“Your Excellency!” Karris snarled, whipping around to face the foul bitch who’d done this to Gavin. Her fear was gone, and her rage wasn’t red. “I declare my husband innocent of any wrong. By your own old traditions, I demand trial by combat!”

“I demand trial by combat,” she announced to the other half of the stadium. If only she had an orator’s voice that could be heard over fifty thousand murmuring souls. But most orators couldn’t pull off this dress, either.

She turned to the Nuqaba and lowered her voice, trying to project just enough for the woman and those privileged few in the front row to hear. “Or I tell everyone here our surname and rally those who are not traitors.”

The Nuqaba’s face gathered a storm. Eirene Malargos interjected some question. A quick volley of questions and responses between them, impossible to hear. Both angry. Both insistent.

There was no ancient Parian tradition of trial by combat. It was pure horse shit.

But the fifty thousand bloodthirsty Ruthgari spectators in the hippodrome didn’t know that. And they loved the idea. Chariot races could be bloody—crashes frequent, injuries common—but true blood sports had been banned and reinstated, banned and reinstated repeatedly for the last four hundred years. They had been illegal for the last ninety or more. A licit taste of an illicit activity? A taste of a vice that the audience could blame on Parian barbarity rather than their own? It was irresistible.

But that pressure wasn’t enough. The Nuqaba didn’t mind angering fifty thousand of some other satrapy’s people. But the pressure wasn’t the bait.

Karris looked closely as the Nuqaba and Eirene Malargos bickered. She could lip-read ‘wife,’ and multiple curses. The Nuqaba nodded her head and said some words to a handsome, muscular Parian man who was still seated next to her. Then she stepped forward and raised her hands. Eirene put a hand on her arm, but the Nuqaba shook her off, giving her a poisonous glance. Eirene surrendered, trying not to make a scene, but clearly furious.

When Marissia had pitched the idea to Karris, she’d said, ‘I’ve studied Haruru for fifteen years. She’s hateful, petty, jealous, and vindictive—and she was involved with Gavin once. If she can do anything to hurt him, she will.’

And now we find out just how competent Marissia really is.

And then a sick thought punched Karris in the stomach: It’s not as if Marissia has an incentive to send me to my death.

Sudden fear shivered down Karris’s back.

Her rival.

Oh, Orholam, what have I done? I thought I’d finally won her over. I thought we shared a love for Gavin that trumped the rest. I thought she was working with me. I’ve taken everything from her, and this is her one chance to reclaim her work, if not her man, whom she knew was lost to her forever.

This is what you get for trusting a slave.

It had been a colossal blunder. The kind Karris never would have missed if she hadn’t been so pressed for time. How long had Marissia sat on that information, in order to make sure Karris was pressed for time? Marissia could have known about Gavin’s imprisonment for weeks, and held it back just so Karris would rush off and get herself killed. Even the trial by combat had been Marissia’s idea.

But the White trusts her. And she loves Gavin. She wouldn’t hold back information when he was in danger, would she?

But Gavin had pushed her aside without a thought when he’d married Karris. How would Karris react if a man had done that to her?

Orholam have mercy.

The crowd quieted, and Karris waited for the word. She would be dragged off as a co-conspirator. Alone, with no one to speak for her, all that needed to happen was for the Nuqaba to say that Karris was a madwoman, and that a trial by combat was never part of Parian history. There would be those in this vast crowd who knew that was true.

It was all falling apart.

“It has been many, many years since the trial by combat has been requested,” the Nuqaba said. And Karris’s heart soared. She had a chance. “As set down in our ancient laws, the trial by combat can only be requested once, and must be fulfilled by the one who asked for it. No champions!”

Bait, swallowed.

Before the crowd could shout, enthralled by the idea of some insubstantial little girl in a dress fighting in a trial by combat herself, the Nuqaba continued. “There is no drafting allowed in trials by combat, and the trial is to the death!”

Now the crowd roared.

So Marissia didn’t betray me.

But this was almost worse. All Karris’s preparations to hide her drafting abilities were for nothing. Either the Nuqaba or Eirene Malargos had known who Karris was and that she could draft. The Nuqaba was vicious, but she wasn’t stupid.

Shit.

The Nuqaba quieted the crowd again, and gestured to the man who’d been sitting to her left. As he stood, the Nuqaba said, “Do you, O common woman, wish to face the hand of our justice, the Lord Commandant of the Armies of Paria, Enki Hammer?”

On his cue, the man, clearly the Nuqaba’s consort, came forward out from under their shade to stand full in the noon sun. He was tall, very tall, with slim hips and shoulders but the reedy forearms that told a warrior like Karris that under his rich Parian cloak—his burnous—and his gold-brocaded tunic that he was a soldier. He wore the ghotra, too, to cover his head, but there was nothing of pious humility in him. Even his ghotra was woven through with gold.

He shrugged off the white-and-black-striped burnous and pulled the laces of his tunic open, dropping it to reveal impressive musculature. Karris wanted to hate him for his vanity, but she dabbled in vanity more than her fair share.

Odd, she thought. That would have made me hate him twice as much not too long ago.

Oh, she was supposed to respond. Something gutsy but that didn’t hint to the crowd that she was a fighter. “I would rather die,” she shouted, “than let you hurt my husband any more.”

The crowd cheered. The Nuqaba tried to whisper something to Enki, but he shook his head. She tried again, but the crowd was too loud, too impatient. He waved her off. Later.

As Enki jogged down the steps and across the sand toward the spina, looking vexed, the Nuqaba waited for the cheer to die and then shouted, “Then may your blood be on your own head!”

There was confusion on the spina as the soldiers tried to figure out what precisely they were supposed to do during a trial the likes of which they’d never heard of, much less trained for, all while under the watching eyes of fifty thousand people. The professional in Karris had some pity on them, but she said nothing. Any hint she gave that she knew exactly what she was doing could get her killed. This is why you strike fast—some part of the enemy force may have intelligence that will destroy you, but if they can’t communicate it in time, it doesn’t matter.

She bent her head and wiped at her cheeks defiantly, as if she were weeping uncontrollably but was angry about it. A fool wisp of a girl in a ridiculous dress, that’s what she was, not at all a Blackguard.

She wanted to look at Gavin. She wanted to go to him. But she’d lose herself if she did.

Finally, on quick orders from Enki himself, the Tafok Amagez set up a perimeter around the spina as he mounted the steps. An Amagez broke ranks and came forward for the offering of weapons. He was probably thirty-five years old, ancient for a warrior-drafter. He lifted his scabbarded longsword from his belt and offered it to Karris. Another Amagez joined him a moment later and offered a stabbing spear. Then another, with a scorpion. Enki himself wore a long, thin-bladed scimitar, scabbard and hilt encrusted with mother-of-pearl and rubies.