“Can I see?” Jake asked.

Djer passed him the spyglass. Horus slipped a second one from inside his cloak and handed it to Nefertiti.

“Ready the ship!” Horus called out.

As the crew bustled to obey, Jake leaned over the rail and stared through the spyglass. It took him several scared breaths to focus and find the wide pit of sand surrounded by stone bleachers.

“We used to have grand plays and great circuses there,” Nefertiti mumbled sadly. “Now it is a monstrous place, where blood waters the sands and nothing but fear grows.”

The spyglass was dizzyingly powerful, pulling Jake to a bird’s-eye view of the arena. In the darkened streets, people filed toward the stadium from all directions. It looked as if the entire population was coming to this game, to bear witness. Such attendance was not voluntary. Splashes of torchlight revealed soldiers herding people toward the arena.

“Kree means to mark his coming to power with blood,” Nefertiti said. “To show his strength, to threaten all.”

Nefertiti could watch no longer, but Jake focused his glass back to the arena. The sand pit was oval in shape and appeared to be the size of a football field. In the center rose a black obelisk with a golden tip pointing skyward. The place reminded Jake of the coliseum in Calypsos, but the games now played here were deadlier.

“Raise the sails!” Horus called out.

Jake straightened enough to see the ship’s wings unfurl, cranked wide by the crew on both sides of the middeck. With a rattle of bony struts, the rubbery sails snapped into place.

Djer joined Jake. “We will have only the one chance. Timing is critical.”

Shoulder to shoulder, they kept vigil on the city below. Jake watched the new day creep across the landscape, stretching through the desert, over the outer walls, across the city—and finally reaching the arena.

Spectators packed the stadium, which was ringed on the outside by a solid mass of guards. Kree was daring the rebels to risk a rescue. But none thought to look up. Even if they did, the windrider flew so high that it would appear but a speck in the sky, a slowly circling hawk.

Djer nudged Jake and pointed farther out from the stadium. Jake followed with his spyglass. Slipping silently through the empty streets from the west, a force of men flowed toward the stadium led by a giant, who, even from so far away, Jake recognized. It was Grymhorst, the red-bearded gatekeeper from the Crooked Nail. The ragtag force he led could not hope to defeat the mass of royal guards. They were outnumbered four to one. Instead their goal was to distract them, to draw them off, to keep them busy. Hopefully long enough for the Breath of Shu to complete a rescue.

Jake returned his attention to the arena floor. As he watched, holding his breath, the golden tip of the black obelisk was struck by the first rays of the new day. It burst into radiance.