“Of course, my lord.” Sorcha nodded. “I’ll have the drill instructors intensify the girls’ practice so that they will be ready.”
“Thank you, Achillea, I knew I could count on you.” He turned and gestured for the others to follow in the direction of the guesthouse, while Sorcha led Cleopatra in the opposite direction.
Thalestris stepped forward to round up all the girls and send us back to the barracks for sleep. My feet followed the others, but my mind stayed with Sorcha.
My dearly departed sister had some explaining to do.
XIX
I LAY ON MY PALLET in my cell, staring up at the full moon as it crossed the deep black square of sky framed by my tiny window. It felt as though it were the unblinking eye of the Morrigan staring down at me, silently admonishing me for doing nothing about the fact that she had brought me to my sister, who was alive and well and currently enjoying her robust health within shouting distance.
What, the goddess seemed to be asking, was I going to do about it?
After the oath ritual had been completed, Caesar and the men had retired to the guest quarters to drink wine and, I imagined, brag to each other. Cleopatra, I’d heard two of the kitchen slaves say, kept a pleasure barge—gifted to her by Caesar and reserved for her personal use—moored at a villa on the far side of Lake Sabatinus. Her entourage had rowed it across the water for her visit to the ludus, and that was where the Lanista would privately entertain the Aegyptian queen with wine and delicacies late into the night.
Unsurprisingly, sleep eluded me utterly.
Instead, I lay on my cot tossing restlessly and contemplating the sharp turn my life had just taken. As outlandish as it seemed, as bizarrely coincidental, my long-dead sister not only lived, she lived in a palatial house not more than a stone’s throw from my cold, cramped cell. After seven long years.
I sat up with a start.
Caius Varro’s mystery, at least, was solved: my sword.
Charon had kept my sword, the blade that bore my sister’s triple-raven mark, and I suddenly understood he’d kept it because he’d recognized it—and me. That was what the slave master had meant when he’d said the trunk was the key to both our fortunes: his fortune, my fate. He must have known who the “Lady Achillea” really was, which meant he’d known that he could likely sell me to her for a royal ransom.
My thoughts turned then to Virico, my royal father. After our mother had died birthing me, Sorcha had become the shining light in his world. And when she’d died—no, when she’d disappeared—that flame had been snuffed out forever. My brave, handsome father had lived as a broken man ever since. I could only wonder what my abduction had done to him.
And it was all her fault.
The anger toward Virico that I’d kept alive in my heart, like a glowing ember, flared brightly. Only now, its heat was directed toward Sorcha. Seething, I threw off my blanket, swinging my bare feet to the cold stone floor. The back of my neck was damp with sweat, and I felt like there was a fire burning deep inside my skull. I dressed and threw on my long woolen cloak, pulling the hood up over my hair. Then I quietly opened the door to my cell and slipped out into the corridor, padding swiftly toward the archway that led out into the practice yard, where the flower garlands still swayed between the extinguished torches.
Unlike what I’d been told about most men’s ludi, especially the ones that had a high ratio of criminals-turned-gladiators, we had guards at the Ludus Achillea but no locks on the cell doors—not in the barracks, at least. I knew that there were other cells, down near the stables, that did have bars and locks, for the rare occasion that a student merited extreme punishment, but I’d not known any of the girls to spend even a single night in them in the time I had been there. My sister ran a well-mannered academy.
Still, that didn’t exactly mean that wandering the academy grounds in the deep of the night was encouraged. But I wasn’t on any midnight kitchen raid, and I didn’t plan on getting caught by the guards. Cold anger washed over me like winter rain as I padded swiftly down the deserted corridor and out onto the grounds of the compound. As I neared the guesthouse, I could hear men’s voices, but I turned down a different path.