“What’s happening?” Elka gasped, placing my hands on the steep ladder that led up out of the ship’s hold. I grabbed the rungs and held on fiercely as other hands in the darkness grappled onto me. Someone clutched at my ankle and was threatening to drag me under the water. I heard a man’s frantic scream as his fingers lost their grip. The scream turned to a gargled choke, but I couldn’t help him. If I let go, I would be lost. I squeezed my eyes shut and hung on.
More water—rain or waves, I couldn’t tell—poured down into the hold from the hatch grate above our heads, and Elka and I clung to each other and the ladder, hunched against the deluge. From up on deck, we could hear frantic shouts and barked commands, the thunder of running feet. And then the clashing of iron—blade upon blade.
We hadn’t run aground. We hadn’t been swamped by a rogue wave or drawn the wrath of some god of the deep. The galley had been rammed, and we were being boarded by pirates. Not so imaginary after all. The wound in the galley’s flank from the pirate ship’s ram was a mortal one. The vessel groaned like a great beast in its death throes as water rushed in through the shattered timbers. From above, an angry orange glow and the acrid tang of oily smoke filtered down into the hold. Fire. The ship’s coal braziers must have been knocked over. If they had set any of the oil stores alight, the wooden deck would burn, no matter the rain.
“We have to get out of here,” Elka shouted, gesturing up toward the deck. I turned and scurried up the ladder to the top. But, of course, the hatch grate was securely latched from the other side. I thrust upward with all the strength of my legs, jamming my shoulders against the iron bars. The grate didn’t give so much as a hairsbreadth. I squeezed my fingers together and thrust my hand through one of the square gaps in the grate, but I couldn’t get the leverage I needed to budge the latch. I slumped back down onto the top rung of the ladder, panting, blood from scrapes on my knuckles and wrist bones running down my arm. Above us, the deck planking thrummed with the impact of feet and bodies.
“It’s no use!” I called down to Elka. “Is there any other way to—”
Suddenly there was a crashing thud, and the body of a man fell across the grate. His mouth and eyes were frozen open in a horrible death grimace. Wine-dark blood flowed from a gaping wound to his chest, but I saw that he was still clutching a dagger. I stuck my hand through the grate again and held my breath as I carefully worked the weapon free from the dead man’s fingers. If it fell, if I dropped it, I’d never find it again in the darkness and the rising water. Slowly, I coaxed the hilt into the cup of my palm until I could get a firm grip. Then I worked at the grate latch with the blade. Sweat, rainwater, and the dead man’s blood poured down my face and arm and made my fingers slick and clumsy, but agonizing bit by creaking bit, the latch moved . . . and slid free.
I shoved my body against the grate, and it swung up on oiled hinges. The dead man rolled off to one side, and I scrambled upward out of the hold, groping wildly for the dagger as it skittered across the deck and disappeared over the side into the waves. Elka surged up the ladder after me, followed close behind by the rest of Charon’s captives. We poured up out of the hatch opening like ants from an anthill, hoping for a chance at survival. But as nightmarish as it was belowdecks, it was arguably worse above. Under a fearsome sky, the deck of the galley was a maelstrom of bloodthirsty pirates, ruthless legionnaires, and angry slave traders.
The pirate vessel was painted black, with black sails and a high curving bow with a stout ironclad battering ram fixed beneath wicked-looking painted eyes. The ram was buried in the side of our ship like the goring tusk of a wild boar. On the other side of the galley, a smaller vessel with sleek lines—the Decurion’s ship, I guessed—was moored to ours with ropes. The legion soldiers were firing arrows into the throng of pirates hurtling over the galley’s opposite rail and leaping from their own vessel onto the deck of the galley to fight hand to hand. In the light of the fire, I looked up to see Decurion Varro balanced like a cat upon the galley rail, the flames reflecting off the blade of the sword in his hand. Lit by the fire against the flashing thunderclouds, he looked magnificent. Like a god. No, like a conqueror.
Something snapped in my mind.
The noise all around me receded in a wave until all I heard was a distant, throbbing pulse like a muffled heartbeat. A legionnaire gutted one of the pirates not three strides in front of me, and the man twisted in a horrid dance as his guts spilled. He dropped his weapons—a pair of short, curved swords—and one of them landed at my feet.
I picked it up.
Through the red mist that drifted down before my eyes, I no longer saw a ship, or pirates. I could see only soldiers. Legionnaires in their uniforms, hacking and slashing and killing. Where the young, arrogant Decurion stood, I saw only a nameless, faceless commander of Caesar’s legions.
I saw only the man who’d murdered my sister.
In that moment, Caius Varro was Rome. And I . . . I was Vengeance.
I ran at him, howling. If I was going to die on a cursed ship in the middle of a cursed ocean, I was going to die a proper Cantii warrior and take a soldier of Rome down with me to our watery graves.
“Are you insane?” the Decurion shouted, desperately defending himself. “I’m not your enemy! I’m trying to save your worthless hides!”
I answered with an incoherent snarl as I slashed at his head. Our blades locked up, and we stood there nose to nose, straining against each other, my strength fueled by battle madness. He shoved me away, and I stumbled backward. I collided with one of the pirates, who responded by yanking his dagger out of the guts of a slave and thrusting the blade at my exposed neck.
Before I could react, the Decurion lunged forward and tackled the pirate, knocking him off the side of the ship . . . and saving me from a dagger through the throat. Without another word, he wheeled around and grabbed me by the shoulders, shaking me so hard my teeth rattled. The red fury cleared from my sight, and Decurion Varro thrust his face close to mine, his chest heaving beneath his armored breastplate.
“If you’re going to kill a man tonight,” he rasped, “I suggest picking one who’s trying to kill you!” He spun me around and pointed with his sword in the direction of the marauders rushing toward us.
I felt my eyes go wide as I switched up my grip on the sword in my hand and shifted my feet into a defensive stance. The motion of the ship reminded me of my chariot back home, and I bent my knees and rode the next surge, letting the momentum propel me forward as a pirate covered in elaborate tattoos lunged at me. There was no art to his attack—no elegance, certainly—and he wouldn’t have needed any if I had been just a slave. As it was, my blade slashed across his ribs, and I’d already moved on to fight the next man before he even realized he was wounded.
The rest of the fight was a blur until suddenly the Decurion had me by the arm and dragged me toward where the other captives were being hoisted over onto the escort ship. I saw Elka among them, as well as the dark-haired slave girl whose name I still didn’t know. I threw one leg over the rail as the captain shouted orders to cast off the grappling lines.
We’re safe, I thought.
Then I looked back over my shoulder and saw that Charon the slave master was still aboard the doomed galley. I watched as he struggled against the increasingly steep pitch of the deck, scrambling for a rope with one hand while hauling along a small wooden trunk with the other.
Mad, greed-eaten fool! I thought. He’ll die before he gives up a box full of meaningless possessions. But my next thought was: And what will happen to me if he does?
Charon was my captor. The man who’d hammered an iron collar around my neck and the source of all my recent misery. But he was also the only thing that had come between Hafgan’s brutality and me on that first ship. He’d rescued Elka and me from the Alesians. And as terrified as I was of my fate once I got to Rome with Charon, it was far more terrifying to think of getting there witho
ut him. I hesitated another moment. Then I swore angrily and, questioning my own sanity, threw my leg back over the rail. Barely holding on by my fingertips, I stretched out my other hand toward the struggling slave master.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Elka shrieked.
I didn’t have a good answer, so I ignored her and concentrated on not falling into the sea. When Charon saw me reaching for him, his face split into a strange, wild grin, the whiteness of his teeth startling in the gloom.
“Here!” he shouted, heaving the trunk up toward me.
“Leave the damned trunk behind and climb!” I shouted back.
“No!” He shook his head wildly, panting. “I need this.”
“You’re mad!”
The galley shuddered beneath my slipping, sliding feet. But it was obvious that whatever was in that box, Charon wasn’t going to leave it to sink. I grasped at the bronze handle of the trunk and pulled with all my might. The effort gave Charon just enough leverage to scramble up the rest of the way, and together we lifted the thing over onto the other ship, tumbling along behind it an instant before the two vessels drifted free of each other.
I shouted at him, furious. “How little you must think of human life that you’d risk your own—and mine!—for a box of trinkets.”
“Thank you,” Charon gasped, chest heaving from his exertion. “And trust me when I tell you, Fallon, this trunk holds the key to both our fortunes.”
He sat down heavily on top of it and wrung the water from his sleeves. I could only stand there, blinking at him dumbly as the firelight from the sinking galley was extinguished in the cold black waves.
I couldn’t, in that moment, remember ever having told him my name.
XI
I WAS ALIVE. I could feel the rising sun on my face and the salt breeze in my hair, and it was only because a Roman had saved my life. A Roman soldier. The very thought clattered around in my head like a loose spoke on a spinning chariot wheel.
The decks of the legion troop ship provided cramped quarters as we sailed east across the Mare Nostrum toward Rome. The smaller of the two vessels, it hadn’t been equipped with anything like a proper complement of slave chains or manacles, and the hold was now full of cargo and soldiers. So we captives were essentially not quite so captive for the duration of the journey, free to wander the decks largely unfettered, so long as we didn’t get in the way or make any moves to escape—which, in the middle of that vast sea, would have been suicide. And having made it as far as we had, none of us were really inclined to throw our lives away, even when we weren’t sure of our fates.
When the second morning broke, clear and golden, the green ribbon of an island appeared on the horizon. The wind had died to a gentle breeze, and anyone who wasn’t performing some sort of nautical duty was slumbering—the sailors down in the hold, the soldiers in tents pitched on the deck, the slaves curled in bundles of snores tucked in between stacks of cargo.
Only I was maddeningly wide-awake.
The island in the distance seemed to float upon the waves, unreachable and dreaming, like one of the Blessed Isles in the stories of my people. I don’t know how long I stood there, leaning on my elbows, before I realized that there was someone else awake and up on deck: Decurion Varro.
He stood at the railing less than ten paces away from me, staring out over the same green-and-blue vista. I almost didn’t recognize him without his helmet and armor. Dressed in a simple tunic under an undyed woolen cloak to stave off the morning chill, he could have been a merchant or a peasant, except for the corded muscles of his arms and the air of military swagger in his posture, even at rest. His hair was chestnut brown and cut legionnaire short, and his cheeks and chin were bare of even the hint of stubble. Shorn and shaved, he seemed at first glance almost vulnerable, and I was surprised to see that he was barely a man at all, only a few years older than me.
He’s almost still a boy, I thought, then checked myself. It was a dangerous illusion. He wasn’t a boy, and he certainly wasn’t vulnerable.
I’d never seen anyone quite like him before. The young men of the tribes were a colorful lot, fond of rich patterns and hues in their clothing, and many of the men wore their hair long and adorned themselves with torcs and wrist cuffs wrought from gold and silver and bronze. There was a wildness to them—a passionate individuality—that made them dangerous and beautiful all at once.
The Decurion was their antithesis. Sharp-featured and starkly handsome, with every angle of him like a honed blade edge. A walking weapon, without adornment or decoration. When he turned to meet my gaze, I became acutely aware of my own appearance. Of the state of my tattered dress, the skirt scratchy and stiff with dirt. My hair hung in filthy ropes, and the dirt was so thick on my skin I was sure I looked like I’d been rolling in a swine wallow. Not so long ago—when I’d been the daughter of a king—men’s eyes had lingered upon me at the Lughnasa feast. Gold at my throat, a circlet on my brow, a jeweled dagger on my hip. But that was another world, another life. And, more to the point, another girl.
But in the eyes of this arrogant young man, I thought, I certainly wasn’t royalty. In his eyes, I was probably less than human—closer in dignity to a pack animal, no doubt. I turned to glare at the passing scenery, seething inwardly. But then the deck planks creaked, and I glanced back in surprise to find him standing right beside me.
After a long moment, he said, “Is there something wrong with my face?”
With a start, I realized I must have been staring.
His mouth twitched into a mocking grin. “Or are you just trying to decide whether or not to attack me again?”
“I . . . No.”
I reached for something to say that wouldn’t make me sound half-witted. He’d caught me off guard with the lightness of his tone. I’d expected nothing beyond disdain from someone like him. But then, I thought, perhaps this was his way of proving his superiority—by showing me he didn’t need to act superior. I wasn’t about to let that happen. I decided I would match his casual manner.
“No,” I continued. “I’m just surprised to see you without your helmet on, that’s all. I was beginning to think you slept in it.”
“Only when I bed down in hostile territory.” His eyes, clear, bright hazel, flicked at me. “Perhaps I’ll wear it tonight.”
“The bravest warriors of my tribe have been known to charge into battle naked,” I said. “You seem to have things backward, legionnaire.”
He laughed and said, “I’m a decurion—an officer in the legion. And you don’t act like a slave.”
“Don’t I?”
“No. You don’t.” He reached out suddenly and took me by the wrist, lifting my hand so that he could examine my upturned palm. “But you have the hands of one.” He ran a fingertip over the places where my skin had toughened like rawhide from hour upon hour of holding swords and spears and the reins of a chariot. “That is how you got those calluses, isn’t it?”
I pulled my hand sharply from his grasp.
The Decurion shrugged and then pointed toward the horizon.
“That is the island of Corsica,” he said.
I didn’t know why he thought I cared. I squinted against the sunlight sparkling off the water, straining to make out details of the shoreline. I could see hills and, farther to the south, cliffs. Beaches. No houses or docks.
“Who lives there?” I asked finally, when it became clear that he wasn’t leaving.
“No one, really.” He grinned. “Sheep. Bees. A few ill-tempered natives too intractable even to be useful as slaves.”
“It sounds ideal.”
“For you, I imagine it would be.”
I couldn’t quite untangle the meaning of his words. Was he disdainful? Amused? I felt my temper flaring. Why was he even speaking to me? Was it just a perverse desire to remind me of my place, among the ill-tempered natives?
&nb
sp; I smiled acidly as I tilted my head and regarded him. “And here you’ve only known me for such a short time to form such strong opinions of my character. How very wise and insightful you are, Decurion.”
“I know nothing of your character,” he said, deftly ignoring my sarcasm. “Not even if you have one. All I know about you—really know—is that you’ve got a bit of skill with a sword. Maybe even some training, judging from those calluses. But you drop your leading shoulder too much when you stand in a defensive posture.” He adjusted the leather bracer on his forearm, tightening the buckle. “And your wrist is weak. You’ll need to work on that.”
“Because I’m sure Charon will sell me to a master eager to enhance my skill with a sword,” I said bitterly. “You and I both know I’ll be sold to a brothel or a fishmonger or a salt mine. But I thank you for that flight of fancy, Decurion. It’ll sustain me in my miserable servitude, I’m sure.”
He looked taken aback, but I didn’t care if I’d offended him. I was about to be sold. And if it amused this pampered son of a senator to tease a slave in her last moments of relative freedom, well, it didn’t amuse me.
It angered me.
“I did not think to offend you,” he said slowly.
“Why would you even think of me at all?” I said. “What does it matter to you if you offend me or wound my pride? I’m a slave.”
“So it seems.”
“What do you mean by that?”
He paused before answering me. “What I think . . . is that appearance and reality don’t always agree with one another. And I think Charon got more than he bargained for when he plucked you by the roots from your native soil.” He pushed back from the rail. “But I also know that even a weed, cultivated with care, might eventually yield a wildflower.”
“A wildflower in a garden is still considered a weed, Decurion,” I said quietly, then turned to leave. I felt him watch me as I walked away.