Scarlett Emberheart's Arc

Chapter 10 of 14

Outside the arena, the crowd did not know what to do with their hands. The marshal's arm still pointed at the sky. He called Scarlett's name a second time and got no answer, only sand where a woman had been. Someone in the front row shouted that she had won and someone else shouted that she was dead. Both were written down. Guards took Cedric Falterblade by the elbows and lifted him off the ground. He did not fight them. He said, quietly, that he had not meant to. Then he said he had meant not to, which was different, and he stopped talking after that. They led him out under the arch while the marshals argued over the ledger. The name at the top of the bracket still read Emberheart. No one crossed it out. Scarlett woke on her back on a floor that was not sand. She sat up slowly. Her leg was there. Both legs were there. She was in a wide flat place with no walls she could see, and the light came from nowhere in particular. Around her lay junk. Broken chairs. A cartwheel with no cart. A stack of clay bowls. A door with no frame, standing up on its own. And chickens. Six of them, then eight, then more behind a heap of rope. They did not look at her. They pecked at the floor as if the floor had seeds. It did not. She stood up. Her sword was still on her hip. That, at least, was something. She looked up. The rift hung in the sky like a crack in a bowl held over her head, thin and bright and very far. She could see the arena through it, small as a coin. She saw the marshal's arm. She saw Cedric being walked away. She shouted. Her voice went nowhere. She climbed a pile of crates and reached up with her sword and the tip did not come close. She threw a bowl. The bowl went up and came down. She threw a boot. Same. She braced her feet and jumped, and her tired legs gave under her, and she landed hard on her knees among the chickens, who did not move. She stood again. She tried again. Nothing worked. Nothing was going to work. Then the crack in the sky sealed. It did not close slowly. It was there, and then it was a line, and then it was nothing. The arena went with it. The light stayed the same. Scarlett stood in the middle of the junk with her sword out and no way home. A chicken walked across her boot. She lowered the sword. She was the tournament champion. She was somewhere that did not know it, and no one out there could reach her, and she could not reach them. She would have to find her own door.