The Defiant

  Down the strand, I saw the second boat from our naumachia moored where there was a narrow wharf that jutted out into the water. It occurred to me then that whoever owned it—one of the obscenely rich patricians who kept a villa near Cleopatra’s—must have been a close friend of Pontius Aquila’s. And more than likely, one of the Sons of Dis. I wondered how deep beneath Rome their thorny roots really did grow.

  “Where now?” Cai asked in a whisper.

  I gestured for them to follow me, and set off down the beach. There was only one gate built into the high, smooth wall topped with jagged stone. But that wasn’t the only way in. As irritating as he’d been endearing, when it came to locked doors, Leander had proved his usefulness. For Nyx, and now for me. She’d used him to break out of the Achillea townhouse in Rome. I would use him now, gratefully, to break into the ludus itself.

  “There,” I whispered to Cai and Quint. “A service gate cut into the rock that leads down to cold-storage cellars linked by a tunnel to the kitchens. Leander described it to me on Corsica.”

  It was the gate through which Thalestris had stolen away—along with my captive sister—on that terrible night. I doubted even Nyx knew about it. I prayed to the Morrigan that she didn’t. Or if she did, that she hadn’t thought to suggest that Aquila station a guard there. Not that it mattered. It was our only way in and, guard or no, that’s where we would go, because I not only had Leander’s knowledge of the door, I had his key. I’d taken it from a leather thong he’d worn tied around his neck, before we’d buried him.

  I whispered a silent thanks to his spirit and hoped that whatever afterlife he’d gone over to was a pleasant one full of laughter and love—or at the very least, abundant flirting. The thought of Leander’s shade charming his way through a bevy of admiring female spirits brought a fleeting smile to my face.

  It faded the minute I stepped through the unlocked door, into a dark, rough-hewn stone tunnel that reminded me entirely too much of the catacombs beneath the Domus Corvinus. Sennefer had given us a few small traveling lanterns—lamps with dark glass shades that cast just enough of an eerie glow for us to be able to make our way through the passage without breaking our necks tripping on the uneven floor. After what seemed like hours, we came out the other side to a deserted kitchen. Hopefully, the rest of the compound would be just as empty, with all the occupants up on the wall or out in the arena field.

  Charon’s ruse had worked well enough, we already knew, and the Amazon girls he’d “sold” to Pontius Aquila were still being kept at the ludus. Nyx had apparently been quite pleased at the propect of a whole new crew of girls for her to bully and beat into submission. I reasoned that she would have most likely locked them away somewhere they could be kept watch on but also isolated from each other. That is, if she’d learned anything at all from having locked all the Achillea gladiatrices together in the infirmary, before we’d made good our escape.

  My hunch turned out to be right—unfortunately for the guard they’d stationed at the main entrance to the gladiatrix barracks.

  Once inside, we discovered that there were newly installed slide-bar locks on the outside of every cell door in the wing that had been our home. On every door except one, that is. When I reached it, I pushed my own door slowly open with a fingertip. The tiny room was empty, and just the way I’d left it . . . except for one thing. My oath lamp. It had been sitting in the middle of my cot as a message for Nyx. Clearly, that message had been received. And understood. There was nothing left of the delicate, colored-glass thing but shards scattered across the floor. In spite of the destruction of one of my most prized possessions, I felt myself smiling grimly. I pulled the door quietly shut and turned to Cai and Quint.

  “Open the doors,” I said in a low whisper. “Set them free.”

  One by one we slid the bars aside to open the cell doors, and the Achillea girls and Charon’s smuggled Amazons stepped out into the hall. Kallista, my headstrong young fishergirl, did a quick head count of her friends and breathed a sigh of relief. I did a quick count of mine and discovered girls were missing, Lydia and Tanis among them. But when the last door opened, and Damya lumbered through into the hallway, I almost cheered at the sight of her. She looked gaunt and pale—as if they’d been starving her—but her eyes were clear, and her gaze sharpened like honed iron when she saw me.

  She was down the length of the corridor and mauling me in a crushing bear hug before I had the chance to say anything. “I knew!” she said in a fierce whisper. “I knew you’d come back.”

  “Damya—”

  “That stupid goose Tanis. She was wrong, and I knew it!”

  “Where is she?” I asked, squirming loose of the dire embrace. “Tanis?”

  I was afraid she was about to tell me Tanis was dead.

  “She’s with them.” Damya’s mouth twisted and she spat on the floor. “With her—Nyx. Sold herself cheap as surely as if she’d still been a slave.”

  “What about Lydia?”

  Damya’s plain, open face turned stony. “Lydia is still in the infirmary. Heron calls her ‘unresponsive,’ but I don’t think even he knows what’s really wrong with her. She just lies there.”

  I winced, remembering how Nyx’s whip had opened up the side of the poor girl’s face. Maybe it had flayed her spirit too. I looked around at the other girls from the ludus.

  “Two others—Persis and Marcella—are dead,” Damya said.

  I felt my heart clench. “What happened?”

  “Nyx got bored waiting for Aquila to start killing us. So she threw those two into the ring one night with one of the Dis gladiators.” Damya shook her head, wincing. “He was near on three times their size, and you could tell he didn’t want to fight any more than they did. But he also didn’t want to die.”

  I closed my eyes against the anger and sadness I felt.

  “The girls did the Lady Achillea proud,” she continued. “That gladiator will have to learn how to hold a sword without a thumb. And he won’t be called on to entertain rich Roman matrons in their bedchambers anymore.”

  “Good for them,” I said, choking on a laugh that was half sob.

  “Aye.” She nodded. “That was the last thrust of Marcella’s blade, but one worthy of an Achillea gladiatrix. He cut her down before her next breath. They dragged away their bodies for burial, and that was the last I saw of them.”

  For burial. I prayed to the Morrigan that their ends had been so. As wicked as Nyx was, I could hardly imagine her participating in the kind of grotesque sacrificial rites the Sons of Dis perpetrated. I shuddered. And then I ignited.

  A coal of anger suddenly burst to life in my heart. This. This was the fate Aquila would consign my sisters to, I thought. This was why we were going to stop him. End him. And men like him . . .

  Men like Cai’s father.

  I glanced away from Damya to see that Cai’s gaze was locked on my face, his bright hazel eyes full of storm clouds. I could tell that he’d read my thoughts, and my heart ached for him. I wondered if he would ever be able to forgive me for what we were about to do. But as he looked at me, I saw his mouth harden into an implacable line. He nodded curtly, once, and then gestured me to lead on.

  I only wished his father hadn’t been able to read my thoughts as well as his son did. But the moment we stepped out into the lesser courtyard, that’s exactly what it seemed had happened. For all our stealth and subterfuge . . . for all the distraction of the spectacle going on outside the ludus walls, it seemed that Senator Varro had been expecting us, regardless. Because there he stood, dressed in black leather armor with a sword in his hand. And a detachment of Dis gladiators at his back.

  XVIII

  “I KNEW SOMETHING was amiss.” A self-satisfied grin stretched across Senator Varro’s face. “You see, you, Fallon . . . you never fought like you were playing for time.”

  He’d known. His soldier’s keen eye had to
ld him that it wasn’t me out there fighting in the armor of Victrix.

  “Keep them here,” he said to his guards. “Or kill them.” His glance flicked over to Cai and then away again.

  He turned and strode off, and his men wasted no time in idle parley but went straight to the attack. Cai parried and threw the first man aside and snapped a quick “Go!” over his shoulder. Then he and the others moved to clear a path for me.

  I swore, stomping the Dis fighter I’d knocked to the ground in the face with my heel. He went limp, and I leaped over him, running after the senator. If he managed to make it to Aquila, then all was lost. Everything.

  I sprinted headlong through the causeway, out into the small stable yard—and took the length of a pitchfork shaft in the stomach. I dropped to the ground, wheezing, and my swords fell from my hands. He’d ambushed me, lured me there away from the others, and hidden behind the wall, waiting.

  He bent down and picked me up. By my neck.

  Varro’s fingers tightened around my throat, squeezing. Scorching-hot tears splashed down my cheeks as I struggled, clawing at his muscle-corded wrists, my feet kicking helplessly as he lifted me off the ground. The blood roared in my ears as I tried to breathe, to no avail.

  “I fought against Spartacus and his cursed rebels, girl,” Varro hissed. “My legions cut them down like wheat in the fields. You are nothing against the might of Rome—”

  “Father!” I heard Cai shout, his voice ragged. “Let go of her!”

  But Varro was far too intent on wringing the life out of me to hear his son’s cry. He seemed to notice we weren’t alone in the stable yard only when Cai slammed into him shoulder first, knocking the senator off balance. With a snarl of rage at the interruption, Varro turned and threw me through the air. I glanced off Cai’s armored chest and landed in a gasping heap on the ground. It felt as though my head had been torn half off. The air I sucked into my lungs seared my raw throat, and I lurched up onto my hands and knees, retching hot saliva that pooled on the ground in front of me. The edges of my vision were tinged reddish gray.

  I tried to speak Cai’s name, but the only sound I could produce was a rasping growl. When I lifted my head, I saw through my tears that he was standing in front of me, legs braced wide, a sword held in either fist.

  “You even fight like one of them,” Varro sneered. “Like a filthy gladiator. A real legion officer would be ashamed.”

  “If you’re what’s considered a real legion officer, then I’d be ashamed to bear that title,” Cai said, his face twisting with bitter disappointment and grief. I watched whatever love he still bore his father die in his eyes in that moment.

  “You disappoint me, Caius. Your loyalty to that would-be emperor and his gladiatrix whores has twisted your mind.”

  “You were the one who pleaded with Caesar for my place as decurion!”

  “So you could see for yourself firsthand what kind of monster he is.”

  “Caesar doesn’t eat the hearts of his warriors!”

  “No, he just turns them into useless lumps of quivering, fearful flesh.” Varro drew the sword that hung from his belt and took a step forward. “Get out of my way, Caius.”

  “You know I won’t.”

  “Then you’ll die.”

  Cai’s father was a head taller than his son, and even though he’d been retired from legion duty for almost as long as Cai had been alive, he’d clearly lost none of his strength or prowess with a blade. But he’d also clearly never fought a gladiator before. Cai had. With two swords, as dimachaerus, all so that he could spar with me.

  What I’d learned on the boat, and on Corsica, was that a legionnaire was drilled in such a way that attacks and defensive moves came automatically, without thought. Denizens of the arena were drilled to think on their feet. To improvise and innovate. Varro might have thought it was weakness to fight with such a lack of discipline. I knew, in certain situations, it was strength. Cai knew it too. He knew it so well that his father never even anticipated that, while one of Cai’s blades parried his hard-struck blow, the other was on its way to finding the side gap in his breastplate.

  I watched in horror as, without the slightest hesitation, Cai thrust the blade between his father’s ribs. Right to the hilt. Varro’s eyes went wide and his mouth fell open in a silent gasp. The sword dropped from his hand and he reached for his son’s face.

  “My son . . .” he murmured, his eyes clouding.

  “You have no son,” Cai said, teeth clenched in a frightful grimace. “I renounce you, and your name, and your blood. I will not perform the rites for you, old man. I will not put coins for the Ferryman on your eyes. You go to Hades with no issue, no legacy, and no hope to ever walk the fields of Elysium beside my mother’s shade.”

  Varro uttered a wordless, strangled sound of protest as Cai pushed him away and then stood, the sword in his left hand dripping red, to watch impassively as his father’s body slumped in a heap on the ground. When Cai turned to me, there was no sadness in his eyes. No more remorse or grief. Only a slow-fading fury.

  “Fallon . . .”

  He strode toward me, dropping to his knees, to take me by the shoulders.

  “Fallon, can you speak? Are you all right?”

  I nodded, still retching and gasping for breath. The dark umbra at the edges of my vision made it seem like I was looking up at him through a portal, and I still wasn’t able to talk. But I could stand. And I could fight.

  “Give . . . give me my swords, Cai,” I managed finally in an ugly rasp as I staggered to my feet with his help. I could still feel his father’s hands around my throat, crushing the life out of me. “I’m going to finish this.”

  “We’ll finish this together,” he said.

  He pulled me close and bent his head to mine, kissing me hard on the lips. Then, without a second glance at the body on the ground, he retrieved my swords from where I’d dropped them when Varro had winded me with the pitchfork. He handed them to me, and together, we advanced toward the main gates of the ludus.

  Leaving his father, and his father’s hate, far behind.

  • • •

  We headed back to where Quint and Kallista waited with the others.

  “What happened to Varro’s men?” I asked.

  Quint snorted. “Seems these girls really were spoiling for a fight,” he said. “All of them.”

  Damya grinned. “I like them,” she said. “Where’d you find them?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it when we’re done,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  Swiftly, silently, we made our way to the main yard of the compound. There, we prepared for what I hoped would be the final act in the drama. The sounds of clashing weapons drifted back over the walls, but the ludus was almost entirely deserted. Pontius Aquila had turned out all his fighters, and he himself sat beneath a torchlit awning, high on a constructed platform that extended out from the guardwalk that topped the ludus walls. The platform was decorated in such a way that you could be forgiven for thinking it was Caesar himself who sat there. Even from that distance, I could see Aquila was surrounded by a crowd of fatuous, fawning men dressed in voluminous togas, and flanked by armed guards dressed head to toe in black. Their collective attention was wholly focused on the fighting that took place down below. I squinted past the fading spots that still clouded my vision and saw Aeddan was up there too, standing off to one side and dressed in the black garb of the Dis warriors. Clearly Aquila still trusted him. I wondered how Aeddan could stand being that close to the man.

  I wondered even more how Tanis could.

  She stood there, bow in her hand and a quiver on her back, dressed in black armor, and a wave of bitter disappointment swept over me. She truly was lost to us, and her betrayal of the ludus was my fault. I’d failed her.

  I would not fail the others.

  I glanced over my shoulder and saw that
Damya and the Achillea girls had formed up behind Cai; the Amazons, behind Quint. In front of us, the main courtyard lay open to sky, with nothing and no one to come between us and the gates, which stood wide that night, a testament to Aquila’s arrogance. Then again, how much arrogance was it, really, when his forces clearly outnumbered ours?

  Or so he thought.

  I was also fairly certain Aquila expected that the moment “Victrix” succumbed to the perilous combination of Nyx’s vicious onslaught and the hemlock Varro had supposedly been dosing me with, the Achillea warriors would lose all heart and either flee the field or be cut down like wheat before the scythe.

  But he was about to be disappointed.

  And it was Nyx who would falter. That, I swore to the Morrigan.

  I signaled to Cai and Quint, and, together, we all moved out. Keeping to the cover of the shadows beneath the walls, I led my gang of stealthy warriors to the open, beckoning gates. Signaling them to wait, I peered around, spying through the crack between the great oak doors and their enormous bronze hinges.

  Nyx’s back was to the ludus. The timing couldn’t have been better.

  I stepped into the empty archway.

  The warriors at my back followed.

  Sorcha saw us standing there, framed by the yawning maw of the gates, like the Morrigan’s own war band, loosed from our bonds in the Lands of the Blessed Dead and sent forth to exact the goddess’s vengeance on the unworthy. Sorcha raised her sword in that moment and backed off. I suspected that Nyx was already furious and frustrated at not having been able to kill “me” yet, and that must have only added to her confusion. She wasn’t alone.

  The crowd expressed their confusion and displeasure right along with her.

  “Come on, damn you!” Nyx howled over the hectoring voices.

  And then Sorcha reached up and snapped open the buckle on the side of her helmet. She lifted it from her head, and Nyx staggered back as if she’d seen a ghost. She probably thought she had. As far as she was concerned, Thalestris had already ended Sorcha’s life, days earlier, beneath the light of a full moon and surrounded by her tribe of warrior women.