Reluctantly he shed the silver coat and left it on a chair while Hastra fitted the plates of armor over his long-sleeved tunic.

In the distance, trumpets sounded. The first three matches were about to begin. There was no telling how long the opening rounds would take. Some might last an hour. Others would be over in minutes. Kell was the third match in the western arena. His first opponent was a Faroan wind mage named Ost-ra-Nes.

He went over these details in his mind as the plates of armor were fastened and tightened. He didn’t realize Hastra had finished until the young guard spoke.

“Are you ready, sir?”

A mirror stood before one curtained wall, and Kell considered himself, heart pounding. You must be excited, Hastra had said, and Kell was. At first, he’d thought it madness—and honestly, if he thought about it too hard, he knew it was still madness—but he couldn’t help it. Logic be damned, wisdom be damned, he was excited.

“This way,” said Hastra, revealing a second curtained door at the outside edge of the private tent. It was almost as if the addition had been designed with Kell’s deception in mind. Perhaps it was. Saints, how long had Rhy been planning this charade? Perhaps Kell hadn’t given his wayward brother enough credit. And perhaps Kell himself wasn’t paying enough attention. He had been spending too much time in his rooms, or in the Basin, and he had taken to assuming that just because he could sense Rhy’s body, he also knew his brother’s mind. Obviously, he was mistaken.

Since when are you so invested in empire politics?

I’m invested in my kingdom, Brother.

Rhy had changed, that much Kell had noticed. But he had only seen his brother’s varying moods, the way his temper darkened at night. This was different. This was clever.

But just to be safe, Kell took up his knife, discarded along with his coat, and pulled back one of the tent’s many tapestries. Hastra watched as he nicked the soft flesh of his forearm and touched his fingers to the welling blood. On the canvas wall, he drew a small symbol, a vertical line, with a small horizontal mark on top leading to the right, and another on the bottom, leading to the left. Kell blew on it until it was dry, then let the tapestry swing back into place, hiding the symbol from sight.

Hastra didn’t ask. He simply wished him luck, then hung back in the tent as Kell left; within several strides, a royal guard—Staff—fell in step beside him. They walked in silence, the crowds on the street—men and women who cared less for the matches than the festivities surrounding them—parting around him. Here and there children waved banners, and Kell caught sight of tangled lions amid the other pennants.

“Kamerov!” shouted someone, and soon the chant was being carried on the air—Kamerov, Kamerov, Kamerov—the name trailing behind him like a cape.

IV

“Alucard! Alucard! Alucard!” chanted the crowd.

Lila had missed the beginning of the fight, but it didn’t matter; her captain was winning.

The eastern arena was filled to capacity, the lower levels shoulder to shoulder, while the upper tiers afforded worse views but a little more air. Lila had opted for one of the highest tiers open to the public, balancing the desire to study the match with the need to maintain anonymity. Stasion’s black hat perched on her brow, and she leaned her elbows on the railing and watched dark earth swirl around Alucard’s fingers. She imagined she could see his smile, even from this height.

Prince Rhy, who’d appeared a few minutes before, cheeks flushed from traveling between the stadiums, now stood on the royal balcony and watched with rapt attention, the stem-looking Faroan noble at his shoulder.

Two poles rose above the royal platform, each bearing a pennant to mark the match. Alucard’s was a silver feather—or a drop of flame, she couldn’t tell—against a backdrop of dark blue. She held a copy in one hand. The other pennant bore a set of three stacked white triangles on forest green. Alucard’s opponent, a Veskan named Otto, wore an ancient-looking helmet with a nose plate and a domed skull.

Otto had chosen fire to Alucard’s earth, and both were now dancing and dodging each other’s blows. The smooth stone of the arena floor was dotted with obstacles, rock formations offering cover as well as the chance for ambush, and they must have been warded, since Alucard never made them move.

Otto was surprisingly quick on his feet for a man nearly seven feet tall, but his skill was one of blunt force, while Alucard’s was sleight of hand—Lila couldn’t think of it any other way. Most magicians, just like most ordinary fighters, gave away their attack by moving in the same direction as their magic. But Alucard could stand perfectly still while his element moved, or in this case, could dodge one way and send his power another, and through that simple, effective method, had scored eight hits to Otto’s two.

Alucard was a showman, adding flourish and flare, and Lila had been on the receiving end of his games enough times to see that he was now playing with the Veskan, shifting into a defensive mode to prolong the fight and please the crowd.

A cheer rose from the western arena, where Kisimyr was going up against her protégé, Losen, and moments later the words on the nearest bracket board shifted, Losen’s name vanishing and Kisimyr’s writing itself into the advancing spot. In the arena below, flames circled Otto’s fists. The hardest thing about fire was putting force behind it, giving it weight as well as heat. The Veskan was throwing his own weight behind the blows, instead of using the fire’s strength.

“Magic is like the ocean,” Alucard had told her in her first lesson. “When waves go the same way, they build. When they collide, they cancel. Get in the way of your magic, and you break the momentum. Move with it, and …”