“It’s not nothing.” She glared back and forth from me to the door. “I’m pulling you from consideration for the Triumphs.”
“You can’t do that!” I felt a flare of panic.
“I can. I will.” She thrust out her arm, pointing at the last of the rusty stain on the wood. “This is more than a warning, Fallon! It’s a promise. It’s a death mark, and I’m not going to let you go out there and—”
“Sorcha, please.” Something in the sound of my voice stopped her cold. “We don’t even know if Caesar will choose me. But if he does, I have to fight. Not just for me. For you. For the honor of the Ludus Achillea and the House Cantii. You have to let me.”
“No. My decision is final.”
Just like when we were young. My sister could be the most bullheaded creature the gods ever let walk the earth. I felt like I was nine years old again, and I wanted to scream. “It didn’t worry you to send me into the arena against the Fury,” I spat. “How is this any different?”
“You weren’t supposed to fight that madwoman,” she said. “None of my girls were. She shouldn’t have even been on the roster! I argued with the games masters until I was blue and out of breath, but they threatened to censure the whole ludus unless your match went forth. Caesar would have had my head.”
“When are you going to stop protecting me, Sorcha? You say you can’t treat me any differently than the other girls? Then don’t!”
“This isn’t a game anymore.” She gripped my shoulders, her face close to mine. “For some, it never was. And now they’ve set their sights on you. I won’t let that happen. You’re going home to the ludus in the morning.”
“Sorcha—no!”
“Pack your things.”
Without another word, she turned on her heel and left me standing there, blood staining my hands and tears of frustration welling in my eyes. Suddenly, I realized I wasn’t alone. I turned to see Thalestris standing at the opposite end of the hall from where Sorcha had stormed off. I turned back to the door and angrily scrubbed at the last traces of blood. The Amazon fight mistress came toward me, silent as a hunter stalking prey, and stopped to lean on the wall beside my doorway.
“It’s natural for older sisters to worry,” she said.
My hand holding the rag froze.
“You know?” I glanced up and down the hall to see if we were alone, more than a little surprised. After Sorcha made me swear not to tell our secret, I hadn’t even told Elka. I hadn’t told Cai.
“Of course,” Thalestris said. “I’ve always known. I am the Lanista’s Primus Pilus. We have no secrets, she and I.”
I thought back to the night on Cleopatra’s barge when Sorcha had said the only people who knew I was her sister were the three of us and Charon. She’d seemed adamant to keep it that way, but I supposed she must have made an exception for Thalestris.
“She’s very proud of you,” she said, interrupting my thoughts.
I snorted. “I doubt that.”
She grinned. “The Romans have a saying: In vino veritas.”
In wine, truth. Romans and their wine, I thought. Back home in Prydain the chiefs and freemen drank good dark beer and spiced mead if they wanted to get to the truth of things.
“There was a banquet one night,” Thalestris continued. “Only a month or so before the chariot wreck that ended Achillea’s career as a gladiatrix, back in the days when she was the absolute darling of the city. That’s when I first learned of your existence. One of Achillea’s admirers was bemoaning the fact that there was only one of her. I’d never heard Achillea speak of her past before, but the wine had been flowing all night, and she was in a melancholy mood. She told the man that, in fact, she’d left behind a younger sister—a sister who showed great promise as a warrior, greater even than Achillea herself—and that she was filled with regret that she hadn’t been able to see her grow to fulfill that promise. She boasted that you would have made a fierce gladiatrix. A champion.”
“She said that?”
“She did. And now you are here.” She shrugged. “Perhaps the goddess you both pray to has designed it that way.”
“Or maybe she just has a twisted sense of humor,” I said bitterly. “I’m here, I can fight—better than anyone—and now she won’t let me!”
“As I said, that was before her accident,” Thalestris said.
“I don’t understand what that has to do with me. I’m not even a charioteer—”
“Afterward, we learned that the axle of her chariot had been tampered with.”
I stared at the fight master.
“In the days before the race”—her eyes flicked to the damp planks of my door—“Achillea had ignored certain . . . portents. Warnings. Over the years, the games have become very dangerous, both inside the arena and out. The rivalries between the ludi are heated.”
“She lied to me,” I said. “She told me it was just an accident, not that someone had tried to kill her. Why would she do that?”
“She didn’t want to frighten you,” Thalestris said. “The very worst thing you can enter into the arena with is fear.”