A deadly silence descended on the gladiators.
“And we know,” Albinus said. He’d lowered his voice, but Xanthus could still feel the frustration seething from him. “We know how much you hate this, Xanthus.” Albinus shook his head and smiled bitterly. “You wanted to let the Taurus kill you, but you stayed alive to save that sobbing heretic. But what now? What about your new Thracian? What do you think will happen to her if you’re not around anymore? And what about us? We’re your brothers, Xanthus. Do you plan to stay alive for us?”
It was then that Xanthus understood the hurt he saw on the others’ faces. He’d seen his willingness to die in the arena as a reprieve, a chance to find some semblance of peace. But to his brothers, it must have seemed like betrayal, abandonment. Guilt swirled in the pit of his stomach.
“You’ve played with death for a long time, brother,” Albinus said. “But that needs to end now. It’s about time you decide if you want to join the living, or if the next body that falls in the sand will be yours.”
Albinus kicked his training sword aside before walking toward his quarters at the rear of the training yard.
One by one, the others went back to their own rooms, leaving Xanthus standing alone in the dust.
*
It seemed that Sabina had finally managed to find a chore in the house with which Attia couldn’t be too destructive.
Armed with rags and a bucket, Attia was sent alone to wander from room to room—dusting, scouring, sweeping, scrubbing. Not even this task was new to her. In her father’s camp, every warrior was responsible for his—or her—own gear and weapons. All her life, Attia had kept her own tent tidy and her own horses groomed. She might have been the crown princess, but she was far from pampered.
Attia tried not to think about the fact that everything she was touching now belonged to Timeus. Of course, that fact also made it rather easy for her to be fairly lazy about her task. There were plenty of other cleaning slaves, she reasoned. If she forgot to wipe a table or sweep a room or do anything at all, someone else would do it. Probably.
With that in mind, she left the first six rooms as she found them, wandering around just long enough to get a good look at what was inside each one. In one unfurnished room, she saw the dark-haired woman leaning against the balcony, her back to the half-open door. She was dressed differently, though, wearing a formless beige dress with a neckline up to her jaw and sleeves that reached her wrists.
Not in a particularly social mood, Attia skipped that room and kept going until she reached a heavy, ornate door at the end of the hall. She opened it, and her immediate reaction was resentment tinged with curiosity.
Timeus’s study.
The room was circular, set into the southeastern corner of the villa, with a single wall that curled all the way around to meet either side of the doorway. Four windows, each covered with thin linen, let in a good deal of light, and Attia saw that the entire room was lined with shelves brimming with scrolls. In the center was a massive desk covered in maps and letters.
She closed the door behind her, heading straight for the desk.
The map grabbed her attention first. It was made of papyrus and composed of thirteen different sections, all fitted together by silk thread. Yet another measure of Timeus’s wealth. By the texture of the papyrus, she could tell it was fairly new—probably made no more than a year or two ago—and it was as detailed a picture as she would ever get of the capital city of Rome.
Her eyes followed the blue meandering lines of the city’s aqueducts, which the Republic had been building and improving on for nearly two hundred years. Dark brown lines crisscrossed in every direction, denoting streets and alleyways. And marked by thick black lines were the infamous paved roads that led from the heart of Rome to the far corners of the Republic.
For a long time, she studied the tiny script that covered the map, naming the roads and borders and major households. The estate belonging to the House of Timeus apparently sat on the coastline west of Palatine Hill. The writing was neat and straight, and used proper Latin rather than the Vulgate used by the common folk. It was still easy enough for Attia to read. Her father had spent years tutoring her in Latin and Greek writing, insisting that his heir should be educated in literacy before war.
Using her finger, Attia traced the black line of the road that led most directly east—to the shores of the Adriatic and the borders of Thrace. My way home … if there were a home left to go back to. She let her hand fall heavily onto the corner of the map, hardly caring if her carelessness tore the delicate papyrus. How ironic to have such information and no way to use it. To want to fight but have a body that could barely run.
Frustrated, Attia turned away from the map and started riffling through the letters and papers stacked along the edges of the desk. Most were short and formal—abundant praise for Timeus’s victory in the arena, invitations to dinners and political functions, requests for matches with the champion. Just like the map, the language of the correspondences was all in proper Latin rather than the Vulgate, though the language was embellished and stylized. Likely the work of employed scribes. Only when she’d cleared aside a particularly deep stack did she see a name that grabbed her interest: Flavius.
She knew that name. Everyone did. It was the name of the royal house perched on Palatine Hill—the family name of Princeps Titus, ruler of the Republic of Rome. Attia pushed aside a few more open scrolls, trying to get a clearer view of the flat sheet of parchment. It was nearly the size of the map, but not as full. There were lines, too, connecting names, dates, ranks, and places. It was a detailed family history of what was currently the most powerful family in the Republic.
Vespasian’s name was known well enough, written at the very top. He’d been a soldier and a senator who eventually came to rule over Rome through a combination of cunning and treachery—namely, killing any man who tried to challenge him. After his death the previous winter, his son, Titus Flavius, had inherited the title of Princeps Civitatis, which literally translated to “first citizen.” Titus alone had ruled Rome for nearly a year, and if he’d taken a wife since, it wasn’t recorded on the parchment.