A feral look entered Lucius’s eyes, making them gleam in the sunlight. Sweat matted down his short hair and made his tunic stick to his back. With each impact, his hands shook. Finally, he lowered his sword, panting hard.
Lebuin took the motion as a concession, and he looked at Xanthus with a raised brow. He wasn’t even winded. But while his head was turned, Lucius raised his sword and swung again. The weapon struck Lebuin’s temple with a loud crack, knocking him out cold. His body fell like a tree.
Lucius was panting and shaking, standing over Lebuin, looking shocked. He swayed slightly as the practice sword fell from his hand. The hilt was coated in blood and sweat. Lucius looked down at his shredded palm for a second, almost unseeing.
No one moved. No one said a single word. The gladiators’ faces were still and calm as stone, as though they’d simply been watching the clouds move across the sky. And they stayed that way as Lucius turned and rushed back to the villa. Only when he’d left the training yard did the gladiators walk calmly to Lebuin’s side.
Iduma brought a water skin and unceremoniously emptied it onto Lebuin’s face. “Wake up, sleeping beauty,” he said in a flat tone.
Lebuin’s eyes fluttered open. “Well,” he said. “Didn’t see that coming.”
“You should’ve broken his other arm,” Albinus said.
Gallus scoffed but said nothing.
They stood back and let Lebuin get to his feet alone. He picked up his fallen sword and took his old position again. “Ready,” he said.
“Idiot,” Albinus grumbled. They all knew who he was talking about, and it wasn’t Lebuin.
Everyone paired off again, and Castor flung Lucius’s bloody sword into a far corner.
CHAPTER 17
A strong wind blew in from the sea, making the night colder and clearer than it had been since they’d arrived. Attia felt it sharply as she sat on the railing of a balcony on the upper floor.
She hadn’t seen Lucretia since they’d left Ardea, and she felt guilty for feeling relief. The lifeless look in the woman’s eyes was so much harder to stomach than the bruises or the cuts. Sabina said that Lucretia was recuperating somewhere in the villa, and Attia decided it was probably better for Sabina to be with her anyway. Lucretia needed peace to heal, and all Attia had to offer was her rage.
Bracing her hands on the balcony, she leaned forward and looked past her toes to the raging surf below. The salty air filled her senses, and she took a deep, steadying breath.
That was how Ennius found her, dragging his uneven step to stand at her side.
Attia waited for his musical voice, waited to hear the message he was holding in the space between his words. Instead, he simply leaned against the balcony beside her, a small lantern in his hand. The light reflected off of something hanging from his neck, and Attia recognized a braided leather cord similar to the one that Xanthus wore. It too held a silver pendant, but instead of a crescent moon, Ennius wore a sharp inverted triangle with serrated edges.
“What is that?” Attia asked. “A symbol of one of your gods?”
Ennius reached his free hand up to touch the pendant. “No. A tooth.”
Attia nearly laughed. “A tooth,” she repeated, skepticism coloring her voice. The triangle was nearly as long as her thumb.
“Not a real one, but a decent likeness.”
“I’ve never seen an animal with a tooth like that.”
“Off the coast near my village, there were water monsters fifty times bigger than the fish you see here, long and blue-gray with fins that rose up above the surface. They had rows and rows of teeth, and they hunted the seals that came to mate on the beaches.”
Attia had never heard of such a creature. “What did you call them?”
Ennius’s mouth moved in a series of clicks, whistles, and consonants that she couldn’t identify. He laughed at her expression. “And,” he said with a grin, “they could fly.”
“Now you’re teasing me.”
Ennius shook his head. “When they hunt, they swim up from the seabed as fast as they can and break through the surface so that their whole bodies sail through the air like birds.”
“You’ve seen this?”
“Many times,” he said. “When I was young.”
“A fish that can fly,” Attia said with wonder.
“What men call impossible are simply the things they haven’t seen yet.”
Attia smiled. “You should have been a philosopher, Ennius. But I suppose we all should have been many things.”
Ennius nodded and turned away, but it was too late. She’d already seen the stricken expression that crossed his face.
“What’s happened?” she asked.
His gaze stayed on the dark water below as he answered. “Timeus has hired a group of freemen to search for Spartacus. Xanthus will go with them.”
The irony of it might have made Attia laugh if the wretched fear that filled her wasn’t so powerful. Her hands gripped the railing until her knuckles turned white. “So Timeus has no idea,” she muttered.
“That Spartacus is a slave girl in his own household?” Ennius said. “No, and he probably wouldn’t believe it. But you must have realized that word of you would spread. Now that others have seen what Spartacus can do, there is no going back.”
“What happens when they don’t find what they’re looking for?”
“I’m not sure. They have almost no information, but Timeus is as tenacious as they come. I can’t tell how far he’ll take this. Especially since the match with Decimus is so soon.”
“Decimus?”
“Xanthus will fight him at the Festival of Lupa.” He glanced at Attia and sighed. “He should be the one to tell you.” Ennius put a gentle hand on Attia’s shoulder. “He leaves tomorrow. Go to him. For both your sakes.”
When he’d gone, Attia swung her legs back over the railing and let her body sink to the floor of the balcony, curling her knees up under her chin the way she’d done as a child. Moonlight flooded the narrow balcony like liquid silver, illuminating even the dark places in the room behind her.
Attia’s vision wasn’t nearly as clear. A cavalcade of emotions marched through her skull like foreign soldiers on parade. Helplessness blended with resentment and anger, fear of loss but also fear of wanting. Before she came to Rome, she’d lived by very simple truths. All that mattered was family—the people bound to her by blood and by oath. The easiest thing she’d ever done was take up a sword in their defense. Without that—her cause and her purpose—she felt lost. Adrift. She didn’t know what to do anymore. If she were the praying kind, she might petition the gods for guidance. But the clarity she sought had little to do with gods or even men. Until now, she’d been blinded by grief and placated by tenderness.