Elias scowled.
Ilena wasn’t their only concern. Half the take usually went to the family to pay the bills and keep Petros and his dogs at bay, but if word got out that they’d bought new clothes, or spent more than they could pull at the quarry, Petros would hear of it and have them arrested for hiding taxable income.
“Does killing my dreams make you happy?” Elias asked, his glare scalding.
Madoc laughed all the way down the steps, but the truth needled deep beneath his skin. Tonight’s winnings were a bandage over a gaping wound. The Undivine would suffer as long as they were powerless, and they were powerless because they would never be afforded the same jobs, homes, and schools that those with geoeia had. In Deimos, if you were born pigstock, you died pigstock, and one man made sure you remembered your place.
Madoc would not be truly happy until Petros had lost everything.
Two
Ash
THE GREAT DEFEAT dance was Ash’s favorite, but the story it told was a lie.
The dancers waiting with her on the sun-warmed arena sands wore costumes representing the six gods, with another dancer in white to symbolize the long-dead Mother Goddess. Around them, the largest arena in Kula hung as quiet as the windless noonday sky; the crowd’s enthusiasm had simmered down from boisterous to a tense, eager silence.
“They recognize what dance we’re going to do,” whispered the boy who was playing Biotus, the god of animal bioseia. He shifted in his costume of heavy furs, sweat beading along his brow, but he nodded at the watchful crowd. “Look at them—oh, this is going to be good.”
Ash could taste his—and the crowd’s—anticipation on the air. It tasted of salty sweat covered by one of the other dancers’ too-sweet tangerine perfume.
The god of fire always staged performances before arena matches—just not this dance, the extravagant costumes, the undeniable insult. This dance was typically reserved for the holiday marking the Mother Goddess’s defeat.
Ash rolled her eyes. “It’s a waste. Geoxus isn’t even here.”
Not that she wanted the earth god here. But his absence made this dance feel unnecessary.
The gods rarely traveled for anything less than gladiator wars, two-week affairs of pomp and arena matches that settled blatant offenses and gave the winning god huge prizes: ports, land, trade routes. The cause of this fight had only been Geoxus accusing the fire god of letting his people fish in Deiman territory—the fight after this dance would resolve that, and give a small reward to the winning god, a chest of gold or a season of harvest.
On Ash’s other side, the dancer representing Hydra, the water goddess, sighed, rippling her sheer blue veil. “I know,” she moaned. “Geoxus is nice to look at.”
Ash snapped a sharp look at her. “That is not what I meant.”
Music cut off their whispers. The dancer playing Hydra gave Ash a grin from behind her veil, clearly not believing her denial. The gods were all painfully beautiful.
Ash shot air out her nose and dropped her eyes to her bare feet. This was why she tried not to talk with the other fire dancers—most people saw the gods exactly as they wanted to be seen. Gorgeous and immortal, powerful and fair. Poverty wasn’t their fault; they always wanted the best for their children. Even when they were cruel, they were still merciful and avenging.
But those were all lies, too. Lies as potent as the Great Defeat dance. Lies that made Ash feel alone, though she was standing in the center of hundreds of people.
This self-pity was not helping. Ash bit down on her lower lip. She knew that all the lies were worthwhile. She would dance in a moment and get a reprieve in the music and movement; her mother would fight in the match that followed, and she would win. Then they’d get to walk out of this arena, together and alive.
She’d tell a thousand lies if it meant another day with her mother.
Her eyes lifted to the stands. The arena was an imposing structure of black granite, obsidian, and jagged spikes of lava rock built in the usual tradition, where audience seating ran tiered laps around the center fighting pit. People filled every bench, some clasping orange and red streamers while others held signs painted with CHAR NIKAU—the fire god’s best gladiator.
Ash noted a new addition with a startled flinch. A few people wore garish masks in Char’s likeness. One showed her sticking out her tongue, her eyes wide and cut with squirming red veins.
Ash wrinkled her nose. People saw the gods as beautiful, but they saw her mother as snarling?
The music swelled. Cymbals crashed, reverberating into silence.
“Here we go,” the dancer playing Biotus cooed.
Ash twitched to right herself, narrowing her mind to the performance.
A harp rippled, and the dance began.
Ash swayed her arms in practiced movements alongside the other dancers. For a moment, she felt a thrum of connection. She had nothing in common with these dancers, couldn’t even choke out a conversation with them for the lies she would have to tell, but in this dance, they were unified.
And Ash wasn’t alone.
The girl representing the goddess of air waved a flurry of streamers to symbolize air energy, or aereia. The Mother Goddess struck her down with a single elegant twirl.
Next went Biotus. He stomped, vicious and growling. The Mother Goddess hurtled into his arms and dispatched him with her limbs twining around his broad body.
Then came Hydra, with flapping cerulean silk to show the hydreia of water, and Florus, with vines for floreia.
When most of the dancers lay sprawled around the Mother Goddess in defeat—not death, but rather their energies merely spent, or so the story went—the second to last stepped forward: Geoxus, the earth god, played by a tall boy covered in dust and sand. He lifted one foot before the Mother Goddess spun on him, blowing him a lethal kiss, and he fell. The crowd roared with laughter.
The only performers left standing were the Mother Goddess and Ash—who played the lead role. She wore a tight bodice with silk pants that hung low on her hips, both in a wine red that made her brown skin gleam. Sheer orange fabric spooled down her shoulders, ending at the tips in bursts of vibrant blue, and her hair hung in thick black ringlets to midback. Kohl rimmed her eyes and blue paint coated her lips, giving a frosty edge to her smile.
She loved this dance for the outfit she wore, for the connection she felt, for the swell of rapture that bubbled up from the core of the earth itself and filled her with power. This dance was a love letter to igneia, fire energy in its most beautiful, enchanting form.
But she hated this dance for the role she played: Ignitus, the god of fire.
Ash had a few more beats before her cue. Her eyes leaped to the arena’s grandest viewing box. On the right were a half dozen centurions from the western country of Deimos; they wore silver breastplates and short pleated skirts, bags at their waists holding stones they could control with geoeia. On the left, Kulan guards wore armor made of dried reeds that, when treated, proved as strong as leather and, better, fireproof.
Divine soldiers like centurions and guards enforced laws among mortals; the immortal, unkillable gods technically didn’t need them for protection, but having them was a display of power.
The Deiman centurions stood behind a plump man who had been chosen as Geoxus’s proxy for this fight, one of his many senators. The Kulan guards stood behind Ignitus.