Ennius smiled. “But the crowds always love it.”
The man was too easy to play with. Xanthus managed to draw the fight out for ten minutes. Then twenty. If circumstances had been different, he might have seriously considered simply falling to his knees and letting his opponent’s sword drive home. But his mind swirled with images of Attia—the olive gold of her skin in the moonlight, the way she unconsciously scrunched her nose when she was annoyed, the curve of her mouth when she granted him one of her rare smiles.
“Damn it all, Xanthus. Finish him!” Timeus shouted.
Xanthus blinked, flexing his callused hands around the grips of his swords. A second later, he ducked his opponent’s blade, came up on one knee, and struck the other man in the back. The man fell with a hollow thud.
The Ardeans clearly didn’t consider themselves Romans, but to Xanthus, their cheers sounded exactly the same.
*
Cold air streamed in, raising goosebumps all along Attia’s arms. The hanging lanterns glowed against the sky. The guards outside were asleep, having succumbed to fatigue and hunger.
This was her chance. With the soldiers shut outside the city gates, the guards asleep, and nearly everyone else preoccupied with the match, she could run. Better yet, she could find Timeus’s chambers. Once she had him alone, she’d kill him. Then nothing would stand in the way of her hunt for Crassus.
Attia hurried to one of the chests in the room and started rummaging through it for proper shoes and clothing. She knew she wouldn’t get anywhere in the dress and flimsy sandals she currently wore.
“Attia, stop,” Sabina said, grasping her arm. “You’re not thinking this through.”
Attia shook her arm free. “As you’ve been so keen to remind me, I am a slave in a Roman household. Escaping is nearly all I’ve thought about. Do you really expect me to just sit here now with an open door staring me in the face?” She pulled out a pair of dark trousers, a matching tunic, and soft boots that likely belonged to Lucius. They were too big, but wrapping her feet in fabric helped with the fit and the cold. Attia burrowed through one of Rory’s chests, looking for the last thing she needed.
“Timeus will find you. You know that. You’re risking your life for nothing! You want to escape? Escape where?”
Attia reached to the bottom of the chest and pulled out the map she’d stolen from Timeus’s study.
“You can’t go, Attia,” she said firmly. “It’s not just Timeus’s guards you’ll have to worry about. If the Ardeans find out someone’s escaped the city, everything will have been in vain.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It was the price Timeus paid for us to stay here—the toll the Ardeans demanded for accommodating us and for letting us all leave together.”
Attia frowned. “What toll?”
“Xanthus has to fight.”
His name made Attia pause for an instant as she remembered the feel of his hands, his arms, his lips on hers. Escaping meant leaving him, and her stomach twisted with regret. But she pushed the emotion violently away. “Well, so what? I’ve seen him in the arena—he’s just as good as everyone says. He’ll win easily. No Ardean is going to beat him.”
“But he’s not fighting just one Ardean.”
“What do you mean?”
Sabina released her wrist. “He has to fight every man who volunteers, and he has to last until dawn. No other gladiators are allowed, and no one in the household can leave the city unless he wins. If you go missing, the entire deal will be forfeit.”
“Well, how many Ardeans have volunteered?”
“All of them.”
Attia sat back on her heels. The map fell to the floor at her feet. She shut her eyes and turned away from Sabina, swallowing past the lump in her throat. She imagined Xanthus in an arena somewhere in the city. She imagined him fighting at this very moment, forced again to do the one thing he hated most. Alone.
“He’s good enough. He’s the best. He can do this. He can…” Attia clenched her hands as her vision collapsed to a single point, bright as a dying star. Sabina’s words echoed in her head, each one sharp, each one cutting into Attia with unforgiving precision. She felt as though she were bleeding from the inside. “I…” The choice should have been obvious. In so many ways, it was. She looked down at her closed fists, and words bubbled up from deep inside her. “I have to help him.”
Sabina grabbed her arm again. “That’s not what I’m saying, Attia. I’m telling you that you can’t help, and you can’t run. You’ll only make everything worse. If Timeus tells Xanthus he has to fight the whole world, there is nothing we can do about it. No one defies Rome.”
“Rome?” Attia spit on the floor. “Rome has taken everything from me—my family, my home, my freedom. I won’t let it have Xanthus.”
“It already has him—it owns him. He is a gladiator. His life and death belong to the Republic, to Timeus. Just as we do.” Attia tried again to pull her arm free, but Sabina’s grip tightened. “Attia, don’t.”
“What happened to you?” Attia said, hurling the words like stones. “When did you become such a coward? Or were you a coward to begin with?” She pushed Sabina away. “I am not. I am a Thracian.”
“So was I.”
The breath caught in Attia’s chest, and she could do nothing but stare at Sabina as though seeing her for the first time.
“I am a slave in a Roman household, Attia,” Sabina said, softly but clearly. “But I and my mother, and her mother, and her mother were born of Thrace. And my father and husband were Maedi warriors.”
“That’s not possible,” she whispered. “That’s not … it can’t … no! No! I don’t believe you. You’re a liar. You never said anything!”
Sabina’s expression turned sympathetic, but Attia shook her head.
“If that’s true, why wouldn’t you tell me? You let me feel like I was alone in the world. I wanted to die.”
“But you didn’t. You couldn’t die because you were born for greater things. A warrior princess does not lose hope so easily.”
Attia laughed bitterly. “You knew that, too? How? How could you know?”
“I know because ten years ago, the swordlord of Thrace named his daughter as his heir,” Sabina said. “And I was there to see it.”
Attia stared at her.
“You were so small and so brave. When I heard what happened—” Her voice broke, but she took a breath and went on. “I wondered if it was you. It didn’t matter, not really. But as soon as I saw you, I knew.”
Attia turned away, wanting to weep and completely unable to. Maybe she’d already spent her share of tears, or maybe there was nothing left to grieve for. Her last hope seemed to be fading right in front of her.
A lifetime ago, she’d wanted nothing but the strength to lead her people. A minute ago, she’d wanted freedom, justice. But now all she could think of was Xanthus fighting alone in the arena.
“I have to help him. I’m going to help him,” Attia said.