The tournament gates had been sealed for three days when the sky above them changed.
Contestants trickled out in ones and twos all morning, mud striped and hollow eyed, the ones who quit early, the ones carried out on stretchers, the ones whose sects had already sent condolence letters home. The factions waited in the great camps outside the barrier, and the Giantess Tribe's pavilion stood tallest among them, all bronze pillars and mammoth hide banners, with the queen's honor guard in lacquered armor flanking the entrance.
Princess Lin Yuxi stood at the front of the waiting crowd with her arms crossed, and she had been standing there for six hours, and anyone in the camp who glanced at her quickly glanced away again, because princesses of the Giantess Tribe radiated their moods like ovens radiate heat, and hers was terrible.
