Page 199 of Everything Under the Sun

“Sounds like the people want a gauntlet tonight!” Maxima shouted over the crowd, and in response the crowd shouted back, hooting and hollering and war-crying. He raised his arms high above him again, gestured his hands to provoke the crowd, and they shouted and whistled and stomped their feet.

Maxima pointed into the bleachers where I was seated, and I looked behind me, following the gazes of everyone else who already seemed to know what, or who, he was pointing at.

A woman, tall and lean and beautiful with a cascade of wavy blonde hair that fell past her waist, stood from the seat six rows behind me.

Kade put his hands to the sides of his mouth, his fingers steepled beneath his nose and he shouted, “Gauntlet!”

“Gauntlet! Gauntlet! Gauntlet!” the gymnasium joined in.

The woman stood, her chin raised even higher than Maxima’s, her poise more majestic, the confidence in her face stronger, more influential.

“What do you say, Ravinia!” Maxima shouted over the crowd at his wife.

A profound hush fell over the room then, like a calm before a storm. Ravinia took her time, looking out at the people, and when she slowly raised her arm out in front of her, teasing the crowd, the hush deepened and it felt like the air had been sucked out of the room. Ravinia’s fisted hand turned at the wrist, and in true Roman emperor fashion, she unfolded her thumb from her fingers and pointed it skyward, and the hush over the crowd broke, and the people went wild in celebration of her decision.

“Gauntlet! Gauntlet! Gauntlet!”

Kade pumped his fist, his nose scrunched up in his face, and he looked over at me, delightedly.

My heart sank into my knees; had I been standing I would have collapsed. I looked back out over the heads of the people in front of me and focused all of my attention on the man I loved and feared I would lose on this night. A gauntlet. I knew the definitions of the word, but not what it meant in Paducah to these people. It could only mean something terrible.

People made bets:

“My case of Jim Beam on the one in the black pants,” said the man on my right to Kade. “And for the gauntlet, I’ll throw in my Harley if you throw in the girl.” His gaze slipped over me.

“What am I gonna do with a Harley?” Kade argued. “Can’t drive the damn thing without gas.”

“But it’s still a Harley!”

“A useless Harley—no deal!” Kade grabbed my waist and pulled me closer. “She’s brand new,” he told the man. “I’d like to try her out first, see what she’s worth before I bet with her. I’ll put in Drusilla, if you can come up with something better.”

The man’s smile broadened.

I sat there, disgusted by their exchange, glad that—hopefully—Drusilla was long gone by now. But Kade and the man and even Drusilla, I had no time for. I watched Atticus from afar with a heavy heart, and I witnessed him change, saw the part of him I’d only seen a couple times since we’d met, take over the part of him that made him human. He stood solidly, his eyes fixed on the floor, his hands wound tightly into fists at his sides; his bare shoulders rose and fell in a relaxed, eerie motion—if I ran through the crowd and stood in front of him, he wouldn’t know I was there. I never would have wanted to see him like this, but I accepted it, and I approved of it in my heart, and I told myself over and over in my mind that he needed to be this way if he was going to get out of this alive and so I drew hope from it. The other fighter had a knife, after all. And Atticus had nothing. Only the demons he carried on his back.

“Why does that man have a knife?” I asked Kade, concerned.

Driggs and Maxima walked off the arena floor together, leaving Atticus and his opponent alone.

“Probably because he asked for it,” Kade answered. “Or demanded it.”

Demanded it? My eyebrows drew closer together. I needed more information, but the fight was to start any second now and it was difficult dividing my time between it and Kade’s half-answers.

“How can a prisoner demand anything?” I asked, but it came out more as a statement.

“Shut up and watch the fight,” Kade said without looking at me.

Just then all heads turned in the same direction again—behind me—and seconds later, Ravinia strode down the bleacher steps in her tall back boots, past me, and made her way onto the arena floor; the thick crowd that blocked it parted like the Red Sea so she could pass.

“Gauntlet! Gauntlet! Gauntlet!”

Ravinia raised her hands above her and silence fell over the room like a heavy blanket.

The fighter with the knife bounced shortly on the front pads of his bare feet, unable to stand still. The baleful grin he wore gave me chills—he was more than ready to kill Atticus. But seeing Atticus, how he looked at no one, how still his body and how lost he was in his own savage mind, further filled my heart with hope. And sadness.

Ravinia dropped her arms.

“Your Main Event tonight,” she began, her voice carrying over the room, “is another fight to the death! But a special fight to the death!”

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