Arena

  “You’re still the Guide, though,” Callie said. “And contrary to what you may think, most of these people do respect you.”

  “Yeah, but for how long?” Pierce gazed over the crowd. “Everyone’s getting restless. And let’s face it—I don’t have Morgan’s charisma.”

  Callie frowned, wondering where he’d gotten this charisma business, and how he could think there was any comparison. Before she could reprove him, however, Mr. C was already doing so.

  “Don’t sell yourself short, young man,” he said sternly. “These people don’t need charisma. They need hard work and the truth— exactly what you’ve given them. You’ve done very well here, and I believe you’ll do even better out there. Popularity isn’t everything. In fact, it isn’t anything when you get right down to it. The majority is rarely right.”

  Pierce snorted.

  Mr. C squeezed his shoulder and released him. “But, hey, you two are supposed to be having fun.” He turned his head as a new burst of music erupted from the tent, glanced at Callie with a sly grin, and said, “Why don’t you take her dancing?”

  Pierce caught the grin. “Good idea, sir.” He grabbed Callie’s hand and pulled her toward the tent.

  “But, Pierce, I don’t know how to dance!”

  “So I’ll teach you.”

  She looked back helplessly at Mr. C, who grinned and waved and told her this would be a good time to count.

  The tent held a varnished wooden dance floor made of interlocking plates. At its far end, a band of drum, pipe, and fiddle played, while couples twirled in complex patterns around the floor. Callie suggested they sit at the edge and watch, but Pierce would have none of it. “Best way to learn is jump in.”

  “But—”

  “You told me yourself you always wanted to do this,” he said, dragging her amongst the others. “You just lacked the nerve. Here, stand like this.”

  “What makes you think I have the nerve now?”

  “If you can throw yourself off the edge of a cliff, my dear, you can handle this.” He took her hands, smiled his wonderful smile, and she surrendered.

  “Watch my feet,” he said. “Here we go. One, two, three—one, two—that’s it.”

  Before long Callie had the hang of it. It didn’t matter that she’d never done it before. Pierce was good enough for both of them. He twirled her this way and that, her skirt and hair whirling around her. When she made a mistake, they just laughed and went on. It was exhilarating, intoxicating—she loved it!

  But after the fourth song, she collapsed against him, breathless. “Enough! I’m so dizzy I can’t stand up, and I have to get a drink.” She staggered to one of the tables surrounding the dance floor, where an Aggillon waiter brought them water, then colas.

  As they watched the others move in time to a slow song, she admitted it was fun. “Even if I did make an idiot of myself.”

  “You did fine.”

  “I had a masterful teacher.” She leaned her chin on her palm and regarded him bemusedly. Could this be the surly, filthy stranger she’d met that first day on the sucker path? “Where’d you learn to do that, anyway?”

  He grinned. “I wasn’t born in the Outlands.”

  “I suppose you play the violin, too.”

  “Actually, the piano. I don’t do gymnastics, though.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I was too clumsy.”

  She blinked. “I mean the piano.”

  “Do I play the piano seriously? Sometimes.”

  She was laughing now. “No—are you any good at it?” And when had he turned into a tease?

  He fingered the brim of his hat, now lying on the table. “My mother wishes I was better, I’m sure, but I never liked competition. I play for myself mostly.”

  He became pensive, lost in his past. She studied him, fascinated. Competition was an option? With those long fingers, it was easy to see why. A pianist, she thought. Here I think I know him, and then another door opens and I see a whole new side.

  “I was supposed to go to the state finals my junior year of high school,” he said after a few moments, “but I broke my hand a week before the competition.”

  “Broke your hand?”

  “Mountain lion jumped me, knocked me off my horse.”

  She stared at him wide-eyed.

  He shrugged. “He was half starved. I felt bad for shooting him. Anyway, that ended my musical career.”

  “What about the next year?”

  “By then the ranch was in a bad way. Dad had already let most of the hands go. I didn’t have time to practice, much less spend a week in Denver. I never wanted to be a professional musician, anyway. They’re inside too much.”

  The slow dance ended and the band took a break.

  Callie sighed. “I always wanted to play the piano, but we couldn’t afford it. And Mom said I lacked the discipline to practice.”

  “Your mother said that? About you?”

  She ran a finger around the rim of her glass. “I taught myself to play the guitar, but it wasn’t the same. Someday I’m going to get a piano and take lessons.” The intensity of Pierce’s gaze made her self-conscious. “Anyway, I’d love to hear you play.”

  “Maybe that could be arranged sometime.”

  He looked up as a couple squeezed by their table. Once again she was struck by the elegance of his profile, the lines burning into her memory with an insistence that made her itch to start drawing. She had long ago admitted to herself that his face and form fascinated her— almost embarrassingly so. She hated to think what Meg would say if she ever found the sketchbook hidden under Callie’s bed.

  “Hullo.” As if conjured by the thought, her friend’s voice interrupted their silence. They looked up to find Meg and Brody Jaramillo standing beside their table.

  “I’m Meg Riley,” Meg announced. “I don’t believe we’ve met.” Immediately her mock seriousness dissolved. “Was that you I saw out there dancing?” She turned to Pierce. “And your date here—surely not our serious and stoic Guide to the Inner Realm?”

  Pierce cocked a brow.

  “It’s an amazing feat you’ve accomplished, Mr. Andrews,” she added. “To my knowledge no one has gotten this girl onto a dance floor in her entire life.”

  “Harvey Bellum,” Callie said dryly. “Sixth grade.”

  “That was square dancing, and Mrs. Wareheiser assigned him to you. Hardly the same thing.”

  “Harvey Bellum?” Pierce asked.

  “A cute little blonde with big brown eyes,” Meg said. “Callie had a crush on him.”

  “Meg,” Callie said between clenched teeth.

  Meg grinned. “Am I embarrassing you? Sorry. Pierce, have you met Brody?” She tugged her date forward and made the introductions.

  “I understand we’re about to start for the final portal,” Brody said without preamble.

  Pierce’s expression became guarded. “Could be.”

  “Good, ’cause I’ve got a lot of things cooking back home, and I wanna finish this as soon as possible.”

  Callie snorted. “Like the rest of us don’t?”

  He regarded her with half-lidded eyes. “Some of you’ve been in this place for years. I’d never have hung around that long.”

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t,” Pierce said. He leaned back and folded his arms.

  “Hey, I’m committed to those prime directives you explained the other night.” Brody waved a hand. “Forward momentum, never look back and all.”

  “Forward momentum isn’t always physical,” Pierce said.

  Brody looked blank.

  “You’ve seen the Leyton record?”

  The young man shook his head, shooting a questioning glance at Meg.

  She blushed. “That one’s awfully gross.”

  “Calvin Leyton’s group moved out too soon,” Callie explained. “Most were captured. They tortured Calvin for six hours, and in the end, he pleaded for the curtain. They’re probably all Trogs now.”

  Brody swel
led before them. “I’m not afraid.”

  “Good thing,” said Pierce, “because your armor won’t work if you are.”

  The other man’s eyes widened, and again he looked to Meg.

  “The belt’s sensitive to fear,” she explained. “The minute you’re afraid, off it goes, and without the field it generates, the breastplate and helmet are useless.”

  He looked surprised, and Callie wondered how he could have been here even the three weeks he had—having been issued his own set of armor besides—and missed that information.

  “You know, you might consider waiting for the next Guide to come through,” Pierce said after a moment. “’Cause if you’re not ready, you could spend a good deal longer than a year here.”

  Brody stared at him, nonplussed.

  Pierce shrugged. “It’s your call.” He glanced toward the dance floor. “Ah, here’s the band coming back.” He put on his hat, stood, and held out a hand to Callie. “You ready to try again?”

  She let him lead her onto the floor and, as he faced her, said, “Goodness, Pierce. You were kinda rude, don’t you think?”

  “Is that the guy Meg’s all in a tizzy over?”

  “Yes.”

  He glanced over her shoulder at them. “Can’t say I’m impressed.”

  “Well, no . . .”

  “Poor guy’s gonna have a tough row to hoe.”

  Callie couldn’t argue with that, and she quickly forgot about Brody as the band warbled a sultry, languorous selection. “Oh no, this is a slow one.”

  “I think we can handle it.”

  He slid his hand around her waist and suddenly she was in his arms. Her mouth went dry, and the blood hammered in her ears and throat. She fixed her eyes downward. “What do I do with my feet?”

  It took her a few minutes to get the pattern down, and then she had nothing to think about except how close Pierce was, and how awkward and jittery she felt. She stared over his shoulder and tried to relax, searching for something to say.

  Then Morgan and Rowena stepped through the tent’s entrance. They sat at a floor-side table to watch the dancers, and Rowena quickly spotted Pierce. She touched Morgan’s arm, and when he turned, Callie knew she’d told him everything.

  “What’s going on back there?” Pierce asked.

  “Rowena and Morgan just came in.” She risked a glance at him. “I think Rowena—”

  “Spilled her guts?” He grimaced. “You knew she would eventually.”

  “What’re you going to do?”

  “Swallow whatever they dish out, I guess.”

  When the song ended, she immediately stepped away from him. “Let’s go.”

  “I’m not running, Cal.” From his expression, she knew he wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise. And as it turned out, running would only have made things worse.

  Morgan confronted Pierce as they stepped off the dance floor. “You lied to us!” he said, his voice low with outrage. “All that garbage about Elhanu was just a cover for your own cowardice.”

  “It wasn’t a lie, Morg.”

  Morgan jerked a thumb at Rowena, standing just behind him. “She told me how you froze up and couldn’t fire your weapon. How your friends never knew if you were going to cut and run, or curl up and mew like a baby. No wonder you hid all the records.”

  “Hid the records? What’re you talking about?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me. Anyone can find them if he knows how to get around the blocks.”

  “There are records of the Outlands?”

  “There are records of everything. All in living color.”

  Pierce had gone pale, but he met Morgan’s gaze unflinchingly.

  Callie scowled at Rowena. “Why did you open this up again?”

  Rowena lifted her chin. “People have a right to know what kind of coward they’re trusting their lives to.”

  “He’s not a coward.”

  “Callie.” Pierce laid a hand on her arm, then said to Morgan, “I’m not proud of what I did. I can’t even promise I won’t do it again. But that’s not why we’re not leaving.”

  “What kind of a fool do you take me for?”

  Around them, the others had stopped dancing, and now the band fell silent. Familiar faces stared wide-eyed—Wendell, Gerry, Tuck, Ian, Brody, Meg. Callie wanted to scream at them to mind their own business and keep on with what they were doing.

  “You’re not the only one who can read the manual around here, you know,” Morgan said. “Or the only one who knows how to access the link to Elhanu.”

  “But I am the only one who wears the circles and bars.”

  “That doesn’t guarantee you’re infallible. Calvin Leyton wore them, too.”

  “And left too early.”

  “And Jason Puala, fearful of sharing his fate, left too late—and shared it anyway.” Morgan leaned toward him, rigid with intensity. “We need to go now, Pierce. The signs are everywhere, if you’d just open your eyes and look.”

  “Then go.”

  Morgan’s eyes narrowed. “Without you?”

  “If you believe I’m deliberately refusing the directive to leave,” Pierce said, “why would you trust me to find the exit portal?”

  “Those are two different matters.”

  “No, they’re not.” Pierce moved for the door.

  Morgan stopped him. “It’s true, isn’t it? You like it here, lording it over the rest of us, and you have no intention of leaving.”

  Pierce was white as death now, but his voice remained calm. “I’ll leave when Elhanu tells me to. That is my only intention.”

  Callie caught up with him outside the tent. He wore his stone face like a shield and said nothing as they walked back to the compound. It was a relief to leave the light and noise and stifling warmth for the chilly, quiet darkness of the front square, a relief to escape the crowd’s curious glances. How many of them would be reviling Pierce by morning?

  They followed the path that wound around the obstacle course, deserted now in the starlight, and stopped when they reached the pool at the base of the climbing cliff. Here the camp’s music was a distant wheedle, overlaid by the water trickling down the rock face and the breeze hissing in the trees. Pierce leaned against the railing and gazed at the silver pond shimmering against the dark masses of foliage and the cliff’s pale bulk. The air carried the scents of moisture and verdant growth.

  After a time he sighed. “I’m not going to be very good company anymore. Do you mind if we call it a night?”

  “Of course not.”

  He made no move to leave, however, and neither did she.

  At length he said, “I guess it’s better this happened now rather than on the road. At least no one will be surprised. If there’s anyone around for it to matter.”

  “There’ll be plenty of people around,” Callie said softly.

  He stepped back and braced both hands on the rail. “This is probably what Elhanu’s been waiting for. It sure gives everyone a choice. And choosing is what the Arena’s about, isn’t it?”

  He studied his boots a minute, then looked up at the trees again. “Gives me one, too: Will I go with what I believe and lose the group, or will I rationalize my way around to doing what Morgan wants?” He snorted and straightened. “Maybe I’ve been rationalizing all along. Maybe I am just using the manual to justify my own cowardice.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  Pierce laughed bitterly. “You of all people? You’ve seen me in action. I’d be dead if not for you.”

  “And I’d be dead if not for you. So would a lot of other people.”

  “Things are different now. I’m supposed to be the leader. What if I lose it again out there, with everyone depending on me?”

  She watched the treetops’ scalloped edges sway in the breeze and said softly, “Isn’t it Elhanu we’re supposed to depend on? Besides, you’re not the same man. And you have the link now.”

  For a long moment Pierce stared at the pond. Then sighing, he said, “You
’re right. I’m being an idiot.” He turned and stiffened with surprise. “You’re shivering! Why didn’t you say something?”

  Callie insisted she was fine, but he took her back to the dorm anyway, walking her to her door on the third floor.

  “Thanks for going with me tonight,” he said.

  “Hey, it was fun. Even if you did make me dance.”

  He grinned. “Especially because I made you dance.”

  They stood looking at each other, and his grin faded. His eyes were very blue and solemn beneath the thick lashes. Her heart began to gallop as once more she became aware of how close he was, his face inches from her own, his familiar, pleasantly musky scent making her lightheaded.

  He’s going to kiss me.

  A wild fear rose up in her. Abruptly, she stepped back and immediately saw the hurt flash across his face. It felt as if a knife had twisted in her chest. She wanted to apologize, to explain—except she had no explanation, and he was scaring her. No, she was scaring herself. This was too much like what happened with Garth.

  “Well, thanks for everything,” she mumbled, unable to meet his gaze. She touched the lock pad and her door slid open. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Yeah.”

  The door slid shut between them.

  CHAPTER

  18

  They were showing videos of Pierce’s failings next morning in the rec hall, and the cafeteria buzzed with reaction. Morgan announced he would set out tomorrow, and that all were welcome to come. “But you’d better be ready to travel!” he concluded with a laugh.

  Everyone cheered.

  Sickened by the enthusiasm with which Pierce was being ridiculed, Callie lost her appetite halfway through the breakfast line. No one showed his being tortured, or any of his moments of heroism, just his failures. Worst of all was seeing Meg at Brody’s side, spouting abuse with the rest of them.

  Callie approached her privately afterward, and they went round and round until Meg suggested Callie’s feelings were blinding her. Callie erupted like a land mine, hotly denying the charge and saying something about the pot calling the kettle black. The conversation degenerated from there.

  Later when her anger had cooled to stomach-twisting regret, she acknowledged Meg’s accusation had hit a sore spot. Last night she’d tossed for hours, tormented by memories of that almost kiss in the hallway, and the look on Pierce’s face when she’d stepped away. Sleep, when it came, was filled with dreams of being trapped in various vehicles racing toward destruction. She’d awakened depressed and irritable. Things had only gotten worse as the day progressed.