Chapter 181: Saltreach and Wyrmwall

The afternoon sun slid toward the western stands, turning the sand to honey and the crowd into a restless sea. Selh announced the second round from a fresh barrel, armed with a flask of cold lemonade and renewed stubborn determination.

"Round two, please clap, the lemonade is working wonders," he croaked.

Nix emptied her coat onto the bench in a clinking pile of buttons, locks, spoons and a live hamster. She counted the pile twice, then redistributed everything into different pockets with the grave solemnity of a temple priestess.

"Do not ask about the hamster," she told the Council, "he has diplomatic immunity."

Nix climbed into the ring against Iselle of Saltreach, a lanky sailor with a rope belt and a knowing smirk. Both girls bowed politely at the same instant, each checking her own pockets while still bent over in the bow.

"Saltreach rule, whatever you can carry out of the ring is yours," Iselle said cheerfully.

"I love this school already... I may enroll, if the fees are negotiable."

The bell rang, but neither girl drew a weapon, circling instead with hands wide like two cats trading fish. Within ten seconds Iselle wore Nix’s chain-blades and Nix wore Iselle’s knives, neither of them remembering the actual exchange.

"Is that my knife in your belt?" Iselle asked, laughing.

"Is that my earring in your ear?"

The crowd roared at each theft, half of them shouting warnings to their pockets as the girls spun and bumped. Iselle stole Nix’s left earring while Nix stole the referee’s whistle straight off his neck mid-sentence of his own warning.

The referee tried again, "I cannot end this match, I have no whis—"

She blew the stolen whistle with a piercing shriek and pointed at herself, grinning around the cord in her teeth. The referee, now whistle-less, lacked any real authority to argue, leaving Saltreach’s whole cheering section howling loudly with delighted outrage.

"Keep the knives, they match your coat," Iselle laughed. "I’ll keep the chain-blades, they’re lovely."

Iselle looked down to find the chain-blades back on Nix’s hips and the rope belt gone from her waist.

The thief returned the whistle to the dazed referee with a curtsy, minus its cord and plus a receipt. He accepted both with the numb dignity of a very tired man, then raised her hand as the winner.

"Pure art," Ysabel admitted grudgingly, "I would have kneeled the whole ring instead."

Yukine sat with her chin resting on her hands, watching the Wyrmwall bench with the patience of a chess player. Beside her Isolde mended a torn glove with tiny stitches, keeping one eye on the sand and one on Riven.

"Wyrmwall trains for sieges, expect patience and very little pity," Yukine told him.

Joss of the Wyrmwall Warden Academy stepped into the ring behind a tower shield as tall as a door. He blocked the first six attacks without moving his feet, then the seventh one without even bothering to look.

"Shield cadets never lose, we simply wait for you to tire," Joss rumbled.

"Then we have something in common, I also love waiting."

Riven tested the shield twice more to confirm the rhythm, counting strike, block, shove and reset under his breath. The pattern never varied by more than a heartbeat, a gift to anyone patient enough to count it carefully.

’Strike, block, shove and reset. A man who repeats himself tells me where he will be.’

He stepped into the next shove on purpose, letting the shield’s own power launch him cleanly right over Joss’s shoulder. Riven landed behind the wall of steel and tapped Joss’s helmet with Overdue’s flat, leaving the tower plate spinning away.

"Show-off," Mara muttered from the bench, grinning anyway, "do it again slower."

Thirty thousand people stamped their feet in rhythm, shaking dust from the rafters of the royal box.

The Wyrmwall bench went silent as Joss lifted the rim of his helm, blinking in the daylight like a turtle. His voice, when it came, was soft as a child’s, the voice of a boy who spent years being unbreakable.

"Nobody has ever gotten behind my shield," Joss said, impressed.

"Nobody ever used it as a launch pad."

"My general on the Wall is... very interested in Raiha, you know, he mentions the name at every meal."

"Interested in what way, exactly?" Riven asked, lowering his voice.

"The kind that sends escorts, politely, with ribbons on their spears."

A boy in a green cloak ran onto the sand to fetch Joss’s shield, saluting Riven politely as he went. Three Wyrmwall cadets followed, saluting too, with the formal stiffness of people unsure whether they were allowed to like him.

"Tell your general the answer is no, whatever the question is," he said.

A cold wind slid down from the Wall’s far north, smelling faintly of snow and old iron.

Veska, at the rope, went rigid, her knuckles whitening on her spear at the mere mention of her family name. She said nothing aloud, only wrote one line in the small notebook she kept for official offenses, underlining it twice.

’A general on the Wall, interested in Veska’s house. That is the second empire-shaped warning today.’

Riven walked to the rope and stood beside her, saying nothing, letting her notebook speak first as notebooks do. She tore out the page, folded it twice, and slipped it into his coat pocket like a signed vow.

"The first page of a long file," Veska said quietly. "I will brief you after the Festival."

Tamsin returned the borrowed roster slot that morning after a Council ruling swapped the two entries.

Cael strolled into the ring whistling, a polished coin spinning between his knuckles, free of every debt he ever owed. Across the sand Pryce adjusted his ironed ruffles and wounded dignity, looking like a man preparing to sue the weather.

"Halloway does not slip or sneeze or lose," Pryce announced, "and I refuse to start today."

Every attack Pryce launched met ordinary bad luck, a loose lace, a gust, a sneeze, none of it borrowed. He slipped on a puddle nobody saw, sneezed into his own sleeve, and sat down hard on the sand.

Pryce wailed from the ground, "This is not a loss, it is a technicality."

Cael tapped his shoulder with one finger, the lightest touch of the Festival, ending the match on the spot. A ripple of laughter ran around the stands, then swelled into the single loudest roar of the entire afternoon.

"A curse upon your lucky hand, I swear revenge across the land!" Pryce shouted from the sand.

"Not lucky," Cael said, offering him a hand up. "Just earned."

Nix and Ysabel argued over whose win looked prettier, leaning across the bench with two identical scowls. Mara and Yukine ignored them with practiced ease, passing a single bowl of roasted nuts between them.

"Stealing a whistle from a living man is art," she declared, "you just hit people with weather."

"Kneeling a captain in one second is art," Ysabel said, "yours is only crime."

’Six heroines on a Festival Claim. I am stuck refereeing whose win looked prettier.’

The posted bracket sheet fluttered on the board at dusk, with Lucas reading the new line aloud. His hand trembled just once over the name beside his own, silencing the whole bench at once.

"I witness: Lucas faces Dorian in the next round, in front of everyone," he read, voice steady.