Stix whistled one last time, and the fox listened. It dove beneath the murky water toward the other sea foxes, to intercept, to fight, to stop because the whistle had commanded and it lived to obey. Stix used the moment to kick her magic forward again in a gentle current that propelled her and the prisoners toward the other stall. She was tired; she needed to conserve her energy just in case the fox changed its mind.

No, not its mind, but her mind. Like with the orange tabby, Stix just knew.

She reached the wooden box with ease. And with silence, for the audience still did not speak. Did not even seem to breathe.

It was not until she reached the wooden exit, her waves lifting her up so she could grab at the latch, that someone finally reacted. It was a single voice, throaty and amused. “Well done, Water Brawler,” Kahina called. “I knew you had it in you.”

Stix had always considered herself cool-tempered. The higher the pressure, the better she kept her head. She had been through brawls and battles and now Ring fights to prove it. Captain Stacia Sotar did not get stressed, she did not get angry.

Right now though, as she stalked out of the wooden stall into the Ring’s winding limestone halls, as water shed off her in great, slapping drops, Stix was a riptide of rage. When Ryber offered her the spectacles, she yanked them too hard; the metal warped; she didn’t care and shoved them on anyway. When Ryber fell into step beside Stix, asking if she needed healing, Stix only grunted and glared.

She reached the highest scaffolding in a blur of fury that thrummed in her blood, sparkling like her magic at its strongest. She only had to snarl once at the guards, and they got out of her way. Ryber, however, had to wait behind again. Which was perhaps for the best, Stix thought vaguely, since she was on the cusp of violence.

She found Kahina’s deck unchanged, though a six-fingered gray cat slept in a ball upon a pile of cushions near the door. The rain had already stopped, leaving a wind-stalled heat thick with swamp stink. The Admiral leaned against her balustrade, scanning the Ring with a gold spyglass speckled in red gemstones.

“You killed that prisoner,” Stix said to Kahina’s back.

“Did I?” Kahina’s drawl oozed over the wooden space. “Or did you kill them because you were too slow?”

Stix’s lips curled back. “You set up the fight today, so it is your soul that bears the weight of that death.”

“If you think that upsets me”—Kahina closed the spyglass with a clack-clack-clack—“then I fear you will be disappointed, my dear. I have killed more men than I can count, and though you may not remember it, so have you.”

“I’m not who you think I am, and I’m not your dear.”