And Sorcha was gone.
I turned and bolted back out the door, a horrible foreboding writhing in my stomach like a nest of snakes. Back out in the courtyard of the ludus, it was chaos. Firelit darkness and shrieks, human and animal, tore the night air. On the sentry walkway that ran along the top of the compound’s outer wall, I saw figures dressed in black cloaks and helmets. The guards from the Ludus Amazona. For a confused moment, I thought they were helping defend us from attack . . .
But then I saw that the front gate was already open.
And the guards were faced inward, their weapons trained on us.
On my friends, my fellow warriors, some of whom lay bleeding on the ground, while others fought fiercely—most of them barehanded—against the girls of the Ludus Amazona, who were all dressed in dark tunics and armed to the teeth. My mind reeled in confusion at the betrayal. The ludus had been attacked, I thought, but like the old tale of the Trojan horse, the enemy had come from within. And opened the door to our downfall.
There was an unfamiliar chariot standing just inside the outer courtyard, and I knew, instinctively, who it belonged to. I didn’t even need to turn to see him stalking the perimeter of the chaotic scene to know he was there. I could feel his presence like a cold, oily fog, poisoning the air. Pontius Aquila. The Collector. My mind flashed back to that horrible night at the Domus Corvinus, to the memory of the men in black masks devouring the heart of a fallen gladiator in the caverns beneath Aquila’s mansion, and I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach.
The only thing other than Aquila’s presence that could have made this night as terrible as that one was . . .
“Gladiatrices!”
A familiar female voice, harsh and harrowing like the shriek of an angry crow, rang out in the darkness.
Nyx.
As if conjured out of the night by my very thoughts, Nyx leaped down from the sentry walk, cloak spread wide—darkness against the dark sky—like the Raven of Nightmares to land in the courtyard not thirty paces from me. In one hand, she carried the chariot whip she’d once used as a weapon against me. The braided leather rope hissed along the ground in her wake, writhing and twitching like a venomous serpent. One by one, the Achillea girls turned to stare, uncomprehending, at the girl who’d once been one of us.
“Rebels!” she continued, cracking her whip. “I call upon you to throw down your weapons!”
What rebels? What weapons?
The alarm raised by the barn fire had brought us all tumbling out of our beds and into the night without a thought to reach for swords and spears first. Which, I realized, had likely been the point of that blaze. The Amazona girls and their guards were armed, to be sure, but the only ones from our ludus who’d had weapons at the ready were the night watch. And they all—to a man—lay dead upon the ground. Nyx, as she spoke, was obliged to step over a prone body as she made her way toward us.
I wondered if Quint’s gambling and drinking had dulled their reactions.
I wondered if Cai and I were to blame . . .
I glanced around wildly for him then and saw Cai standing with Quint and Tully, all three of them with soot-blackened faces from leading the horses to safety. Four of the Amazona guards prodded them forward to join the defeated clump of gladiatrices at the center of the yard, and Quint suddenly lunged for one of the guard’s weapons. I gasped in horror as an archer up on the sentry walk spun and aimed, loosing an arrow, at the same time as Cai shouted for Quint to stop and threw himself forward in a tackle that brought his second in command to the ground. The arrow grazed past Quint’s cheek . . . and lodged in the breast of legionnaire Tullius, who was right behind him and never saw it coming.
All Tully had time for was a moment of surprise before he sank to his knees and toppled forward motionless onto the ground. The look on Cai’s face as he slowly got to his feet spoke murder. He glared at the man who stood framed by the archway that led to the main house, draped in a toga of indigo-dyed wool.
On the ludus circuit, he was known as the Collector, for his rapacious drive to own only the best fighters. I knew him as the leader of the Sons of Dis, a depraved and cultish secret society dedicated to the sacrificial worship of a god of the Underworld. The rest of the Republic, blissfully ignorant, knew him as the respected citizen and politician, Tribune of the Plebs, Pontius Aquila.
Heron and Kronos, along with the domestic staff, were nearest to him as he came forward. They gaped at the Tribune in disbelief as he strolled at a languid pace into the chaos of the courtyard, looking as if he owned the place.
We were about to learn, to our horror, that he did.
“It pains me,” Aquila said, in a voice loud enough to be heard by all, “the circumstances that dictate the manner in which I must now present myself to you.”
“And what manner is that?” Heron asked.
“This ludus,” Aquila continued, “is an extremely valuable asset to the Republic. A treasured facility wherein you”—he gestured to the ragged, angry gathering of gladiatrices—“who should be joyful servants of the citizens of Rome, have learned and honed your craft. Rome needs you, ladies. Rome treasures your ongoing contribution to her vital and vibrant culture. You are to be safeguarded. But you have clearly been led astray and therefore must also be instructed in the errors of your ways . . . and rehabilitated accordingly.”
“What in Hades are you talking about?” Kronos snarled. “What errors?”
Aquila regarded him with a studied expression of mild disdain. “Why, this rebellion, of course.”
“Rebellion?” Heron was aghast. “Are you mad?”
“Have a care, physician,” Aquila warned, glaring at Heron down the length of his nose. “It is clear to me that there has been an attempted revolt at this ludus.” He gestured at the lot of us standing there in sleeping shifts and bare feet, weaponless, defenseless . . . vulnerable. If this was his idea of a revolt, it was the furthest thing from the meaning of the word as I’d learned it.
And where in the wide world was Sorcha to refute such a ridiculous claim? I felt a sharp twist of fear in my guts and tried to tell myself the blood on the floor of her quarters didn’t mean what I thought it might . . .
“I am here to tell you,” he continued, as if we weren’t all staring at him like he was speaking Germanic, “in no uncertain terms that the Republic will brook no Spartacus-inspired rebellion. The Servile Wars are still fresh in the memories of loyal Romans and will not be repeated as long as there is breath in my body.”
The look on Kronos’s face told me that he would cheerfully arrange for that not to be an issue if he could. “What exactly brought you out this way, Tribune?” he asked, barely leashing the anger in his voice.
“A simple errand to escort my own fine warriors home in the wake of their performance at Cleopatra’s naumachia.”
His mouth twisted as he spoke the Aegyptian queen’s name, as though he tasted something bitter on his tongue. And how convenient, I thought, that he just happened to have a contingent of archers with him for his “simple errand.”
“Fortuitous, really.” Aquila shrugged. “I thank the gods they were here, and able to help quell this shameful uprising.” His expression turned stern and stony. “Now, in the wake of the untimely demise of she who was Lanista of this ludus—”
The twist of fear tightened into a knot in my stomach.
“You’re lying,” I said, choking on the words that came out of my mouth. “She’s not dead. She can’t be! You’re lying—”
“And what reason would I have to lie to you?” he said coldly. “Do you see the Lanista here among you?”
He spread his hands wide and turned in a slow circle, as if waiting for my sister to step out of the shadows. When she didn’t, he shrugged and dropped his hands to his sides.
“Were the Lady Achillea alive,” he continued, “I can assure you, I would be most happy to hav
e her taken into custody for her obvious dereliction in the management of noble Caesar’s facility.” The word “noble” bent under the weight of Aquila’s sneer. “But only the gods themselves know when—or even if—the Consul will return from the field, and so, in the interim . . .” He paused, seemingly for dramatic effect. “. . . I, Pontius Aquila, take due and rightful ownership of this facility and all those who reside within it. On behalf of the Republic, of course.”
“You can’t do that!” I cried.
“Who’s to stop me?” he asked. “You?”
Sorcha . . .
But I had seen the blood in her wrecked scriptorium.
I glanced around wildly at the other girls, at the ludus trainers, at Heron, silently pleading for any one of them to tell me they’d seen my sister. That she was alive. Hurt, maybe. Hidden. But alive! Face after face told me the same thing. Everyone standing there knew Sorcha and knew that if there was even a single breath left in her body she would have been there. Fighting for us. That she never would have let this happen in the first place. All I saw in the eyes of my friends was the terrible realization that it had happened. And Sorcha wasn’t there.
I felt a rush of blinding red rage wash over me and felt my fists clench into stones at my sides, all of my muscles tensing . . . But then I saw Cai staring at me, his own anger masked behind a warning expression, aimed pointedly at me. Tully was dead—right there at Cai’s feet—the guards were dead, there were arrows trained on all of us, and we were utterly defenseless. I didn’t care. No . . . I didn’t want to care. But I had to.
The Ludus Achillea was more than just me. More than just Sorcha. And what would my sister do if she was the one standing there in that moment instead of me? I could almost hear her voice in my head: Think first. Grieve later. Go down fighting only as a last resort. I spun back around to face Aquila.
“I know you Romans,” I spat, trying to think past my anger, past the cruel ache in my heart, to what Sorcha would have done and said. “I know how scraps of parchment bind you like blood oaths. And I know that even if something has happened to Achillea, then the ludus passes into the ownership of Thalestris!”
Heron gaped at me in surprise. But he was one of the Ludus Achillea’s trusted administrators, and I saw in his face that he was fully aware of that provision in Sorcha’s will too. He was simply astonished that I knew about it.
He took a step forward.
“The girl is correct, Tribune Aquila,” he said. “I will vouch for it upon my soul’s oath until such time as the document can be produced. With all respect, I must assert that the rightful ownership of this ludus passed from Julius Caesar to the Lady Achillea—the arrangements and transfers of monies finalized just this morning—and I myself have seen the further testament she herself signed, willing it unto Thalestris in the event that—”
“This testament?” Aquila interrupted, withdrawing a vellum scroll from a fold of his toga, as if he’d held it there in anticipation of such a challenge. “Ah. Yes . . .”
He unrolled the vellum with a snap of his wrist, and even in the darkness, I could see the bold black hand—words stroked across the document beneath my sister’s careful script—that had been added to the document. There was a signature beneath it, and the blob of a wax seal. I recognized it as an imprint of a coin Thalestris wore around her neck on a chain, bearing the likeness of winged Nemesis. The goddess of vengeance.
My dream came back to me, and Uathach’s voice whispered a dread warning in my mind. Vengeance . . .
“I believe, physician,” Aquila continued, pleasantly conversational, “insofar as you are a learned man, you would find everything in order were you to read this document in full. Your former Lanista’s legal—and binding—pledge that, in the event of her demise, the Ludus Achillea passes without limitation into the keeping of her primus pilus and longtime comrade, Thalestris the Amazon. And here”—he pointed to the heavier-handed script at the bottom of the document—“you would see Thalestris’s subsequent—and equally binding—pledge to deliver those same goods and chattels over into my ownership for the sum total of one silver denarius. Which I paid the Amazon in full not more than half an hour ago.”
“And where is Thalestris now?” Heron asked the Tribune, his gaze narrow and piercing.
“Who can say, really?” Aquila smiled thinly. “Probably halfway across Etruria by now, I dare say. Poor thing was utterly unnerved by the savagery of this attempted rebellion of yours.”
Thalestris. Unnerved.
Impossible.
The only thing I could think—the only thing that made any sense—was that Thalestris, as fiercely loyal to my sister as she’d always been, was dead too. Pontius Aquila must have taken the seal from around her neck. Forged her signature or forced it from her hand before ending her life. My sister and her primus pilus—the two fiercest warriors I’d ever known—gone.
Aquila shrugged and carried on, weaving his ridiculous fiction as if rehearsing what he would say to the courts when he returned to Rome with Sorcha’s will clutched tight in his grasping fingers. “Whilst my people subdued the uprising, Thalestris begged me to accept her offer in the hopes that I could restore order where she, tragically, could not. I graciously accepted, granted her clemency, and released her back into the wild.” He uttered a brief laugh at his humorless joke, before his expression went flinty again. His eyes were black and bleak and hungry as his gaze raked over us where we stood, horrified. “The rest of you, however,” he continued, “won’t benefit from such leniency. You’ll all need to learn the kind of respect and obedience toward me, as your new owner, that the Lady Achillea so very clearly neglected to instill in you.”
I saw Heron grow pale.
This was no misunderstanding. No error of perception on Aquila’s part that could be cleared up in a matter of moments with the right words from the right people. This was a runaway cart that had been set in motion a long time ago and had finally picked up enough speed to carry us all hurtling over a cliff. And while no one who was a passenger in that cart felt they deserved to be there, it was Lydia who was the first one to protest—by throwing the rest of us under the cart’s wheels, as if there was a chance it could save her neck.
“I’m not one of them!” she suddenly blurted, lurching out into the center of the courtyard, wild-eyed, her hair waving in a cloud around her face.
“Lydia—”
“Shut up, Fallon!” She ran to Aquila, bare arms outstretched, her pleading shaded with a kind of desperate, wheedling flirtatiousness. “She’s one of their leaders, you know—she’s probably the one who murdered the Lanista! I’m loyal to the Republic!”
Pontius Aquila’s gaze swept unblinking down upon her like she was a beggar in a back alley. Beneath contempt. I winced, sensing what would likely come next. Lydia seemed to sense it too. She was shallow, but she wasn’t stupid.
She took a step back, eyes darting side to side, like a cornered animal.
“Nyx, my dear friend . . .” She turned her pleading to the girl who’d spent their time together treating Lydia more like a lackey than a dear friend. “You know I’m just like you. I’m on your side! Tell the Tribune—”
That was as far as she got.
The crack of leather echoed across the yard.
Lydia screamed and dropped to the ground as Nyx’s whip caught her on the side of her face and blood poured onto the sand from between her fingers. I saw Gratia clamp a hand over her mouth as, between one breath and the next, the whip cracked again as it sliced across Lydia’s shoulders, rending the fabric of her thin linen sleeping shift and drawing an arc of bright blood. She shrieked again in agony, and before I’d really thought about what I was doing, I put my head down and ran at Nyx.
When she’d been at the ludus, Nyx had been very good at dishing out punishment with a chariot whip. It seemed she’d gotten even better at it in the intervening months. But that
was with a target more than an arm’s length away. In close quarters, it was a useless weapon. If Nyx couldn’t get a windup, she couldn’t crack the whip to devastating effect, and that was what I was counting on. I ducked under her arm and tackled her to the ground.
I’d thought only to keep her from killing Lydia. I hadn’t anticipated what would happen next: Nyx went utterly mad. I heard her growl like an animal as she thrashed beneath me. She brandished the heavy butt end of the whip like a club and caught me on the side of the head with it. Stars burst in front of my eyes, and I reeled back. Nyx was on her feet in an instant. The whip in her hand cracked again, the lash slapping viciously into the dirt beside me as I rolled frantically, half-blinded by the blow to my head. I tried to crawl, but Nyx slammed the whip across my back like a truncheon. Then again. And again.
How many nights had she lain awake, dreaming of the kind of revenge she would take on me for that moment in the arena? The moment when I’d ruined her life. I’m sure that’s how she’d framed it in her mind.
I’d thought, at the time, that I’d been trying to save her life.
Did you really? a voice in my head asked, muted by red fog. Or did you just want the satisfaction of seeing Nyx driven out of the one world she’d ever known? The only life she’d ever thrived in?
Nyx didn’t give me time to answer my own silent question.
A kick from her hobnailed boot lifted me off the ground and drove the breath from my lungs. I heard Cai shout and then the dull thud of a landed punch. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two of Aquila’s men dragging him back, semiconscious and struggling. My pulse roared in my ears. Nyx’s boot made contact again, this time with my shoulder. I think she’d been aiming for my head, but the kick went wide—a glancing blow, but still another burst of blooming pain. I clenched my hands into fists full of sand and threw it in her face, reaping curses—and a momentary reprieve—as my reward. It was enough so that I could scramble up to my knees and ready myself for her next attack.
But my only weapons were my fists. I made what use of them I could, and felt her nose crumple beneath my knuckles as we brawled. I’m not even sure she noticed. The blood flowed, painting the lower half of her face in a red mask.