The Defiant

  I frowned. “And what if they find him? He’s a well-known gladiator, and he’s defected from Aquila’s ludus—they must be looking for him too. No.” I shook my head. “If we turn him away, it might lead the vigiles straight back to us.”

  Was that really it? I asked myself. The reason I was reluctant to rid myself of Aeddan? Or was it just a way of torturing us both for what had happened to Mael? A kind of dual penance? I honestly didn’t know. There was so much I was unsure of, not the least of which was—what now? I didn’t know where we would go or what we would do. How we would clear our names. But what I did know, deep in my heart, was that wherever we went, whatever we faced, we would need every advantage we could lay our hands on.

  “He’s good in a fight,” I said. “And I fear we’re going to need that too.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Cai nodded, accepting my decision even if he didn’t like it much. “About trusting him, that is. But if he becomes any kind of a problem, you only have to say the word, Fallon, and I’ll happily run my swords through his guts without a second thought.”

  I gave him a look.

  “Or”—he shrugged, grinning—“I suppose I could just stand aside and watch you do it first.”

  “We could draw lots.” I grinned back. “And I know Elka would love to take a crack at him too.”

  Cai laughed. “That she would. She almost did—a couple of times—while you were in your fever.” He glanced over his shoulder at the door that led to the outer yard. “She cares about you a very great deal. They all do.”

  A sudden blush of shame burned my cheeks as I realized that I’d been avoiding asking after the others. Elka and Ajani and the rest. I didn’t even really know, beyond the number Elka had told me on the road, who’d made it out. And who hadn’t. I squeezed my eyes shut and saw Tanis’s stark white face as she dropped to her knees in the mud. But then I shook my head and opened my eyes again. I couldn’t stay hiding in the darkness of Arviragus’s prison home for the rest of my life. The whole mess was my fault in the first place. My fault, and my responsibility.

  So I might as well pull myself together and face my friends.

  And tell them what?

  I hadn’t exactly figured that part out. I asked Cai for a few moments alone to collect myself, and told him I’d meet him in the yard, where the others waited. Because of Kassandra’s warnings, no one had gone about in the streets of Rome since we’d arrived, Cai told me. No one except Leander, who knew every back alley in the city and how to make himself invisible. As much as it had angered me on the wild ride down the Via Clodia to think that he had stolen a place in the wagon that could have gone to one of the gladiatrices, from what Cai told me I had to admit that, in short order, Leander had proved himself invaluable to our fugitive cause. Whatever that cause might ultimately prove to be.

  He’d even procured a clean tunic and cloak for me to wear.

  I dressed and combed my fingers through the tangles of my hair as best I could. Then I headed out into the yard to meet my ludus-mates. They’d been industrious over the days I’d lain tossing in fever. The yard had been set up with tent-like awnings for shelter against any more rain, and the girls had done their best with what provisions Arviragus’s accommodations and Leander’s stealthy sojourns had provided in such a short time. The atmosphere reminded me of the days we’d spent traveling around on the ludus circuit, in the lead-up to the Triumphs. There were sleeping mats and rugs laid out beneath the awnings, and two cooking fires glowing, one with a roasting fowl set over it and one with a pair of rabbits turning on a spit.

  The girls themselves sat scattered about, conversing in low tones or tending to chores. In the far corner of the yard, Aeddan sat alone on a bench, sharpening a knife on a whetstone with all the focused purpose of already knowing who he planned to use it on.

  I walked out into the yard on wobbling legs, blinking against the shafts of sunlight that streamed between the awnings. Gratia was the first one to notice me, and she hailed me from across the yard, a wide smile splitting her face. One by one, the others turned to greet me too. I felt a surge of relief when I realized that not one of them actually seemed to blame me for what had happened. Neferet and Antonia were there, side by side as usual. Ajani and Elka. Meriel.

  No Tanis or Lydia, of course . . .

  “Where’s Damya?” I asked, looking around.

  Gratia shook her head. “She didn’t make it out.”

  “Oh . . .”

  I looked around at the others who had made it that far.

  Over near one wall sat a girl I’d once thought of as “Wolf” because of the design on the shield Sorcha had given her at our oath swearing. Her name was Hestia, and over the last several months, I’d watched her fighting thraex-style with a methodical determination that won her more bouts than not. She was sitting with a Greek girl named Nephele who’d grown up a beggar on the streets of Athens until she’d been taken and sold. She never stopped smiling—which was a mystery to me—and her smile brightened as our eyes met.

  I looked away from her to the other girls. Beneath one of the awnings sat Vorya, a girl from a neighbor tribe of Elka’s own Varini, who’d been with us since those first days traveling in a slave caravan, but who I couldn’t remember having had a lengthy conversation with. At the same fire were Kore and Thalassa, both of them from the isle of Crete; and a Germanic girl named Devana. Tending the rabbits was a North African girl whose given name I’d never known. She’d called herself Anat—after her tribe’s war goddess—upon arrival at the ludus and refused to be referred to as anything else.

  I didn’t know any of them nearly as well as I wanted to. As I should have.

  I promised myself that would change.

  “Damya and Tanis and some of the others might not have made it out, Fallon, but we did,” Ajani said firmly. “And we wouldn’t have, if not for you.”

  “Right.” Elka nodded. “So. Seeing as how you’ve stopped babbling and sweating, let’s get on with it. What do we do now?”

  I’d rather been hoping I’d have a few more moments upright before that question reared its head. Of course Elka’s cheerfully dire pragmatism would allow for no such thing. Move on, don’t look back. There’s always something in front of you that needs fighting . . . And there was one thing in front of me I definitely needed to fight. Pontius Aquila.

  “I’m going back,” I said.

  “Back?” Ajani tilted her head as she looked at me. “Back where? Home?”

  “Yes,” I said and felt my hands knotting into fists. “Home.”

  “To Britannia?”

  “No.” I looked around at the gaps in our company that should have been filled with the girls we’d left behind. “I’m going back to the Ludus Achillea.”

  “Didn’t we just leave that party?” Gratia snorted.

  Elka’s eyes narrowed. “When you said ‘tactical retreat,’ I didn’t think you really meant it.”

  “Of course I meant it,” I said. “Sorcha gave everything—even her life—to secure the ludus as a safe haven for us. I intend to find a way to take that haven back.”

  “Might be helpful if you find out how it was taken so easily in the first place,” Aeddan said, from where he sat apart from the others. Just loudly enough so that we all turned to look at him as he sheathed his blade and put aside the whetstone.

  “What are you saying, Aeddan?” I asked.

  He looked at me. “Pontius Aquila had to have had someone inside the ludus working with him.”

  “You mean someone other than you?” Elka cast a laden glare at the black feather-crested helmet that sat beside him on the bench.

  “I mean,” Aeddan said, ignoring the glare, “someone he could plan an attack with. Well before any of the Amazona gladiatrices, or their guards—including me—ever set foot inside the gates of your compound.”

  As he spoke, he reac
hed beneath the helmet and pulled out a red leather pouch. He hefted it in one hand, and it made a muted jingling sound. Coins. A lot of coins. Elka frowned and everyone else went very still.

  Everyone except Leander.

  He’d been crouched by one of the cooking fires, turning the spit on the roasting fowl. But he took that moment to shuffle awkwardly away from the fire, as if he would get up and leave. But to go where, I didn’t know. There was nowhere to go.

  “What do you think, slave?” Aeddan called out in a casual tone. “Is there anything you’d like to share with this gathering?”

  Elka snorted in derision. “You can’t be serious.”

  I was tempted to agree with her. “Are you actually saying Leander is some kind of . . . what? Conspirator?”

  “No.” Aeddan shook his head. “He doesn’t have the wits. But I’m fairly certain he knows who does. And he’s so far chosen to keep his mouth shut about it.”

  Aeddan tossed me the leather pouch. It was heavy in my hand as I caught it.

  “I found that in the bottom of his traveling pack,” he said.

  Gratia scowled at Aeddan. “You searched through his things?”

  “I searched through all your things.”

  “You don’t trust us,” Neferet said, shaking her head in disgust.

  “I don’t trust anyone,” Aeddan snapped. “Neither should you. But he was the only one who had a pouch full of money stowed in his gear.”

  Cai turned from me to Leander. “Where does a slave get that much coin?”

  “The . . . men. The men on the—the boat . . .” Leander stammered, wide-eyed. “The ones who paid me to chop down the mast—”

  I upended the pouch and poured out a stream of gleaming coins onto the ground. There was a small fortune in sestersii. More than a top gladiatrix would make winning a prime festival bout in the Circus Maximus.

  Ajani turned to Leander, a dangerous snarl curling her lip. “Liar,” she said. “Those curs wouldn’t have paid you half that much.”

  A sheen of sweat had broken out on Leander’s brow, and his eyes darted wildly, as if seeking any means of escape. “The Lanista . . .”—he tried again—“she also rewarded me for—”

  “Don’t.” I took a step toward him.

  “Domina . . .” he said, and swallowed nervously. “Please . . .”

  I loosened the sword that hung on my right hip. “Sorcha didn’t give you those coins.”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Who did?”

  “She . . . it . . . it was for my silence,” he said in a rush. “She gave me the pouch and told me to keep my mouth shut. Forgive me—”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Thalestris.” It came out in a ragged whisper. “I was to keep quiet about the Lanista. Your sister, domina . . . She’s not dead. At least . . . not yet—”

  With a snarl, I shoved Leander up against the stone wall of the courtyard, and thrust the tip of my sword up under his chin.

  “What do you know?” I asked through teeth clenched tight.

  “On the night the ludus was taken,” he said, naked fear in his eyes, “I was asleep in an alcove in the kitchen. I awoke to the sounds of Thalestris dragging the Lanista out through the service gate in chains. She was unconscious, and there was blood on her sleeping shift—but even more blood on the Amazon’s tunic. I think Thalestris was hurt, from the way she moved. And she was in a hurry. Desperate. When she saw that I was awake, she gave me the coins to buy my silence.”

  “You treacherous little—”

  “I was afraid!” he screeched. “She told me that Pontius Aquila would further reward me—but I know what that means more often than not. It’s why I decided to leave the ludus when you all did.”

  I felt the breath heaving in and out of my lungs as if I’d just run a mile. My pulse roared in my ears, and I held Leander pinned to the wall almost as much to keep myself standing as from anger.

  Thalestris wasn’t dead.

  She was alive and—there was simply no other way to frame it in my mind—in league with Pontius Aquila. And she had my sister. The naked betrayal of it staggered me. But I could barely even think of it beyond that one simple fact.

  “My sister isn’t dead . . .”

  Leander shook his head.

  I felt a touch on my shoulder as Cai stepped up beside me. “What makes you think the Lanista is still alive?” he asked, his fingers tightening, as if he expected I might try to carve answers out of Leander’s flesh in chunks.

  “Because Thalestris wants more than just her death,” Leander said. “She wants blood vengeance.”

  Why? I wondered. For what? And then, in the next breath I knew.

  Even as Leander said it out loud: “Vengeance for the death of her sister.”

  I released Leander and stepped back, reeling.

  Suddenly it all made sense. Thalestris wasn’t just a pawn in Aquila’s game. She’d been playing her own all along. I remembered the day I’d found the crow nailed to my door and had been convinced Nyx had been behind the evil prank. Even when she’d denied knowing anything about it. But Thalestris had been there, as I’d cleaned the blood from my door, and she’d told me how it was a warning I should heed. For Sorcha’s sake.

  “Think on this,” she told me, “it would break the Lanista’s heart if she were to lose her beloved sister. Believe me. I know.”

  It had broken Thalestris’s.

  In the wake of the fateful battle that claimed her sister Orithyia’s life and secured my sister’s place as Lanista of the Ludus Achillea, Thalestris had donned a mask of forgiveness—of dearest friendship, even—but deep down, she’d harbored an implacable revenge for years.

  Nurtured it, fed it and coaxed it to grow . . . and I understood.

  I’d spent years of my life thinking my sister was dead. I could still feel the coal of hatred that had burned in my heart for Caesar, the man I’d thought responsible for her death. But how Thalestris had managed to hide her true feelings from Sorcha for so long . . . that was impossible for me to understand. My sister’s primus pilus and closest confidante, she could have killed Sorcha a thousand times in a thousand ways. In a sparring bout, in the dead of night, with a draught of poison . . . but no.

  She wanted her broken.

  Suddenly, I understood. Sorcha would know, before she died, that Thalestris had killed her dreams too. Her fight for the freedom of the Achillea gladiatrices—a dream that Thalestris had so very maliciously delivered into the grasping hands of Pontius Aquila. Along with Sorcha’s baby sister. Me.

  The ultimate act of poetic vengeance.

  I turned back to Leander. “How do you know all this?”

  “One of the advantages of being a slave, domina.” He grinned bitterly. “No one ever thinks you’re listening.”

  “I’m listening now,” I said and lowered my sword.

  “When Nyx was sold to Aquila before the Triumphs,” he said, “I packed a cart with her gear while she and Thalestris talked. About you, domina, and about the Lady Achillea. Nyx was furious. She felt betrayed, she said. Thalestris told her not to worry—that Nyx would soon have her revenge on you . . . and that she would have her revenge on the lady.”

  In his time at the ludus—sweeping, serving, bending his head, and averting his eyes—Leander must have heard, and seen, a great deal. I remembered then that the night Nyx had led me and Elka and Lydia to that cursed Bacchanale at the Domus Corvinus, it had been Leander who’d procured the key to the door to let us sneak out. And I remembered something else. He’d been whipped for it.

  “You never told anyone what they said?” I asked. “You never told Sorcha?”

  “I thought at the time that it was just talk.” He shook his head, and I could see genuine regret in his eyes. “Nothing but talk. I forgot about it almost as soon as I heard it, jus
t like most things.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything about the Lanista’s abduction earlier?” Cai asked. “That was far more than just talk.”

  “Because Thalestris didn’t just give me coins.” Leander turned to him. “She also gave me a promise. She said she’d kill me if I so much as breathed a word of what I saw that night. She told me she would find me—hunt me down wherever I was—and split me open to spill my guts for the vultures. She was very convincing.”

  I fought against the surging tide of desperate hope that swept over me. If I was to help my sister—save her—then I had to keep my wits about me. Listen to your head, not your heart, I could almost hear her say. Truth before hope. Strategy before passion.

  “Aeddan—did you know Thalestris was still alive?”

  He shook his head. “Pontius Aquila may have trusted me enough to think I wouldn’t turn against him, but that doesn’t exactly mean he considered me a close confidant. I didn’t know it was the Amazon who was working with him, and I saw nothing of what happened to her, or your sister, on the night of the ludus attack.”

  I turned back to Leander. “Did she say anything else? Thalestris?”

  Leander nodded. “When she was dragging the Lanista out through the kitchen—before she saw that I was awake—she was ranting. Laughing to herself and saying how she would take the Lanista away and make her pay. That she would sacrifice her to the goddess of the Amazons under the light of the Huntress Moon. How spilling of her blood would make their tribe mighty again. I think she has gone mad, domina. The goddess Nemesis has infected her mind.”

  Maybe so. But at the very least, Sorcha was still alive. There was still a chance.

  “Huntress Moon . . . the next full moon,” I turned back to Cai and the others, looking from face to face, unable in the wake of my fever to even think for myself what day of the week it was. “When is that? Does anyone know—”

  “Fifteen days,” Neferet said. “Lucky for Achillea, there’s still time.”

  “Depending on where Thalestris has taken her,” I said. “Leander?”