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By the time I joined my family for an early breakfast I had slept perhaps an hour in total, a few snatches here and there when my eyes could no longer focus on the crabbed script of the Fire card textbook, and none of it by choice.
As usual, my parents and brothers were preoccupied with their own affairs and so paid little attention to me despite my obvious rumpled appearance and the fact that today marked the beginning of the Rising Stars Tournament. The closest they got to acknowledging the occasion was my mother mentioning that she couldn’t wait to have another woman in the family – followed by a pointed look my way – to which I did my best to respond neutrally. It seemed that neither Esmi nor her parents had alerted my family about the impending possibility that our engagement might be called off or that I’d likely be facing a foreign noble at some point today. My father – who looked even more exhausted than me, as he always did from an evening spent refreshing the city guard Souls around the Noble District – would have certainly roused himself to give me a gruff speech if he thought the pairing he had worked so hard on was in any sort of jeopardy.
To his credit, Gale made a commotion when I got up to leave, tapping his fork against his stemmed water glass. When he had the family’s attention, he said, “To our little Basil. May he rise as far as he can today.”
Randel favored the poor quip with a brief laugh, while my mother pursed her lips and my father opened his.
“I’m sure Tipfin was exaggerating,” he said, which made my heart dip – what had the old duelist told them before he had left? – “and that you’ll do fine. Soldier through, as we all must. If it goes poorly, well,” he spread his hands over his half eaten eggs and sausage as if they were somehow relevant to my future, “you have more important things on the horizon, and a job that will never be in doubt.”
The City Guard, and thus my father, always needed more people to summon and check on the vast network of Soul cards that policed Treledyne, keeping it safe. My older brothers had somehow managed to weasel out of the responsibility so far, but I knew that unless I acquitted myself well in the Rising Stars Tournament and then in the invitation-only war camp that was to follow, I would not be so lucky. Of course, I wasn’t about to tell my father anything concerning my alternate plans. That conversation would come after I had achieved what I needed, in which case he’d have no choice but to recognize that I was meant for something different than his own calling.
For now though, I simply said, “Yes, father.”
“Be careful, dear,” my mother added. “Letting anyone with two cards to rub together enter this tourney is a surefire way to entice opportunists and ruffians to attend. When you’re not competing, stay in the noble dorms and venues.”
“Yes, mother,” I echoed but with even less enthusiasm. I had heard that many people viewed participation in the Rising Stars Tournament as a coming of adulthood, and it would have been nice if my own family could have treated it the same. Instead, she was acting like I had never been in the lower districts before, which I had, on at least a half dozen occasions.
With those pleasantries complete, I left our home, taking the smallest of our carriages to the tournament grounds. The location wasn’t far from our estate, since we lived close to the center of the Noble District – one of the few advantages to being one of the less wealthy noble families.
I thought it might be quiet, what with it only being a few hours after sunrise, but the large open-air space within the large arena was already abustle with activity. A mixture of men and Soul cards were setting up multiple wooden stages, each of which rested a few inches off of the ground and was clearly meant for summoners to use for their dueling.
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They were all square and thirty feet across, I knew without measure, because that was regulation to ensure that there was always twenty four feet between summoners at the start of the match, along with a bit of extra space behind each duelist to provide them some maneuverability.
Food stands were also setting up on the edges of the walled space. From watching past tournaments here I knew they’d have helpers who’d walk the tiered seats, hawking everything from meat pies to spiced wine.
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I never could eat before a duel though, so I moved past the various workers, living and vibrant Souls alike, making my way to an oversized board on the north side. There, on an enormous piece of stretched parchment, were a series of plates with names, connected by lines made from inlaid gold: the bracket for the tournament. Like a hawk, I zeroed in on my quarter of the competition:
[https://i.imgur.com/mj0qa9i.png]
The first thing that leapt out at me was that I had no opponent in my first round. Some people liked getting a bye, as it was called, a free win, but I wanted nothing of the sort. After all the time I had spent contemplating an alternate version of my deck, as well as not finishing my last match with Tipfin, I needed an opportunity to warm up. The first match of a seeded tournament was usually the perfect opportunity since my opponent at that point would almost certainly not be as skilled as those I would face later on. In addition, in every match a card was wagered, so not having a first opponent meant that I was missing out on earning a card that could enhance my deck. While I had decided against adding any Water, I would certainly consider an Order, Air, or neutral Relic card, especially if it was a Rare or higher.
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Someone must have registered and then dropped out at the last moment – it was the only explanation for why there would be a gap for the 27th seed and not later. If I really didn’t have an opponent at the start, I could at least watch Throice and Lily compete since I’d be facing the victor of their match in the next round. Sometimes knowing what type of deck an opponent employed was key to leveraging a win, and if the Twins were kind, they would send me a few easy victories today. Or I could try to figure out who Esmi’s mystery suitor was. A Spell-heavy Fire deck should be easy to spot, and if what she said was true about his dueling prowess, knowing how to defeat him would be the most important information I could find. Unless the reason for the missing slot was him paying someone to let him take it over, in which case the blank space next to mine wouldn’t remain that way for long, and I wouldn’t have any chance to scout him before I faced him across the dueling square.
I was breathing faster than was necessary as I turned away from the board, my mind a jumble of half-formed ideas of what I should do next. I was considering summoning some Order source to calm myself, when I spotted a familiar face in the growing crowd.
“Warrick, you came!” I said, unable to keep the immense relief at seeing him out of my voice. “But you swore up and down you wouldn’t.”
The tall noble sighed dramatically when he reached me. “I nearly didn’t,” he said, “but then I’d be a poor excuse for a friend. Can’t be terrible at everything, can I?”
“You’re not a terrible duelist,” I told him, to which he gave me a flat look. I didn’t press the point because I could tell it wouldn’t help him feel any better. Even though he was of age to compete in the Rising Stars tournament, his family hadn’t sponsored him for the event. Instead, they had given that honor to the best student in the school they ran, some girl whose name I also didn’t know. I could respect the merit of the decision, the fairness, but at the same time I felt badly for my friend. He could have chosen to enter the tournament on his own, but the truth was he really wasn’t a very good duelist.
In an effort to distract him from his own woes, I described my own predicament, to which he let out a rueful whistle.
“Fate has you over a barrel and Fortune isn’t helping,” he said. “Any idea who the bastard is?”
“Not a clue,” I said, turning back to the bracket board. “Demane. That sounds like a Charbonder, doesn’t it? Or maybe Plutar?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Warrick replied, unhelpfully. “I saw a vampire on the way here, though.”
That was enough to yank my attention away from the brackets. “A vampire? Here? In the daylight?”
“That’s right,” Warrick said, “and not just here, competing.”
“Now you’ve taken the joke too far. Even without a night of sleep, you can’t expect me to believe that.”
Warrick was shaking his head the whole time, denying my refusal to believe him, but it wasn’t he who answered me.
“She’s a foreign dignitary and was given special dispensation to compete by my father. Not that I’d expect lesser nobility to know that.”
I didn’t even need to turn around to know who the smugly pompous yet perfectly polished voice belonged to. I had been hearing it off and on throughout my whole life, and interactions with it always led to me feeling much worse about myself afterward.
I turned around because it was the only proper thing to do, and there, flanked by his two toadies as always, was the crown prince, Gerad of Treledyne. His clothes were the height of fashion: a stiff high collar, long cuffed sleeves, smooth pants tucked into tall boots, and every inch of those items stitched with intricate patterns likely made from gold thread, so that he shone nearly as much as his father, the Sun King. His long, wavy black hair was tied back, and his condescending smirk was one I had seen many, many times before.
“Gerad,” I said, giving him half a bent knee as was appropriate given our difference in stations, and I heard Warrick do the same beside me. When I straightened, I did my best to put us on a pleasant path, saying, “Are there any opponents you’re excited to face, my prince? Perhaps this vampire ambassador?”
He snorted. “Hardly. This is a tournament for children. Forcing me to compete before I’m allowed to attend the War Camp or regular tourneys is an obscene joke. I could face every duelist here at once and not break a sweat in claiming victory.”
It was a ridiculous boast, but if the rumors about his deck containing nearly all Mythic cards was true, he might actually be right.
“Reggie is in the same portion of the bracket as the vampire. Lustra, she’s called,” the prince continued, gesturing to the boy on his right, “and I expect him to make short work of her.” Gerad smiled toothily, his teeth pristine. “It’s important that we show those bloodless curs what we men and women of Treledyne are capable of, after all.”
“Of course, my prince,” Reginald of Turmas said. He was a stocky boy with shorter legs, which I always found a touch odd since his family was in charge of our military’s cavalry.
As Fortune would have it, Esmi arrived at the bracket board then. This time she was bereft of kobolds but carried herself with a commanding grace I found enchanting. The curtsy she gave the prince was a hair less deep than the leg I had done – her family was more powerful and respected than my own. She turned to me, a smile on her lips until she looked down and saw that I wasn’t wearing her gift on either of my arms.
I immediately wanted to rid her of that look of confused disappointment, my musings that she might be trying to undercut my performance discarded. “Could we go somewhere private? To…to…,” I stammered, finding it much harder to speak to someone of her beauty with other people watching me.
“A kiss or even more isn’t going to give you the kind of luck you need win, Basil,” the prince’s other toadie said, Losum of Drakk.
I shot the tall, crass boy a hateful look. He was the one I had been training with Tipfin to defeat, and after that comment, I wanted nothing more than the opportunity to grind his Archer Souls into the ground.
“That’s not what I meant,” I said, turning back to Esmi. “I – ”
A horn sounded, which meant I had been staring at the bracket and then talking with my peers much longer than I had realized. It was time for the tournament to begin.
Esmi gave the prince another shallow curtsy and departed, favoring me with a brief backward glance that nearly ripped out my heart. The prince said something cutting before leaving, but for once I didn’t listen. It wasn’t until Warrick spoke up that I heard anything at all in truth.
“Fate is giving you no breaks today.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked without looking at him. I was still watching Esmi on her path away from me, wanting nothing more than to run after her, to explain everything, but there just wasn’t time.
“You don’t have a free round anymore as your first,” Warrick explained. “They just added a new nameplate. Someone called…Hull?”