“It has been weeks, Domina.”
“No need to fear, lover,” the dona smiled. “Ever I’ll return.”
“Until you find favor in another?”
“Another?” Leona’s lips twisted. “And who would that be, pray?”
“The Savior of Stormwatch,” he muttered with mock theatricality.
“Ah,” Leona sighed, rolling her eyes. “We arrive at spear’s tip. But I’ve no taste for women, Furian. And even less for jealousy.”
“You fight her on the sands beside me,” he muttered. “As if she were my equal. But she has no honor. She has—”
“She has a victor’s laurel,” Leona said. “She has the favor of the crowd. And she has one-third the key to unlock the gates of the magni for us.”
“I can best your father’s silkling alone, Domina,” Furian growled. “I need help from no one, least of all some conniving slip that my enemy has already defeated.”
Leona sighed. Rising from the bed, she gathered up the sheet and casually wiped his seed off her skin.
“This conversation bores me.”
Furian reached out his hand. “Leona…”
“Leona?” The dona glanced up sharply. “You forget yourself, slave.”
“O, slave, aye,” Furian nodded. “Until you’ve a thirst again. And then it’s all ‘lover’ and ‘my champion’ and honeyed words until you’ve had your fill.”
“And you complain so bitterly at the time?”
“I’ve a mind to be more than just your stud.”
“And what more would you be?” Leona asked. “You may stand a champion in the arena, but other laurels, you’ve far from won. I am domina of this house. Think not that simply because I bed you, I hold you in my counsel. Or that when command is given, I do not expect it to be obeyed.”
“When your nightmares wake you from your sleep, do you think I comfort you because I’m commanded to do so? Do you think I hold you because—”
“You overstep, Champion.”
Furian pressed his lips together, anger darkening his brow. But he spoke no more. Looking at him a long, still moment, Leona’s face softened. She sank down onto the bed beside him, pressed her hand to his cheek.
“I care for you,” she murmured. “But I cann—”
A knock sounded at the door.
“Champion?”
Leona’s eyes widened as she recognized the voice.
“Almighty Aa…,” she hissed. “Arkades!”
Furian rose off the bed, his face running pale. “I thought he was in his cups?”
“He was! Passed out in the dining room, dead to the damned world.”
Another knock. “Furian?”
Leona searched the room desperately. The shrine to Tsana. A small chest. Wooden swords and a practice dummy. Nowhere to hide. Finally, the dona of the house dropped to her knees. Crawling under the bed with Furian’s aid, she drew her legs up and hugged them to her chest. Satisfied she was out of sight, the Unfallen tied his loincloth and opened the door.
Arkades stood on the threshold, his face blotched from drink. He was swaying slightly, goldwine thick on his breath as he looked the champion up and down.
“Apologies,” he said. “Were you asleep?”
“Only resting, Executus.”
“Mmf.”
Arkades shouldered past and limped into the room, his iron leg ringing on the stone, clink, thump, clink, thump. He looked about for somewhere to sit, finally thumping down on the bed. The straw mattress sagged under his weight, Leona smothering her cry as it smacked into the back of her skull and bounced her head off the floor. Cursing under her breath, she hunkered lower, like a disobedient child hiding from her parents.
Arkades sniffed the air, raised an eyebrow, his voice thick from drink.
“Stinks in here.”
“The heat, Executus. Saai crawls closer to the horizon every turn.”
Arkades wrinkled his nose. “I’ll have a word to the magistrae. That soap she’s got you using smells like a woman’s perfume.”
Furian’s eyes widened slightly, and looked to the shadow below the bed. The executus didn’t notice, pulling out his trusty flask and taking a long pull. He offered it to the Unfallen, who declined with a silent shake of his head.
“Mmf, good man,” Arkades said, stowing the drink away. “Makes you soft on the sands.”
“But it makes you forget the blood that stains them, too,” Furian replied softly.
Arkades nodded, almost to himself, a faraway look in his eyes. Staring down at his hands. Up into the Unfallen’s dark stare.
“I like that about you, Furian. You see. You understand. The pain we endure. The red rivers we must wade through.”
“On our way to glory.”
“A heavy weight.”
“I welcome it. If it brings me victory.”
Arkades scoffed softly. “I like that about you, too.”
“Forgive me … But do you need something, Executus?”
Arkades sighed and shifted his weight, the sagging mattress pushing Leona into the floor. The dona was breathing soft and thin, chest pressed hard to the stone, panic on her face. If she made a sound, if her executus discovered her there …
“I need you to stop working at odds with the Crow,” Arkades replied, slightly slurred from the drink. “I need you to fight beside her, not against her.”
Furian scowled. “That girl is on every tongue this nevernight, it seems.”
A blink. “… What?”
“She is a liar and a cur, Executus. Her glory is undeserved.”
“How can you say so?” Arkades frowned. “Aa’s cock, I hold no more fondness for her than you, but you saw her fight at Stormwatch. Her victory over the retchwyrm—”
“Was steeped in treachery. She is not a victor, she is a thief.”
Arkades sighed, reaching for his flask before he caught himself. He stood, unsteady for a moment, Leona sighing in relief now she could breathe again. Regaining his balance and limping around the room, Arkades motioned to the walls around them.
“What do you see?”
“My domina’s house,” the Unfallen replied.
“Aye. The walls that shelter you, the roof that keeps the suns off your back. Know you what will happen, if we fail to secure berth at the magni?”
“I need no aid besting the silkling, Executus,” Furian growled, bristling. “And I will not fight alongside an honorless dog who steals what should be earned.”
“Because you’d know all about being an honorless dog, neh?”
Furian’s eyes grew wide. “You dare—”
“Spare me your indignity,” Arkades growled, raising one callused hand. “You forget I was the one who found you, brought you here. I alone know where it is you came from, what it is you did to find yourself in chains.”
Furian glanced to his bed. The figure lurking beneath it.
“That was many a turn ago,” he said. “I am that man no longer. I am a god-fearing son of the Everseeing, and a gladiatii who lives to honor his domina.”
“You live to honor yourself,” Arkades replied, shaking his head in exasperation. “To prove yourself better than the man you were. And I see to the heart of that. But say not that you fight for your domina. If you truly thought for one moment of Leona, if you felt one drop of what I feel for h—”