The Valiant

  “Grab the bitch!” a female voice barked in the darkness.

  A hand closed over my face, and I bit down hard. Another muffled cry of pain and I was free again, spitting blood as I lurched forward into a stumbling run. I bolted for the deep shadows beneath a stand of cypress trees, where I hoped to hide before sprinting for the nearest path leading back up into the house. But even though I could hear distant raucous merriment, I couldn’t find any stairs back up to where the party still carried on. In the state I was in, I didn’t even know which way was up, and when I did finally find a stone staircase—half-hidden by an overgrown thornbush—it didn’t take me toward the revelry.

  I could hear angry shouts behind me, so I pushed past the grasping branches and crept down the stairwell as quietly as I could. I didn’t understand much in that moment, but one thing seemed abundantly clear: I had suddenly become hunted quarry. At the bottom of the stairs there was an iron gate secured with a chain, but it gaped enough for me to squeeze through. Without a moment to spare, I stumbled deeper into the shadows of what seemed to be a tunnel leading beneath the house.

  “I did my part!” The female voice drifted down the stairwell. “I got her here. How did you manage to let her get away? He’ll kill you if she manages to escape your grasp again. He’ll probably kill me too—”

  “Shut up!” That was Aeddan’s voice. He sounded near frantic.

  I held my breath and stayed as still as I could.

  “She’s a weak little gladiolus, and she’s wasted with mandragora.”

  Nyx, I realized with a dread chill crawling down my spine. It was Nyx’s voice.

  “You’re useless, Mandobracius.”

  Their voices grew faint as they argued.

  They clearly hadn’t seen me duck down the stairs, and that was my only advantage. I was certainly in no shape to fight. I was panting like a cornered animal, and I could barely even run. I had no idea where Elka was, and I desperately wished Caius were there in that moment. I was in dire need.

  Dire need. All of a sudden, I remembered the scroll Charon had given me—the one that guaranteed my safety—and I fumbled at my waist. But of course I hadn’t worn my leather belt pouch that evening. It had spoiled the look of the delicate stola I’d worn, and so I’d left it behind. The little vellum scroll was tucked away in my pouch, back in the traveling trunk in my room—in spite of Cai’s and Sorcha’s warnings and Charon’s admonitions.

  I was a fool.

  The shadows of the cypress trees loomed menacingly on the walls of the stairwell where I hid, and I began to imagine them reaching for me. I had to get away from that place. My only option was to run, and the only direction I could go was down. As silently as I could, trying not to stumble against the walls in my addled state, I descended into a catacomb that ran beneath the Domus Corvinus and felt my way along, brushing fingertips against the rough-hewn stone. I heard water dripping and then, after what seemed a long while, what sounded like muffled voices.

  A faint glow of torchlight at the end of the tunnel beckoned, and I crept toward it, hoping to find a servants’ entrance up into the house. I found an archway instead. It opened out into a vaulted chamber, and I peered cautiously around the wall. In the flickering torchlight, I had to look and look again before my bleary eyes fully understood what they saw. I listened hard to make sense of the sounds above the weird, low chanting. But then my eyes and ears put their senses together, and my stomach climbed into my throat.

  The body of Ajax—the slain gladiator from earlier that night—lay naked on a polished black-marble slab. His olive skin was pale and slack and painted with blood. His face was turned toward me, and his eyes were open, vacant and staring into the afterlife from which his spirit would never return. A circle of robed and hooded figures wearing black-feathered masks hovered over him. Through the gaps of their huddled forms, I could see that they had split Ajax’s torso open like the roasting carcass of a wild boar. I glimpsed the white gleam of his rib cage grasping like rigid fingers at the shadows, and I could hear the wet, gluttonous sounds of feasting.

  Morrigan protect me—they’re eating his heart!

  The bile rose in my throat, bitter and searing, and I felt my own heart thud heavily in my chest. I clapped a hand over my mouth to keep from screaming. What manner of monsters had I stumbled upon? Did the revelers in the palace above have any idea what was going on in the catacombs beneath their feet? Did Nyx?

  My head throbbed with the beat of my pulse, and the smell of smoke and incense and blood was overwhelming. Beneath their grotesque, black-feathered masks, the mouths and chins of the men gathered around the slab were stained crimson. One of them stood behind a set of golden scales, and I saw that in one dish lay a finely wrought feather made of gleaming silver. In the other . . . a raw, red lump of flesh quivered as the scales dipped and settled to rest on the marble slab with a thump.

  The glamour of a celebrated gladiator’s life suddenly shattered like glass in my mind, exploding outward in jagged pieces, the picture reshaping itself into a grotesque mosaic of blood and dishonor. Monstrous. I spun dizzily on the heels of my sandals and ran as swiftly as I could, stumbling blindly back through the black stone tunnel and out into the cool, fragrant air, praying to the Morrigan that the monsters in their lair hadn’t seen me there. I scrambled clumsily up the stairwell and fell sprawling on the lawn. The grass whispered secrets and lies into my ears, and the earth beneath my shoulder blades was warm and breathing, expanding and contracting like the chest of the dead gladiator had before they’d torn out his heart.

  I’d almost forgotten why I’d gone down into that tunnel in the first place.

  Until Aeddan appeared out of the darkness.

  I opened my mouth to scream but didn’t make a sound. At least I don’t think I did. I wasn’t really sure of anything at that point. Aeddan sank down onto his knees in front of me and held his hands out, reaching for me.

  “Fallon!” he said in a low, urgent voice. “I’m not going to hurt you! You have to listen to me. If they find you, they’ll take you. I’m so sorry—this is all my fault.”

  “Who?” I managed to gasp. “What are you saying?”

  He looked so much like Mael in that moment that I wanted to cry.

  “I used to think it was all for the money,” he continued, breathless, “but it’s more than that. They worship death. There is a man they call the Collector—”

  “Pontius Aquila?” I shook my head, trying to clear my mind enough to make sense of what Aeddan was saying. “The Tribune? What does he have to do with any of this?”

  “These are his revels. Not every gladiator in his collection is destined for the arena sands. Some of them wind up here instead. Fighting in the munera—private bouts—for men who call themselves the Sons of Dis. They think they draw mystical power from the death of strong fighters.”

  “I saw them,” I said. “Men. In the catacombs—”

  “If you were close enough to see them, then you should thank the Morrigan you got away from them.”

  “It was horrible.”

  “Their practices are outlawed. They only meet in secret, and they’re depraved. Cruel. The games aren’t just games to these men, Fallon. It’s a kind of madness.”

  “The gladiator . . . Ajax . . .” I looked up into his pale face. “Tonight is the second time I’ve watched you kill a man.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. “Don’t. Please. He was a friend to me at the ludus. I know his fate, and I weep for it. I had no choice. The munera aren’t just entertainment. They’re ritual. And they’re always to the death—an offering to their underworld gods.” The pain in his voice was real. “Ajax would have killed me just the same if he’d had the chance. Once we were pulled from the ludus to fight in the munera, we both knew that only one of us was walking away from that bout.”

  I gaped at him in disbelief. “What—why are you even fi
ghting for a ludus?” I shook my head to try to clear the fog of confusion that wrapped around my brain. “You’re no gladiator, Aeddan. You’re a king!”

  “I’m an exile, Fallon,” he said quietly. “Again. Because of what I did to Maelgwyn. The Trinovante decreed me a kin killer and banished me from the tribe.”

  Right. Aeddan may have been a king, but he was also a murderer. In spite of the peril of my current situation, I felt a certain grim satisfaction that he hadn’t escaped his punishment. It might have been the mandragora, but I imagined I could see the shade of Mael hovering darkly over Aeddan, haunting him.

  “How did you end up back here?” I asked.

  “When my uncle and I were first forced to flee to Rome, it was Pontius Aquila who offered to take us in. And when I found myself once more an exile in Rome, I wound up fighting for him as a gladiator in order to pay off all the debts my uncle had incurred.”

  I remembered Aeddan’s uncle, as treacherous a fool as his traitor father.

  “Depending upon Aquila’s patronage was the only way I could survive here. And then I discovered that somehow, somewhere along the way, Aquila had found out about you.”

  “Me?”

  “The great Lady Achillea’s little warrior sister back home in Prydain. Better, stronger, and younger than the best gladiatrix they’d ever seen.”

  My head spun at the notion. I remembered what Thalestris had said to me about the time Sorcha had drunkenly bragged about the fierceness of the women of the Cantii and how her little sister had been the fiercest of the lot. So much for keeping me a secret. My own sister had betrayed me without even knowing it. And Aeddan had betrayed me too.

  “Why didn’t you tell me she was alive?” I demanded. “You knew Sorcha was in Rome, and you didn’t tell me.”

  “Because I knew how much it would hurt you. I planned on telling you once we were married, on our journey here. I didn’t think—”

  “You didn’t think about anything!” I raged. “Only your own selfish desires. You and Sorcha both. And now I’m the one in danger.”

  “It’s not her fault,” Aeddan said. “The blame is mine alone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sorcha couldn’t have known that Aquila would become obsessed with you, Fallon—with the idea of you—but I did. And when he convinced me I should bring you here, I turned a blind eye to that obsession.” Aeddan’s face was full of misery. “He promised he’d make you a shining star of the arena if I did—hailed as a queen, adored by the masses. I didn’t know. I didn’t understand, but he convinced me to bring you to him. And then Mael was dead, and you were gone, and I . . . I was lost.”

  I could only stare at him.

  The Morrigan’s ravens had led me to this place—had led us both.

  Unwittingly, I’d escaped from Aeddan’s machinations only to wind up in the very place he’d meant to bring me all along. In dodging one fate, I’d fallen victim to its twin. In the distance, I heard voices calling. Aeddan heard them too. He grabbed me by the shoulders and lifted me up off the ground, half carrying, half dragging me across the lawn toward a garden wall.

  “Run, Fallon!” he urged. “Run!”

  Blind, animal terror drove me as I leaped for the top of the wall. It was only as high as my shoulder, but my bleary clumsiness had me scrabbling and clawing to climb over, scraping the skin of my hands and knees. Once on the other side, I bolted down a road that led back into the shadow-bound streets of the city.

  In my mind, there were black-feathered monsters chasing me as I ran.

  XXVI

  THE LIGHT ON MY FACE WAS WARM, and the blanket covering me, soft. Somewhere nearby, a fountain trickled water with a sound like bells chiming, and birds sang sweet melodies to each other. The room smelled faintly of lilacs.

  And I felt like Death herself.

  I struggled to roll over on my side as my stomach churned and my head swam dizzily. I gritted my teeth hard against the rising tide of bile creeping up the back of my throat, and when the feeling finally subsided, I forced my eyes open and squinted in the pale morning sunshine. The open, glass-paned window above my head was draped with a gauzy curtain that billowed in a gentle breeze. There was a vase of lilacs on the sill, and the walls of the room were washed in a pale green that was almost white. The effect was cool and soothing.

  And utterly unfamiliar.

  For a terrified few moments, I thought I might still be at Domus Corvinus, and the overwhelming urge to flee pushed the sensations of sickness far into the background. I clutched at the soft woven blanket covering me and almost flung it aside. But then I realized I was entirely naked beneath it. And I was not alone in the room.

  “You’re safe,” Cai said quietly.

  His voice had a quality to it that sounded like disappointment.

  I squinted at where he sat on a low chair in a corner of the room. I was having trouble focusing, but he looked weary—as if he hadn’t slept well, or maybe not at all—and I wondered what he was doing here . . . wherever “here” was.

  I struggled to sit up without letting the blanket fall away. My head was pounding like a blacksmith’s hammer on a sword blade. Cai stood and moved to a table beside the chair where he’d been sitting. It held a cup and a pitcher, and he poured me water, which I gulped at thirstily. Then he handed me a new, clean stola. It was plain but finely woven, with simple fastening brooches and a belt.

  “Here,” he said. “Put this on.”

  I glanced at the clothing and then at him. And then down at the blanket that covered me. Cai rolled his eyes and turned his back.

  “I won’t look,” he said. “But I’m also not leaving. I’d like to get you out of here and back to Achillea’s town house without anyone noticing.”

  I slipped out from under the covers and into the simple linen shift as quickly as my muddled state allowed. The room tilted perilously with every move I made. As I was fastening the second shoulder brooch, my fingers fumbled, and it fell to the floor. Cai stooped to pick it up. He stood and brushed my hair from my shoulder, fastening the brooch for me. Then he fetched my sandals—the only things I’d worn the night before that seemed to have survived the adventure—and knelt before me, slipping my feet into the straps. As he did so, I heard the sound of gentle female laughter coming from outside the room.

  “Where are we?” I asked. “What is this place?”

  Cai stood up, an expression that I could only describe as embarrassment crossing his face. “This is, um, well—”

  “We call it a House of Venus.”

  I turned at the sound of the familiar voice and saw Kassandra, the girl from my days in Charon’s slave caravan—the one who’d given me her shoes—standing in the doorway. With the door to the hallway open, the subtle perfume of the lilacs on the windowsill was displaced by a heavier, cloying haze of incense. “Thank you,” I mumbled.

  “For what?” she asked.

  “For the shoes,” I said, struggling in my foggy state to find the right Latin words. “Back when we were in Gaul.”

  Cai snorted. “You have more than shoes to thank her for.”

  I looked at him blankly.

  He nodded at my former cage-mate. “She’s the one who found you and brought you here.”

  “I didn’t have much choice,” Kassandra said. “You were in no condition to travel on your own. As it was, we were barely able to carry you this far.”

  I looked back and forth between them, hopelessly muddled. “Where am I? The House of Venus? What is that?”

  “Most people call it a house of whores,” Kassandra said with a dry smile. “That is why Caius Varro hurries to spirit you away from this place. Before your bright rising star is tarnished by association.”

  The two of them might as well have been speaking in Greek. “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “You attended a party last n
ight at a house on the Caelian Hill, didn’t you?” Kassandra asked.

  I nodded and put a hand to my forehead, which throbbed mercilessly.

  “I was there too.” When I looked at her, she shrugged. “They hired some of the girls from this house to serve as hostesses for the revels. We left with our escort when things began to get out of hand—as they often do at those sorts of affairs—and that’s when we found you, lying on the side of the road at the bottom of the hill. You were insensible. Babbling.” She offered a sympathetic smile. “But I recognized you, and we brought you here. I sent word to Caius so that he might come and take you back to the place where you belong.”

  I wasn’t sure where that was anymore. I wasn’t sure of anything.

  “How do you two even know each other?” I asked.

  “Kass has been a friend to me since she was sold to this place,” Cai said.

  Oh, I thought. Of course. A friend. I felt my cheeks redden.

  She laughed, shaking her head. “What he means is that this place entertains its fair share of politicians and patricians. So I occasionally find myself in possession of information that could prove useful to a certain consul of the Republic. I’m really Caesar’s friend, if you want to think of it that way.” She put a hand on my arm. “But I trust the Decurion. And you should too.”

  Cai reached out and took my other arm. “We should go now. We have to get you back to the Achillea town house.”

  “Why?” I asked. “So they can flog the skin from my bones? I didn’t have leave to go to those revels. None of us did. Sorch—I mean, the Lanista—is going to be furious,” I said. “I’ll be very surprised if she doesn’t just send me packing back to the ludus to muck out horse stalls until I’m too old to throw a spear.”

  “Us?” Cai asked.

  “I went with a few of the other girls. It was Nyx’s idea.” Thinking back on the beginning of the evening—which was substantially clearer in my memory than the rest—I realized I hadn’t actually seen Nyx drink from the wineskin. Or Lydia, for that matter. Only Elka and me. “She’s the one who put mandrake in my wine.”