The Defiant

  “Right . . .”

  “Where?”

  He nodded and held up a hand, and I could see him struggling to remember. The muscles of his throat worked as he swallowed hard, concentrating. “Corsica!” he said finally. “They’ve sailed to the island of Corsica.”

  In the middle of the Mare Nostrum, I thought. And I felt my heart sink like a ship in those deep waters that I had no way to cross.

  IX

  I HEARD QUINT groan and looked over to see a pained expression on his face.

  “Quintus?” Cai asked.

  He sighed. “I was afraid he was going to say that.”

  I remembered then that Cai had told me Quint was from Corsica. I struggled to remember what else I knew about the place, and the only thing that came to mind was something Cai had told me as the slave transport ship we were on sailed past the island, on that long-ago day when I’d been on my way to being sold in the marketplace of Rome.

  He’d told me then that Corsica was inhabited mostly by . . . what was it? Right. I remembered: “Sheep. Bees. A few ill-tempered natives too intractable even to be useful as slaves.” That sounded like a fairly accurate representation of a tribe of Amazons . . .

  “Why ‘afraid,’ Quint?” I asked.

  “I was born in a fishing village on the east coast of Corsica,” he said. “Youngest of five boys—hence the name: Quintus. My mother sent me and two of my brothers away to the mainland when I was ten.”

  “Why did she send you away?” Elka asked.

  He paused and glared at the ground between his feet, a strange expression that was half regret, half anger crossing his face. “Because she didn’t want us to be taken,” he said. “Like one of her other boys had been. My brother Secundus . . .”

  “Taken by who?” Elka asked.

  Quint lifted his gaze to meet hers directly and said, “The Amazons.”

  Cai and I exchanged a glance.

  “That’s what they call themselves,” Quint continued. “They’re not really—everyone knows there haven’t been any real Amazons for over a century—but don’t tell them that . . .” He looked about, the muscles of his jaw working. “Is there any drink left around here?”

  Arviragus silently went and fetched him a mug of ale. Quint took a deep pull and huffed a sigh as the rest of us gathered around to listen to his story.

  “In the early days, a hundred years ago or more, when the Greeks first sailed the Mare Nostrum and discovered Corsica, they colonized it,” he began. “No one else had really paid it much attention before that time, but they thought it might be worth establishing a trading port or two in the coves where the marsh flies weren’t so bad. They brought slaves with them, of course, and some of those slaves were, to my understanding, Amazons. Real ones. Or the daughters of them, at least.”

  I remembered Gratia saying something similar about the real Amazons having died out long ago as we sat around the fires on the beach after the naumachia. And when Quint told his story, it sounded like part of a long-forgotten legend. I forced myself to listen, not to give in to the urge to do something—anything—in that moment that would do nothing to actually help my sister and would only put myself and my friends at risk.

  The Huntress Moon, I told myself. There’s time . . .

  “Corsica is a rugged land,” Quint was saying. “Mountainous where it’s not treacherous bog, full of ragged peaks and hidden valleys . . . and, well, it proved the perfect place for those ladies to one day defy their masters. They rose up, rebelled, escaped, and set up a cozy little settlement of their own, hidden away on the other side of the island.” He laughed a little and swallowed another mouthful of ale.

  “And no one ever hunted them down?” Hestia asked, skeptical.

  “Their Greek masters decided—wisely, I suspect—that they were more trouble than they were worth and let them be,” Quint said. “The Roman settlers who came after—my folk—decided to adopt that policy. And so they’ve remained there ever since, spearing fish, brewing honey mead, telling tales of bygone glory . . . and occasionally swooping down out of the hills in a midnight raid to steal a few of the young fishermen—my brother, for example—from the villages on the other side of the island to keep their population from dying out entirely. Probably explains my predilection for cold-hearted warrior women,” Quint muttered, casting a laden glance at Elka.

  She grinned back at him. Cold-heartedly.

  “The only time we ever got any retribution,” Quint continued, “was once when my brother Tertius was a raw recruit with the legions and our village begged Rome for protection. They feared the time was coming round when the Amazons would be back. He was sent over with a detachment to the village and, sure enough, there was a raid all right. Chaos and casualties. But they captured a handful of those wild women and sold them at auction in the Forum. I’m betting your Thalestris and her sister were two of those.”

  “And we all know the rest of how that story ends,” Cai said, grimly.

  “No,” I said. “We don’t. Because it’s not over yet.”

  A spark of anticipation flared in Quint’s gaze.

  “Can you take me there?” I asked. “To their settlement?”

  He nodded, and a slow smile spread over his lips. “Aye,” he said. “I can lead you right to their bloody doorstep.”

  I turned to Cai. “We’re going to need a boat.”

  Antonia stood up. She was back to wearing the plain leather sheath over her arm, her crescent blade carefully oiled and set aside. “One big enough for all of us,” she said.

  “I can’t ask that.” I shook my head. “I don’t know what risks we’ll be taking—”

  “You don’t have to ask. Achillea could have turned me out of the ludus after the accident.” She gestured to Neferet, who stood beside her. “Both of us. But she didn’t. We owe her our loyalty, Fallon. And you too.”

  “Me?”

  Neferet nodded. “You could have easily left us at the ludus and escaped on your own. You didn’t.”

  Gratia stepped forward. “We’re with you, Fallon. To be honest, I want to be there just to see you pummel Thalestris’s treacherous arse into the dust.” She rolled her muscled shoulders, grinning, and cracked the knuckles of her fists. “And maybe give a hand, if the opportunity arises.”

  I looked around at all of their faces. Each one—from Elka, my closest friend, to Devana, who I barely knew—bore a look of fierce determination. Of purpose. Even Aeddan’s expression told me that he would follow me to Corsica to rescue my sister.

  I felt a swell of gratitude. For all of them.

  Leander stepped forward. “Please, domina, let me come with you too. All my life, I’ve pretended I was the hero in my own epic tale. But you, all of you, are real heroes. Give me the chance to win back your trust—to prove myself more useful than pilfered fish and wine.”

  “And the bag of coins we’re not giving back to you,” Elka said.

  His shoulders sagged for a moment at that, but then he turned back to me. “Let me help you bring the Lanista home,” he said quietly.

  I raised an eyebrow at Cai.

  “Better bring him along,” he said. “Who knows what kind of trouble he’ll get himself into if we leave him behind.”

  “All right then, hero.” I nodded. “You’re with us. One of us. But I swear on the breath of the Morrigan, if you even think of betraying us, I’ll make you wish for Thalestris to find you before I do.”

  It was decided. Now, like one of Leander’s epic tales, all we had to do was journey to a land across the sea, descend into the Underworld to rescue my sister from the clutches of death, and . . . if we somehow managed to get that far, I thought silently . . . return with Sorcha and together liberate our home from the evil that beset it.

  The Ludus Achillea might have been named for the legendary hero Achilles, I thought, but even he might have se
cond-guessed undertaking such a journey.

  My next thought was To hell with Achilles!

  He was famous for defeating one Amazon.

  I would defeat them all, if it meant getting my sister back.

  • • •

  We were all in agreement then. Pontius Aquila could wait. Rescuing Sorcha was the first order of business for our merry band of renegades. There were dozens of arrangements to be made before we set out on our quest, not the least of which was procuring transport, but there was, at the very least, a real sense of purpose among us. Even Arviragus’s longtime guard—Junius was his name—had been converted to our cause and was bustling about like a man with newfound direction in life. A focused, palpable urgency had turned Arviragus’s prison cell and courtyard into a hive of activity. Most of it having to do with weapons. And war paint. The girls had collectively decided that if we were to take on a gang of so-called Amazons, we would do it in fearsome, Ludus Achillea style.

  Back on the night of our oath taking, when Sorcha had first appeared to the new gladiatrices, she’d done it dressed in the full regalia of a Cantii warrior princess, complete with intricate designs painted on her face and limbs with woad—the bright blue skin paint the Cantii and other Celtic tribes wore into battle. My companions had taken inspiration from it and, to that end, most of them were inside that morning, crouched over braziers and experimenting, mixing pots of salves with pigments Leander had procured at the market—with Thalestris’s coins—to produce an equivalent shade of blue. They tested out the results on Quint, who was only too happy to sit there, captive and flirting.

  I could hear the laughter even when I stepped outside for some air. It made my heart feel less like a knotted bruise throbbing on the inside of my chest every time I thought of Sorcha. I prayed almost constantly that Leander was right, and that the Morrigan—and Thalestris—would keep my sister alive at least until the night of the Huntress Moon.

  Meriel was sitting alone out in the yard.

  I figured she had enough permanent woad tattooed onto her skin that war paint wasn’t really a priority. I sat a ways off from her and went about sharpening my swords. After a while, I shifted on my haunches, still aching a bit from my wound, aware that Meriel had been staring silently since I’d come outside. I sighed inwardly and turned to stare back.

  “Something on your mind, Meriel?” I asked, as pleasantly as I could.

  She was silent for a long while, as if deciding whether it was worth telling me what that something was. But I’d never known Meriel to shy away from confrontations—real or imagined, large or small—so it wasn’t a surprise when she did open her mouth.

  “I don’t like you, Fallon ferch Virico,” she said finally, speaking my full name with deliberate emphasis. She spoke in her native tongue, which I understood—barely—because of the similarities to my own, fogged as it was by the thick burr of a harsh northern accent.

  I nodded. “I know. Back at the academy when Nyx and—”

  “Hang Nyx.” Meriel glared at me bleakly. “I didn’t need Nyx to tell me how to feel. I didn’t like you before I was born.”

  “That seems a bit extreme,” I said.

  “My tribe are the Coritani.”

  “Ah.”

  That explained a lot. Everything, really. In truth, I’d always suspected as much, based on the tattoos and accent. The aggressively bad temper. And it was more than enough reason to hate me. There was a blood-deep feud between her tribe and mine, a grievance that had spanned tens and tens and tens of years before I was even a wisp on the wind . . . Long enough that most had forgotten the reason behind the thing, but not the thing itself. I’d grown up hating Meriel too, I suppose. In principle, anyway. When my driving passion in life had been to join my father’s royal war band, I’d always assumed that hers was one of the tribes I’d go into battle against when the time came.

  When the time came . . .

  It never did. For either of us. And now here we were.

  “So. I didn’t like you before I met you.” She shrugged. “Making your acquaintance did nothing to alter that.”

  I laughed. “Fair enough.”

  “Now, Nyx, I like,” Meriel continued. “She’s a cold-hearted, poison-eyed bitch, and she’ll stab you in the neck at breakfast for a second bowl of porridge if she’s peckish. I like that. I understand it . . . But I don’t trust it.” She turned back to me, her expression serious. “I trust you.”

  That surprised me. “You do?”

  “What choice do I have?” She snorted. “You’re honest and honorable. All the things I’m not. I’d be a fool not to trust you.”

  “Thank you. I think.”

  She nodded her chin toward the cell house where the others were. “These girls . . . I’ve known most of them longer’n you. I don’t like most of them either. But we’re sworn to each other—to fight and die for each other—and Nyx never understood that. Porridge is one thing. Blood’s another and thicker even than that. We all swore a blood oath to look after our ludus-mates. And I know you’ll uphold that. You and your Lanista sister—damned if I’d known I was fighting for the great Cantii bitch-goddess Sorcha ferch Virico all those years at the academy! Lugh’s teeth. I might’ve killed her in her sleep before you were ever taken from home. And now look at me. Off to go save her precious neck. It’s an odd old world the gods have given us, Fallon, and that’s the truth of it.”

  We laughed together, quietly, and then Meriel went back inside. I told her I’d follow, but I still wasn’t up to much company. Instead, I went and sat in a corner of the yard, hidden from the brightness of the high sun beneath one of the makeshift awnings, and started sharpening my swords again. If we didn’t leave soon, I’d sharpen them down to meat-skewers. I wished Cai was there to distract me, but he’d gone out into the city, incognito, to arrange for a ship. The thought had barely crossed my mind when I saw Junius issue a challenge through the iron grate of the outer courtyard door. It was Cai, dressed as a merchant, with a cowl drawn up around his face. Junius opened the door just enough to let him through, and as he was closing it, I saw Cai hesitate and turn back.

  Someone had called his name from the street.

  For a brief, panicked moment, I thought maybe the vigiles had discovered our hiding place. But then I saw a slender, cloaked form slip through the gap across the threshold in Cai’s wake. Not a soldier or a watchman, no. A girl.

  Kassandra.

  Cai strode back to her as she pushed the palla shawl back from her face. Her hair was loose and tumbled about her shoulders, and her cheeks were flushed. It looked as though she’d been running. She spoke in low, urgent tones, but I was too far away to hear what she said. Cai listened at first, his head bent in concentration. After a few moments, he shook his head and uttered a bark of laughter. But Kassandra clearly wasn’t joking, and she wasn’t finished. She made a grab for Cai’s arm but he shook her off, suddenly angry.

  I still couldn’t hear the argument but I’d rarely seen Cai so upset. He put a hand up and—this I did hear—told Kassandra to shut her mouth and never speak such a lie to him again. Not to him, or to anyone. Then he turned on his heel and stalked off into the prison house. Kassandra called after him, but her cries fell on deaf ears. The door slammed in his wake, and she stood there, staring after him, her hands clutched together.

  I remembered thinking once that there had been something between the two of them. I’d long since laid that fear to rest but, suddenly, the ghost of it was there, hovering over my shoulder, whispering in my ear. I shushed that whisper mercilessly and, sheathing the sword I’d been sharpening, walked over to Kassandra. It took a moment for her to even realize I was there. When she did, she turned to blink at me blankly, her mind a mile away from where she stood.

  “Kassandra?” I asked. “What is it?”

  “I . . .” She hesitated for a moment and her glance flicked back and forth
between me and the direction Cai had gone. Whatever she’d been about to say died on her lips and she shook her head, lapsing into silence, her brow creased into a deep, anxious frown. I noticed then that, beneath the flush of her cheeks, she was pale and drawn, her features more sharply defined than the last time I’d seen her, as though she’d lost too much weight. And there were circles under her eyes.

  “Kass . . .” I put a hand on her arm. “Are you well?”

  She looked at me, blinking, as if she’d half forgotten I was there.

  “No,” she murmured. “No, I’m not.”

  “What’s wrong? Can you tell me?”

  She laughed harshly and shook her head. “No. Only . . .” Again her glance drifted off in Cai’s wake. “Only this: I . . . dream, Fallon. Terrible dreams where the statues of the Forum are thrown down and shattered and the streets of Rome run with blood. I fear that something terrible is about to happen. To the Republic . . . to those loyal to Caesar. Maybe to all of us. I fear a dreadful turmoil approaches.”

  In the brief time I’d come to know her, I’d learned that Kassandra was a sensitive and generous soul, for all that she’d likely seen the worst of humanity in her life. And now . . . bad dreams? Ruinous premonitions? She’d already told me poppy wine—and worse—flowed freely in the House of Venus. Maybe she’d fallen into the habit. I could hardly blame her. The life she lived . . . I probably would have tried to numb myself too.

  I wondered why she would have felt the need to tell Cai of her fears—and why he would have reacted so. Then I wondered if maybe Kassandra didn’t secretly have feelings for Cai. Was that why she’d come to see him? To try to convince him to leave aside the reckless danger I seemed to be leading him into? I couldn’t find it in myself to blame her for that. But I could also see how that would anger Cai.

  “Kass . . .” I had to shake her arm to get her to focus on me again. “Why don’t you stay here? With us? Join me and the rest of the girls and—”

  “And learn to fight for my life?” She laughed. It was a hollow sound. “I’m already doing that, Fallon. I just don’t have the luxury of watching my enemies bleed.”