Sid shook his head. “I was Luminatii, little Crow. Served the justicus five years.”
Mia’s eyes narrowed, belly turning to ice. “You served Marcus Remus?”
“Remus?” Sid scoffed. “That treacherous shitheel? ’Byss, no. I served the justicus before him. The true justicus, girl. Darius fucking Corvere.”
Mia’s heart lurched in her chest. Tongue cleaving to the roof of her mouth. Black Mother, this man had served her father.
But that makes no sense …
“I…” Mia cleared her throat. “I heard the Kingmaker’s army were all crucified … on the banks of the Choir. They paved the Senate house steps with their skulls.”
“I wasn’t there when Corvere and Antonius’s army fell apart.” Sid rubbed the brand at his chest, his voice growing distant. “Always wondered if I might have done some good had I been…”
Sid ran a hand over his dark cropped hair. He nodded at the walls around them. The bars that held them in.
“This used to be Corvere’s house, you know,” he sighed. “He and his familia used to spend summers here, I think. Little girl. Baby son. Before they gave it to that snake, Remus. To think this is where I’d end my turns. Locked in that fucker’s basement. Winning blood and glory for his widow until my guts paint the sand.”
So. Sidonius had done more than serve her father. He’d remained loyal, when the whole Republic turned against him …
Maw’s teeth, she’d never imagined it. To think she’d meet one of her father’s men, under this very roof? If she’d felt no kinship before for this man she’d bled beside at Blackbridge, she felt it flooding inside her chest now. The way Sidonius spoke about her father made her want to kiss the stupid sod.
“The true justicus,” he’d said.
When everyone else just called Darius Corvere “traitor.”
Mia rubbed her bruised throat, her shadow rippling as Mister Kindly drank her fear. She’d not spoken of her gift much, not to anyone. People feared what they didn’t understand, and hated what they feared. But for all the strangeness of it, Sidonius didn’t feel anything close to afraid anymore.
He’s an odd one …
“I can’t walk through walls,” she confessed.
Sid’s eyes came into focus, looking at her across the cell.
“I just sort of … Step. After a fashion. Between shadows, I mean.”
“’Byss and blood,” the big man breathed.
“But it makes me want to puke afterward,” she added. “And I can make myself unseen. But I’m almost blind when I do. It’s not the most wondrous gift, truth told.”
“And your passenger?”
“Say hello, Mister Kindly.”
“… hello, mister kindly…”
“So you can leave these cells any time you want?”
Mia shrugged. “After a fashion.”
The Itreyan shook his head in bewilderment. “Then what in the name of the Everseeing and all Four fucking Daughters are you still doing here, little Crow?”
The portcullis shuddered upward as a guard pulled a mekwerk lever. Executus marched into the barracks, graying beard bristling, whip curled in his hand.
“Gladiatii!” he barked. “Attend!”
With a shrug to Sid, Mia rose to begin her turn’s work.
CHAPTER 14
BREATHING
Two suns burned the skies clear, Shiih’s smoldering yellow and Saan’s bloody red against a curtain of endless, beautiful blue.* The heat shimmered against the endless ocean, and Mia cursed the Everseeing for the hundredth time that turn.
She danced across the circle, dodging Bladesinger’s strikes, weaving in and out of range. The woman’s face was set like stone, her wooden sword whistling as if it knew her name.
“No!” Executus bellowed from the circle’s edge. “You’re bouncing like a damned blackrabbit. You’ll wear yourself to fainting if you keep dancing in this heat. A shield is a weapon, just like your blade. Batter your foes’ strikes aside, send her off-balance.”
Mia raised the great curved rectangle of wood and iron on her right arm. It was heavy as a pile of bricks, affixed with a band of old rope. She hated the fucking thing, truth told, but it was true what Arkades said—she was sweating like a pig from dodging about so much. She tried to mark his tutelage, but as Bladesinger raised her sword and bore down on Mia like thunder, the girl instinctively skipped past Bladesinger’s guard and slapped her blade against the woman’s hamstring.
“Shit,” Bladesinger spat. “Quicker than a drakeling, this one.”
“No!”
Executus limped across the circle, drawing out the steel gladius he always wore to session.
“If you’ll not stop dancing like a bride at her wedding, I’ll bloody hobble you…”
Mia bristled, thinking perhaps Arkades was set to strike her. But instead, he stabbed the sword into the dirt, right in the center of the ring. He snapped his fingers at Maggot, waiting as always in the shade of the small shed in the corner of the yard.
“Rope,” Arkades commanded.
The girl dashed to the weapon racks, unslung one of the pull ropes the gladiatii used for their calisthenics. Dragging it back to Arkades, Maggot watched with curious eyes as the executus fixed one end around his blade hilt, the other to Mia’s leg.
“Dance with that, blackrabbit,” he scowled.
Arkades retired to the circle’s edge, barked at Bladesinger to attack. Unable to dodge, Mia was forced to use her shield, Bladesinger’s strikes landing like thunderclaps. The impacts jarred Mia’s arm, until finally the old rope affixing the shield to her forearm snapped clean in half, snagging up her hand in the knotted leather grip. And with a series of damp, snapping sounds, three of Mia’s fingers popped right at the knuckle.
“’Byss and fucking blood!” she bellowed, dropping her shield.
The other gladiatii in the yard turned to stare, watching as she bent double, clutching her hand. Butcher laughed, Wavewaker broke into a round of applause. Fixing her broken shield in her glare, Mia aimed a savage kick at it (“Fucking thing!”), sent it flying across the yard before dropping onto her backside in the dust.
“Owww,” she moaned, clutching her now-sprained toes with her one good hand.
“Show me,” Executus said, limping over to kneel beside her.
Mia held up her trembling hand. Her smallest finger was jutting out at entirely the wrong angle, her ring and middle finger were both crooked. Arkades turned her hand this way and that as Mia writhed and cursed.
“You broke my fingers!” she said, glaring at Bladesinger.
The woman shrugged, slinging her long saltlocks over her shoulder.
“Welcome to the sand, Crow.”
“Stop whining, girl,” Arkades said, squinting. “They’re just dislocated. Maggot!”
The girl perked up from her shady seat near the shed, dashed over to Mia. Untying the rope at her ankle, Maggot helped Mia up, the older girl rising with a wince. The other gladiatii returned to training as Maggot led Mia by the hand across the yard. She saw Furian sparring with Wavewaker, watching from the corner of his eye. His face was a mask, her belly, as always, a knot of sickness and hunger when he was near.