The Triumphant, page 4
But . . . Venus was the Roman goddess of love—Nyx’s Greek fellows called her Aphrodite—and so maybe she was a goddess worth making the acquaintance of. I already had a surfeit of war goddesses. I smiled to myself and decided that, the next day, I would go to the temple, and I would offer up a prayer to Venus that she might put love in the heart of my dead enemy.
“My tribe believes it’s never a good idea to drink alone.”
The voice in the darkness startled me from my reverie, and I looked up to see Elka standing there. I hadn’t even heard her approach. She hunkered down beside me and pulled a wineskin out of a sack she had slung over her shoulder.
“Leaves you far too vulnerable to malevolent spirits,” she said.
“I’m not alone,” I said, tilting my cup at the ground in front of me. “I’m visiting a friend.”
“Well then, so am I.”
I snorted. “You hated Nyx.”
“So did you.” Elka grinned and twisted the stopper out of the wineskin.
“To be fair,” I said, “she did try to kill me.”
“On several occasions, ja.” Elka tilted her head and poured a stream of dark liquid down her throat, wiping her mouth with the back of one hand. “It’s not an uncommon reaction, little fox. I remember trying it myself once or twice.”
“If you’d really tried to kill me,” I said, “you’d be the one sitting here drinking alone. And I’d be the pile of ashes lying under all that dirt.”
“Pff.” She waved away the notion. “It would have been a rash decision. After all, I never would have made it this far without you.”
“Of course you would have.”
Elka raised a pale eyebrow in my direction. “Don’t underestimate your ability to kindle the fires of determination in those around you, my friend.”
I laughed. “That doesn’t really sound like a compliment.”
She grinned and took another pull from the wineskin she’d brought for the occasion. “More a statement of fact,” she said, then changed the subject before I had a chance to argue or backhand a compliment in return. “How’s Cai?”
I sighed and took a drink of my own. “Performing in two days’ time.”
“I know that. Quint and I are going together into the city to watch the games. That’s why I asked.” She glanced at me sideways. “I meant how is he?”
“I honestly don’t know.” I shrugged, avoiding her inquisitive stare. I hadn’t had any contact with Cai since he’d reported to the Ludus Flaminius. “He won’t see me. He won’t even write to me. I’ve sent messages, letters, but they all come back with the seals unbroken. I’m seriously thinking of visiting the ludus and demanding a visitation with Cai from the lanista himself. He’s been courting Sorcha’s favor for months now, after all. Wants to arrange a joint spectacle.”
“What better draw than a disgraced hero of the legions?” Elka shook her head. “Cai’s more infamia now than you and I ever were.”
“And it’s all my fault.”
“It’s his father’s fault.” Elka’s voice turned stern. “No one else’s. Least of all yours.”
“Then why won’t Cai even see me?”
“Maybe he needs to win in the arena first,” she mused. “Think about it. From respected decurion to reviled gladiator is a far way to fall.”
“You’re talking to an ex-princess,” I snorted. “It’s not as if he has something to prove to me, Elka.”
“Maybe he has something to prove to himself.”
She reached over and picked up the little beer jug I’d brought, pouring out the last of the liquid into both my cup and Nyx’s.
“Wait.” I turned to blink at her. “Did you say you’re going to the games with Quintus?”
She grinned, and if only the moon were a little brighter, I suspected I might have seen a blush tint her pale cheeks. “Are you going?” she asked, neatly deflecting the conversation again, back toward the subject of Cai’s upcoming contest.
If I was already in the city to attend the dedication of Caesar’s temple, I thought, it seemed a waste not to stay the extra day to see Cai’s match . . .
“Yes.” I nodded and drained my drink. “Yes, I am.”
Whether Cai wanted me to or not.
As we stood to leave and make our way back to the ludus together, I paused in front of another patch of ground, a plot set a little ways from the resting places of the Ludus Achillea gladiatrices, marked not with a stone but a newly planted yew bush. I pulled one of the empty cups from my bag and scooped up some of the earth, dark but flecked with ash, like Nyx’s. If I ever left this place, I thought, I would not want to leave what remained of Aeddan’s soul—whatever there was of him that had not found its way to the Blessed Isles and his brother, Maelgwyn Ironhand—there to languish alone. This way I could take a piece of his spirit with me. He deserved that, at least.
I stood with a sigh and gazed out over the little necropolis.
There might have been one more grave there that was the result of the night we retook the ludus, but Kallista and Selene and their Amazon sisters had requested of Sorcha that they deal with Thalestris themselves. Sorcha had agreed, and they’d taken her body, tightly wrapped in a plain linen shroud, and disappeared from the ludus into the surrounding countryside. They were gone for two days, and when they returned, they never spoke of it. But whether they burned her or buried her or left her beneath the sky for her bones to be scattered by the Morrigan’s ravens and wolves, I didn’t care. For what she’d done to Sorcha, it would serve for Thalestris’s spirit to wander lost forever. And if it made me cruel to think such a thing . . . then I had her, in part, to thank for teaching me such cruelty.
IV
THE MORNING OF the temple dedication dawned clear and soft, the sky in the east veiled with a sheer curtain of blush-tinted clouds that vanished with the rising of the sun. Italia, I’d learned, never really got cold. Not like Prydain. The relatively mild winter had begun to fade, but the nights and early mornings still bore a distinct and often biting chill. We’d left the ludus well before sunrise and had dressed accordingly—both for the weather and the occasion—but as the sun climbed higher into the sky, the cool spring breezes that reminded me of home curled up in the hollows of the hills like cats and went to sleep for the day. I shifted the palla I wore, like all the other proper Roman ladies in the crowd gathering in front of the temple steps, and pushed it back off my forehead, shrugging uncomfortably beneath the heavy hang of soft folds that draped over my shoulders and arms.
“This is ridiculous,” I muttered. “I feel like a swaddled babe.”
“If you can learn to wear boiled leather and bronze, you can learn to wear that,” Sorcha said, a glint of amusement in her eyes as she reached to tug the material back up over my hair.
Easy for her, I thought. She’d had years more practice.
As we approached the temple at the far end of the Forum, I glanced sideways at my sister, wondering what she was thinking. Her expression, as usual, gave away almost nothing of what she felt. I sometimes wished I had that kind of control over my emotions. Ahead of us, six tall men draped in saffron-dyed tunics carried poles that held aloft a litter bearing the offerings that were to be enshrined in the temple, including the armor my sister had been wearing on the battlefield when she’d made her bargain with Caesar and saved our father’s life.
To the other side of Sorcha, Charon walked along with us. He’d offered to accompany us and then take Sorcha back to the Ludus Achillea while I stayed on to attend the games with Elka and Quintus tomorrow. The slave master—well, ex–slave master, really—had become something of a fixture at the ludus. Over the months since we’d reclaimed the academy, after Charon had been so instrumental in helping us do that and saving Sorcha’s life in the process, he’d given up that particular aspect of his business. The only “acquisitions” Charon made these days were the infrequent purchases of likely gladiatrix candidates.
Charon had been in Prydain—Britannia—with Caesar during his campaigns to conquer the Island of the Mighty, offering his slaver’s expertise. He’d been there the night my father was captured. The night Sorcha had surrendered her sword at Caesar’s feet in exchange for Virico’s freedom. And he was here now, offering his sun-browned arm to her as we ascended the steps to the temple with its eight marble pillars gleaming in the morning sun.
Once inside, Charon stepped back and took up a place at my side as Rome’s elite shuffled about, arranging themselves for the best vantage point. He glanced at me and offered a wan grin, likely guessing what I was thinking in that moment.
“If you’d told my ten-year-old self that this day was in my future,” I muttered, “I would have cut your tongue out for lying. And maybe burned it for sorcery.”
Because when I was ten, my sister was dead. And Caesar was my greatest enemy. Now? Neither of those things was true anymore. Charon put a hand on my shoulder, and I sighed. Life was far too complicated, I thought, and there were far too many paths for my feet to tread.
And not just mine, it seemed.
Flutes and drums began to play, and the priestesses of Venus filed out onto the dais with their incense and offerings. They bore sheaves of flowers and baskets of fruit . . . and I was astonished to see that I knew one of them. Her long dark hair was unbound and fell forward, obscuring her face as she knelt to place her basket at the feet of a statue of the goddess, but I’d already recognized Kassandra, the girl I’d first met in a slave cage in the middle of Gaul. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been working in a brothel that catered to a mostly patrician class of patrons in the city. As she stood and turned, her eyes met mine and she blinked, as surprised to see me there as I was to see her. A small smile flickered at the edges of her mouth, and she gave me a little nod of greeting. Then she went to stand with the other priestesses, leaving me to wonder how her radical change of profession had come about.
It was strange. I’d actually been thinking about her over the last few weeks—about how she’d risked her own safety to try to warn Cai about his father—and I’d been meaning to pay her a visit. As music ended and the high priestess of the temple stepped forward, I decided I would try to speak with Kass after the ceremony. In the meantime, I resigned myself to suffering through the next hour or two of invocations and singing and incense wafting up my nose, all of it making me want to do nothing more than either nap or sneeze.
I envied Elka her decision to stay back at the townhouse.
* * *
—
In truth, I don’t remember much about the actual dedication ceremony. Perhaps because of everything that happened after, or maybe it was because I simply didn’t understand Romans and their gods. I do remember a few details: Caesar, wearing a laurel wreath on his brow, standing on the dais. His wife, Calpurnia, was at his side and looking as if she’d rather be anywhere else in that moment. I suppose I could hardly blame her. There were three statues in the temple. One, of course, of the goddess Venus. One of Caesar. And one, rendered in bronze and leafed in shimmering gold, of Cleopatra. Caesar’s paramour. I nudged Sorcha and nodded at the effigy. She bit her lip and gave me a wide-eyed glance that told me she didn’t fully understand Romans either.
When, finally, the thing was done and Rome’s elite filtered back out into the sunlight where the plebs mingled and milled, I told Sorcha I would catch up with her later and stayed back, waiting to see if Kassandra would appear. Eventually she did, trailing behind a group of priestesses who drifted like wraiths out from beneath the temple portico and down the steps, blending into the crowds below enjoying the festival that had blossomed in the streets surrounding the temple, with food and drink stalls unfurling canopies like leaves and merchants selling wares from carts and baskets.
I hurried to catch up with Kass, tugging on the sleeve of her stola.
She glanced over her shoulder without stopping, but when she realized who it was, she spun and reached for my hands, a genuine smile lighting her face. “Fallon!” she exclaimed, drawing me into a hug. “I’m so glad to see you . . .”
I hugged her back, feeling how thin she was beneath her robes. When she pushed me back to arm’s length, I saw that the shadows beneath her warm brown eyes were still as deep as the last time I saw her. But there was no mistaking the happiness in her expression at the sight of me.
“It’s been so long—and I was so worried,” she said. “We heard such stories of the ludus and Aquila. And you!” Her glance darted around the bustling street. “Of Varro . . .”
“I know.” I smiled and shook my head. “It was . . . well. A lot has happened. But everything is fine now. I mean, better. Much better. Mostly.” I didn’t know if she knew what had happened to Cai. I still wasn’t sure if Kass had—then or now—feelings for him. Although I suspected that, even if she had, the fact that she was a priestess now would render the issue moot.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, slipping her arm in mine as we walked away from the temple to find a space in the street that wasn’t so crowded. “I never suspected you as a devotee of Venus.” She grinned. “Minerva, yes, but . . .”
I grinned back. “My sister is here on Caesar’s invitation.”
“Ah. Of course.”
“I just decided to come along too.” I shrugged and glanced over my shoulder at the temple. “Mostly because I wanted to talk to your goddess.”
“Oh!” She blinked at me. “You did?”
I nodded. “She seems like she’s probably a bit busy right now, though. But I wanted to ask her to take care of a . . . friend.”
“I see.”
“How would you go about asking your goddess to do such a thing?”
“Well . . .” Her expression turned priestess-serious. “If this friend means a great deal to you, perhaps I could sacrifice a dove or—”
“No!” I exclaimed, recoiling from the thought of any living thing spilling blood because of Nyx ever again. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to waste a perfectly good dove. Not for this.”
Kassandra bit her lip and looked like she was trying to keep from laughing.
“What?”
“I think I might have misunderstood,” she said, something close to a giggle in her voice. “I though you wanted me to propitiate the goddess on behalf of you and Cai.”
“Cai?” I blinked at her. “But why . . .”
“She’s the goddess of love, Fallon.”
“Oh . . . Oh!”
She tilted her head and looked at me, frowning. “Aren’t you and he . . . I mean, aren’t you together?”
“We’re trying to be.” I sighed. “The rest of the world keeps getting in the way.”
“Ah.” Her frown shifted to a sympathetic smile. “I heard about what happened—with his father and Cai’s . . . disgrace. But I also know the truth of why it happened. And being a gladiator isn’t a dishonor to my mind.”
“Nor mine,” I said wryly.
She smiled and squeezed my hand. “Keep trying to be together, Fallon. A man like Caius Varro isn’t one you’re likely to come across more than once in this lifetime.”
We continued our slow stroll through the market stalls, the crowds streaming past us on either side. “What are you doing at the temple, Kassandra?” I asked. “I mean—that is to say . . .”
“It’s all right,” she said, shoulders lifting in a shrug that was almost a shiver. “Life in the House of Venus wasn’t agreeing with me so very well. But my mistress there was a good woman, in spite of her trade, and she thought the temple of Venus might suit me better.”
“Last time I saw you,” I said, hesitantly, “you told me of bad dreams.”
Dreams were the province of the druiddyn in my tribe, and talk of them usually made me—and any good Celt worth the name, really—wary. I wasn’t sure if the same was true of Rome and Romans.
Kass was silent for a moment before she answered, and I wondered if I’d offended her. But then she said, “Not dreams so much as . . .” There was that shiver-shrug again. “It’s . . . not important.”
I looked at her, wondering, as we passed a particularly tawdry market stall selling erotic talismans and cheap defixio—thin strips of tin carved with either a spell or a curse purchased by the desperate and the lovelorn, which would then be left on the altar of Venus as a votive offering.
Kass rolled her eyes and sighed.
“Sometimes,” she said, lowering her voice as the woman behind the stall eyed Kass’s priestess garb with a narrow gaze, “my dreams . . . they come to pass. If it keeps happening, the high priestess has said she might have me trained as a sibyl.” At my puzzled expression, she explained, “A soothsayer.”
“Ah!” I exclaimed, understanding. “We have those in my tribe—men and women—only we call them druids. My father’s druid, Olun, once told him that I would follow in the footsteps of my sister. For a long time, we’d both taken that to mean that I would die on a battlefield.” I shook my head. “Little did either of us know just how right his auguries were. Just not in the way we thought they were.”
Kass had lapsed into a strange silence beside me.
“It’s a position of great honor,” I said, trying my best to be encouraging. “The druiddyn are revered. And only a little frightening. They get the best seat at the council fire and are always served meat and mead first. At times they—”
I heard a soft gasp and looked over to see Kassandra staring down at her feet, an expression of horror on her face. I followed her gaze and saw that the cobbles beneath her delicate beaded sandals shone slick and crimson. The channels between the stones were red rivulets—it was like gazing down over a miniature hellish landscape carved by streams of blood. Startled, I rocked back a step and spun around to see who it was that had been murdered and lay emptying out their veins into the street . . .
