I felt my face redden with shame. If I’d known she was sitting there watching, I never would have tried to trick Cai like that. I would have to apologize, I thought. And try to explain.
“You really don’t like that boy, do you?” Elka said, strolling over to stand beside me as Kronos helped Cai stand. Elka had her practice spear slung over one shoulder and a satisfied grin on her face as she watched the Decurion stagger painfully to his feet. “Wonder how it feels for the legion to be on the receiving end for once?”
I didn’t answer her. Once, not so long ago, I would have laughed right along with my Varini friend—two girls from two tribes that had both felt the hobnailed tread of the legion’s sandaled foot. But in that moment, all I could feel was the shock of my blade slamming into Cai’s ribs. If we’d been using real swords, he’d be dead.
And I would have killed him.
“Have you really thought about what it means to be a warrior, Fallon?” Sorcha had once asked me. “It means you kill. You kill men. You kill women. All while they are trying very hard to kill you. And if one of them is better at it than you, then you die.”
Conflicting emotions of savage triumph and regret tore at my heart. I wondered what Aeddan had felt in the instant when his blade sank into his brother’s flesh. Elation? Satisfaction? I shuddered and pushed the memory away.
“That was well done, gladiolus.”
I turned to see Nyx standing there, looking in the direction Cai had gone.
“That Decurion is an arrogant arse,” she said. “Maybe now he’ll understand that even the lowliest gladiatrix is worth being wary of.”
She slapped me on the back—a blow that fell somewhere between hearty and pummeling—and shouldered past Elka to join the rest of the veteran students gathered at the far end of the pitch. I watched as Cai moved stiffly toward the infirmary with the help of a trainer. I looked down at the wooden sword still clutched in my hand. It felt heavier than lead.
I handed it to Elka, who took it with an amused shake of her head. It was time for the midday meal break, but I found myself without an appetite. Instead, I headed to the baths and immersed myself in the cold pool, scrubbing savagely at the dust and sweat caked on my skin. My stomach was churning with emotions as I dressed and combed my fingers through my damp hair, pulling it back into a loose plait.
Then, for the second time in only a handful of days, I found myself standing inside the door of the infirmary. Heron was just on his way out, and he paused to offer me a wan smile and a pat on the shoulder.
“In the arena,” he murmured, “that blow would have won you the adoration of the crowd, you know.”
I nodded my thanks. He was right. What I’d done in practice was the very thing I’d been trained to do in a bout. Why, then, did I feel so bad for having done it? Heron pulled the door shut behind him, leaving only me and his most recent patient alone in the room. Cai was sitting on the end of one of the cots, his clothes stripped away except for a length of linen wrapped around his hips like a kilt and more linen—strips of it—wrapped tightly around his torso. As I approached, I tried not to notice the lean, defined muscles of his chest and arms. He didn’t look at me as I sat down on the low stool in front of him.
“Broken?” I asked.
He shifted, wincing.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean for that trick to really work. I didn’t think it had—”
He shook his head. “Cracked. It’ll heal. And it was well-deserved anyhow, even if you’d broken my rib in half. My behavior was inexcusable, and I beg your pardon, gladiatrix.”
His apology confirmed what I’d begun to suspect.
“You mean your attempt to teach me a lesson?” I asked quietly.
He didn’t answer.
“This is about Antonia, isn’t it?” I pressed. “The injured girl. You wanted to show me how easy it would be for me to wind up like her. How easy it would be for another fighter to beat me.”
He raised his head, his gaze boring into me. His eyes were red-rimmed, and his face, even clouded with hurt, was devastatingly handsome. “Yes.”
His admission should have filled me with anger, but it didn’t. Maybe it was because in that moment he reminded me so much of how Mael, with his ridiculous overprotectiveness, used to treat me sometimes. It wasn’t that Cai didn’t think I could handle myself, but he worried about me all the same. I hadn’t been imagining things the night of the oath taking. Cai cared about me.
He shifted again on the bed, clearly uncomfortable, and stifled a groan. I poured him a cup of cool water. He gulped it down thirstily, and when I reached for the empty cup to take it back, he circled my forearm with his long fingers.
“I was wrong, you know,” he said. “Your wrists aren’t weak. Nothing about you is.”
“Decurion—”
“Cai.”
“Cai—”
His hand ran up the length of my arm, then drifted upward to rest against the side of my face. His palm was warm, and I found myself leaning into his touch before I could stop myself.
“I’ve never known anyone like you,” he whispered. “Ever. Since that moment on the ship.”
“The moment when I tried to kill you?”
“No. The one when you put yourself at risk to help Charon, the man who’d put you in slave irons, in the middle of all that chaos and death. You are uncommon in your bravery, Fallon. You are stronger than any woman I’ve ever known.” He smiled ruefully. “And you seem determined to haunt my dreams.”
I stood abruptly, feeling my heart pounding in my throat. If Cai had been a slave, even if he’d been a simple merchant or tradesman, it would have been different. How laughable for a once-princess of the Cantii to even think such things. There was a time when he wouldn’t have been near good enough for me. Now he was so far above my station as to be in the stars. To even allow myself to be swept away on the tides of my imagination was madness . . .
“Fallon.” Cai pushed himself stiffly to his feet and took a step toward me. “Look at me.”
I did. I shouldn’t have. Embers of desire flared in his hazel eyes, and suddenly all of my reasoned arguments as to why this should never—could never—happen fell silent. A roaring silence muffled the voices in my head telling me to turn around, leave, don’t look back . . .
He was close enough to take me in his arms, if he wanted to.
But he didn’t.
“This can go no further,” I said in a choked whisper. “We both know—”
Cai pulled me tightly to his bandaged chest and held me there, even though I knew it must have hurt him to do it. I looked up at him, and he kissed me with a hungry desperation that tore the breath from my lungs. His hands tangled in my hair, and my arms tightened around him. He hissed in pain—or pleasure, I couldn’t tell which—but he didn’t stop kissing me.
Not for a long, dizzying while.
No one had ever kissed me like that before, not even Mael. I didn’t know anyone could kiss me like that. It seemed as if time stopped in that moment and everything I’d gone through—every hardship and horror that had led me to where I was—had been worth it for this. For him.
But then I felt his hands brush the iron slave collar I still wore around my neck. I heard the whisper-scrape of his soldier’s calluses on the raw metal and pulled away from his kiss. Cai’s eyes were shut, his chest heaving.
“Cai,” I breathed. My lips tingled from his kiss.
He opened his eyes and cradled my face, holding me so that I couldn’t look away. “I ask you again—I’m begging you—will you let me buy your contract, Fallon?” he asked in a fierce whisper.
I swallowed hard again and shook my head. “No, Decurion. I will not.”
Cai dropped his hands and stepped away from me. Then he turned, bending to retrieve his tunic from where it lay on the cot. He stood with his back to me for a lon
g, aching moment. And his expression, when he turned back, was once more remote. It was as if he’d closed a heavy door and shut himself away from me.
“So be it,” he said. “Then you should know that one of my missives from Caesar to your Lanista was this: You and the other seasoned girls are to go on the circuit starting in three days’ time.”
“The circuit?”
“A tour of the regional arenas outside of Rome.” He looked at me, the flaring passion in his gaze buried beneath an ashen layer of pain. “Caesar and some of the other senators are sponsoring a circuit of gladiatorial bouts leading up to his Quadruple Triumph. He wants the gladiatrices to create names for themselves before they appear in his Triumph events. At the end of the circuit, Caesar will choose one gladiatrix to perform in the role of Victory in a reenactment of his conquest of Britannia.”
I thought of Nyx and how there must be others like her at the other ludi. Girls who were just as competitive, willing to do almost anything to win a role like that. The competition would be fierce and dangerous. Perhaps even deadly.
“So,” Cai continued, “as a gladiatrix of the Ludus Achillea, you will go and you will fight. You’ll probably survive. Perhaps you’ll even survive unscathed. Maybe you’ll make a name for yourself.”
He looked over to the rumpled cot where Antonia had been convalescing. From where I stood, I could see that there were rust-colored stains on the edges of the sheet.
“Or maybe you’ll wind up like her.”
“You tell me I’m so strong, and yet you don’t really believe it.” I shook my head. “You don’t believe in me.”
“Of course I do. But there’s strength and then there’s stubbornness. Recklessness. You think you need to prove something? To whom, Fallon?” His gaze burned my skin. “To me, to the Lanista, to Caesar himself, maybe? Do you really care what a bloody-minded tyrant thinks of you?”
“I’m not going to fight for Caesar, Cai,” I said, adamant. “If I’m going to fight, I’m going to fight for me. No one else. Because that’s the only honorable thing left for me to do.”
“Honor is nothing but a dangerous lie, Fallon,” he said. “In battle, there is no honor, not really. Caesar never won because he was honorable. He isn’t. He won because he was clever and tenacious and used whatever means necessary, just like you did today.”
“I didn’t—”
“You cheated. And you won. And here’s a piece of advice.” He gripped me by the shoulders hard, and his next words sounded more like a warning than advice. “The next time someone offers you an advantage in a fight—a shield, a better sword, an opening for a cheat, or a moment of weakness in your opponent—do yourself a favor: Stuff your high-minded sensibilities and take it. Your adversary might not be so noble as you. And your honor will only wind up getting you killed.”
XXII
MY SMALL ACT OF REBELLION—the refusal to have my slave collar removed—did not go unnoticed. One sweltering afternoon, Sorcha tracked me down after the other girls had drifted off to the baths or dining hall, finding me alone in the weapons shed as I filed the burrs from my practice blade with a metal rasp.
“We have body servants here at the ludus, you know,” she snapped by way of greeting. “Baths, barbers, clean tunics in the quartermaster’s stores. A blacksmith—several, in fact—all perfectly capable of cutting that collar off your neck.”
“I shouldn’t think you’d want to get rid of it,” I said as she stalked circles around me. “After all, wasn’t it part of my outrageous purchase price?”
“Don’t be a brat. I could force you.”
“Of course you could.” I shrugged and returned to the task at hand. “You own me.”
“That’s not how I treat my girls, and that’s not how they treat themselves—not if they want to win.”
She stopped pacing and picked up an oilcloth, holding out her hand for my sword. I gave it to her, and she wiped the filings carefully from the blade, checked the smoothness of the edge with her thumb, and placed the sword back on the rack with the others.
“You are as much the weapon as the blade you wield, Fallon,” she said. “And you need to start taking care of yourself the same way you take care of your equipment, or you’ll be of no use in a fight when that day finally comes.”
I glared up at her, but I had to admit that Sorcha had a point. I’d been pushing myself hard on the training ground. Too hard. By the end of each day, I was often so exhausted that I would forgo the bathhouse so that I could simply collapse on the pallet in my cell. I think part of me reasoned that if my body was tired enough, I would fall asleep regardless of the thoughts that galloped like runaway horses inside my head. Thoughts of Caius Varro and Maelgwyn Ironhand. Thoughts of my father and of home and how I’d never see those green shores again.
I blinked back the tears I refused to shed in front of my sister.
“When was the last time you had your hair trimmed?” Sorcha asked me in a gentler tone.
I glanced up at her. “What does it matter?”
“Come with me.”
She turned on her sandal heel and stalked out of the shed, leaving me no choice but to follow her across the practice yard and through the breezeways that led to her private accommodations. Once inside her chambers, Sorcha sat me at a bench in front of a cosmetics vanity.
A floor-to-ceiling tapestry hung on the wall of the room. It depicted the moment when the Greek hero Achilles defeated and killed the Amazon queen Penthesilea, her blood woven from bright crimson threads. I guessed that was how they’d come to name the first two gladiatrix ludi—after that epic struggle between heroes.
Sorcha fetched a comb and a pair of silver shears and worked through the tangled mess of my hair with ungentle tugs of the comb. I sat there glowering, arms crossed. After she was through torturing my scalp, she picked up the shears.
“You’ve become such a shaggy thing, like one of those ponies you used to drive to exhaustion,” Sorcha muttered as she snipped away at my neglected tresses. “It’s an absolute wonder Caius Varro has taken such a shine to you.”
My jaw dropped open.
“Don’t deny it,” she said. “I’ve never seen him ask to spar with any of the other girls at the ludus.”
“Perhaps the Decurion respects my skills in the arena,” I said stiffly.
“The arena had best be the only place he’s encountered your skills,” she said, and her reflection raised an eyebrow at me. “I mean it, Fallon. It’s one of the strictest rules we have here at the ludus. I have no use for a gladiatrix who’s lost her wits to lovesickness.”
“I haven’t!”
“Good.” She nodded, then paused. “Why ever not?”
“Sorcha!”
“I only mean that he’s kind, rich, from a powerful family, and not unhandsome. I wouldn’t ever allow it, of course, but I’d at least understand.” She stopped snipping and regarded me seriously for a long moment. “You’re not pining for a boy from home, are you? Maelgwyn Ironhand? I know you two were close, but—”
“Mael’s dead.”
Sorcha fell silent. She’d grown up with Mael and Aeddan too. “I’m sorry to hear that. What happened?”
I closed my eyes and could picture the fog-bound lane from that night . . . but not Mael’s face. “Virico gave me away to . . . to someone else.” My next words dropped, leaden, from my lips: “They fought. Mael lost.”
“Did you love this other boy?”
“No.” I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that the other boy had been Aeddan.
“Then why would Father do such a thing?” Sorcha frowned.
“Because I wanted to join his war band, and he didn’t want me to fight and die like you.” I glowered at her reflection. “Like he thought you had.”
She laid down the scissors and lifted my hair off my shoulders, smoothing it down my back. “I’m sorry to he
ar it, Fallon. Truly. And I wouldn’t have allowed it if I’d been there.”
“Well, you weren’t,” I said.
Her reflection gazed at me for a long moment, cool and appraising. Finally, she seemed to come to a decision about something.
“I’m going in to the capital tomorrow morning to take possession of six new chariot ponies,” she said. “Thalestris is too busy with the younger girls’ training, and Kronos and I will need an extra hand. I was going to take Nyx, but I want you to come with me instead. And while we’re there, I want to show you something that might help you understand. Now go. Meet us at the stables at daybreak. Don’t be late.”
Help me understand what? I wondered.
• • •
The next morning, Sorcha turned a corner off a bustling street near where we had left our wagon at a stable close to the Circus Maximus. She led me down a narrow lane, Kronos following close behind us, until it dead-ended in front of a small, squat residence, an unassuming structure with only a single heavy door and no windows. Sorcha tugged on a rope hanging by the door, sounding a bell on the other side of the featureless wall. After a long moment, a small square opened behind a metal grate, and a man peered out. When he saw my sister, he closed the door again without a word, and I heard the sounds of lock and key and of a heavy slide bar grating as it was hauled aside.
The heavy oak door swung inward, and Sorcha nodded for me to precede her inside. The man who’d opened it was armored like a legionnaire, but he was older and battle-scarred.
“Lady,” he said to my sister in a voice like a boot heel crunching gravel. “He’s not expecting you—”
“I know. Is he well?”
The man shrugged bulky shoulders. “Is he ever?”
Kronos waited by the gate as the man gestured us across a tiny courtyard open to the sky to where he unlocked another heavy iron-bound door and let us through into the dim vestibule of the interior building. The only source of light came from a few torches set in wall sconces. Unlike most of the Roman houses I’d been in up to that point, there were no windows here, no airy colonnades, no natural light.
The Valiant Page 19
