There were sounds of weeping coming from some of the hoods that hid the faces of the girls, and even the Lanista’s voice quavered with emotion. But I thought I heard one girl to my left scoff in quiet derision. Had there been a rivalry within the sacred sisterhood of the ludus? Perhaps “sisterhood” at the ludus, as in life, could be a double-edged sword.
One of the gladiatrices stepped forward with a torch and thrust it in between the logs of the pyre. The white shroud caught fire instantly, and the sudden updraft of heat sent it fluttering into the sky above our heads like the spirit of the dead girl released from her body. It hovered there, fluttering for a moment, then burst into a ball of brief flame before raining back down as ash upon us. I thought of how we’d never had the chance to burn Sorcha’s body. The Romans had never given her back to us. Then I thought of Mael. I didn’t even know where they had buried him. If I had been there, I would have made my father raise a barrow for him in the Forgotten Vale and crown it with a standing stone. Then I would have lain down and wept until the grass upon it grew long, watered with my tears.
Through the shimmering air, I looked on the face of the girl who had been called Ismene. She looked like she was sleeping. I searched my heart for a prayer to offer, but I did not know the gods the Lanista had spoken of. I only knew my own. So I formed a silent prayer for the dead girl I’d never known but in that moment felt a strange kinship with.
“May the Morrigan keep your soul,” I whispered in my mind.
Yours and Sorcha’s and Mael’s.
As I hoped, one day, she would keep mine.
XV
“BY THE MORRIGAN’S BLOODY TEETH!” I spat as I stumbled forward, dropping painfully to one knee in the sand of the ludus practice yard. The wooden sword in my hand was wrenched from my grip, tangled in the hemp net that my opponent wielded. “This isn’t fair!”
The other girl heard me—and laughed.
Of course it was unfair. After the long journey through Gaul, my muscles had gone soft from lack of decent food and exercise. I had all the strength of a runty kitten. With clumsy fingers and, yes—damn Caius Varro’s eyes—weak wrists. And none of that seemed to matter to the girl who stood waiting for me to stand up so she could knock me down again. Her name was Meriel, and she fought, so I’d been told, in the style of a retiarius-class gladiator, wielding strange weapons—a three-pronged spear called a trident, and a woven rope net—like she was dancing with them.
She was my first sparring partner of the day.
I was beginning to think she might be my last.
Meriel’s pale skin was freckled where it wasn’t covered in the thin blue lines of tattoos, and her dark red hair was tied up on top of her head in an unruly rat’s nest of twists and plaits. Her eyes looked upon me with the leaden gleam of cold gray rain. I knew her look. She was from Prydain. Home. Only she was from the far northern reaches, where the tribes were brutal and barbaric. And, as a rule, very good at killing things.
So am I.
Never mind that the only things I’d ever actually killed, up to that point, had ended up in the cauldron for supper. With a grunt of effort, I pushed myself back up to my feet.
“Well, come on then, gladiolus,” Meriel sneered in barely understandable Latin buried beneath a guttural accent.
“Gladiolus,” I’d learned, was a nickname bestowed on all the new recruits—a pun meant to diminish us by calling us flowers. Pretty to look at but easily trampled.
“Come on!” Meriel barked at me again. “Show us why you are worth all the monies!”
She rubbed the fingers and thumb of one hand together. “So many sestersii. And for what? Falling down?”
Word of the price paid for Elka and me had obviously gotten around. It wasn’t my fault someone paid that much for me, I thought bitterly. Behind Meriel, I saw that a group of the other ludus girls had gathered and were watching us. They were all laughing, except for the one with long black braids, who just watched. Her name was Nyx. I’d seen her sparring on several occasions, and she’d impressed me with her technique. I, on the other hand, was clearly impressing no one.
I’d figured out fairly quickly that you could tell how well and how often some of the girls had fought by how they were kitted out. The ones who’d earned a purse or two or more wore bronze or leather wrist bracers or belts, or they had better weapons beyond the ludus-supplied gear. Nyx, by the look of her, was one of the better fighters. She wore tooled-leather shin greaves and wrist bracers and a belt around her waist that was decorated with bronze medallions and coral studs.