Chapter 9: The Podrace and the Promise of a Name

The morning of the race arrived the way mornings do in desert places — suddenly, without the gradual negotiation of light that temperate lands provide. One moment the darkness held, and then it did not, and the twin suns climbed with an indifference to human preparation that Arthur found oddly clarifying.

He had slept three hours, which was more than he had managed the night before. The wound at his side had not worsened. He catalogued these facts the way he had learned, over decades of campaign, to catalogue the condition of a horse before a charge: not with satisfaction, but with the understanding that knowing the exact state of one's resources was the only honest form of optimism available to a person in difficult circumstances.

He dressed in the grey morning light, settled the sword harness across his back, and went to find out what a podrace looked like.