CHAPTER ONE
The crowd roars. In front of me, two gladiators are fighting blindfolded, stalking one another with magically enhanced senses. The people in the underground arena below their approval every time one of them comes close to cutting the other. I can feel the tension in the air, the sense that death is close for one of them as I sneak through the crowd.
Without warning, a cry goes up, people pouring into the space, resistance fighters flooding in to disrupt the bout…
“Do you need anything else, Senator Lyra?”
The servant’s words snap me out of my memories of the death match. Was it already two weeks ago?
“Senator?”
“No, thank you,” I say, shaking my head. The servant steps back from me, looking nervous.
I don’t know how to behave around servants, even now. I’m a senator of Aetheria, arguably the greatest city in the world, and once the heart of a vast empire. It’s a position that gives me power over so many things within the city, that makes me a figure of importance in the eyes of the populace.
Or maybe the servant is nervous because I used to be a champion of the colosseum, one of those forced into it to fight for my freedom over five seasons of games. There’s a circular brand on my left shoulder with five neat lines through it, each representing a set of games, a series of fights survived against beasts or fellow gladiators.
Of course, it could just be because of how strangely I was behaving, staring off into space as my memories took hold of me.
I wonder which side of me the servant sees as she backs away, bowing. I still have the athletic frame of a gladiator, still work hard to stay in shape, training with practice weaponsbecause I can feel the violence that’s coming to the city, the way someone else might feel a storm before it arrives.
But in so many ways, I dress and look like a senator. I wear the white toga required of us when we speak in the senate, and my golden hair is swept up in an elaborate set of braids that takes a couple of servants long minutes to achieve. The blue of my eyes is the same as it ever was, but now it's augmented by hints of golden eyeshadow that speak of power and opulence.
So do the rooms. Not that they're mine, exactly. As a senator, I'm allowed to claim rooms in the palace to stay in and conduct my work. Some of the wealthier senators just claim a small office, a space in which to meet with others, but live in vast houses within the city. I live in these rooms, filled with gilded and elegantly carved furniture, even as I supposedly represent the people of the slums beyond the city, who live in hastily thrown-together shacks or simply on the streets.
Although I hope I've been able to do some good there, along with the rest of the senate. First, Senator Rowan, in particular, has pushed the rebuilding of the slums in the same white marble as the rest of Aetheria. Symbolically, we want to make those slums a full part of the city, even as better buildings and cleaner conditions improve people's lives.
I go to my desk, looking through the pile of missives and reports the servant brought for me. I scan the notes and messages first, a part of me hoping there might be one from Alaric, my fellow former gladiator, my former lover. He’s now the leader of the resistance, fighting against corruption within the city, forced to work from the shadows to avoid arrest.
There’s nothing, though. He’s been silent in the two weeks since I infiltrated the death match, since he and his followers chose to raid that fight without warning me. He hasn’t contacted me, and nor have any of his followers. It’s as if they’ve cut me off,seeing me as one of the enemy, rather than someone who wants to help them.
That hurts enough that I need to distract myself by throwing myself into the reports in front of me. There are requisitions and details relating to the next round of games in the arena, some of which make me wince. There are details of which animals they'll be bringing in for the bouts. Matches with beasts always mean greater danger.
That danger has been building within the games each time they’re run, though. The crowds demand blood, and some within the senate are only too willing to give it to them.
Including Marcus, and that fact hurts as much as Alaric’s silence.
Senator Marcus Larius' name is on so many of the plans to do with the arena. It makes sense when he's always pushed so hard for the return of the games. He and I worked closely together on them, and grew far closer than that. We were as close as I'd been with Alaric, maybe closer. He even proposed marriage to me, albeit in a businesslike way that made it seem as much like a political move or a business acquisition as a love match.
That fell apart when I found out he was the one behind the death matches.
Marcus invited carefully selected groups of people to watch gladiators fight to the death in the old ways, watched over by priests and priestesses who worship Aetheria and its gods, ensuring that power flows back into the stones beneath the city with every death. The priests say all magic pours out into the world from those stones, and they must be fed. Marcus claims it’s necessary to channel the baser instincts of the people, and because someone else will do it if he doesn’t.
I don’t know what to think about Marcus. His involvement in something like that sickens me, but I don’t have enough evidence to bring his actions before the senate, and I’m not surewhich way the vote would go, even if I were prepared to do something like that to him. Even now, I care too much about him to demand that he be tried as a criminal, potentially condemned for what he’s done.
But I still can’t let it go. I see that night at the death matches again and again, trying to think of a way things could have gone differently, remembering the shocking moment when I saw Marcus was in charge.
The thoughts of Marcus mean I can’t focus on the rest of the reports, although there’s at least one other thing distracting me:
Selene Ravenscroft, the former arch-magistrate of Aetheria.
I sigh, knowing I won’t be able to do anything useful today until I check on her. So I go through to my bedroom, lying back on the bed so that it looks as though I’m merely resting. I’m not. I lie in my rooms at the palace, but that isn’t where my mind is. I reach out with my powers as a beast whisperer, one of those who can control animals and link with their minds. I stretch my awareness out over the city of Aetheria, finding one of the birds out in the palace gardens.
I slip into its mind carefully, determined not to harm it. My powers let me take from creatures, borrowing fragments of their strength, but if I take too much I could hurt them, or myself. I’ve seen beast whisperers twisted into animal forms, with claws or feline eyes, patches of fur or bestial legs.
So I ride the bird’s mind without stealing from it, looking through its eyes as I push it gently to fly out over the city. I see the palace of the former emperor below, set in elaborate gardens, augmented by magic so that trees and plants grow in impossible shapes.
Magic permeates Aetheria. The fine houses of the noble quarter have illusions outside them, depicting the symbols of the noble families in motion, or works of illusory art crafted by thefinest magic users around. Glowing orbs line the streets, ready to produce patches of light when darkness finally falls.
