No. I was afraid of Cai hurting me . . . of him walking away.
But he didn’t. For a long time, we stood in the laneway with Cai’s arms around me. He didn’t question me; he didn’t judge me. He didn’t leave me. He just brushed the tears away until they stopped running down my cheeks.
XXVII
I RETURNED TO THE DOMUS ACHILLEA with my head and heart bruised from the horrors of my night at the Domus Corvinus only to find that Elka had been flogged.
Caius had distracted Kronos at the gate while I slipped into the town house courtyard. Once inside, I made my way up to the room I shared with Elka, passing through corridors that were deserted and silent. I found Elka lying facedown on her cot, the bare skin of her shoulders and back crisscrossed with lash marks still seeping blood. Ajani was with her, carefully applying salve to the wounds.
I was horrified. And furious. “She had no right!”
“She had every right.” Elka’s voice was muffled by the thin pillow she lay on. “She owns us. We broke the rules.”
“I broke the rules!” I almost shouted. “I made you go with me—and where’s Nyx? I’ll kill her!”
“Nyx is down in the laundry this morning,” Ajani said in a flat voice, “serving out her own punishment.”
“In the laundry?”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “For pilfering food from the kitchens last night, of course. Her only crime, it seems.”
When the girls of the Ludus Achillea had been roused from their beds, Ajani explained, my absence did not go unnoticed. Neither did the fact that Elka—who didn’t even remember how she’d gotten home—was still intoxicated from Nyx’s evil brew. The domus staff were rounded up and questioned, the ludus guards were turned out into the city to hunt for the fugitive—me—and the gladiatrices were banished to their rooms and, in Elka’s case, punished.
She had told Sorcha the truth about what we’d all done—as far as she could remember it—but then Nyx had argued, protesting that the only place she was guilty of sneaking off to that night was down to the larder to pilfer a late snack. The kitchen boy confirmed having seen Nyx raiding the pantry. He’d received ten lashes for not reporting the theft. I wondered what Nyx had traded in return for that little lie. The only other person who could confirm or deny what had actually happened was Nyx’s lapdog Lydia.
“Lydia crawled trembling to the Lanista and told her how she’d heard you and Elka planning to escape,” Ajani said, her lip curling in disgust as she covered Elka’s shoulders with a square of linen bandage. “And how she’d been too afraid to do anything about it—because you, of course, had threatened to cut out her tongue if she did.”
I didn’t even know how one would go about cutting out a tongue, but I vowed, upon hearing Ajani’s story, that I would learn.
I’d been willing to believe that Nyx had truly had a change of heart. That we were sisters, like she’d said. Like we’d oathed. I ran a shaking hand over my face. My skin felt too tight, stretched across the bones of my skull, and the inside of my head was full of sheep’s wool and hobnails. Mandragora was truly awful stuff.
Ajani stood, wrapping up the leftover bandage. She left it and the pot of salve on the little table. With all the other girls confined to their rooms, she was taking a risk even being there, but I was grateful. “That’s my own magic,” she said, pointing at it. “My own herbs. Better than anything Heron has, but don’t tell him I said so. Keep the cuts clean and lightly wrapped. Tell her she cannot fight before they’re fully healed.”
“I’m fighting in the Triumphs,” came the muffled protest.
“You’ll scar.”
“Don’t care.”
Ajani rolled her eyes and made an emphatic gesture in Elka’s direction. I thanked her, and she hugged me before wishing me good luck with the Lanista and ducking out the door. I closed it behind her and leaned on it heavily. I felt like I’d been trampled by a team of oxen, and I could only imagine how Elka felt, with the mandragora aftereffects on top of what must have been scorching pain from Thalestris’s whip.
“What happened to you last night?” she asked.
I shook my head, not even sure where to begin. “It’s a tale long in the telling. Rest, and I’ll tell you the whole story later.” I reached over to gently smooth a wrinkle from her bandages. “I’m so sorry, Elka.”
“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault.”
“No. You’re right,” I said. “It was Nyx’s. And I’m going to kill her.”
? ? ?
I found Nyx alone in the laundry, shrouded in steam and the astringent stink of lye soap. She was hanging on to the pole that spanned across the tops of the huge wooden tubs, her tunic tucked up in her belt and her legs boiled-lobster red as she stamped her feet up and down in a soup of hot gray water full of dirty linens.