect only patches of her flesh.For a weapon, she's been given a single, curving sword.The combination is clearly intended to look as though she has been given equal equipment to Sorrel, but I know enough to see that her armor is not as protective as his, and her blade is probably not a weapon she's used to using.It's also one that will require her to come within the range of Sorrel’s staff if she wants to kill him with it.Normally, such a weapon would be combined with a shield or a secondary weapon so that the gladiator can protect themselves on the way in.Selene has been given nothing like that.She has her magic, but the dampener on her left wrist will limit her ability to use it.
“Did you simply come to stare at me?”she asks without looking around.“Why not use one of your creatures, the way you've been watching me the whole way into the city?”
Her voice betrays no hint of anger at that, no sense of emotion at all.It's as if the situation doesn't touch her.
“I wanted to talk to you,” I say.
She doesn't reply and doesn't look at me.It's clear she has no interest in saying anything to me, but I have to try.
“Why did you come back?”I ask her.“That's what I don't get about all this.You could have lived out your life in exile, or if you were going to return, you could have done it with an army at your side.Instead, you walked back into the city and simply surrendered yourself.What's your plan, Selene?”
She doesn't reply, and I get the feeling that there's nothing I can say or do that will make her tell me the truth.I’m not some psychomancer, who can go rooting around people's minds or force them to obey simply through the power of their will.
Finally, Selene looks my way, those violet eyes locked onto mine as she stands opposite me.In that moment, I'm all too aware that she's holding a weapon and I'm not.She could try to cut me down here and now, and it would be a difficult fight, with no weapon of my own.
But she doesn't.Instead, she keeps staring at me.
“What grows beneath the city will consume it,” she says at last.“With or without me.”
“What do you mean by that?”I ask.“What's growing beneath the city?”
But she doesn't answer, and there's no time to ask her more questions.Marcus is here now, coming into Selene’s cell.
“There you are, Lyra,” he says.“What are you doing down here?We’re needed above.It's time for us to go to the senate box to oversee the games.”
“I was just talking to Selene, trying to get answers from her.”
Marcus gives Selene a cold look.“There's nothing she can say that will help now.Soon enough, she'll be dead, and none of this will matter.Come on, Lyra.”
He takes me from the cell, and we start to make our way up.Soon, the games are going to start.Soon, Selene will be fighting for her life.So why does she seem so unconcerned by that?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I return to the senate box, overlooking the sands of the arena.The first fights have started, two figures fighting below in a beautiful ballet of skill and precision, magic and violence.Cesca is one of the gladiators down there, whirling around a much larger opponent who seems to be able to float shields around him in an ever-shifting web of protection.It's a game of cat and mouse as Cesca seeks an opening and her opponent tries to get close enough to crush her without being taken down by her ability to summon sparks of lightning along the blade she carries.
Ordinarily, Cesca is a fan favorite, a gladiator who revels in the attention she attracts and who has thrived in these safer games, knowing that no one is truly going to call for her death should she lose.By this point in the bout, the crowd should be calling her name and should be on the edges of their seats with excitement.
Instead, they're booing, and it takes me a second to work out why: there's only one bout the crowd is interested in seeing today, and it isn'tthisone.Cesca seems to sense it, too, because she picks that moment to thrust her blade through her opponent's defenses, sending him twitching to the ground with the shock of her lightning.It's obvious she could have done it any time she wanted, but she was trying to draw the bout out to be more entertaining for the crowd.The moment it became clear they weren't interested, she finished the fight.She stands over her opponent, gives a perfunctory bow in the direction of the senate box, and stalks from the sands in obvious annoyance.
There probably won’t even be any nobles waiting for her in the receiving rooms.They all seem to be in their boxes, looking out, waiting for the main event of the day.The former imperial box is almost empty, by contrast, with only myself and Marcus within.Rowan has stayed true to his principles by refusing to attend the games.The other senators… I get the feeling many of them are afraid, staying away because they assume Selene is going to choose this moment to mount some kind of attack.They don’t want to make themselves targets.
That thought makes me shudder, because I’m sure she’s planning something.I just don’t know what.
“We need to give the people what they want,” Marcus says, and stands, approaching the front of the box.He stays there for a moment, letting the people see him, letting their attention settle on him before he speaks.
“Citizens of Aetheria!The time has come for our main bout of the day!”
The roar that answers him is almost deafening.It’s obvious the crowd knows what’s coming next.
