Alex Lidell - The Cadet of Tildor

The man advanced.

Renee retreated until her back hit the wall and the stench of cheap spirits filled her nostrils.

Awareness brushed Savoy like a puff of wind. His body ached with a deep, nagging pain that seeped into each muscle fiber. The burn on his hand had disappeared. He pushed himself up, panted from the exertion, and looked around.

He sat in a cage, two spans square—scarcely tall enough for Savoy’s height—that stood inside a larger room. He wore only white drawstring trousers and, around his wrists and neck, flat bands of leather interwoven with blue-tinted metal strips and rings. The leather chafed, but in light of a previously certain death, he lacked grounds to complain.

“I’ve neither time nor desire to break a new pup, Jasper.” A large, muscular man carrying a coiled hemp whip at his waist entered the room. He was in his mid-thirties and hard, the kind of hard that grows from experience. Crossing meaty arms, the man weighed Savoy with his eyes and scoffed when Savoy returned the look glare for glare.

“Make time,” said the man’s partner, a scrawny adolescent whose peach-fuzz cheeks had unlikely yet met a razor. “Mother said I could have him.” The boy adjusted his glasses and squatted to Savoy’s eye level. “Hi, Cat. I’m Jasper, your keeper. That’s your training master, Den. Don’t be frightened.”

Cat? Savoy studied the smiling youth who saved him the trouble of creating an identity and hoped he had found the weaker link.

“I named you for your green eyes,” Jasper continued.

Savoy glanced at Den to measure his reaction, but the man showed none. Instead, he and Jasper began to back away. Something was about to happen. Savoy tensed. Jasper smiled and raised his hand.

It glowed blue.

Savoy’s bracelets shimmered in reply and started to pull.

A wave of foreboding washed over him as the glowing bands dragged his wrists up and back, gluing his arms to the back of his collar. Savoy fought the restraints, but the invisible force sheared through the struggle, twisting joints and muscles into compliance, tearing the skin beneath the leather to blood.

Jasper’s hand flashed once more, the light reflecting off his glasses. The three bands dragged their prisoner backward, forcing him to move his feet or fall, and slammed him against the metal cage. Savoy glared at Jasper and gritted his teeth.

Den entered the cage and clipped a rope to the bands holding Savoy. Immediately, the glow coming from Jasper’s hand died, releasing the strain on Savoy’s wrists.

“You going to cause a problem?” Den growled into Savoy’s ear and, arching him backward, marched him out and down a corridor, similar to the one that once led to Diam’s cage.

They came to a large room where two rows of cots lined the walls. Six men, dressed in identical white pants, pinned him with hate-filled glares.

“You sleep there.” Den pointed to an empty cot next to a bald, mountain-sized man. Then he retrieved a piece of chalk from his pocket and wrote “Cat, evaluation care” on the slate affixed to the footboard.

A man with a scar running down his face cleared his throat. “We already got six.”

“Don’t you worry, Pretty. We’ll return to six soon enough.” Den unclipped the rope and left without further word.

Savoy crossed his arms and regarded his cellmates. Predators. “It usually takes people longer to dislike me.”

“How long?” Mountain Man asked with surprising sincerity.

“Shut up, Boulder.” Pretty looked Savoy up and down. “You really this clueless?”

“No, I enjoy putting on shows of ignorance.”

“White Team has six slots and, now, seven pups,” said a third man, joining the conversation. The sign on his bed named him Farmer.

Pretty bared his teeth. “Which means, little blond boy, one of us awaits a death match.”

“My sympathies to you then, Pretty.” Savoy sat on the thin, blanket-covered mattress and tugged at his wristbands, careful of the raw flesh beneath.

“Don’t bother,” Farmer mumbled, motioning to Savoy’s wrists. “There’s only one way out of here.”

“Death?”

“Two ways out, then. The Predator who wins fourth tier finals gets his freedom. If you need a delusion of hope to cling to, use that.”

Looking up, Savoy found the man’s eyes and nodded his thanks, adding the new scrap of information to his pitifully small pile.

A few hours later, Savoy was herded into a training salle. Beautiful . That was the only word for it. Equipment shone with polish and begged for use. Clean, raked sand covered the floor evenly. Cords marked off sparring rings. Ropes, pull-up bars, free weights, punching bags, leather strike pads, all emanated maintenance and care. The Academy’s salle, one of the finest the Crown had, paled in comparison, like a starved pony next to Kye.

Boulder, the large, slow-witted man, paced beside a pile of rocks.

“Don’t touch Boulder’s stones.” Farmer caught Savoy’s arm. “He’ll wail all morning.”

The giant did look attached. Every few seconds, he stopped pacing and squatted down, stroking one rock or another as if they were puppies. Watching him mumble and brush stray grains of sand from one gray pet, Savoy thought of Diam, who used to play like that, turning twigs and pebbles into horses and warriors. The man looked up, eyes full of innocence and caution, and grimaced at Pretty, who swaggered in his direction.

“Don’t hurt ’em.” Boulder stood guard in front of his pile.

Pretty grinned. He reached down and gathered a handful of sand. “Sand’s just a bunch of dead rocks, did you know that?” he asked, while Boulder shuffled from foot to foot, wringing large hands together. Without waiting for a reply, Pretty cocked his arm for a throw.

Savoy caught it.

“Cat, don’t!” Farmer called out, but Savoy already twisted Pretty’s wrist and drove him to the ground. He straddled the man’s chest and cocked a fist, ready to reshape Pretty’s nose.

The blow never connected. Instead, the instant before his fist descended, the bands around Savoy’s wrists tightened, shimmering with blue glow.

“I see we have a problem.” Den’s voice said behind him.

Turning, Savoy saw the training master a few yards away, pointing an amulet in his direction. A line of light stretched like a leash, from the amulet to his bands. Den jerked the leash, ripping Savoy off Pretty.

Savoy landed face-first in the sand and sat up, spitting the grains from his mouth. The next moment, his wrists pulled up to the collar, and the leather pieces glued together. Savoy met Den’s gaze and threw a dirty look at the amulet. “Coward.”

“Idiot.”

“One doesn’t negate the other.”

“Don’t try me.”

“Don’t worry. I’m tied up at the moment.”

Den tapped his hand against his thigh and stared at Savoy, who braced himself for a blow. No strike came. Instead, the training master squeezed the amulet and the glow died, releasing the restraints. Den shook his head and pointed toward one of the sparring rings. “We’ll do this once, Cat. And only once.”

Savoy rubbed his wrists and rose, aware of the silence settling around them. His hand reached for a nonexistent sword and he covered the misstep by dusting sand off his trousers. Den’s invitation reminded him of how he himself handled rookies, which suggested that one of the two of them was in for a surprise. Meanwhile, Den unhooked the rope-whip from his waist and rested it on the ground. When he stepped into the ring, boredom played in his eyes.

“Begin.”

Savoy brought his right leg back and bladed his body into a fighting stance. His weight shifted, and his hands rose to protect his head. Den crouched and shot in, moving faster than Savoy had expected from a large man more than a decade older than him. Savoy sprawled back from the attack, shoved Den’s shoulders, and danced away. Den came at him again, an odd frontal assault that would have gotten him skewered had Savoy had so much as a toothpick. But a weapon he did not have, and Den cut him at the knees.