Tseren commits a crime a day for Kaz Brekker. Even talking to him could get her a stint in jail. Her Dreg tattoo, hidden by her servant uniform, could get her sent to Hellgate, with the wrong judge.
And yet, it's worth it. She knows it is. Brekker'...
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𝗪𝗛𝗘𝗡 𝗧𝗦𝗘𝗥𝗘𝗡 and Bolor were eight, their parents took them to the nearest town for the summer games. Tseren remembered wandering off, still unused to the sheer number of people, and had hidden herself at the back of a crowd, watching the match at the center of the empty room. They'd draped chains to signal the edge of the arena. Then, the athletes had lined up so that people could start to place bets.
The Hellshow wasn't like that at all.
Tseren stood on a jutting stone ledge, looking down into a crudely made amphitheater. The tower had been gutted to create a sandy arena. Only the black wall remained–even the roof had been destroyed to allow for the night sky to peek through.
The summer games had lasted a week, held only during sunlight. When the sun disappeared past the horizon, the athletes would wander through the rows of tents, mingling with the audience. Tseren's parents had fed one of the boxers she'd gotten to see before her brother had wrestled her out of the room and back towards the horse races. They'd eaten with him, and he'd laughed and joked, so grateful for their charity.
The Hellshow was only held in darkness; it was secret, taboo. This wasn't a celebration of anything other than Kerch cruelty. Their athletes were all criminals, convicted for every crime in the books. One wrong move, and Tseren would be occupying one of the empty cells she'd passed earlier.
More masked men and veiled women crowded onto Tseren's terraced ledge, and onto the many other ledges jutting out over the arena. They stomped their feet in unison as two men walked out into the arena: one, wearing a cloak made from a skinned lion, leading another–the prisoner–by a short chain leash.
The prisoner was scrawny and old. He'd once been large, Tseren imagined, like the Shu boxers at the summer games. Now, his skin was wrinkled and hung in folds. His muscles sagged. The crowd didn't want to see him fight. They wanted to see him suffer.
The lion cloaked man marched the older man up to a big wooden wheel marked with drawings of little animals. "Spin the wheel!" he commanded, voice echoing throughout the chamber.
With heavy, shackled hands, the man who Tseren could picture eating at her table, looking gratefully at her parents, gave the wheel a hard spin.
Once it had spun to a stop, the entire crowd seemed to hold its breath. They leaned forward as one, jostling Tseren, who did not particularly care. They were too far to see the little animals (which was something Pekka Rollins should fix immediately) and there was no chance of it becoming clear. Tseren stayed put.
The prisoner was allowed to cast aside his chains and scrambled to pick up a flimsy knife from the sand. He faced the last open hallway, and soon, Tseren found out why. A roar that carried even over the excited bellowing of the crowd. The announcer and the prisoner's guards were lifted out of the pit in a hurry, away from whatever had just been released into the arena.
