by Camilla Monk
I rolled atop him to straddle his chest and pressed the inoffensive blade to his jugular with a seething growl. He froze, staring up at me with wide gray eyes, like shiny silver sigli. I pressed harder and bared my teeth. “If this was a real blade, you’d be dead right now.”
He threw his head back… and let out a laugh. “You’re getting double ration for lunch.”
•♦•
I did get a second helping of Thurias’s lentil soup, which I accepted with a regal nod, even though it still looked and tasted like he’d shat it directly into the pot. Afternoon’s training went surprisingly well, perhaps because Victrix and I had exhausted our aggressive impulses for now—and his balls still hurt. When he warned me that if they were damaged, he’d cut mine, it took all the self-discipline I possessed not to burst into a nervous laugh. When the sky started to darken, he made us run an hour or so until nightfall with our hands tied behind our backs—out of spite, I gathered.
The moons watched from behind the clouds as we ran around the pit, drenched in cool sweat. This time Plescus made it to the end, under the cheers of the boys. Irius called the final lap with a powerful shout, and a scarlet-faced Plescus raised a victorious fist to the sky. Perched atop the water barrel, Victrix watched him with a blank face I wasn’t sure how to interpret. Was he disappointed that there wasn’t any blood to quench the thirst of his whip? Shaking off the thought, I picked up my satchel and sword, intent on finding Nerie—and maybe getting my hands on a piece of bread to go with the rest of my salt boar.
“Going to sleep in your tree?”
I turned around to find Victrix standing at a distance, his arms crossed. Gemina had been right; he watched my every move. “Not yet. I want to find Nerie. I thought he’d train with us today,” I replied—no point in lying about that.
He raised one eyebrow. “He’s your friend?”
“Not really, I just spoke with him a couple of times,” I said, avoiding his piercing stare.
“I see. Well tell Gemina to keep an eye on her new pet, ‘cause I won’t do it for her.”
Did he mean Nerie? Why would Victrix bother with him anyway? I nodded warily and hurried up the pit’s stairs and into the mine to Gemina’s tent. A wail tearing through the shell curtain gave me pause. I parted it gingerly, peered inside, and saw blood. A naked girl lay on Nerie’s pallet, her inner thighs smeared with blood. She writhed in agony while Gemina tried to hold her still and feel the soft swell of her belly. I was reminded of the blood between my legs, only days ago. With the memory came a nauseous chill and the intuition that this girl wasn’t just having her menses. It had happened to my mother once, and I still remembered her ghostly parlor, that same mask of agony. She was losing a child.
“What do you want?”
Gemina’s angry hiss snapped me out of my daze like the crack of a whip, and I was suddenly overcome by shame. I shouldn’t see this. “I was just… looking for Nerie.”
“I told him to go help Thurias count the grain until I’m done,” she snapped. The girl had stopped moaning, but she clung to Gemina’s arm with trembling hands.
Victrix’s warning came back to me. Tell Gemina to keep an eye on her new pet. “I’ll go find him,” I told her.
Her bracelets chimed softly as she waved for me to go. It was only once I stood outside that I realized I had no idea where to find Thurias. When he had sent the bare-breasted girl to give us water in the cage, she’d come from a nearby tent, and the well in the mine’s ceiling had been much farther to our right. Guided by the patch of starry night and the ropes of hederia hanging high above my head, I wandered through the camp until I found the cage, which now sat empty against a wall. I pictured Leis again, sleeping soundly in the dirty straw, but that memory too was forever tainted by blood, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut to escape a vision of his lifeless body in the pit.
I swept a look around, and there was the tent. I crept closer to the entrance, leaning in to poke the hide flaps, afraid of what I might find inside if I intruded on an unidentified soldier’s privacy.
“Hey,” I hissed. “Thurias? Are you in here?”
No one answered, but footsteps crushed the dry leaves somewhere behind me. I whirled around to find myself shadowed by Thurias’s big frame. “What do you want? Bread?” he asked.
Well, I wasn’t going to say no to that. “Yes. And I’m looking for Nerie. Gemina said she sent him to help you count the grain.”
Thurias went inside the tent, allowing me a glimpse of a couple dozen bags stacked under a piece of tarp. There were several loaves too; he took one and tore off a quarter, which he gave me. He wiped the flour from his hands on his tunic, and said, “He left a while ago. We were done weighing the bags and writing everything down.”
So Nerie could write too—no wonder he had become Gemina’s favorite so quickly. “So, he just wandered off?” I asked, failing to conceal a wince as I remembered a boy I’d seen being punched last night. There was good reason for new recruits to stay huddled in their own tent after dark.
“I thought he was going back to Gemina’s,” Thurias countered, maybe a little defensively. He looked around, his brow furrowing. “Come with me.”
He led the way with long strides, darting quick glances left and right at the many faces he seemed to know. He stopped near a big cart whose single curtained window let through a little light and feminine voices—well, squeals, really. When he pushed the carriage’s red-painted ajar, a whiff of unwashed man and perfume washed over us. I glimpsed a shock of coppery hair cloaking a tangle of sweat-soaked limbs, and immediately averted my gaze to a particular pebble on the ground, my neck heating up in equal disgust and embarrassment.
Moments later, a plump redhead popped her head through the ajar door. “What the hell do you want? Soa isn’t here!”
Thurias clasped his big paws behind his back and muttered something to the girl. She frowned and whispered a few words back. His nostrils flared. Her eyes wouldn’t meet his, and I didn’t like that: there was a problem. Cold settled in the pit of my stomach as the carriage’s door slammed shut, covering Thurias’s word of thanks. He turned to me, wiping off sweaty palms over the back of his tunic. “Stay here.”
I couldn’t. I trailed a few steps behind, toward a tent in front of which a battered iron pot boiled on a fire. A small group of soldiers sat gathered around it, swigging wine directly from a jug that was making the rounds. Thurias towered over them, a trembling mountain with enough strength to crush their skulls, and yet his voice was a reluctant mumble as he asked them where the merchant’s son was.
Their conversation died. The men met his gaze with hard, empty eyes; they wouldn’t talk. Just as I was about to step forward to insist, the tent flapped open and a bare-chested man came out. Thurias startled as he took in the newcomer’s brawny, combat-hardened body and the unkempt black locks falling on his shoulders. He plodded sideways to stand right in front of me. It was only when his fingers curled in awkward fists that I figured he meant to protect me from this man. “The merchant’s son…” Thurias repeated.
The dark-haired soldier welcomed the inquiry with a contemptuous sneer as he fastened the leather laces on the front of his trousers. He must have been about Clearchos’s age, thirty-five, forty perhaps—I couldn’t tell for sure. He gave the laces a sharp tug, and I saw the veins snaking across the back of his hands like gnarled roots.
I remember his hands. I remember that they became a blur at the edge of my vision as I stared past him, at the silk-clad silhouette curled inside his tent. Expensive silk, the color of sigillaria leaves and deep lakes. My heart beat so loud it hurt, and I didn’t want to see. But I recognized Nerie’s tunic, his bare legs. His tear-streaked cheeks and the shame in his gaze. There was a stinging in my eyes too, that I tried to blink away over and over.
I looked up at the black-haired man, my teeth gritting until I thought they’d shatter. His lips curled. I should have said something, done something, but I stood petr
ified, aware only of this unspeakable horror and the tears threatening to roll down my cheeks.
The man asked, “You want something?”
My mouth chewed in vain on words that wouldn’t come out. Him, the other soldiers… They were all looking at me, and Nerie’s shame became mine because I turned away and ran. I registered Thurias’s voice calling me, soiled by a gravelly laugh that wasn’t his. I didn’t look back; I raced back to Gemina’s tent in the night, my feet barely touching the ground. I bumped into a few shoulders that I shoved aside before their owners had a chance to voice their discontent.
The nacred shells lashed at my face and caught in my hair when I burst into the tent. A pungent vapor of herbs lingered in the air, and the girl from earlier now lay curled under a cover, asleep. Gemina looked up from her prone body. She read the distress on my face at once, and lines creased her forehead in response. “What happened?” she asked.
•♦•
Draped in her white stola, Gemina glided among the tents, bathed in the light of the campfires, like a goddess none of Clearchos’s men had a right to touch—or even look at, it seemed. They trained their eyes on their laps, their swords, or the bread in their hands. None dared to raise their head. I followed her, safe in the wake of her footsteps, all the way to the tent where Thurias waited alone. The soldiers had deserted their campfire, and the black-haired man was nowhere in sight.
She parted the tent’s flaps and walked in without bothering to ask for permission. I glimpsed Nerie, still curled in the same position, and greasy black locks falling over a broad back. Voices screamed inside my skull that I had abandoned Nerie, just as I had run after hitting Servilius. I stood in silence, my fingers itching to claw at my own skin as if it might cleanse me.
I didn’t hear what Gemina told the black-haired man, or what he said in response. Maybe she didn’t even speak because she didn’t need to.
She came out, followed by Nerie, or rather an empty shell fashioned in his image. His gaze down, he followed her back to her tent and didn’t spare a single glance for me. His avoidance twisted my insides painfully, but I knew it was all I deserved. I had meant to rescue him and instead run like a coward. Trapped under my disguise, I couldn’t even be the friend he needed; all the words of solace I would have wanted to speak remained sealed behind my lips. I couldn’t tell him I knew exactly how he felt, that the pain would pass, and he’d get used to the invisible scar inside him. That it would make him stronger.
•♦•
After the shell curtain had closed behind Gemina and Nerie, I dragged my feet back to my tree. Guilt gnawed at my bones, and neither the bark under my palms nor the cool breeze rustling in the leaves brought me any peace tonight. I didn’t sleep. I thought of the black-haired man until my head hurt, and a little before dawn, came to a decision.
I climbed down from my tree and traipsed through the sleeping mine. There was a little mist shrouding the camp, a grayish veil that seemed to cling to everything, the tents, the horses. Most fires had died; only embers still burned under piles of ashes, crackling softly in the damp morning air. I knew though, that there was one part of the mine where torches still burned bright: a forbidden door guarded day and night by two soldiers. There I would find my answers.
At first glance, it was just another hole in the rock, a gash inside which a thick wooden door had been built. Two men in armor stood on each side, their tired features and shaggy chins chiseled by firelight. When the older of the two noticed me, he flicked his wrist and mumbled an invitation for me to scram.
I squared my shoulders and walked up to him, drawing some measure of confidence from the fact that he was slightly shorter than me. “Is he in there? Clearchos?” I asked.
“None of your business,” the young one hissed, resting a hand on the pommel of his sword.
“I want to talk to him.”
He snorted. “And you think we’re gonna wake him up for you?”
“I can wait.” I chose a nice flat rock and sat there, looking him directly in the eye.
The older guard scratched his chin. “You gonna stay here?”
I crossed my legs and rested my sword on my lap. “Yes. He’ll have to come out eventually, right? I’ll talk to him then.”
They rose to their full height, clearly disgruntled by my declaration of a siege. The young one stepped forward. “Get the hell out of here.”
I did. Jumped to my feet, whirled to his left—in his blind angle—and elbowed him with all my strength. He coughed out a groan of pain and surprise, and I shoved him back hard enough that he fell to his ass. His partner unsheathed a short gladius. “You’re fucking dead!”
Ablaze with an anger that desperately needed an outlet, I reached for my own blade, intent on hacking my way to Clearchos if I had to. A tent thankfully flapped open behind me before this vigorous exchange could escalate any further. I spun around to check the source of the noise and saw a bare-chested Victrix emerge, his face scrunched up with sleep. He shoved me aside and rasped. “Cut that shit right now and go back to your tree, birdshit, or else I fucking swear…”
I took a quivering breath to steady my voice, the leather of my sword’s grip squeaking under my fingers. “I want to speak to him.”
“You can’t.”
“Then I’ll wait here until he wakes up.”
His hand dragged across the stubble on his chin. “He’s not asleep. I’m not even sure he ever does.”
Whatever the reason, Victrix seemed completely exhausted. Good. Because I wasn’t. “If he’s up, then can I see him?” I reasoned, hoping against all hope to win the battle against his sleep-deprived brain.
He rubbed his eyes, exhaled a low growl. “You’re not letting me go back to bed, are you?”
I shook my head. “No.”
He stretched, releasing a low string of creative expletives, and flicked his head to the door and the men guarding it. “Follow me.”
The soldiers obeyed his order to open the door with tightly clenched jaws, darting murderous glances my way as it creaked open to a flight of stairs carved into the rock. A few candles melting on the steps lit the path, deep into the still heart of the mine. I padded behind Victrix, my fingertips trailing against the damp walls. Greenish veins glimmered faintly in the stone, lined with moss; the divine water Gemina collected probably came from a cave inside the mine. I stared at Victrix’s back as we climbed up—at the tattoo I had glimpsed before on his neck. Those shapes that peeked from his collar when he wore a cuirass weren’t leaves after all. They were the ears of a wolf, the same Clearchos wore on his cuirass.
Gemina’s warning rang in my ears—Remember this: his only loyalty is to Clearchos—as we reached the final landing. There, half a dozen men guarded a pair of iron doors, some leaning against the wall and conversing in hushed tones. They straightened up as soon as they saw Victrix.
“Go tell him bir—Constanter wants to talk to him,” he drawled in a tired voice.
I narrowed my eyes at his near-lapse; he needed to stop calling me that…
One of the guards grabbed a big snake-shaped knocker and rapped at the door five times—it sounded like a code: one short, three fast, one short. I registered a muffled echo on the other side of the door that sounded like a male voice. The soldier pushed the door and slipped inside like an eel, leaving me no time to glimpse what awaited on the side. After a tense wait during which I felt every single pair of eyes burning holes through me, the soldier came out and opened the door fully, motioning for us to come in.
Victrix led the way. I followed him into a dim room whose high and uneven vaulted ceiling might have once been part of a natural cave. I breathed in hot, stale air, and the musky fumes of a few tallow lamps on the walls. A long table stood at the center of the room, covered with maps and papers. A couple of iron chests sat at the end of a massive canopy bed whose many layers of gauzy curtains were drawn. What little sleeping time Clearchos enjoyed, he spent right next to the money em
peror Manicus had given him.
He awaited us near a wooden chair on which a blue wolf pelt had been thrown, the dead beast’s sharp fangs a subtle warning. Clearchos raised the only eyebrow he had left, the burnt half of his face frozen in a lifeless mask. “What do you want?”
“To talk,” I said, eyeing Victrix.
Clearchos understood. He jerked his chin in a silent order for his devotee to leave the room. Victrix’s nostrils flared in evident disagreement, but he marched out of the room nonetheless, with one final wary look my way.
“Leave us too,” Clearchos said, settling in his chair.
I darted a confused look around, before a soft rustle drew my attention to the bed. A pale figure emerged from the bed’s diaphanous curtains. She didn’t meet my eyes, and I tried my best to appear detached. Her golden hair was down, cascading down her back, and she wasn’t wearing her jewelry. Silent as a cat, Gemina readjusted the clasps on her shoulders, which held a near transparent gray stola, and she glided past me and out of the room as if I weren’t here. It should have been no surprise that Clearchos had the same sort of vile needs as the rest of his men, but the way Gemina wouldn’t meet my eyes… Somehow I had imagined she was above this debasement, that maybe he truly gave her all that silk and gold as a reward for tending to the wounded. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to remember her like that.
After the iron doors clanked shut, Clearchos went to sit in his chair. “I’m all ears.”
I thought it was a strange thing to say since he only had one ear, but I didn’t tell him that. I took a calming breath, steadied my voice, and asked. “What’s his name, the man who took Nerie?”
“Why do you care?”
I shrugged. “Just curious.”
“He’s skilled,” Clearchos noted, without answering my question. “He used to be a legionary. He claims he was an optio in the First, but he’s probably lying about that. I doubt he ever served under Parthicus, and much less as an officer.” His mouth twisted in contempt. “Not the type.”
“Who’s Parthicus?”