“But Caito…,” Arkades began. “Pandemonium is no place for a man to die.”
Leona downed her cup with one swallow.
“Matilius was not a man,” she said, pouring another. “He was a slave.”
“You do not truly believe that, Mi Dona.”
Arkades stared at the younger woman across the table. Mia could see a moment’s softness in her stare, replaced quickly with iron.
“Do I not?” she asked.
“Matilius was gladiatii,” Arkades said. “He won glory and honor for this collegium. For you, Dona. He was not our finest blade, true, but he served you with all he had.”
“It was not enough. I have mouths aplenty and they all cost money. Our debts mount with every turn and my purse is all but empty.”
“And how came that to be, I wonder?” Executus scowled. “When you spend a living fortune on a single recruit?”
“Ah,” Leona sighed. “We come to the rub quickly this time.”
“For the thousand silver pieces you paid for that girl, you could have fed this collegium for the rest of the year!”
Mia’s ears pricked up at her mention, eyes narrowing.
“Did you watch her at Blackbridge?” Leona asked. “Did you see the way she ignited the crowd?”
“We have Furian for that!” Arkades all but shouted, rising from his chair. “The Unfallen is this collegium’s champion! That slip can’t even lift a damn shield!”
“Then we fight her Caravaggio style. Twin blades. No shield. The crowd will adore it, and her. A girl her size, gutting men twice as big? And looking the way she does? Four Daughters, the crowd won’t be able to see for the swelling of their cocks.”
Arkades sighed, pushing his knuckles into his eyes.
“When you started this collegium, Dona, you asked for my aid.”
“I did.” Leona toyed with the neckline of her robe. “And I am ever grateful for it.”
“So with all respect, my counsel must carry weight. I have known you since you were a child. I know you grew up around the venatus. But there is a world of difference between watching from the boxes, and running a collegium.”
Leona’s eyes and voice turned cold. “Think you, I do not know that?”
“I think you wish to spite your father.”
Leona’s eyes narrowed, her lips thin. “You overstep, Executus.”
Arkades raised a hand in supplication at Leona’s outrage. “Daughters know, I remember how he treated you and your mother. And your rage has no lack of merit. But I fear outbidding him on that girl so steeply proves your mind is clouded on matters of familia. Mine is clear. I fought for years on the sand, trained your father’s gladiatii years after that. And I tell you now, that girl is no champion. She has a fox’s cunning, but she’s not half the gladiatii Furian is. There will come a time when guile and wit won’t serve her. When it’s only she, and a sword, and a man she has to kill.”
Arkades leaned on the table, staring into Leona’s eyes.
“And she. Will. Fail.”
Mia’s stomach sank to hear Arkades talk so. She thought she’d impressed him with her showing at Blackbridge, but the man seemed utterly blind to her merits.
Leona’s eyes fell and Arkades remembered himself, sat back in his chair with an apologetic grunt. The dona downed the rest of her wine, stared into the empty goblet for endless minutes. When she spoke, her voice was so soft Mia almost couldn’t hear.
“Perhaps it was ill advised, spending such a sum. But I … I didn’t want to see him win again. Mother warned me when I was a little girl. ‘Never stand against your father,’ she told me. ‘He always wins.’”
She looked up at her executus, eyes bright with fury.
“But not this time,” she spat. “Never again. I want him on his knees. I want him to look up into my eyes and know it was me who put him there. I want to drink his suffering like the finest wine.” She hurled the bottle into the wall just beside Mia’s head, shattering it into a thousand splinters. “Not this fucking slop.”
She hung her head and sighed.
“Even selling Matilius, we owe another dozen creditors.”
“… How much?”
“Much. And the points accrue by the turn.” Leona curled a fist, knuckles turning white. “Daughters, if only Marcus hadn’t died. Another few years on a justicus’s stipend, I’d have had enough to do this properly. If I find the ones who took him from me…”
“It matters not,” Arkades said. “We can pay whatever is owed with the coin we make from the Crow’s sale. And from there, we will drive Furian all the way to the magni. We have three venata between now and truelight, three laurels to win a qualifying berth. You will have your victory, Dona,” Arkades vowed. “If you let me give it to you. Have faith in me. As I have faith in you.”
Mia looked at the pair of them, each alone, and then together. Leona’s robe, the brazen sexuality, the way she used her body to put Arkades off guard—it made a kind of sense, knowing she’d grown up in the home of a domineering father.
But Arkades …
The fire in his eyes. The fervor in his voice when he made his vow. He was champion of the most brutal competition the Republic had devised. Ten years her senior. Separated by the barrier between the wealthy born and former property.
And yet …
Mia shook her head. Five minutes with them alone and she knew exactly why Arkades had left Leonides and come to serve his wayward daughter.
The poor fool’s actually in love with her.
Leona placed her empty goblet on the table and sighed.
I wonder if she knows?
“You are my executus,” the dona said. “I know you gave up much to come here. And I would see that faith rewarded.”
Leona toyed with the lip of her cup, nodded, as if to herself.
“I will heed your counsel. We will fight the Crow at the venatus in Stormwatch at month’s end. Not the Ultima, we have our champion for that. Some minor bout, so as not to damage her. With good fortune, she’ll comport herself in fashion fine enough to regain some measure of the cost we paid for her.”
Mia’s stomach dropped into her boots.
Black Mother …
“You will sell her, then?” Arkades asked.
Leona looked to the tapestry on the wall. The goddess of fire, sword in hand, shield raised and wreathed in flame.
“Unless she proves herself Tsana made flesh?”
Leona heaved a sigh.
“Very well. I will sell her.”
Arkades nodded, Leona poured herself another glass.
“Now, if you are well satisfied?” she asked.
The executus grunted apology, stood slow. With a deep bow to his dona, the man limped from the room, his walking stick and iron leg beating a tired retreat down the stone stairs. Leona sat alone, swallowing deep from her cup, clouded eyes fixed on some nothing only she could see. Running idle fingers across her collarbone, down the pale skin of her throat. Taking another draft and licking her lips.
Mia stood silent in the shadows, watching close. Trying to ponder this woman, a way to sway her mind. If she could fashion some way for Furian to lose favor, poison him before a bout, perhaps? If Mia could raise herself in the dona’s esteem …