“Fallon—”
“I should return to my quarters now, Decurion. You’ll excuse me.”
I turned and walked—ran, really—away from him before I betrayed myself any further. My heart pounded in my chest, and my throat ached with unshed tears. Even though I’d heard Mael’s voice, plain as day, in my head, I’d also realized, for the first time, that I could no longer picture his face.
I couldn’t remember what he looked like.
The image of him had been slowly fading over time, and I’d let it slip away. To be replaced by the face of another—of our enemy. What kind of a monster was I? Tears seeped through my lashes and ran down my cheeks, burning with shame.
? ? ?
As I made my way back to the barracks, taking a shortcut between the baths and the cooks’ quarters, I heard sounds—voices coming from around the corner of the grain shed. It seemed that Cai and I weren’t the only ones indulging in midnight strolls. I stopped and held my breath, wiping the wetness from my cheeks. The ludus guards may not have caught me in an embrace with a legion officer, but I still didn’t exactly want to have to explain any weepy midnight wanderings to them. All I wanted was to get back to my cell and collapse on my pallet.
But the voices continued.
“Does he know she’s here?” asked a female voice. “Within barely a half-day’s ride of him?”
A man laughed in reply, an ugly sound.
“You mean Mandobracius?” he said. I recognized the voice and froze—it was Pontius Aquila. The Collector.
“Is that what he’s calling himself now?” the woman asked.
“One of his fellow barbarians coined that gem after he won his last bout—they all speak Latin like they’re chewing on shoe leather—and it seems to have stuck.”
Mandobracius? I puzzled through the mangled Latin to arrive at something like “Devouring Arms.” A gladiator, I gathered, from the mention of a bout. I wondered if those gathered elites ever talked of anything else.
“No,” Aquila continued. “No, I haven’t told him yet. That sort of information could prove priceless when it comes time to bending that wretched barbarian to my will. He’s damned lucky things turned out the way they did—no thanks to his incompetence.”
“It’s uncanny,” the woman said.
“It’s fate. That girl will be mine. The gods have willed it so.” His voice turned suddenly low and threatening. “In the meantime, you’ll not breathe a word of it to Mandobracius—or to anyone else. Do I make myself clear?”
The woman made a choking noise of assent. It sounded as if he was physically threatening her. I thought to make a noise—a cough or a shoe scrape on the gravel, as if I’d just now come walking up the path—but then I heard the woman bid Aquila good night, albeit a little hoarsely. I pressed myself against the side of the grain shed, fearing that they would find me eavesdropping. I feared for the girl they spoke of, the one Pontius believed was his.
I wondered if it might be me . . .
Don’t be ridiculous. I gave my head a stern shake.
What Cai had said to me earlier was certainly true—I wasn’t the only girl who could swing a sword. And so far, in my brief time at the Ludus Achillea, I hadn’t done anything to distinguish myself. I was nothing more than a green little gladiolus in the eyes of Sorcha’s dignified guests.
Girls like Nyx and Meriel were the ones who caught the wealthy patrons’ eyes, not me. Not yet. Still, it was good to know that Sorcha and Cai hadn’t exactly been exaggerating the Roman propensity for secrets and double-dealing. I heard the voices moving on, growing faint in the distance, and I let out a slow breath.
Let the ludus owners and their lanistas backstab and bargain. I cared only for bed and sleep and maybe a dream or two. I smiled wearily as I loped down the path back to the barracks. I hoped my dreams would be good ones, because in the morning, it was back to the basics of sand and sweat and the sword.
But this time, it would be as a gladiatrix in my own right.
Not just a maybe, a someday.
A would be, I vowed.
XXI
MY FIRST DAY as a gladiatrix began with the stench of blood.
“What happened?” I asked fight master Kronos as he elbowed his way through the girls gathered at the edge of the practice pitch. The smell curdled the honeyed porridge in my stomach that I’d only just wolfed down.
“Accident” was his brusque response in passing. “Need a stretcher.”
I turned on my heel and ran after him to help. Just inside the equipment shed, there were several canvas stretchers hanging on the wall.
“Take an end,” Kronos grunted at me, lifting one off the storage hooks.