Wrapped in a thick leather cloak, Jake shivered as he stood atop the deck of the windrider, the Breath of Shu. It was the same ship they’d traveled aboard to reach Ka-Tor yesterday. The damage to the ship from the air battle with the harpy horde had been repaired; but a few scars remained, including those of the flesh.
Skymaster Horus manned the ship’s rudder, but he carried his arm in a sling. They’d lifted off an hour before sunrise under the guise of testing the repaired boat. While this was mostly an excuse, Politor still scurried above and below the deck, making sure all was in good shape.
And Jake now understood why.
He stared over the rail. Ka-Tor lay two miles below, still shadowed by the night. He could make out an outline of the city, lit by fires set along the walls. Politor had told Jake that it was rare for a skyship to travel so high. It took an extraordinary amount of fuel to heat the balloon and drive the ship to this height. To keep them here, the crew continually pumped the bellows and dumped bushels of the ruby-skinned gourds into the balloon’s furnace.
At this height, the air was thin and cold. Jake’s head pounded with a headache, a symptom of altitude sickness from lack of oxygen, or maybe it was from the fitful sleep he’d had. Jake had been plagued by nightmares of his mother being attacked by a giant grakyl, one that spewed fire. When awake, he just stared into the dark, plagued by worries of Kady and his friends.
“You’d better eat,” a soft voice said from behind him.
He turned to find Nefertiti standing with a steaming bowl of porridge. The scent of cinnamon and spice wafted to him in the cool breeze. She was wrapped in a heavy cloak against the cold.
“You should keep up your strength,” she said, passing him the bowl. “Uncle Shaduf taught me that a hunter is only as strong as his belly is full.”
Jake took the porridge and sank to the deck. He ate it with his fingers, as was the custom here. The heat warmed him, pushing back the cold fear in his gut.
Nefertiti sat nearby, her eyes on the sky as she hugged her knees. It looked as if she hadn’t slept much either. She chewed her lower lip, worry etched into every line of her face.
“We’ll rescue them,” he said. “We’ll make it all right.”
She was silent for a long moment. “But how did it get so wrong?” She swallowed and stared down at her knees. “After Father fell into his great slumber, I spent most of my days in the desert, hunting. All the while, Kree was slithering into position. Why didn’t I see it?”
Jake imagined that such desert escapes were her way of coping with the loss of her father. She and her sister had no one, and Kree slipped into that gap with his handsome looks and oily words.
“It weren’t just you,” a craggy voice said from beyond the rail.
Jake and Nefertiti turned and peered overboard. Politor hung there outside a hatch, tightening some cables on the hull. His eyes were on his work, but his words were for them.
“It were all of us. Those wearing the collar”—he tapped the bronze ring around his neck with his wrench—“and those who were not. We turned a blind eye to what was happening just as surely as you.”
Jake remembered how everyone in the city shunned the boarded-up houses sealed with the Blood of Ka’s mark, refusing even to look at them.
“That’s how freedom is lost,” Politor said. “One grain of sand at a time.”
Jake remembered something his father quoted about this very subject. He whispered it aloud. “‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’”
“Aye, well-spoken.” Politor nodded to Jake, then turned his sky blue eyes on Nefertiti. “The people of Ka-Tor—all of us—have been sleeping as deeply as your father.”
Nefertiti stood up, fire entering her voice. “Then it’s time we all woke up.”
A shout rose from the stern.
“It begins,” Politor said, and swung back into the hatch and vanished.
Jake gained his feet and spotted Djer standing beside Skymaster Horus. He was bent over the rail, a spyglass fixed to his eye. Jake hurried toward them, leaping up the steps from the middeck. Nefertiti followed just as swiftly.
“The people gather toward the arena,” Djer said. “It will not be long before Ra’s first rays touch the obelisk and start the games.”
“Can I see?” Jake asked.
Djer passed him the spyglass. Horus slipped a second one from inside his cloak and handed it to Nefertiti.
“Ready the ship!” Horus called out.
As the crew bustled to obey, Jake leaned over the rail and stared through the spyglass. It took him several scared breaths to focus and find the wide pit of sand surrounded by stone bleachers.
“We used to have grand plays and great circuses there,” Nefertiti mumbled sadly. “Now it is a monstrous place, where blood waters the sands and nothing but fear grows.”
The spyglass was dizzyingly powerful, pulling Jake to a bird’s-eye view of the arena. In the darkened streets, people filed toward the stadium from all directions. It looked as if the entire population was coming to this game, to bear witness. Such attendance was not voluntary. Splashes of torchlight revealed soldiers herding people toward the arena.
“Kree means to mark his coming to power with blood,” Nefertiti said. “To show his strength, to threaten all.”
Nefertiti could watch no longer, but Jake focused his glass back to the arena. The sand pit was oval in shape and appeared to be the size of a football field. In the center rose a black obelisk with a golden tip pointing skyward. The place reminded Jake of the coliseum in Calypsos, but the games now played here were deadlier.
“Raise the sails!” Horus called out.
Jake straightened enough to see the ship’s wings unfurl, cranked wide by the crew on both sides of the middeck. With a rattle of bony struts, the rubbery sails snapped into place.
Djer joined Jake. “We will have only the one chance. Timing is critical.”
Shoulder to shoulder, they kept vigil on the city below. Jake watched the new day creep across the landscape, stretching through the desert, over the outer walls, across the city—and finally reaching the arena.
Spectators packed the stadium, which was ringed on the outside by a solid mass of guards. Kree was daring the rebels to risk a rescue. But none thought to look up. Even if they did, the windrider flew so high that it would appear but a speck in the sky, a slowly circling hawk.
Djer nudged Jake and pointed farther out from the stadium. Jake followed with his spyglass. Slipping silently through the empty streets from the west, a force of men flowed toward the stadium led by a giant, who, even from so far away, Jake recognized. It was Grymhorst, the red-bearded gatekeeper from the Crooked Nail. The ragtag force he led could not hope to defeat the mass of royal guards. They were outnumbered four to one. Instead their goal was to distract them, to draw them off, to keep them busy. Hopefully long enough for the Breath of Shu to complete a rescue.