Authors: Scott Lynch
“It would, of course, be impossible for me to produce a deck of cards from thin air … but
what’s this?”
He moved his right hand toward the mirror, with a flourish, and a deck of cards slipped
clumsily out of it, coming apart in a fluttering mess as it fell to the floor.
“Oh, fucking hell,” Locke muttered.
He had a week of empty time on his hands, and his legerdemain was improving with torturous
slowness. Locke soon turned his attention to the curious institution at the heart
of Salon Corbeau, the reason so many idle rich made pilgrimage to the place, and the
reason so many desperate and
downtrodden ate their carriage dust as they trudged to the same destination.
They called it the Amusement War.
Lady Saljesca’s stadium was a miniature of the legendary
stadia ultra
of Therim Pel, complete with twelve marble idols of the gods gracing the exterior
in high stone niches. Ravens perched on their divine heads and shoulders, cawing halfheartedly
down at the bustling crowd around the gates. As he made his way through the tumult
Locke noted every species of attendant known to man. There were physikers clucking
over the elderly, litter bearers hauling the infirm (or the unabashedly lazy), musicians
and jugglers, guards, translators, and dozens of men and women waving fans or hoisting
wide silk parasols, looking like nothing so much as fragile human-sized mushrooms
as they chased their patrons under the growing morning sun.
While it was said that the floor of the Imperial Arena had been too wide for even
the strongest archer to send an arrow across, the floor of Saljesca’s recreation was
just fifty yards in diameter. There were no common seats; the smooth stone walls rose
twenty feet above the smooth stone floor, and were topped with luxury galleries whose
cloth sunscreens flapped gently in the breeze.
Three times per day, Lady Saljesca’s liveried guards would open the public gates to
the better class of Salon Corbeau’s visitors. There was a single standing gallery
(which even had a decent view) to which admission was free, but the vast majority
of spectators at the stadium would take nothing less than the luxury seats and boxes,
which needed to be reserved at some considerable expense. Unfashionable as it was,
Locke elected to stand for his first visit to the Amusement War. A relative nonentity
like Mordavi Fehrwight had no reputation to protect.
On the floor of the arena was a gleaming grid of black and white marble squares, each
one yard on a side. The squares were set twenty by twenty, like a gigantic Catch-the-Duke
board. Where little carved pieces of wood or ivory were used in that game, Saljesca’s
playing field featured living pieces. The poor and destitute would man that field,
forty to a side, wearing white or black tabards to distinguish themselves. This strange
employment was the reason they risked the long, hard trudge to Salon Corbeau.
Locke had already discovered that there were two large barracks behind Lady Saljesca’s
stadium, heavily guarded, where the poor were taken upon arrival in Salon Corbeau.
There they were made to clean themselves up, and were given two simple meals a day
for the duration of their stay, which could be indefinite. Each “aspirant,” as they
were known, was assigned a
number. Three times per day, random drawings were held to select two teams of forty
for the coming Amusement War. The only rule of the war was that the living pieces
had to be able to stand, move, and obey orders; children of eight or nine were about
the youngest taken. Those who refused to participate when their number was drawn,
even once, were thrown out of Saljesca’s demi-city immediately and barred from returning.
Without supplies and preparation, being cast out onto the roads in this dry land could
be a death sentence.
The aspirants were marched into the arena by two dozen of Saljesca’s guards, who were
armed with curved shields and lacquered wooden sticks. They were robust men and women
who moved with the easy assurance of hard experience; even a general uprising of the
aspirants would stand no chance against them. The guards lined the aspirants up in
their starting positions on the board, forty white “pieces” and forty black “pieces,”
with sixteen squares separating each double-ranked army.
At opposite ends of the stadium were two special gallery boxes, one draped in black
silk curtains and the other in white. These boxes were reserved far in advance by
a waiting list, much as patrons of a chance house would lay claim to billiards tables
or private rooms at certain hours. Whoever reserved a box gained the right to absolute
command of that color for the duration of a war.
That morning’s White warmistress was a young Lashani viscountess whose retinue looked
as nervous with the affair as she was enthusiastic; they appeared to be scribbling
notes and consulting charts. The Black warmaster was a middle-aged Iridani with the
well-fed, calculating look of a prosperous merchant. He had a young son and daughter
with him in his gallery.
Although the living pieces could be hung (by the agreement of both players) with special
tabards that gave them unusual privileges or movement allowances, the rules of this
particular Amusement War seemed to be plain Catch-the-Duke with no variations. The
controllers began calling orders and the game slowly developed, with white and black
pieces trudging nervously toward one another, very gradually closing the distance
between the opposing forces. Locke found himself puzzled by the reaction of the stadium
crowd.
There were easily sixty or seventy spectators in the boxes, with twice as many servants,
bodyguards, assistants, and messengers on hand, not to mention caterers in Saljesca’s
livery hurrying to and fro to serve their wants. Their buzz of eager anticipation
seemed totally incongruous given the plodding nature of the contest shaping up on
the squares.
“What,” Locke muttered to himself in Vadran, “is so damn fascinating?”
Then the first piece was taken, and the Demons came out to the arena floor.
The White warmistress deliberately placed one of her “pieces,” a middle-aged man,
in harm’s way. More of her army lurked behind him in an obvious trap, but the Black
warmaster apparently decided it was a worthwhile exchange. Under the shouted orders
of the Black adjutant, a teenaged girl in black stepped from a diagonal square and
touched the middle-aged man on the shoulder. He hung his head, and the appreciative
clapping of the crowd was drowned out a moment later by a wild shrieking that arose
from the far left side of Locke’s view of the stadium.
Six men ran onto the arena floor from a side portal, dressed in elaborate leather
costumes with black-and-orange fluting; their faces were covered with grotesque flame-orange
masks trailing wild manes of black hair. They threw their arms in the air, screaming
and hollering meaninglessly, and the crowd cheered back as they ran across the arena
toward the cringing man in white. The Demons seized him by the arms and by the hair;
he was thrust, sobbing, to the side of the game board and exhibited to the crowd like
a sacrificial animal. One of the Demons, a man with a booming voice, pointed to the
Black warmaster and shouted, “Cry the default!”
“I want to cry it,” said the little boy in the merchant’s gallery.
“We agreed that your sister would go first. Theodora, name the default.” The little
girl peered down to the arena floor in concentration, then whispered up to her father.
He cleared his throat and shouted, “She wants the guards to beat him with their clubs.
On his legs!”
And so it was; the Demons held the writhing, screaming man with his limbs spread while
two guards obligingly laid into him. The fall of their sticks echoed across the arena;
they thoroughly bruised his thighs, shins, and calves until the chief Demon waved
his hands to clear them off. The audience applauded politely (though not with particular
enthusiasm, noted Locke), and the Demons hauled the quivering, bleeding man off the
stadium floor.
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
warmistress’ 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 armored guards would dissuade all possibility of refusal or rebellion.
Those “pieces” who 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 colors
and for once reserved the choice of default to herself. “We must keep our hostess’
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 halfhearted. 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 lives 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 of Camorr
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.