The arena was stuffed with people when we arrived. They were mostly Estheni, the majority demographic in this region—lots of saturated brown hair, gray eyes, prominent cheekbones, larger builds, deeply tanned skin—but there was enough diversity that people wouldn’t give us foreigners a second look. I say “us,” but Markus had shifted his eyes from their usual brown to gray for the role of Thala. His cheekbones weren’t all the way there, but makeup had helped with that.

We entered through the testicle archway—I almost asked Roel to explain its significance, but my head was too fuzzy to think about whether that was a good idea. People gave us a lot of room, either because of our expensive clothes or because the Vitares girls were recognizable.

I still wasn’t feeling that great. Given that the baseball cap hadn’t been invented on Theria, I’d asked the Vitares’ private hairstylist to whip up something to shade my light-sensitive eyes. After she laughed me off I’d acquired a fan instead. My other arm was linked in Roel’s in case I overbalanced or something. I’d tried to do that with Markus, but the girls had informed me that implied a romantic connection around here. Fucking microcultures, you can never get anything right.

As we walked to the arena, our little bubble in the crowd hit an antibubble, a bunch of people squishing in close. The source of attention was easy to spot because he stood head and shoulders above the crowd—Cades was standing there in all his scantily-clad glory. His +1 Wreath of Sexual Availability draped over his overdeveloped pectorals, which faintly gleamed in the morning sunlight. You’d almost think his smile would gleam too, but actually his teeth were kind of dull. No whitening treatments at this level of tech, I guess.

He caught sight of us and quickly began to make his excuses, moving through the crowd of fans. Kuril left us, citing judge responsibilities, but the rest of us didn’t have an excuse to escape.

“Godsmile, my ladies! By the goddesses, Thala!” he said with a dismayed tone, his deep voice cutting effortlessly through the noise of the crowd. “You are injured!”

“I wanted to make it a fair competition,” Markus shot back. Cades laughed.

“I saw you at the grounds when you arrived,” said Cades. “You looked like a worthy challenger. I looked forward to today. But this won’t do at all! How long will you be out of competition?”

“I’ll face you today,” said Markus, grinning. “Have you heard the tale of how I came by these injuries?”

“Who hasn’t?” Cades gripped his uninjured shoulder. “I hear you saved these bright ladies from a craven assassin. Vitareas glows today, ladies, for you still shine upon it.”

Oh, real fucking smooth. I checked my comm. Yup, attraction all over.

“I fought too, musclebrain.” I scowled at him. The attraction levels dropped as he looked at me in surprise. Good. Buzz off, creep.

“I thought you had the heart of a warrior,” he told me in approving tones. “You make a mighty couple.”

“It would help if you called off your guard spy,” I said. “I don’t wanna get knifed out here.”

Cade’s face grew uncertain at that, glancing at Markus. “The Lady Lirian does not answer to me, Lady Ajarel. If these rumors are true about her, they are troubling. I had thought to approach her—but one does not lightly meddle in the affairs of goddesses.”

“Well, she meddled pretty hard with us,” I said. “Thala won’t be able to compete at full strength now.”

“Lady Ajarel,” Markus interrupted. “Cades isn’t to blame here.”

I shot a look at him that meant something like, really? You’re defending the creepy dudebro? Markus didn’t react to it.

“Plenty of Renathions before the Kabidiad,” he told Cades. “I’m sure we’ll learn each other’s strength in time.”

Cades nodded, looking a bit distracted. He looked up at Markus.

“I owe you a debt,” he said simply, without the larger-than-life grandstanding I’d come to expect from him. “Already my name is tarnished by the accidents. Your courage is a boon to us all.”

“Buy me a drink,” said Markus, his face softening just a bit. “We’ll call it even.”

Cades looked searchingly at him for a moment, then effortlessly switched back to stage performance mode. “A drink it is!” he laughed, clapping Markus’s shoulder again. “But for now, the contest!”

Then he set off for the competitors’ area. Markus said his goodbyes and followed.

“That was weird,” I said.

“Do you think he’s in on the conspiracy?” asked Roel.

I looked at her. “What? Conspiracy?”

She nodded seriously. “Yeah, the Cult of Silence’s plan to use Cades as a distraction so they can secretly get another candidate into the Empress’s harem. Otherwise there’s no reason for Lady Lirian to parade herself so openly. It’s obvious if you think about what you’re supposed to think is going on.”

“Oh, that conspiracy,” I said, trying to parse what she’d just said.

“I read the whole Pelnassiad. They usually design their operations to make you think something’s going on when it’s actually not. I bet Lady Lirian’s actually just one of the other nobles in a disguise.”

“Huh,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Roel, starting to warm up to the conversation. “Did you hear that Geremine Ferades never showed up to the ball? There’s no way she’d have missed it if she weren’t pretending to be someone else. And the guards say the assassin disappeared into the Jubios estate!”

“I have no idea what that means,” I told her, which kind of took the wind out of her sails and made me feel like a bad person.

“They’re allies,” she said curtly.

“Oh,” I said. We walked in silence for a little bit, heading for the administrative building. “Uh, sorry, Roel. I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s my damned brain injury.”

She looked at me curiously. “Brain injuries make you rude?”

“Well, you know, you have less self-control,” I said. “Also it hurts.”

“That makes sense,” she said. “I guess it means your blood doesn’t get to your heart effectively.”

I blinked. Fuck, I’d almost spilled medical knowledge I wasn’t supposed to have. “Uh, yeah. Exactly.”

She didn’t press me further, which meant I hadn’t just blown my cover and accidentally caused a medical revolution. Weird thing to celebrate, I guess, but that’s the job. You had to triage. You can reincarnate after a deadly illness, but there’s no coming back from the stomach of a god.

*

The opening blessing ceremony was long and pointless, but we confirmed that Kabiades’s divine signature was present while the old priest rambled at the crowd. That meant that the arena would be active, worship-wise, and whatever Markus achieved today would count towards his eventual installation as a stand-in for the big guy himself.

The plan had changed because the targets had changed. We’d immediately recognized the ceremonial marriage for what it was: an etheric conjunction between gods, which paraphysicists called a “conduit.” They’re built out of conceptual alignments—that is, if you graph Kabiades’s concept, there’s a part that says “husband of Varas,” and she’s got one that says “wife of Kabiades,” and overlapping them with a religious ritual lets them both profit from the same worship. With Markus standing in for Kabiades and the Empress for Varas, they’d serve as icons—focal points of sympathetic resonance, passing mortal significance onto their respective gods.

So naturally Markus was gonna stab the Empress.

Bam! Symbol of rulership killed by the person supposed to be most loyal to her! Bam! Perfect husband stabs his wife!

Val said it wouldn’t quite be a kill shot on either of them, but that’s where we get to the best part—with proper amplification and filtering, if Markus assassinated his royal bride while at the center of the conduit, it’d register to Varas like Kabiades had actually tried to stab her. She’d fucking tear him apart, and with the conduit active she’d have an easy vector for her first strike. Best case, she ripped out one of his aspects and collapsed under the internal pressures of triphase. Unlikely, but hey—maybe we got lucky.

Just so we’re clear, by the way, marital violence is bad and I wholeheartedly condemn it. But let’s not forget the stakes here—Kabiades fucking eats people. Varas too. All the competitors here were basically slabs of spiritual meat being fattened up for the gods’ table. Cades, Gaedera, Jerevai, Kada—one day they’d die, then they’d be godfood, and that would be that.

We were here to put those monsters down. If you’re a surgeon, you cut people’s bodies to save their lives. If you’re a godslayer, you cut people’s cultures to save their souls. The damage was both necessary and temporary. We’d ruin their little pre-modern Olympics for a bit, but they’d have eternity to make something else. Something that was meaningful because they made it, not because a supernatural predator wanted to fatten them up.

Basically what I’m trying to say is I didn’t pay attention to the opening ceremony.

*

The massage event was held privately, located inside the administrative building on the arena grounds. The five judges attended, along with a handful of other women who I assumed were important for some reason. I drew some looks when I walked in with Kuril and Roel, but the people looking seemed to recognize me. So they’d been at the ball the other night. Lovely.

There was a table covered in blankets, where I assumed the massages would be taking place soon. Rows of stone benches surrounded it in a semicircle, reminding me of a lecture hall. The first vulture was on me moments after I sat down on one, full of polite smiles and hints at some sort of request that I was too tired and fuzzy-minded to unravel. Roel shooed her off after it became clear I wasn’t going to, but then the next one approached. I started wondering if I could pretend to fall asleep or something before I realized it was Alceoi Voranetes, one of the people I’d talked to at the ball.

Alceoi was a pixie of a woman, thin like Eloi but short enough that she didn’t look like the skeleton dude from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Same sharp features, though, and even though her eyes were green—my first time seeing them, come to think of it—I realized I was looking at a close relative of the spice queen herself. Fuck, I really did not have the mental capacity to deal with this. Next Voranetti I met, I was just gonna run away.

“You’re alive,” she said after we’d exchanged greetings. “I heard you were dying.”

“We’re all dying,” I said grumpily. “Getting smacked in the head doesn’t make it go any faster. Unless it does.”

She laughed. “We’d miss you. All these gossips would have no one to bother.”

I blinked, trying to figure out if she was asking me for something. Eh, fuck it, she’d been alright at the ball.

“Whatever, sit down if you want,” I said. “Sorry in advance, I’m gonna be rude today.”

“It’s her brain injury,” Roel interjected. Her book was out again; she hadn’t even looked up.

“Don’t make me challenge you,” Alceoi mock-threatened me. “Goddesses, can you imagine? Aunt Eloi would throw a fit.”

I froze.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “She told you to be here, didn’t she.”

“Wouldn’t you?” asked Alceoi. “You were charming enough before that disaster with Lirian. Neither of us want Auntie's displeasure. It’s dangerous to be lonely in this city.”

“I’m not lonely. I’ve got friends,” I said, giving Roel a side hug. She leaned into it but still didn’t stop reading.

Alceoi peered at me. “Is that the head injury talking?”

“No, I’m just fed up with the—” I started. “Actually, you know what, let’s go with the head injury.”

Alceoi laughed like I’d said something witty, which I was ninety percent certain I hadn’t. I would know—I was there. Fucking politics.

“So what did the Lady Eloi ask you to do?” asked Roel. “Is she working with the Cult of Silence?”

Alceoi waved that off. “Oh, you know how it goes. Caught in the web of the Whisperer, as are we all, so on, so forth. Not a hint of her true thoughts to anyone, except maybe the Lady Sael, and no one’s even going to think of sticking their hand in a priasor trap.”

I nodded in understanding.

“The fuck is a priasor trap?” I subvocalized to the team.

“A moment,” Val replied, relaying the question—minus the profanity, I assumed—to the philosophy tutor we’d paid for lessons.

“So here we are,” said Alceoi. “Do the men of Salaphi train in massage?”

“I’ve heard the custom is different here,” I said, dodging the question. “I’m looking forward to the Vitarean traditions.”

“Priasors are a moderately sized pest animal,” said Val. “Farmers put bait in a metal bucket with inwardly facing spikes. When the priasor attempts to extract the bait, the spikes dig into the limb.”

“Shit,” I said while Alceoi small talked at me. “Then what, it chews its paw off?”

“The spikes are smeared with poison,” said Val.

Right then. No messing with Sael Voranetes. Must be nice to have everyone be so afraid of you. Hm, maybe I could be like a priasor trap. Then all the Lirians and Alceois of the world could just watch their step around me and let me hang out with actually cool people.

I nodded to myself. New life goal acquired.