There was a break in the fighting after the second match, and as the unfortunate young man who had been so proud of his first victory at the start of the event was dragged away, I felt a pang of guilt.
I hadn’t even thought about him while I was enjoying my cup of wine; I was thinking about how warm it was even though it was the evening, and how surprising it was to me that the Emperor was so willing to switch to another language when he really didn’t have to.
I was about to ask the Emperor how many more people we would have to see dragged out of the ring tonight when he leaned closer to me to whisper so that only I could hear.
I was conscious of the number of eyes on us as he did that; there were more people in this stadium than I could comprehend and a great deal of them would have f
