Scott Lynch - Red Seas Under Red Skies

They came back soon enough; one of the Whites removed a Black on the next move. "Cry the default!" echoed once again across the arena.

"I'll sell the right for five solari," shouted the Lashani viscountess. "First taker."

"I'll pay it," cried an old man in the stands, dressed in layers of velvet and cloth-of-gold. The chief Demon pointed up at him and he beckoned to a frock-coated attendant standing just behind him. The attendant threw a purse down to one of Saljesca's guards, who carried it over to the White War-mistress's side of the field and threw it into her gallery. The Demons then hauled the young woman in black over for the old man's examination. After a moment of exaggerated contemplation, he shouted: "Get rid of her dress!"

The young woman's black tabard and dirty cotton dress were ripped apart by the grasping hands of the Demons; in seconds, she was naked. She seemed determined to give less of a demonstration than the man who'd gone before; she glared stonily up at the old man, be he minor lord or merchant prince, and said nothing. "Is that all?" cried the chief Demon. "Oh no," said the old man. "Get rid of her hair, too!" The crowd burst into applause and cheers at that, and the woman betrayed real fear for the first time. She had a thick mane of glossy black hair down to the small of her back, something to be proud of even among the penniless — perhaps all she had to be proud of in the world. The chief Demon played to the crowd, hoisting a gleaming, crooked dagger over his head and howling with glee. The woman attempted to struggle against the five pairs of arms that held her, to no avail. Swiftly, painfully, the chief Demon slashed at her long black locks — they fluttered down until the ground was thick with them and the woman's scalp was covered with nothing but a chopped, irregular stubble. Trickles of blood ran down her face and neck as she was dragged, too numb for further struggle, out of the arena.

So it went, as Locke watched in growing unease, as the pitiless sun crept across the sky and the shadows shortened. The living pieces moved on the gleaming-hot squares, without water and without relief, until they were taken from the board and subjected to a default of the opposing Warmaster's choosing. It soon became apparent to Locke that the default could be virtually anything, short of death. The Demons would follow orders with frenzied enthusiasm, playing up each new injury or humiliation for the appreciative crowd.

Gods, Locke realized, barely any of them are here for the game at all. They" ve only come to see the defaults.

The rows of armoured guards would dissuade all possibility of refusal or rebellion. Those "pieces" that refused to hurry along to their appointed places, or dared to step off their squares without instructions, were simply beaten until they obeyed. Obey they did, and the cruelty of the defaults did not wane as the game went on.

"Rotten fruit," the little boy in the Black Warmaster's box yelled, and so it was: an elderly woman with a white tabard was thrown against the stadium wall and pelted with apples, pears and tomatoes by four of the Demons. They knocked her off her feet and continued the barrage until the woman was a shuddering heap, curled up beneath her frail arms for protection, and great spatters of sour pulp and juice were dripping from the wall behind her.

The white player's retaliation was swift. She took a stocky young man in black colours and for once reserved the choice of default for herself. "We must keep our hostess's stadium clean. Take him to the wall with the fruit stains," she shouted, "and let him clean it with his tongue!" The crowd broke into wild applause at that; the man on the arena floor was pushed up to the wall by the chief Demon. "Start licking, scum!"

His first efforts were half-hearted. Another Demon produced a whip that ended in seven knotted cords and lashed the man across the shoulders, knocking him into the wall hard enough to bloody his nose. "Earn your fucking pay, worm," screamed the Demon, whipping him once again. "Haven't you ever had a lady tell you to get down and use your tongue before?"

The man ran his tongue desperately up and down the wall, gagging every few seconds, which would bring another crack of the Demon's whip. The man was a bleeding, retching nervous wreck by the time he was finally hauled from the arena floor. So it went, all morning long.

"Gods, why do they bear it? Why do they take this?" Locke stood in the free gallery, alone, staring out at the wealthy and powerful, at their guards and servants, and at the thinning ranks of the living pieces in the game beneath them. He brooded, sweating in his heavy black garments.

Here were the richest and freest people in the Therin world, those with positions and money but no political duties to constrict them, gathered together to do what law and custom forbade beyond Saljesca's private fiefdom — to humiliate and brutalize their lessers however they saw fit, for their own gleeful amusement. The arena and the Amusement War itself were obviously just frames. Means to an end.

There was no order to it, no justice. Gladiators and prisoners fighting before a crowd were there for a reason, risking their fives for glory or paying the price for having been caught. Men and women hung from a gibbets because the Crooked Warden had only so much help to give to the foolish, the slow and the unlucky. But this was wanton. Locke felt his anger growing like a chancre in his guts.

They had no idea who he was or what he was really capable of. No idea what the Thorn ofCamorr could do to them, unleashed on Salon Corbeau, with Jean to aid him! Given months to plan and observe, the Gentlemen Bastards could take the place apart, find ways to cheat the Amusement War, surely — rob the participants, rob the Lady Saljesca, embarrass and humiliate the bastards, blacken the demi-city's reputation so thoroughly that nobody would ever want to visit again. But…

"Crooked Warden," Locke whispered, "why now? Why show me this now}"

Jean was waiting for him back in Tal Verrar, and they were already neck-deep in a game that had taken a year to put together. Jean didn't know anything about what really went on at Salon Corbeau. He would be expecting Locke to return in short order with a set of chairs, so the two of them could carry on with the plan thed'r agreed to, a plan that was already desperately delicate. "Gods damn it," said Locke. "Gods damn it all to hell."

Camorr, years before. The wet, seeping mists enclosed Locke and Father Chains in curtains of midnight grey as the old man led the boy back home from his first meeting with Capa Vencarlo Barsavi. Locke, drunk and sweat-soaked, clung to the back of his Gentled goat for dear life.

"… You don't belong to Barsavi," Chains said. "He's good enough for what he is, a good ally to have on your side and a man that you must appear to obey at all times. But he certainly doesn't own you. In the end, neither do I." "So I don't have to—"

"Obey the Secret Peace? Be a good little pezon? Only for pretend, Locke. Only to keep the wolves from the door. Unless your eyes and ears have been stitched shut with rawhide these past two days, by now you must have realized that I intend you and Calo and Galdo and Sabetha to be nothing less," Chains confided through a feral grin, "than a fucking ballista bolt right through the heart of Vencarlo's precious Secret Peace." "Uh…" Locke collected his thoughts for several moments. "Why?"

"Heh. It's… complicated. It has to do with what I am, and what I hope you'll someday be. A priest in the sworn service of the Crooked Warden." "Is the capa doing something wrong?"

"Well," said Chains, "well, lad, now there's a question. Is he doing right by the Right People? Gods, yes — the Secret Peace tames the city watch, calms everyone down, gets less of us hanged. Still, every priesthood has what we call mandates — laws handed down by the gods themselves to those who serve them. In most temples, these are complex, messy, annoying things. In the priesthood of the Benefactor, things are easy. We only have two. The first one is, thieves prosper. Simple as that. We're ordered to aid one another, hide one another, make peace whenever possible and see to it that our kind flourishes, by hook or by crook. Barsavi's got that mandate covered, never doubt that.