Chapter 4: The Trial of Beasts

The Great Arena held five thousand, and it was full.

Dockers sat on the upper steps with their lunches.

Hall mages sat in the gold boxes, and every one of them had come to watch the Cronstedt girl lose.

Ilsa walked out onto the stone platform at the rim of the pool with Oren beside her.

Her fingers were laced through his, and the mark on her wrist glowed softly.

Someone in the crowd whistled.

"She brought a boy!"

Laughter rolled around the stands.

On the opposite platform, Tuva stood in a white-and-silver gown, with the pale hair she was so proud of braided over one shoulder.

She cupped her hands around her mouth.

"Sister! Did he cost you the family, or is he free?"

Ilsa looked at her and did not answer.

Beyond Tuva, in the great salt pool, the water began to heave.

A long pale shape rose under the surface, then a back as wide as a boat.

Then a tail slapped down and sent a wave over the steps.

The Sacred Whale breached with a roar that shook the arena.

He was four times the size of any beast in the Hall.

His skin was the white of old bone, and one blue eye rolled toward Ilsa, calm and cold.

The crowd screamed with delight.

"First to yield, or first out of the ring, loses," the Archmage called.

"Begin."

The whale dived.

Oren's hand tightened on hers.

"He is big," he said quietly.

"He is slow to turn," said Ilsa.

"I know him."

She did.

She had watched this body move for six years.

She knew how he hunted and how he fed, and she knew what he did right before he killed.

"Watch the left fin," she told Oren.

"When it stretches, he strikes."

A pale shape rushed at the platform under the water.

The pool surged up the wall in a white wave, and Ilsa's boots skidded on the wet stone.

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