BEYOND THE WALLS of the arena, word spread like wildfire. Slaves took up whatever was at hand, seizing their freedom. One after the other, the Great Houses fell, stricken down not by invaders from without, but by those imprisoned within. That night, the final night of holy Marthuua, it was not the shades of their ancestors who marched through the narrow, filth-lined streets, but the city’s sins. And the streets ran red with their reckoning.

Collane traded hands in a cataclysm of justice. Fires raged in the High City, and the statues of the royal families were toppled and broken into pieces, and to these were chained the remnants of the dynasty whose greed had so afflicted the city. Among the torchlit mobs, a mad, black robed priest danced, singing praise to High Zol, for his visions had come true, and upon every head that came to him the Crow laid a blessing, for in the hour of his vision, power flowed through him. They named him prophet, and even in latter days swore by his name.

Ulrem took no part in the bloody bacchanalia. He returned to the pit with Shiara, who wore no collar now: he had snapped it off with his bare fingers and tossed it down on the belly of the dead prince. She held his hand, and he could feel the heat of her excitement like a bright furnace.

They found the arena abandoned now, the blankets and cushions of the spectators strewn across the stone risers as if a whirlwind had passed through. Bodies lay where they had been trampled as the mob fled. Those unlucky fools who had brought their slaves to the spectacle had paid with their lives, too, and they lay sprawled across the benches with knives in their chests, or scarlet grins cut into their throats.

The quiet of the space seemed to ring as if the great stone edifice was uncomfortable in its hollowness. Such silence seemed blasphemy to a place baptized in blood and screams, where life was lived on the whetted edge of a blade.

Down on the sand, a figure crouched beside the black maned lion. It lay panting on its side.

Ulrem dropped to the floor from the prince’s balcony, and caught Shiara as she slid over the wall after him. Together, they strode across the bloody sand towards Juban. The thin man was weeping. As they drew near, Ulrem saw that Juban was bleeding badly from a gash that ran from his elbow nearly to his wrist. His right eye was swollen nearly shut, too. The skin around it was a lurid saffron.

“We need to bind that wound,” Shiara said, sinking to the sand beside the small man. She tore a strip of fabric from her own garment, but Juban didn’t seem to even notice she was there. He was weeping. Miserably, he wiped his nose on the back of his hand, and ran a hand over the lion’s flank. The creature’s bloody ribs lay open to the air, the flesh hacked away cruelly. It was slashed and cut and stabbed in a dozen places, but eight of the veiled shadows figures lay scattered around them, each in a pool of blood. The lion drew a shuddering breath.

“It’s dying. They killed it,” Juban said, looking up at Ulrem.

The big man frowned. “This is the price any warrior must be willing to pay, if he would walk proud.” He settled on his knees beside the beast’s head. It lifted its head enough to gaze up at him with huge golden eyes. He felt its pain as his own. It huffed once and settled its head back to the sand. Sighing, Ulrem brushed his hand over the round ears and down along the bloody, matted mane. It shivered at his touch, strength fading to the wind.

“They caged us,” Ulrem said to the beast, biting off the words. His voice was ragged, raw with rage. “But they could not contain us. Go to your rest now, my king. You have earned your place among the stars.”

The lion groaned, a thunderous, awful sound he felt in his very bones. Its tail lashed once, twice, and fell still. Shiara clamped her hand across her mouth, and choked back a sound of grief. Ulrem rose slowly, his eyes closed and mouth drawn into a hard scowl that held back his own bitter anger. He curled his fist around the ring on his finger, taking in its steady glow, feeling its strength play along his muscles like lightning among the clouds.

The work was not yet done.