“Delightful! What a lovely girl, Esladas!”
Father moves us along with just enough haste that I realize how whenever we are in public he does his best to prevent us from speaking to Patron men. People are taking their places, ready for the trials to start. Every part of the floor of the court except the central victory tower is covered with canvas, concealing the layout of today’s obstacles. The covers will only be pulled back when the first trial starts. I want to be out there so badly that I can taste the kick of the sawdust and the grit of chalk. I have to check in before the gate to the undercourt closes or I’ll forfeit.
My mouth goes dry. I’m going to do it even though I know I shouldn’t. I’ll be obedient forever after this. I will.
As Father settles Mother into a chair I lag behind, patting my forehead with a scrap of cloth and pretending to grimace in pain. Amaya points me out to him and he walks back to me.
“Jessamy? It’s not like you to retreat from a challenge. I hope you are not afraid of appearing in public.”
“Of course not, Father. The noise and dust have given me a headache. If I can close my eyes for a little without being disturbed, I am sure I will feel better right away and I will come back out.”
He nods. I slip into the long tent that stretches along the back of Lord Ottonor’s box. Curtains divide the interior into small private rooms. Coriander is waiting at the far end of the tent. She quickly slips a servant’s blank leather mask over her face. Seeing me, she relaxes and pulls the mask off. We go into the tiny retiring room where she has stowed our satchels.
“Give me your servant’s token,” I say.
She hands over a cord strung with a servant’s ivory pass. “As you command, Doma.”
“If anyone comes looking for me, fetch Amaya.”
She nods and goes out. I pull my game clothes out of the satchel: a short tunic, leggings, and shoes sewn out of a leather so supple that they fit my feet like gloves fit hands. I change quickly and pull an ankle-length green tunic over everything. My mother embroidered the sleeves and collar herself. It’s nothing fancy, the kind of linen sheath gown a Commoner girl would wear in the market. A gauzy shawl conceals my hair, and one of the plain leather masks worn by servants conceals my features. Then I get on my belly and peek out from under the tent’s base, which isn’t pegged down. A servants’ aisle runs between the back of the tent and the tall stone back wall of the Court. In a moment when no servants are in sight, I wriggle out.
Every time a servant rushes past me bearing a covered tray of food for the Patrons or carrying out a covered bucket of waste to dump in the sewer, I expect them to shout and expose me. But they think I am one of them. Pretending to be a servant isn’t hard at all. Amaya and Maraya could never manage it because they look too much like Father, but no one takes a second look at me. With shoulders hunched and head bowed I slip past the guards while they are admitting a large party walking in under a palace banner, people so highborn they use only lowborn Patrons as servants, not letting any Commoners at all into their household. I hurry down the outer stairs and down a ramp into the nether passages of the ground level.
It is customary for competitors to arrive at the trials and descend into the undercourt with their masks and game tunics already on. In a shadowy alcove that smells of urine I tug off my tunic and stuff it and the shawl into the satchel. Quickly I bind back my hair in a tight net. A nondescript player’s mask of silk, thread-wrapped wire, and fine leather cord conceals my face. Most competitors wear fancy bright masks and colorful tunics, meant to draw the eye. My mask and tunic are an ordinary brown, like me.
There is only one gate into the undercourt, where the Fives players, called adversaries, assemble before trials begin. The guards let me through when I show them my adversary’s token. I join the stream of players moving down the stairs to the attiring hall, where we’ll be assigned our starting round and belts. Just as I reach the bottom, a bell rings and the gate slams shut above me. No one who arrives late will be admitted, in order to keep competitors from discovering ahead of time what configurations of the Fives will be unveiled when the canvas is pulled back.
I hurry past locked doors behind which lie the mechanisms and structures used to build and manipulate each new Fives course. The people who work there belong to a guild sworn to protect the sanctity of the Fives. It is said that men have been killed for revealing the secrets of the undercourt.
But all that has nothing to do with a girl like me.
Still hidden behind my mask, I walk into the attiring hall. There are benches, open spaces for warming up, and curtained alcoves and basins for washing. I gawk as I look around. I’ve never been in a real attiring hall. I’ve worked my way through practice trials at unofficial neighborhood courts where a girl like me is anonymous among crowds of Commoners and slumming Patron men seeing what competition is out there. It’s only because anyone with enough coin can purchase a token to enter the Novice-level City Court official weekly trials that I can finally walk here.