by Camilla Monk
Hastius let out a low whistle. “Aren’t you a sweet piri… No wonder you and Victrix get along so well. You two make a fine pair of angry farm boys.”
“Swallow your fucking tongue before I cut it, Hastius,” Victrix hissed.
Every word oozed pure hate, but it would take more than a single threat to curb Hastius’s enthusiasm. “Look at him,” he told me, waving a hand to Victrix’s back. “We didn’t even have to snatch that one. He came to us one fine day while we were setting up camp not far from Segester. I’ll never forget it. Imagine a runt of barely fourteen who literally marched into the camp yapping that he wanted to see Clearchos.”
“We tossed him in the cage before he was even done talking,” Vatluna said in a gravelly laugh to Victrix’s back.
“But he made it out, and now it’s been what, five years? And he’s become our favorite whoreson,” Hastius concluded with a wink.
I never knew Victrix could draw so fast. I registered the sound of steel dragging against leather, a silvery arc in the air, and the tip of his blade was pressed to Hastius’s Adam’s apple, to the general indifference of our companions. I gripped the hilt of my sword, ready to draw, but Hastius’s hand stopped mine. Even he didn’t seem ruffled by Victrix’s sudden aggression. He drew a sigh and rolled his eyes to the cave’s ceiling. “We get it, your mama was no whore.”
Victrix sheathed back his sword in its scabbard, his steely glare daring Hastius to crack another joke. I studied him through the heavy-lidded eyes of my mask. He had been in the cage, fought his way out through the pit like I had. Who would have thought he and I had so much in common?
“By the way,” Hastius said, his grin returning as he pointed at a strangely shaped rock—or rather a fragment of what must have once been a humongous column. “We’re here.”
18
“We should be right under the Meditrinal temple.”
Hastius inspected the ruins of a portico with an expert eye, running his fingers across ancient inscriptions. “According to Disius’s annals, the hill of Nyos was formed by an earthquake nine hundred years ago, around the time Loria was founded. The town was called Koimoiakkos at the time, and it got wiped from the map.” He waved at the emerald water. “The river actually used to flow in open air, and the old temple stood on the east bank.”
I had never heard of that Disius person, but I thought it made sense that people had once named that place home by the lake, kind of like my village. Well, we could admittedly have come up with something nobler than lake’s ass and spared ourselves a great many puns. Watching Hastius decipher the words engraved in stone, I envied him for being able to see and understand things a dumb head like mine never would. There was undeniable power in knowledge, and not for the first time I felt frustrated that no matter how fast and strong I became, this one door would remain closed to me.
I ventured closer to the portico to touch the signs like he had. They still looked well-defined even after all this time.
“How do we reach the top of the hill from here?” Victrix asked, his fingers rapping against the guard of his sword impatiently.
“Through the mining tunnels.” Hastius pointed to a cracked stone gate that must have been the entrance to the old temple.
“They’re abandoned, right?” I asked him as we climbed a few cracked steps to enter the ruins of the temple. I couldn’t help but touch the stones, let my fingers linger on the cool, rough surface and imagine who had been here last to kindle the flames in the broken vases, and pray in vain that their town wouldn’t disappear. I noticed Irius doing the same, but there was no telling what thoughts lay behind his stony face.
Hastius pulled out a tube of divine water from his satchel to light our path inside the temple. “Yep. There used to be a huge orichalcum vein up there. Some two hundred years ago, the Nyseites quarried so deep they ended up digging through the old temple’s ceiling. By then they realized that not only was the vein exhausted, but there was a network of caves underneath, and their entire hill would collapse if they kept digging.” He raised his makeshift torch to the coffered dome ceiling, illuminating a jagged hole in its center, prolonged by a seemingly endless tunnel whose walls glistened green until the light faded and died in darkness.
“Maybe you’re gonna be useful,” Victrix remarked, his gaze flitting between me and the huge mouth above our heads.
Hastius tied the rope to a grappling hook and tossed it to me. “Not gonna be a problem, I suppose?”
I tucked the equipment into my sword belt, along with a second tube of divine water, and looked around the room. “Plenty of holds.”
Having said this, I proceeded to demonstrate by hauling myself atop a broken column, then up the nearest wall, grasping the open jaws of a pair of snarling wolves forever trapped in stone. There, a foot-long piece of ledge allowed me to stand upright. That part had been easy; crawling up the dome upside-down like a bat to reach the mining tunnel might prove a steeper challenge —literally so. Most of the dome’s ancient coffering had collapsed through the centuries, but a few jagged, vaguely rectangular holes remained in the concrete structure: they’d have to do.
I took a deep breath and jumped, barely catching a protruding edge even as my feet slipped and failed to find support against the friable material. Panic thundered through me as I paddled in the air in vain, hanging from the ceiling by my fingers. I had been too bold; the damn thing wouldn’t hold very long. Dust and gravel rained on my head and tumbled down where my companions stood twenty feet below.
Victrix yelled, “If you fall, I leave you to die here.” But I didn’t miss the undercurrent of worry under his usual bark.
Feeling the ancient mortar crumble dangerously in my grip, I swung back and forth to reach the next attainable hold. This time my boots met solid concrete and I managed to grab a sturdy coffer edge. My muscles ached from the strain of supporting my own weight upside-down, but at least that part of the ceiling didn’t threaten to collapse. The next coffer proved easier to reach as I started to figure how to push on my feet to relieve the strain on my arms and cling more efficiently to the ceiling.
At last I my fingertips met damp rock and dirt. With one final push of my legs, I gripped a deep hollow in the tunnel’s walls and I was able to haul myself up.
“How’s it going up there?” Victrix asked as I progressed up toward the opening in the tunnel’s wall some ten feet above; perfect for the hook.
I let go with my right hand and reached for the grappling hook tucked in my belt. “Could be worse. Let’s just pray the rope can hold Vatluna’s weight.”
“Nothing can!” Hastius guffawed.
The deep bass of Vatluna’s voice laced with my higher pitch in a perfectly tuned chorus to chant, “Shut the fuck up, Hastius!”
•♦•
The rope resisted, but the water-eaten rock didn’t and nearly released the hook. We all saw the moment Vatluna would crash down to the floor below and crack his head open. Victrix, Hastius, Irius, and I found ourselves desperately tugging at the rope to help him climb the remaining distance to the safety of the perpendicular tunnel in which we now stood. From there, a gentle slope guided us upward, deep into the heart of Nyos’s hill. Hastius took out maps, which he studied with a tightly knit brow.
“You’d better not get us lost,” Victrix warned as we climbed up a series of platforms using old iron rungs embedded into the walls.
“Easy, farm boy. As long as we’re going up, it’s all good.” He directed the tube’s green light to a rusty pipe running down the wall and the few words engraved in the metal there. “Look. Year 643, Selerius Acretius.”
“What does it mean?” I asked, leaning closer to inspect the pipe.
“They’re water pipes; they come directly from the surface. What you see here is the year it was made and the name of the manufacturer.”
643. Far as I knew, we were reaching the end of the 821st year since the foundation of Loria—and therefore of the old empir
e. Like the temple and the divine water, these pipes had existed longer than any of us ever would, and when we were dead, they’d probably still be here.
I turned to Hastius. “That means we’re going in the right direction?”
“That part of the water system dates back to when the miners started digging, so we should be close to the surface now. Let’s keep going.”
He was right. As we trudged upward in the dark, brick walls and arches progressively replaced the damp rock around us. The water pipes multiplied, turned, and intersected until at last, at the end of a long horizontal corridor, iron gates barred the way, bearing a lock that certainly didn’t look two hundred years old.
Hastius clasped his hands and rubbed them together before opening again what I now mentally dubbed his magic satchel. He rummaged in there and produced a pair of thin metal hooks extended by bone handles. I leaned in to better see as he inserted both in the lock and twisted them at various angles. Soon the lock gave with a faint click, and he flipped the tools in his hands with his trademark grin. “Anyone want to make a stop in the Meditrinal temple’s cellar before we get down to business?”
“Lower your voice! What makes you so sure we’re there?” Victrix hissed, pushing the gate open carefully to stifle the creaking hinges.
Hastius’s grin grew smug as he waved the tube of divine water to illuminate the walls of the vaulted room in which we now stood. The emerald light outlined the smooth and round bellies of hundreds of clay jars, all sealed around the neck with rows of glass prayer beads, to consecrate them to the goddess. “Not exactly the kind of wine I usually drink.” He smacked his tongue, twirling the glowing tube once between his fingers.
“Let’s get out of here before someone finds us,” Victrix whispered, hurrying toward a wooden door nestled between two shelves full of jars. He tested the iron handle and made a come-hither gesture to Hastius. “Take care of that one too.”
This lock didn’t offer much more resistance than the previous one, and the door opened to another flight of stairs at the top of which shadows glided on the walls and female voices murmured. Everything Irius and Victrix had taught me came back in a rush as, like them, I drew my sword and flattened my body to the cool stone wall, trying to count the voices over the hammering of my own heart.
There were two of them, praying, singing softly—too far away for me to understand the words. I didn’t have much of a singing voice, and neither did anyone I knew, but it struck me as the purest sound I’d ever heard. It flowed effortlessly to us through the chill night air, laced with the scent of medicinal plants burning. Maybe those were the kind of prayers the gods listened to.
Silent as a cat, Hastius climbed a few steps to peek up at the moonlit entrance. The voices stopped singing, exchanged a few murmured words, and everything became quiet. He curled his forefinger slowly, motioning for us to follow him upstairs. With each step, the light spilling on the steps became brighter, until I glimpsed the glowing edge of one the moons, hiding behind a finely sculpted marble pediment. I took slow, calming breaths, focusing on the razor-sharp edge of my blade. Anything, anyone I saw, I’d cut them. Fast. Nothing else mattered.
When he reached the top of the stairs, Hastius crouched, and for the first time I noticed he hadn’t drawn any weapon. He raised his palm for us to stop and ventured out. I stretched my neck to glimpse a garden, and in its center, a long pool that shimmered green under the pale moonlight—Meditrinal water. At first, I thought the place had been deserted, but Hastius crept toward a pale silhouette huddled by the pool. A priestess. The muscles in my calves coiled as I bent forward, ready to intervene.
He slinked like a shadow across the lawn, closer and closer, until he pounced and crushed his hand over the young girl’s mouth. She didn’t even scream. Under the white veils covering her form, her small body arched and jerked in vain. I gritted my teeth, watching her go still. There was no other choice; we couldn’t risk being discovered.
Having ascertained that no one had seen him attack the young woman, Hastius dragged her prone body behind the gnarled trunks of a grove of piricarias that stood in a corner of the garden. We watched him pick up a piri from the ground to steal a bite from it, before he faded into the trees’ shadows. Victrix’s molars ground together in disapproval, so loud I heard the ominous crack in his jaw. “Let’s go,” he whispered.
We followed him and dashed across the lawn and past the piricarias, to the darkest corner of the high brick enclosure wall, which shielded the Meditrinal temple from prying eyes.
“Did you kill her?” Victrix asked Hastius once we’d joined him, glancing back at the lean body curled in a fetal position under the tangle of low branches. The pristine linen of her palla had slipped off, revealing red tresses that pooled around her like blood in the dark.
Hastius’s shoulders shook in silent laughter before he pulled out his grappling hook and hurled it over the wall’s travertine lip. “And waste a pair of perfectly good tits? She’ll wake up tomorrow with a headache.”
Irius’s expressionless eyes briefly lit up, at the same time that Victrix’s hand reached for the dagger tucked in his belt. “The girl will get raped to death when the city gets taken anyway. She’ll never make it to twenty-five.”
The age when a Meditrinal priestess could choose between dedicating the rest of her life to the goddess or leave the temple to be married. A tendril of compassion I didn’t want snaked around my heart and squeezed it. Victrix was right, though; the priestesses meant too much for their wombs to be spared by the soldiers. They symbolized the city’s pact with Meditrina and her nymphs, its strength and purity—not to mention its wealth, as only girls from old patrician lineage could pretend to serve the goddess and tend to her water. If our mission succeeded, this girl was doomed to shame and agony, like all the others inside the temple.
Fighting my instincts, I stood still, closing my eyes as Victrix unsheathed his dagger. Against all odds, it was nine-fingered Vatluna, the famed centurion killer, who placed his big hand with the half-missing thumb over Victrix’s wrist. “Let her deal with whatever dawn brings,” he said, the soft, deep echo of his voice similar to the sound the wind made sometimes when it blew inside the cave of my sanctuary in the woods. I looked up into his dark eyes, shadowed by bushy coal eyebrows. A faint smile cracked through his beard and winked at me. There was a measure of kindness in him I hadn’t suspected.
Victrix’s hand clasped my shoulder, bringing my attention back to our mission. His gloved fingers dug into my flesh through my tunic and the chain mail over it, and I got the feeling that I was serving as an outlet for his frustration with Hastius and Vatluna’s insubordination. “You go first; Irius and I will follow. Then Hastius.” He glanced up at Vatluna. “You go last, and if the girl wakes up, we kill her.”
The giant all but ignored him, his gaze set on a point across the garden—a flickering flame. My eyes widened at the same time as Victrix’s when an arrow whistled past his cheek and my hair to drive into one of the phalerae covering Vatluna’s cuirass. He casually snapped the wooden shaft off and stated, “We have company.”
19
The garden descended into chaos. Shouts and arrows flew our way as the temple vomited a group of soldiers wearing scarlet tunics and polished bronze cuirasses, two of them carrying bows.
“Shit, urban cohorts!” Hastius yelled.
We took cover behind the piricarias as the young priestess came to her senses at our feet with a weak moan. I drew my sword and lowered it between her eyes. “Move or scream and you’re dead.”
She gave a trembling nod, tears rolling down her cheeks. Meanwhile, next to me, Victrix produced a couple of throwing darts he kept tucked in his wrist guards. He flipped one, threw it at the soldiers, and was immediately rewarded by a satisfying scream of pain. “They were guarding the temple?” he asked Hastius.
Our self-appointed comedian’s response flew among the arrows hissing past us between the trees. “I guess so. But I br
ought something that’ll keep them busy while we make our exit.” His tone remained chipper, but the good-natured humor was gone from his eyes, replaced by a frosty glint. He flicked his chin to the wall where our rope still hung. “They probably have more men waiting on the other side of that wall… Be ready to climb at my signal.”
“What are you going to do?”
My question was answered by the sight of a small jar of glass in his hand, filled with a greenish-brown substance, a powder that swirled inside the container as he raised and prepared to throw it.
Vatluna nodded to Hastius in approval, while Irius and Victrix seemed to share my confusion. We were given no time to question his plan; Hastius hurled the jar across the garden with all his strength. Glass shattered in a cloud of smoke, followed by a concert of curses and desperate coughing. It only took a few breaths for the putrid smell to reach us. Stinkwitch spores—I remembered the time my father had stepped on one such mushroom in the woods. He had thrown that pair of boots in the lake, which says a lot, considering we could barely afford another. It was just as bad as in my memory, a blend of rotten egg and stale piss that made my eyes water even under my mask.
Under me, the red-haired girl covered her nose with her pale hands and her eyes rolled back in her head. Better for her to pass out, indeed.
“Now!” Hastius roared, while near the temple, the soldiers suffocated in the fetid brown cloud.
My legs did all the thinking for me and covered the distance to the wall in a few leaps. I grabbed the rope and hauled myself up amidst a renewed salvo of arrows, before jumping over the wall. In the instant I spent suspended in the air I tasted relief and freedom, felt it rushing through my veins, laced with electrifying fear. Then I saw them, a dozen soldiers wearing the same dark red tunics as the others, running toward the temple along a ribbon of the tallest and most beautiful stone houses I’d ever seen.