The Defiant

  “What—why didn’t you say so?” I sputtered and spun in a circle, checking my tunic for obvious stains or creases and patting down my hastily plaited hair.

  Senator Decimus Fulvius Varro was one of the wealthiest, most influential men in Rome. He was a war hero, having served with distinction under Pompey the Great, and now, in his retirement, was an esteemed senior member of the senate and a successful businessman.

  More to the point, he was Cai’s father. And he liked me.

  At least, that was the impression he’d given. My mind flashed back to the very first time I’d met him. It was in the heady moments after my victory in the Triumphs—and in the wake of a very public display of affection from the senator’s son. Cai had vaulted the spectator barrier of the Circus Maximus to, quite literally, sweep me off my feet in an embrace. Our kiss had sent the crowd in attendance into a frenzy of cheering and swooning.

  I’d been half-convinced it would be the end of us when, afterward, I saw a man pushing through the celebratory crowd with focused purpose. A man who looked like Cai. Tall and handsome, an elegant figure with a soldier’s bearing, draped in a purple-striped toga with dark hair just beginning to shade to silver.

  “Victrix,” he’d greeted me with a serious look on his face. “I salute your victory. But I couldn’t help noticing that not only have you defeated your adversaries, you seem to have ensnared the affections of my one and only son whilst doing so.”

  Cai had been pulled away from me by a group of young men, friends of his from the stands who were heartily backslapping and cheering him over his impulsive, romantic declaration. I was on my own.

  “Senator Varro.” I bowed, my mouth going dry. “I . . .”

  “We shall have to have you to the house to dine.”

  “I . . . I beg your pardon?” I blinked at him, thinking I’d misheard.

  His expression, with the twitch of his lip, softened into an amused grin. “So that I might come to know you better, my dear,” he explained. “I can already see from your performance today why his warrior’s heart is drawn to yours. In time, perhaps, I may come to know better the woman who appeals to his soul.”

  I’m certain I blushed a fiery shade of crimson, but he was kind enough to pretend not to notice.

  As a gladiatrix—even one who’d just won the crowd in spectacular fashion—I was still infamia. A social pariah where the houses of the Roman elite were concerned. But not, it seemed, to the senator. In the few brief moments we’d shared at the Triumphs, he was kind. Gracious. Effusive in his praise of my martial prowess, and clearly bursting with pride over his son’s accomplishments. And in the months since that time, he hadn’t actively discouraged a relationship between Cai and me, although I hadn’t yet received that invitation to dine at his house in Rome. Mostly because Cai had been called away soon after to Caesar’s campaign in Hispania, and the opportunity hadn’t presented itself.

  Now, though, Senator Varro was in the courtyard of the Ludus Achillea, and I wondered what in the wide world had brought him there.

  “Well, Fallon?” the senator asked me for the second time. He gestured toward the heavy-axled cart before him. “What do you think?”

  I stood there, staring. Lost in a moment frozen in time.

  “Do you like it?”

  An exquisitely sculpted marble frieze lay on the cart. It looked as though it weighed more than the team of oxen that had transported it there. It was a gift—commissioned for the ludus, to be placed above the main entranceway of the academy: longer than two tall men stretched out end to end on the ground, it was a breathtaking, lifelike depiction of a band of warrior women engaged in fierce battle, facing off against an opposing army of men, weapons brandished, mouths open in battle cries.

  Senator Varro had generously funded the piece from his own overflowing coffers to commemorate the occasion of my victory in the Triumphs and the imminent passing of the Ludus Achillea into my sister Sorcha’s hands.

  “Such things—such extraordinary occasions, and such extraordinary women—should be celebrated,” Varro had said when I’d first arrived, out of breath and trying not to look it, in the yard where he and my sister stood waiting for me.

  Then he’d thrown back the canvas sheet covering his gift so that Sorcha and I could see.

  “Sisters in arms,” he said, with a sweeping gesture. “For sisters in arms.”

  In the wake of the Triumphs, it had become general knowledge that the Lanista of the Ludus Achillea was my sister, so I’d known Cai’s father was aware of our connection. But, as a Roman statesman, I wouldn’t have necessarily thought he’d consider it important. I wouldn’t have thought he’d consider it at all. But he clearly did. He had. And it made my heart beat a little faster, thinking that the father of the boy I loved could appreciate the kind of bond that Sorcha and I shared. It gave me small, secret stirrings of hope for another bond—the one between me and Cai . . .

  I shook my head and dragged my attention back to the marble lintel.

  The stonemason artisan who’d created the masterpiece was flapping about underneath the archway, directing his apprentices to erect the wooden scaffolds they would use to maneuver the heavy slab into place above the main gate. Along with ropes and, I suspected, a generous amount of swearing.

  “It’s beautiful. That one looks like you, Sorcha,” I said, pointing to the main figure on the frieze.

  My sister glanced at me sideways. “That was not the intent,” she said, deferring to the senator, “I’m sure.”

  Senator Varro grinned. “A happy coincidence, perhaps,” he said.

  I noticed the hint of a blush creeping up Sorcha’s cheeks as the senator pointed to the two main figures, facing off against each other at the center of the carving.

  “It’s a representation of the legendary battle,” he continued, “between the Amazon queen Penthesilea and the hero Achilles at the Fall of Troy.”

  “Like the tapestry in your room,” I said to Sorcha.

  “A gift from Caesar,” she explained to the senator. “From when he and I first founded this ludus, together.”

  “But this is different,” I said. “On the tapestry, the queen is dying.”

  “She is,” Sorcha said. “That scene shows the moment of the Amazons’ defeat by Achilles and his men.”

  “Like your first fight as a gladiatrix against Thalestris’s sister,” I said. “That’s why they called you Achillea and Amazona.”

  Sorcha nodded, gazing at the marble frieze as if mesmerized. “Here, though, she’s barely even begun to fight. An interesting choice, Senator.”

  “Caesar is, of course, entitled to his idea of the story’s key moment,” Senator Varro said pointedly. “I only hope you can enjoy my own humble interpretation as well.”

  I glanced at the senator, surprised. There were not many men in Rome who publicly disagreed with Caesar, even when he wasn’t there to hear it. The only other man I’d seen do such a thing was Pontius Aquila. And Caesar still took every opportunity to remind him of that particular folly. Coming from the senator, such a thing was an impressive display of either confidence or recklessness. I wasn’t sure which. But if Sorcha, as Caesar’s own Lanista, was taken aback by Varro’s comment, she didn’t let on.

  “Of course,” she said, gracing him instead with one of her rare, full smiles. “It is a generous and thoughtful gift. The ludus will treasure it. As will I.” She linked an arm through his. “You will stay and dine with us tonight?”

  “I would love to, Lady Achillea,” he said, patting her hand, “but my business calls me home to prepare for a trade expedition. I only wanted to deliver this before I go.”

  “A cup of wine, then,” she said. “At least.”

  “If your delightful sister will join us,” he said, turning to me.

  Sorcha led him toward the main house, saying, “Indeed. She can pour the wine.” br />
  • • •

  “It seems you made quite an impression,” Sorcha said later, after we’d walked the senator back to his horse and seen him on his way.

  The dryness of her tone made me glance at her sideways. “I barely said a word!” I protested. “I was trying to behave myself. Like you—a proper Roman lady.”

  It was true. I had tried. Although to what degree of success, I wasn’t sure. Sorcha, in her time living among Romans, had managed to figure out how to fit into their society. How to dress like them, eat like them, and navigate her way through their baffling customs and social niceties. Me? I’d sat there, a cup of wine in my hand, listening to endless small talk about politics and Caesar’s wars and senate squabbles, and the state of the Republic, and on and on . . .

  When all I’d wanted to do was ask Senator Varro if he’d heard from Cai. How was he? When was he coming home? Did he ever mention me in his letters?

  My raging curiosity was to remain unsatisfied.

  “I didn’t mean just now,” Sorcha said, turning back from watching the senator depart. “I meant in general.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Together we walked back toward where the marble slab still lay gleaming in the sunlight upon the cart.

  “This frieze is meant to be seen by everyone who passes through that gate,” she said. “And everyone will know that it was Senator Varro who gifted it to the ludus. A man of power and prestige. Your win at the Triumphs has helped legitimize what we do here, little sister. I’m proud of you.”

  I half wanted to roll my eyes at her, and half wanted to bask in that praise. It was something I’d never thought I’d hear from Sorcha, even though I’d lived my whole life wanting to. I glanced over at her, but her attention had drifted and she seemed lost in thought, gazing down at the carved figures. Her lips moved and she murmured something in Greek. I could recognize the language, but I couldn’t understand the words.

  When she noticed me looking at her, she smiled and repeated herself, not in Latin but in our own tongue. “‘Not in strength are we inferior to men,’” she said, “‘the same our eyes, our limbs the same; one common light we see, one air we breathe. What then denied to us have the gods on man bestowed?’”

  “What’s that from?” I asked. “Some bard’s tale?”

  “Penthesilea was said to have uttered those words at the battle of Troy.”

  “That women are equal to men . . .”

  She nodded. “Not better, not different, not lesser. The same. She was a wise woman.”

  I ran my fingertip over the wheel of the stone chariot the Amazon queen rode in. “I think the legends got it wrong,” I said. “I think Penthesilea’s side won this battle.”

  “Why do you say that?” Sorcha asked, one eyebrow raised. “Because she looks like me?”

  “No . . .” I pointed to the figure with swords raised, running toward the fight directly behind the queen’s chariot. “Because that one looks like me. How could she possibly lose?”

  Sorcha laughed and swatted at my ear. In the distance, the faint sounds of combat practice echoed through the ludus yards. I looked at my sister and saw that, as ever, a corner of her mind was attuned to those noises. The sharp ring of metal, the shouts of the fight masters and cries of the girls as they challenged each other. I imagined Sorcha could see in her mind everything that was happening just by the sounds she heard. Every blow that hit its mark, every swing that went wide . . .

  “Do you miss it?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Fighting. The excitement . . . the glory.”

  Her hesitation was so slight, it could almost have been my imagination. But it wasn’t. “No.” She shrugged. “Of course not. And with my limitations I’d only be a liability in the arena now, anyway.” Her left hand clenched once, convulsively.

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  She lifted an eyebrow at me. The gesture gave subtle emphasis to the scar that ran from her hairline down her forehead, stopping just above her eye. “Really.”

  “I think, in your case, your ‘limitations’ are actually assets.”

  She frowned, but I put up a hand.

  “I’m serious!” I said. “I’ve seen you fight, Sorcha—and I don’t mean just when we were girls growing up in Durovernum. That night I saw you sparring with Thalestris? The way you compensated and improvised . . . it makes you unpredictable. And that makes you dangerous. I mean, even more dangerous.”

  She hesitated again, but then shook her head, smiling. “I’ll leave the arena to you and your friends, little sister,” she said. “And the glory. My warrior days are done and I’m content.”

  Maybe that was true, but the strange thing was . . . I wasn’t sure contentment actually suited her. Like an exquisite Roman stola, she wore it well. Maybe just not quite as well as she used to wear war paint and leathers. I tried to think if I’d ever seen her relaxed, even when we were girls, and I didn’t think I had. I’d seen her fiercely happy, determined, focused, busy, but never just . . . present. Never soaking in a moment. There had always been a kind of tension in the air around Sorcha, even in stillness. She carried it with her, like she was her own little cloudburst just waiting to explode into a full-blown tempest.

  A restless heart, our father had said of her. Of me? A reckless one.

  “Virico would be proud of you,” Sorcha said quietly, as if she could sense I was thinking of him in that moment.

  I shrugged. “I’m not so sure. I wear Roman armor and fight at the pleasure of his greatest enemy.”

  “You’ve done what you had to to survive. And you’ve thrived.”

  “We both have.”

  She nodded, her gaze thoughtful and fixed on a faraway vision in her mind. She missed home, I knew. We both did. When Sorcha had made a deal with Caesar, she’d done it to save our father’s life, pure and simple. My deal had been a bit more complicated. But both had meant neither of us would return home any time soon.

  “We could send word . . .” It wasn’t the first time I’d suggested it.

  “To what end, little sister?” She sighed. “No. Far better for Virico to think of his daughters happy in the Lands of the Blessed Dead with our mother, rather than living in the marble halls of his worst enemy halfway across the world.”

  She hugged me—a brief, hard hug—and sent me back to my practice. I made my way to the equipment shed, thinking about what she’d said. She was right. And there was no way Father would ever know the difference anyway, I reasoned to myself. Aeddan was the only one who even knew that Sorcha and I still lived, let alone where and how, and Aeddan was an outcast and a murderer. He would no sooner return home than I would.

  The last time either of us had seen the shores of Prydain had been shortly after the night of my seventeenth birthday and the feast in my father’s great hall that had ended in heartbreak. And bloodshed. The night I’d asked Maelgwyn Ironhand, the boy I’d loved, to wait for me to be made a member of my father’s royal war band before pleading for my hand in marriage.

  Warrior then wife—that was what I had decided.

  And then the door slammed in the face of both those dreams. My father had not made me a warrior but he had tried to make me a wife, in the worst possible way. By giving me, instead, to Mael’s brother Aeddan. They’d fought . . . and Mael had died. And I’d run away from the whole sorry mess, only to find myself a slave. And then a gladiator.

  Sorcha was right, Virico was better off never knowing. If he ever found out the truth of that night—how, in trying to protect me from a life of danger, he’d instead set me on a path headed straight to the arenas of Rome—he would never forgive himself. I still wasn’t even sure I’d forgiven him. But there was also a part of me that wondered if my father’s decision hadn’t been a part of the goddess Morrigan’s plan for me all along. It had set my feet on the path that had led,
ultimately, to the Ludus Achillea. To Sorcha. To the one place where I truly seemed to belong.

  I thought about that as I chose the blades I would practice with that afternoon. I was what I was. A gladiatrix. More than that—I was Victrix.

  And that was the way I wanted it.

  • • •

  Life at the Ludus Achillea carried on, and almost a week after the senator’s visit we were still hosting an utterly joyless pack of Amazona gladiatrices. My patience with them was wearing extremely thin. They were a sullen and humorless lot and cast a pall over the practice pitch—made worse by the gloomy presence of their black-garbed “escorts”—and, on top of that, I was beginning to give up hope I’d ever get another letter from Cai.

  Even Elka had begun to take pity on me.

  “I’m sure everything is fine,” she said that morning, putting a hand on my shoulder after I’d let loose with a particularly exuberant stream of cursing, having absentmindedly bashed my shin in practice right in front of a contingent of smirking Amazona girls. Elka must have noticed—as had I—that there’d been no mail courier at the gates that morning. Again. “He’s probably just too busy hacking Caesar’s enemies to bits to pick up a quill.”

  I stood there, unwilling to be mollified, glaring bleakly at Elka as her gaze slid away and drifted over my head.

  “On the other hand,” she continued after a moment, “I suppose it’s possible that he’s forgotten about you entirely.”

  My glare, I’m sure, went from bleak to baleful.

  “I mean . . . probably not.” She rolled an eye at me. “But you never know. Soldiering is a lonely life. Tedious. All that marching through foreign towns filled with strange women. Those Hispanian girls . . . I’ve heard they can beguile a man with a dance.”

  “A dance . . . ?”

  She nodded. “They do it barefoot and—”

  “The only dancer I’m interested in wears sandals and carries two swords.”

  I spun around at the sound of a familiar voice just beside my ear.

  “Cai!”

  Decurion Caius Antonius Varro—real as life and standing not two paces away—grinned down at me, his clear hazel eyes sparkling with light. I felt a huge smile split my face, ear to ear. A laughing Elka slapped me on the shoulder and wandered off. It took every last infinitesimal amount of self-control I could muster not to throw myself into Cai’s arms and devour him with kisses, right there in front of the whole academy and those of the Ludus Amazona who cared to watch.