The Defiant

  I felt myself smiling as Cai plucked the lamp from my fingers and placed it on the bench to illuminate our midnight repast. This was the place where we’d come a fingerbreadth away from sharing our first kiss on the night of my oath swearing. This time, there was no near miss.

  The shadows beneath the tall cedar trees circled us like a dance of phantoms as Cai lowered his face to mine and kissed me on the mouth. I felt myself melting into his embrace as my arms circled around his neck. The night was warm and fragrant and wrapped around us as we wrapped around each other and sank slowly to the soft grass, the call of a nightingale soaring high over our heads in the darkness.

  My hand slipped beneath the short sleeves of Cai’s tunic and up over his shoulder. His, traveling the outside length of my thigh, traced the curve of my hip up past the hem of my tunic skirt. We both broke out into gooseflesh, shivering at one another’s touch . . . and then his hand stopped moving at almost the exact same moment mine did.

  Cai’s lips pulled away from my mouth, and he opened his eyes.

  “What’s this?” he asked, tapping a finger against my skin.

  “I was about to ask you the same thing,” I answered.

  My fingers rested on a raised ridge of flesh that crested the curve of his shoulder and felt puckered at the edges. His hand rested likewise on the scar of a recently healed wound I’d received in a bout with a gladiatrix from a new ludus that had recently begun operations on the outskirts of a coastal town north of us called Tarquinii. They’d held a day of games to celebrate the opening of the fledgling academy, and I’d sparred with a girl who’d fought retiarius. A less experienced fighter than I was, maybe, but I suspected that she’d grown up spearfishing; she tagged me soundly with her trident. One of the weapon’s three tines had sliced up under the leather straps of my battle kilt and left a gash that had thankfully been longer than it was deep. Heron had used the opportunity to teach Neferet how to sew a wound closed using sinew thread. I had passed out only once while she practiced her handiwork—more from the sensation of the needle tugging thread through my flesh than any actual pain, because Heron’s potions had already ensured I would feel none of that.

  I’d almost forgotten about the incident. It was nothing—a day in the life of a gladiatrix—but I knew Cai wouldn’t see it that way. He reached past me for the lamp and brought it down so he could get a closer look at my hip, hissing through his teeth when he saw the scar. When he looked back up at me, his expression had clouded over.

  “It’s just a flesh wound,” I said, tugging down my hem. “No damage to the muscle, and no infection. I limped for a week or two—that’s all. And I won that bout!”

  “I don’t like the thought of you getting hurt in the arena,” he said.

  I snorted. “We have that in common, believe me.”

  Cai opened his mouth and the look in his eyes told me I was in for a stern lecture—which I forestalled immediately. “Unh!” I exclaimed and tapped his shoulder. “I showed you mine. Now let me see yours.”

  He seemed rather more reluctant to share, and when he finally tugged aside his sleeve, I understood why.

  “Lugh’s teeth, Cai!” I gasped. “You look like you were attacked by a bear!”

  I was more than a little surprised when he started to laugh. “I was.”

  “What?”

  He nodded ruefully.

  “We were on a march through a thick forest,” he explained. “The troops were strung out in a narrow, tree-choked pass. I was mounted and checking the rear for any stragglers when I had the misfortune of coming between a mother bear and her cub. I’ve been convalescing for the past month. You might have won your bout, but I wasn’t quite so lucky with mine. Then again, the old sow wasn’t really fighting fair, but she definitely walked away from that bout the champion. I was just lucky that Quintus circled back to find me when my horse suddenly bolted past him, riderless.”

  “Oh, Cai . . .”

  The scars—three long parallel gashes—were still a bit livid, with ragged edges, and I could see the suture holes from where they’d sewn him up. Neferet had done a far neater job on me, I thought, than the army doctors had on Cai. Mind, I hadn’t been mauled by claws.

  “Does it still hurt?”

  He shrugged the material back down over his shoulder, stifling a wince. “It’s made it . . . challenging.” He frowned a bit. “I can still ride and swing a sword. But in a standing fight I’m useless in formation unless I can hold a shield. And I’m not quite up to that yet.”

  That didn’t surprise me. A scutum—the standard-issue legion shield—was a great heavy rectangular thing that covered a man from shins to shoulders. In a fight against a tribe of angry Gauls hurling javelins and fireballs, I would have cheerfully hidden behind one, but it took a deal of brute strength to use one properly. Gratia and Damya were fine with scuta, but I found the things awkward and near impossible to use.

  I moved to pull my hand away, but Cai reached up and held it there, pressing my palm against the scar through the material of his tunic.

  “The strength returns,” he continued. “Only slowly, and I’m a little less limber on that side. I decided I would try to make myself useful in other ways and requested this courier duty. Caesar agreed that his legions would somehow muster up the strength to soldier on without me and gave me the assignment to carry his papers to the Lanista. On the journey, I started practicing some basic dimachaerus sequences.”

  “So that’s it.”

  “To help build my strength back up . . . and in case I can’t return to regular soldiering.” A shadow passed over his face. I thought about what that prospect might be like. It would be like my not being able to return to the arena.

  “You’ll be fine,” I said. “It’s just a scar.”

  He ran his fingertip over my hip again. “Like this one?”

  I nodded. “Or . . .”—I reached up to pull aside the shoulder of my tunic and swung my hair out of the way so he could see my shoulder—”. . . this one.”

  I heard Cai make a small noise in the back of his throat as he traced the line of another scar. One of a pair of faded white lines, all that was left of some particularly nasty welts acquired during an encounter with Nyx’s whip. No permanent damage, but the marks had refused to fade, as if to perpetually remind me of my rival, even long after she’d gone.

  Only Nyx was the last thing I was thinking of as Cai leaned down to kiss the scar and sent a wave of searing heat washing over my whole body, head to toe. When he lifted his head, his eyes glinted wickedly at me.

  “There’s another one just like it on the other side,” I whispered, my voice gone husky.

  Cai brushed my hair away from my other shoulder and kissed the second scar. “You’re acquiring quite a collection,” he murmured against my neck.

  “Me?” I said, a bit breathless. “Do you mean to tell me that the only adversary who ever left a mark on you was a bear?”

  “Oh no . . .” He grinned. “See, here, these marks on my knuckles.”

  “I see.”

  “First fistfight I ever got in. It was with a wall . . .”

  “A fierce opponent, no doubt.” I lifted his hand and, just as he had done, kissed the pale marks one by one. I felt his fingers tighten convulsively on mine and smiled. “Is that all?”

  “No . . .” He showed me a long thin line running the length of his right forearm. “That was from a tribal rebellion on the Germanic frontier. My first real engagement. Now that I recall, I think that warrior had worse breath than the bear.”

  He was trying to keep his tone light, I could tell, but his voice grew ragged as I dropped a line of kisses all the way along that scar.

  “And is that the extent of your wounds?” I asked.

  “Well . . . you have yet to leave a visible mark on me.” He moved closer. So close our noses were almost touching. “But I’ve
a rib that aches in wet weather, thanks to you. And a deeper ache”—he grasped my hand and pressed it to the center of his chest—“here.”

  I could feel his heart pounding beneath my palm, strong and steady.

  “Have you asked your army physicians about it?” I whispered. “It might be something serious . . .”

  “I think it’s definitely serious. Probably fatal if left untreated.”

  If by treatment he meant kissing, then I suspected he’d more than survive the next few moments at least . . .

  Or maybe not.

  Thanks to Quintus the second.

  Cai and I were far too occupied to hear him right away, but eventually his throat-clearing and gravel-crunching caught at the edge of Cai’s attention, and I suddenly found myself kissing air.

  “Quint!” Cai rose to his feet and stalked toward his friend. “What in Hades are you doing here?”

  I stood too, tugging my tunic straight and smoothing my hair, trying unsuccessfully not to blush furiously. Quint tossed me a wave over Cai’s shoulder.

  “Game ended earlier than expected,” he said.

  “What happened?” Cai asked.

  “I’m a good gambler.” Quint shrugged apologetically. “I won all their money. Faster’n I expected. I offered to keep playing for fun, but by that time they were rather drunk and cranky and declined the generosity.”

  “Drunk?” I raised an eyebrow at him. “Sorcha’s men?”

  “That’s why I’m such a good gambler,” he explained. “I kept pouring them wine and me water—just enough to get them a bit wooly in the head—and it makes for much better odds.”

  “A little too good in this case.” Cai frowned at him.

  “Sorry.” Quint offered him a rueful grin. “At any rate, they’re all back out on patrol and probably looking for someone else’s night to ruin. So if I were you, I’d escort the lovely gladiatrix to her quarters and get yourself back to ours. Me, I’m going to make myself scarce until morning.”

  Cai sighed heavily and picked up the jug of wine we hadn’t even gotten around to opening. “For your troubles,” he said and tossed it to Quint. “Such as they were.”

  Quint caught it deftly and tucked it under his arm, chuckling. Then he threw us a salute as he loped off into the darkness. Cai packed away the goblets and platter into a linen sack and slung it over his good shoulder. He held out his hands to me, and I stepped into the circle of his embrace.

  “I wish your father didn’t want you back so soon, even if I understand now why he does.” I shook my head at him and ran my fingers over his tunic where it covered the claw scars on his shoulder.

  Cai rolled his eyes. “He worries too much.”

  “He’s right to do so.”

  “I’m just hoping he didn’t go and sacrifice a white bull to the healer god Aesculapius or anything so ridiculous . . .”

  He made light of it, but I knew that in his heart, Cai revered his father. Decimus Varro was like a Roman version of my father, Virico. Both big, strong, handsome men, devoted to their families and used to being in command. The senator had been a hero in the legions in his youth, and his son aspired to be just like him in much the same way that, growing up, I had aspired to be like my mother and my sister. I thought of my own father then, and how he had done all the wrong things to try to keep me safe. I’d come to accept that my father’s actions had come from a place of love, but at the time they had wounded me deeply. I was glad for Cai that his father seemed to be rather less destructive in his overprotective tendencies.

  “He just wants to see for himself that I’m still in one piece.” Cai reached for both my hands, clutching them tight to his chest. “And then he’ll be off to Brundisium and away on his trade mission, and I’ll be back here at the ludus before you know it.”

  “Of course you will.” I leaned in to him. “You need my help with your technique.”

  His eyes flashed and he bent his head to kiss me. A long, slow, teasing kiss that made my lips tingle and turned my skin to fireflies and feathers.

  “I look forward to our practice bouts,” he murmured.

  I was virtually breathless but managed a raspy “So do I . . .” in response before he stepped back and, glancing around to make sure there were no guards to see us, led me back toward the main buildings of the compound. He kissed me one last time at the fork in the path that led one way to the gladiatrix barracks, the other to the stables.

  My bed one way, and his the other.

  In that moment, I was suddenly, painfully aware that there was still a sharp divide between someone like Cai and someone like me—like the person I’d become. Somewhere deep inside, the Cantii princess stirred to life and protested that she should, by all rights, be sleeping where—and with whom—she damned well pleased. The gladiatrix told her to shush and be proud of her place as an equal among her sister warriors, with the freedom to stay or go and the obligation to abide by the same rules if she stayed. Even in Sorcha’s new order, that was the way things would remain. I’d have to learn to accept that, as long as I remained an Achillea gladiatrix. Which, because of my deal with Caesar, was for the foreseeable future. I sighed, and Cai seemed to sense what I was thinking.

  He wrapped his arms around me and kissed the top of my head. “One day,” he murmured. “One day, I will have you all to myself for as long as you’ll let me, Fallon. No rules, no ranks, no campaigns or competitions or other people’s ideas of what should or shouldn’t be to come between us. No decurion and gladiatrix, no slave and soldier—or even princess and patrician—just us.”

  “Just Cai and Fallon.” I sighed. “I like the sound of that.”

  “And we’ll each leave our weapons behind.”

  “Now you’re just being silly.”

  He looked down at me and grinned. “You’re right. But that day will come. I know it in the core of my heart. For now? Sleep.” A last lingering kiss. “Dream of your fierce goddess, dream of me, and keep a blade tucked under your pillow just in case you get into a fight with either one of us.”

  V

  WRAPPED IN THE memory of Cai’s embrace, I fell back on my bed and drifted off to sleep. In hindsight, maybe I should have put a blade under my pillow that night, like he said. Maybe such a talisman would have warded away the disaster that was to come, heralded—as Cai had unwittingly predicted—by a dream.

  In my dream, I wandered through a hazy portal and found myself standing in the fragrant and manicured courtyard garden of the Ludus Achillea. The statue of Minerva, Roman goddess of battle, stood motionless in the moonlight, pale and perfect. But that night as I approached her in my dream, something was different. When I stepped closer, my bare feet making no sound on the pebbled path, I saw that it wasn’t Minerva at all who stood there. It was my sister, Sorcha. And she wasn’t dressed in the helmet and stola of the Roman goddess but, instead, she appeared in the guise of the Morrigan, dressed in a long cloak of feathers that swept the ground. No, I thought. Not feathers . . .

  Iron.

  Her cloak was made of dagger blades. They rang like chimes as she lifted her arms and the cloak fell away. In the moonlight, the blood that dripped from them was black. And then I saw, sitting crouched at my sister’s feet, Uathach. My first fight. My first kill. I hadn’t dreamt of her in months.

  The Fury lifted her head. She smiled up at me. And then down at the body that lay, wrapped in the folds of what looked like a toga with a wide purple stripe. No. Not purple . . . red.

  “Victrix,” she said in her raven’s-croak voice.

  And then one other word that made my blood run cold.

  “Vengeance.”

  I bolted awake, soaked in sweat and wondering why the light from my oath lamp was crimson. But then I realized that it wasn’t my lamp. It was the light coming through my window. And then I heard it—the sound of horses screaming.

  The stables
were on fire.

  The stables where Cai and his two friends were sleeping.

  I threw on a cloak and ran down the hall, pounding on the doors of the other girls’ rooms as I ran. Servants were already stumbling out into the yard by the time I got there, half-asleep and calling for buckets and water. Cai was there too, leading a pair of horses from the stalls under the pall of smoke, and I gasped with relief at the sight of him. When I glanced over my shoulder, I saw that most of the other girls had come running from the barracks behind me.

  I hurried to untie the donkey from his post in the yard and saw Antonia lugging a heavy pail of water with her one hand across the yard. Cai ran by with another pair of terrified chariot ponies, Quint and Tully following right behind with more. Then Kronos was there, directing the kitchen staff to form a bucket line, but I couldn’t see Thalestris anywhere. Elka ran past, blonde hair streaming on the wind, as she hurried from stall to stall, throwing open the doors to let the panicked horses out. I saw Neferet carrying a wicker cage that held a squawking young raven—once nailed to my door in an attempt to frighten me—that she’d nursed back to health and kept as a pet in the barn. My mind flashed back to the dream. My sister wearing a cloak of iron raven’s feathers . . .

  Sorcha was nowhere in sight.

  “Go!” Kronos shouted when he saw me. “Find the Lanista!”

  My heart in my throat, I ran for the main house.

  As I pounded up the path, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the guest barracks, in the far west quadrant of the compound, were eerily silent and dark. When I reached Sorcha’s chambers, I found the place had been wrecked. Couches and tables were overturned, goblets smashed, and oil lamps spilled and smoldering on the finely woven rugs. Scrolls and the copper tubes they were stored in were scattered everywhere. One tube had the wax seal destroyed and was lying on her desk, empty. The tapestry of Achilles and Penthesilea on the wall had been torn in half, leaving only the dying Amazon queen hanging to stare down impassively at a pool of blood that was spreading in a slow creep across the tiled floor.