The sun has barely risen when I emerge from the Arena, heading east. As soon as I turn a corner, I hit a wall of beggars. Dirty and haggard, many are scarred by fire or steel.

  “Not now, vermin!” I yell, swatting them away. As if I had money to give away.

  I swing my cane at them but they still swarm me, some pleading, others threatening. In the end, I’m forced to show my steel to make them scamper. Angry and ashamed, I run as fast as my leg allows me. Because I took syndell, it’s not pain that eventually stops me but lack of breath. I stumble and nearly drop, panting wildly.

  I glance around me, my chest still heaving. No sign of the beggar swarm. Instead, a single child stands a few steps from me. A dirty, barefoot lad, dressed in little more than rags. He looks at me expectantly but cautiously.

  “You are a persistent runt, aren’t you?” The child does not reply as if he doesn’t understand, but he shifts his stance, ready to bolt if I intend to chase him or throw something.

  “Oh what the hell,” I murmur to myself. “With the way thing are going, I won’t have time for lunch in any case.”

  I have a single copper scale in my pocket, I toss it at him. Skinny arms dart out and catch the coin deftly. He’s gone behind a corner before I can blink. For the span of a single breath, I let myself feel bad for all the poor bastards, then I turn and continue on my way.

  I have no desire to shove my way through the Forum, the densest crowd in the whole City. That is why I turn towards Isurion’s Gardens if a couple of charred stumps can still be called a garden. The Halmurri burned it all when they stormed the City and no one thought of replanting any trees.

  A slight stab in my hip threatens that my leg might be waking up before schedule, probably due to my haste to escape the beggar swarm. I hope some rest would make it go back to sleep so I sit down once I reach the great oak, the only living tree left in the Gardens.

  All other trees in or around the City seemed to be dead or dying. I will never know how this one managed to survive. Some say that Isurion himself planted this tree and that his magic protected it from harm. I think it was simply too sturdy to be cut or burned and Halmurri never bothered too much with it. It would make them look stupid, trying to fell a tree and failing.

  How many times have I sat underneath this tree? Green, gold or grey, it did not matter. All I needed was a trunk to lean on, to rest my demons against it like Isurion’s tribe did in the days of legends. No wonder I came here now.

  The autumn has barely begun yet the leaves are already losing colour, predicting a cold winter. A wind picks up and the leaves fall in droves. This tree seems ageless but now it also looks tired, ready to lay down its burdens. Like me.

  An acorn falls and lands on my face. Exact same thing happened every year as I sat here and I laughed at the continued coincidence. Now the nut that hit me seems to be looking up at me from the ground, mocking me. I put the bottom of my boot on it and squish it into mush. I get up and leave the damned tree behind. Die for all I care. I’ll axe you myself if the winter gets cold enough.

  I emerge from what remained of the Gardens and find myself in Koriantal’s Middle District, home of the commoners. The streets are definitely cleaner here than in the Poor Quarter. Less stench, houses made from brick instead of wood. The signs of destruction are long gone, even though the Middle District got hit hard when Halmurri came into the City. Like a swarm of ants, they are perpetually scampering to make their living and no one has time to detect my panic as I hobble past them. Not that I would want them to.

  Following the current of labor and commerce, I catch glimpse of the columns of the Forum. In the distance I can also see the shape of High Hill with Scholar Society grounds on top. I have friends there but they can’t help me with my current predicament.

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  There it is. Infantry Guild hall. I can smell their damned arrogance from here. Even though they are technically called a guild, they would never stoop so low to have their premises in the actual Guilds Quarter. Oh no, they had to be a part of the society, among the wealthy.

  One thing about the Infantry Guild: their matters are never simple and nowhere more so than their matters with the Arena. They still look down on us, even though my combatants were a bigger pain in Halmurri behind than their mercenaries when the blasted things came in the City.

  At the moment of the attack, the Guild was manning the City walls. But Halmurri didn’t need to breach the blasted walls, did they? They opened a bloody Portal right in the middle of the City. The Guild was out there while we were in here. They never forgave us for their own lack of brain.

  The people thanked us for rescuing a whole lot of them, oh sure, but I was forced to close down the Arena anyway.

  Ysa was right. I would not go see the Guild. I would not give them the satisfaction of coming for their help. I would rather fill my Arena with beggars and thieves than to become a beggar myself.

  I head back. This time I will not avoid the Forum.

  I make two steps when someone calls my name. For a moment I fear that one of the Guild men recognized me. I turn and immediately wish I hadn’t. The toothy smile belongs to Ambakaro.

  It’s not that his smile is ugly. Quite the opposite, he displays two lines of shiny white teeth. They are so white in fact that everything about them screams fake. And the way the man smiles. If I were a simpleton, I would say it makes him look kind, generous even. But I wasn’t born yesteryear. This man wears his smile like a suit or a hat. He could chuck it off at any moment.

  Word around town was that when the Incursion was at its thickest, Ambakaro had been buying land off the countryside farmers. Seeing how bad the Hegemon’s troops were at protecting them, they were eager to sell so they could afford to buy food once they hide behind the City walls. He bought everything cheaply and was now making a fortune selling land to large estate owners who could afford his prices.

  Of course he’s smiling, the war has paid off. Thanks to people like him, the independent farmers which were mostly war veterans were going extinct.

  “If it isn’t the Arena Master,” he says, his toothy grin wide and repulsive. “I thought you open in a matter of hours.”

  “I am opening today.”

  “Then how come I find you here?”

  “Business.”

  “Capitol!” he roars. “Devotion to his enterprise, I like that in a partner!”

  I do a double take on that. “Partner?”

  “Of course! After I heard about your financial predicament with the money lenders, I realized this is my chance to give something back to the community.”

  I don’t like where this is going. Not one bit.

  He grins. “So I decided to pay off all your debts.”

  I stare at him in silence. “You... bought my debts?”

  “Every last one. But if there’s anything else I can do for you, don’t hesitate to ask.”

  And that’s when it hits me. Was it coincidence that one of my teams has been disabled just before our supposed comeback or did someone have a hand in it? Someone like Ambakaro, by any chance.

  It is no secret this man covets any land he can get his hands on and my Arena sits on the most prominent place imaginable, the border between the Middle District and Poor Quarter. It is an enormous piece of flatland, hardened for large scale construction. If Ambakaro should get his hands on it, he would tear down the Arena, sell every stone block, build tenements for hundreds of people and make a fortune by housing thousands.

  A masterful move, it pains me to admit. He took a whiff at me and detected a weakness. Now I’m his pet, my leash in fact a noose. When he’s done playing with me, all he needs to do is squeeze.

  “I think you’ve helped enough,” I say, tasting the bile in my mouth. As I walk away, I swear I can feel his grin on my back.