The Defiant

  Never mind Sorcha, I told myself, glancing skyward. There’s time yet to convince her. Time, at least, until Aquila’s munera. I searched the breaks between the clouds stretching across the day-blue sky as if I could see the moon and stars there. A fortnight. We had a fortnight to bring my plan to fruition. And then it would be too late. Aquila would hold his munera instead, and Achillea girls would die.

  I would not let that happen.

  And neither, I knew in my heart, would Sorcha.

  I looked toward the bow of the ship and saw that Charon had gone to speak with her. I admired his courage. And, to be perfectly honest, his selflessness. Because what he was trying to convince my sister of, in that moment, carried with it a great risk to himself. To his heart, his honor—and strange as it seemed to me, Charon was not without his own particular honor—to his one impossibly slim chance at the kind of happiness he’d craved for years.

  I watched him lift a hand as they spoke—not quite touching the side of Sorcha’s face that still bore the scars of the chariot accident that had ended her gladiatrix career—and I saw her own hand come up to meet his, to push it away . . .

  But she didn’t.

  Whatever Charon was saying to her, Sorcha was listening—not relenting, maybe, not yet—but listening. They stood there, hands clasped between them, and she did not turn from him. Not immediately. When she finally did let go of his hand and walked away, he stood there for a long moment, his hand still lifted as if he caressed my sister’s face. As if she stood there letting him.

  • • •

  Later, I didn’t ask Charon what had passed between them, and he didn’t seem inclined to tell me. But he carried on as if our scheme was still set in motion, and to that end, there was a great deal to be accomplished before we made landfall. Not the least of which was figuring out how to smuggle not just the Achillea gladiatrices but a band of Amazons—all hardscrabble warrior girls dressed in little more than rags and bad manners—into the city. The first of many hurdles. When Cai expressed that very concern as I sat plotting and planning with Charon outside the captain’s tent, the slave master smiled at him benignly.

  “Don’t fret, decurion,” he said. “These girls won’t be attracting the attention of the legions or Rome’s vigiles.”

  “They won’t?” Cai raised an eyebrow at him. “We’re pulling in to a smaller port, then?”

  “No.” Charon took a deep breath, seeming to sniff at which way the wind was blowing. “I’m going to drop anchor in the same place I always do. The wharf on the west bank of the River Tiber. Inside the very walls of Rome herself.”

  Cai followed the slave master’s gaze to see his men pulling down the sail with its subdued, faded colors and replacing it with a bright-striped one. I recognized the colors from the very first ship I’d sailed on with Charon. With that, and the shields removed from the side rails and stowed belowdecks, even I had to admit that it looked like an entirely different craft. It looked like one of Charon’s fleet of slave galleys.

  “I see.” Cai nodded. “And . . . then you have a plan to get the Amazons through the city unmolested by Rome’s authorities.”

  “I do.” Charon nodded, pushing himself to his feet as the crew hustled about the deck. “But they’re not going to like it very much.”

  He flashed us a jaunty, slightly feral grin and went to confer with his men.

  Cai turned to me, and I shrugged apologetically for not having had the chance yet to confer with him. But I’d needed to be sure, first, that what I’d had in mind with Charon was possible before I could slot the next piece of the mosaic into place. And the shape of that next piece was up to Cai himself.

  “And the rest of you and your Achillea cohorts?” he asked, one eyebrow raised. “I trust there’s a plan for that too?”

  I nodded and, beaming up at him with the best, brightest smile I could muster, said, “You once told me your father was rather fond of his wine?”

  • • •

  The mainland loomed ever larger on the horizon, and for one brief moment, I found myself alone on the deck, watching the port of Ostia creep closer across the waves. I felt as if I was standing in a field, bathed in sunlight, watching the sky darken as thunderclouds advanced over the horizon. The calm before the storm.

  Cai and I had discussed my plan, worked through the potential pitfalls and contingencies, and arrived at the best course of action that either of us could come up with—even though it meant imposing on Cai’s father’s hospitality in his absence. With the senator away on his trade mission to Brundisium, there was a great empty marble palace right in the middle of the capital available to hide a contingent of rebel gladiatrices. Getting us there was simply a matter of logistics—the kind I’d left up to Charon, who’d grinned his nefarious grin when we told him, along with Quint and Aeddan, my idea.

  Quint was onboard from the outset. Aeddan’s brow had furrowed, and I could sense him brewing storm clouds, but he’d declined to offer a dissenting opinion in front of the others, and I left him to his brooding. For my part, my only reservations about the plan were that I didn’t want to do anything to implicate the senator if we were caught.

  “If my father was here, Fallon,” Cai had assured me, “I know—in my heart—that he’d be the first to speak up about these nonsense charges of ‘rebellion.’”

  “Even if it put his career at risk?”

  “It wouldn’t. But yes, even then.” Cai leaned out over the railing, gazing east. Toward his home. “He’s my father.”

  I stood beside Cai and closed my eyes, and memories of my home—of Prydain, and Durovernum, and my own father—flooded my mind.

  For a moment, as I stood there, my mind wove a daydream.

  I had my sister back. We had a ship and freedom, and we could have just as easily traveled west instead of east, round the Iberian Peninsula to sail clear all the way back to the Island of the Mighty. I pictured me and Sorcha, in the company of our very own royal war band of gladiatrices, marching straight up to the gates of Durovernum, right to very doors of our father’s great hall. King Virico Lugotorix would welcome his long-lost daughters with tears and open arms and great, foaming vats of good dark Cantii beer, and give us all land and cattle. We would build our own town and marry who we pleased. Charon would give up his slaver’s ways, and Sorcha would finally open her heart to him. My father would embrace Cai as a worthy suitor for his daughter’s hand, and my sister and I would build a kingdom as co-regents. And no tribe—not the Trinovantes, nor the Catuvellauni, nor the Coritanii—would dare to raid against us.

  We would have peace . . .

  And the girls left behind at the Ludus Achillea would pay the price.

  With their lives.

  The Sons of Dis would make them fight and kill, and feast on their brave hearts after they fell. And it would be all my fault. The pleasant, ridiculous fantasy of returning home shattered and fell to pieces all around me. The arena was my home now, I thought. And those girls, my family. I would fight with every strength in my soul for them. For their freedom. And pray to the Morrigan I would not fail.

  “Fallon?” I heard Cai’s voice from close behind me. “Are you all right?”

  I tried to say I was.

  But in that moment, I suddenly felt so lost. I knew what I had to do, and why I had to do it, but I honestly didn’t know if I could. I feared, in that moment, that I would fail. Fall and be defeated and die a horrible death. And I didn’t know if I had the right to lead others to that same fate. In spite of the cloudy-bright sky overhead, I suddenly felt as if I was back in Tartarus, behind a wall of bars, staring into the black eyes of the man who wanted to claim my life and soul. That was the madness that I was willfully returning to face.

  I questioned my own sanity.

  “Are you afraid of what’s to come?” Cai asked me.

  I turned to look up into his clear hazel eyes
and could not find it within me to lie. “Yes,” I said.

  He smiled at my answer and said, “Good.”

  “Doesn’t that make me a coward?”

  “No. Sweet Juno, Fallon, no.” He took me by the shoulders, his face close to mine, and I could see in his eyes that he wasn’t just trying to make me feel better. He meant what he said. “It makes you human,” he continued. “And it keeps you sharp. Caesar once told me—on the eve of a battle—that he did not want men under his command who didn’t have the good sense to be afraid to die. He wanted men who wanted to live. Only fools or desperate men rush blindly into the fray without giving at least a fleeting thought to what they stand to lose if they don’t come out the other side.”

  “I grew up thinking that to be a warrior meant to have no fear,” I said. “To be brave above all else.”

  He thought about that for a moment. “That’s one way to approach it, I suppose,” he said. “But I suspect real bravery is knowing fear intimately—I mean feeling it in the very center of your bones—and then going ahead and fighting anyway.”

  I thought of what Pontius Aquila had said to me in my cage. About how he taunted me, saying he would take my courage, my bravery, and make it his own.

  Fine, I thought. He can have it.

  Instead, just as Cai said, I would keep my fear. And I would use that to bring Aquila and his vile Sons of Dis, and Nyx, and everyone who thought to cut me down, to their knees.

  I reached up and pulled Cai’s head down so that I could kiss him.

  “You don’t think any less of me,” I said, “now you know fear is my companion on the battlefield?”

  “No.” He grinned. “I think you choose your companions very wisely. Well, except for maybe Quint. He’s not quite right in the head.”

  I laughed. “No, he’s not. But with his help, we’ll send Aquila packing with his toga tucked up between his legs. Him and his wretched Sons of Dis.”

  A flicker of a frown twitched between Cai’s brows. So brief, I thought I’d imagined it. “Right,” he said, as his gaze slipped from my face and drifted over my shoulder. “And his Sons of Dis . . .”

  “We’ll send them screaming back across the River Styx to Hades,” I said.

  I expected to see an answering spark in Cai’s eyes, but his gaze had turned cloudy and distant. I put a hand on his arm, but it was clear that he was suddenly miles away from me.

  “Cai?”

  He blinked at me, as if just then remembering I was there, and smiled. But when he opened his mouth to speak, we were interrupted by Charon, hailing from the captain’s perch. Cai shook his head, as if to dispel an unwelcome thought.

  “Be right back,” he said, and kissed me on the top of the head.

  I watched him stride across the deck, wondering. There were still unspoken things—those shadows on the chasm bridge—hovering between Cai and me.

  When all of this is over, I thought, I will take him to our secret place in the ludus gardens and sit him down and talk those things to death. Then, once they are dead, I will forget they were ever there, and I will kiss Cai in the moonlight until it will seem like they never existed at all.

  I turned to go find Elka and almost bumped into Aeddan, who was suddenly standing right behind me. Dressed still in his black cloak and armor. A shadow on the chasm bridge. I stifled an impatient sigh and moved to one side so that I could slip past him—only to have my way blocked when he mirrored my steps.

  “What is it, Aeddan?” I asked, woefully unsuccessful at my attempt to conceal the irritation in my voice.

  He ignored it or didn’t notice. I looked at him and saw that he was staring after Cai and Charon. I crossed my arms and waited, one eyebrow raised, until he looked back at me.

  “Don’t you find it disconcerting to have placed your complete trust in the hands of the man who stole you from your home and sold you into slavery?” Aeddan asked.

  I shrugged. “No more than I find it disconcerting to place any trust in you.”

  He ignored that too. “And the Roman?”

  “If you mean Cai, then—”

  “He will betray you.”

  Shadows on the chasm bridge . . .

  I shoved away the whisper of thought, glaring at Aeddan and suddenly angry. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I think I do,” he said. “I know what the whore warned him about back in Rome before we left. Do you?”

  I felt my temper flaring. “Her name is Kassandra—”

  “It’s bad, Fallon,” he snapped. “Very bad.”

  Shadows . . .

  “What is?” My patience would allow him two more words out of his mouth. Maybe three. It turned out that was all Aeddan needed to make me listen. And they weren’t what I was expecting. Not at all.

  He hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Cai’s father.”

  “Senator Varro?” I frowned. “What of him? Has something happened—”

  “He’s one of them, Fallon!”

  I stared at Aeddan, not understanding.

  He shook his head in frustration. “One of the Sons of Dis.”

  I burst out laughing, just like Cai had with Kass in the prison courtyard.

  The very idea was laughable. Senator Varro—elegant and eloquent, kind and caring Senator Varro, a decorated hero of the legions and a respected statesman of the Republic—could not conceivably be one of those monsters. Preposterous.

  “It’s true,” Aeddan said.

  I stared at him hard, struggling to find the joke. Aeddan’s expression remained humorless.

  “Senator Varro is a war hero,” I said. “An honorable man. He served in the legions under Pompey the Great—”

  “And that makes him honorable?” Aeddan gaped at me. “The Fallon I used to know would never have said such a thing. Would he have been honorable if he’d served in the legions when they came to conquer our land?”

  “That’s not what I meant—”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He shook his head and turned a withering glare on me. “Here’s something I know about the esteemed Senator Varro from the time I spent with Pontius Aquila, Fallon. Since Pompey’s death, Varro has been vocal in his support of Caesar, but it’s a lie, Fallon. He hates Caesar, just like so many of his fellow snakes in the senate do. Hates him and fears him. Varro is secretly on the side of the Optimates—the very faction of Romans that Caesar is off fighting now in Hispania.”

  “So he doesn’t agree with Caesar’s politics,” I argued, growing increasingly uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken. “That doesn’t mean he’s part of that sick, subversive cult.”

  “That sick, subversive political cult, Fallon. Don’t be naïve,” he scoffed. “The Sons of Dis think the gladiatorial sacrifices grant them power. The kind of power they can channel into bringing down the mighty Julius Caesar. Whether someone like Varro buys into their beliefs or not, he still might very well see them as a useful means to an end. Caesar’s end. Add to that, the delicious irony that it would be a downfall set in motion by Caesar’s own treasured Spirit of Victory. You.”

  I looked down to see that I was clutching my arm where Aquila had carved his mark into my skin. I unclenched my fingers like they’d touched something hot and hid my arm behind my back.

  “I followed the girl back to the brothel, Fallon,” he said. “That night. She told me everything she knew.”

  “Liar. She wouldn’t tell me—”

  “I’m not you. I’m not as polite.”

  I glared at him, wanting to turn on my heel and walk away from his nonsense, but needing to know what he’d learned in spite of myself. “And what did she tell you, then?” I snapped. “What proof did she have? Is Varro, himself, one of her . . . her patrons?”

  “No.” Aeddan shook his head. “There is a junior senator named Fabius. A freque
nt visitor at the brothel. A fool, yes, and usually addled with poppy wine. But according to the wh—” He stopped himself when he saw the look in my eyes and amended what he’d been about to say. “—according to Kassandra, he’s never said anything while in his cups that hasn’t borne out as truth. That day, he was running off his mouth about secret gatherings, about ‘blood sacrifices’ and how he was going to be a force to be reckoned with soon . . . How the ‘great dark god’ would grant his ‘sons’ the strength to take on a tyrant. How ‘his master’ would soon be one of the most powerful men in Rome—”

  “Listen to yourself!” I shook my head. “You’re actually giving credence to the third-hand boasting of a drink-addled brothel hound, Aeddan!”

  So that was it, I thought, finally understanding Cai’s reluctance to even mention his conversation with Kass and realizing all along that I’d had nothing to worry about. It was ridiculous and embarrassing—nothing more than the delusional proclamations of a drunken degenerate—and I was sure he hadn’t wanted to tell me for fear that I might think less of a man I’d come to admire. His father. Senator Varro had been kind to me. Accepted me. Me. A gladiatrix, infamia, darling of the unwashed mob and wholly unsuited to even be seen talking with the likes of a senator’s son. Kassandra—and Aeddan—had it all wrong. And I couldn’t help but question Aeddan’s motives, at least.

  “Did Kassandra tell you whether this fool, as you yourself call him, ever even mentioned Varro by name?” I asked.

  Aeddan’s surety faltered. “No,” he admitted. “But if this Fabius is a protégé of Senator Varro—”

  I put up a hand to forestall any more of his nonsense. “I’ve heard enough. You can rest assured I’ll be the first one to sound the war horns if I see even the shadow of one of those twisted bastards, believe me . . . But you’re striking at shadows that aren’t even there.”

  “Am I?” He looked at me bleakly. “Tell me something, Fallon. Did you see any of the faces of the men that night in the catacombs of Domus Corvinus?” His eyes burned into me. “Do you think they were commoners? That party was attended by Rome’s powerful elite. How do you know Senator Varro wasn’t one of them?”