The street seems to hold its breath as one, watching the familiar tragedy.

A crack echoes and she falls backward, clutching a bruising cheek. The legionnaire didn’t even lift a finger or even look up from his grim work. He must be a telkie and used his abilities to swat the woman away.

“You want worse?” he snaps when she moves to stand.

“Don’t!” the boy says, using his last free words to beg.

This will not last. This will not continue. This is why I’m here.

Even so, it makes me sick to know I cannot do anything for this boy and his mother. Our plans are falling into place, but not fast enough for him. Perhaps he will survive, I tell myself. But one look at his thin arms and the eyeglasses trampled beneath a legionnaire’s foot says otherwise. The boy will die like so many others. In a trench or in a wasteland, alone at the very end.

“I can’t watch this,” I mutter, and turn down another alley.

After a long moment of strange hesitation, Tristan follows.

I can only hope Rasha stays the course as well as he does. But I understand. She lost two sisters to Lakelander conscriptions, and fled her home before meeting the same fate.

Rocasta is not a walled city, and has no gates to choke the ends of the Iron Road. An easy place to enter, but it makes our task a bit more difficult. The main body of the returning supply convoy comes along the Road, but a few of the walking escorts peel off, taking different shortcuts to the same destination. On another day, my team would spend hours tracking them all to their homes, only to watch them sleep off the long journey. Not so now. Because it’s First Friday. Today is the Feat of July.

A ridiculous Nortan tradition, albeit an effective one, if the intelligence is to be believed. Arenas in almost every town and city, casting long shadows and spitting blood once a month. Reds are required to attend, to sit and watch Silver champions exchange blows and abilities with the glee of stage performers. We have no such thing in the Lakelands. Silvers don’t feel the need to show off against us, and the storied threat of Norta is enough to keep everyone terrified.

“They do it in Piedmont too,” Tristan mutters. He leans against the poured concrete fence edging the promenade around the arena’s entrance. Our gazes flick in unison, one of us always watching our marks, another always watching the band of officers directing people into the gaping maw of Arena Rocasta.

“Call them Acts, not Feats. And we didn’t just have to watch. Sometimes, they made Reds fight too.” I hear the tremor of rage in his voice, even above the organized chaos of today’s spectacle.

I nudge his shoulder as gently as I can. “Fight each other?” Kill Reds, or be killed by Silvers? I don’t know which is worse.