by Camilla Monk
Just one.
I reached behind my head to unfasten the leather laces holding my mask in place. His fingertips grazed the cheek I exposed, feverish, impatient.
We were both wearing a lorica, but the clicking of metal wasn’t ours. I shoved him away lighting fast and leaped to a safe distance to reattach my mask, blood rushing furiously to my neck and cheeks. Victrix rolled befuddled eyes that immediately focused into a scowl. He looked around, heels digging into the ground. Had someone seen us? No, the sounds were from a small unit of praetorians marching up to the palace. Bathed in golden light, the shadow of the Overseer stood atop a flight of marble stairs leading to the dining room terrace. A centurion knelt in front of the old man and said something to him that I couldn’t catch. Clearchos soon joined them and bent to listen to hushed words from the old man.
Victrix watched them with narrowed eyes. “Something smells off.”
I ducked my chin in agreement, my right hand reaching for my scabbard in vain. Shit. I’d nearly forgotten they’d taken our swords. We raced back to the terrace. The young emperor was gone from the dining room; only the honeyed notes of a harp and empty wine bottles lingered. A single glance at Clearchos’s steely gaze was all the confirmation I needed that something had happened. Behind him, Irius’s deadpan face was as impenetrable as ever. The tension rippling through the muscles in his arms, however, told a different story.
The Overseer placed a friendly hand on Clearchos’s shoulder and squeezed it, pure sorrow etched in the lines of his face. “My friend, it is when Aus tests us that we find faith and strength deep within ourselves that we never knew we possessed. That is how we know He lives in us.”
Victrix’s gaze cut between the Overseer and the praetorians, his eyebrows drawn in confusion. “What’s going on?”
The Overseer turned a compassionate smile to him. “My boy, evil always festers where we expect it the least. I’m afraid we were forced to make several arrests after a routine inspection of your father’s camp.”
Victrix’s mouthed an emphatic, what the fuck? But he successfully held his tongue and allowed the centurion to complete the Overseer’s explanation. “We found evidence of moral gangrene and witchcraft. Two suspects were arrested; two men who tried to oppose were taken as well for questioning.”
Cold washed over me. Gemina and Nerie. “Who did you…” I began, words failing me as I read in Clearchos’s tightly clenched jaw the answer I least wanted.
“A woman and a boy. The witch’s guilt has already been established. The other three must be questioned.” As he said this, the centurion produced a glowing green vial from a leather pouch at his belt. One of Gemina’s bottles of divine water.
The Overseer gazed down at it, his brow crinkling in apparent pain. “Destroy it,” he murmured.
Blood pounded fast in a quivering vein on Victrix’s temple as he tried to rein in his temper. “Who… You said you got two of our men too?”
The Overseer raised an eyebrow at Clearchos. “Your personal guard, I’m afraid. A one-eyed man from the south, and”—he flicked his wrist disdainfully— “some sort of giant who had to be restrained with a net. A feral beast, my men say.”
Shit. “What will happen to them?” I asked, with a supreme effort to keep my voice even when under my lorica, I could feel my heart strain against my rib cage.
“The men will be freed, if their innocence can be established without any doubt,” the Overseer replied. “As for the witch,” he went on, the words suddenly cutting and frosty. “I do not hold the power to change our laws. She’ll be boiled in the arena at noon.”
Panic knotted my insides, in the same instant that the brittle dam holding Victrix’s anger broke. He grabbed the Overseer’s tunic at the neck, his eyes wide with rage and incomprehension. “Bullshit! You make the fucking laws! She’s not a witch; she just…”
“Stop him!” The centurion’s bark sent his men lunging at Victrix to seize him. Seeing one of them try to crush his throat with his wrist guard, I hauled the man around and headbutted him hard. I barely had the time to enjoy the feel of bone smashing into a bloody pulp against my mask before brawny arms hooked around mine, threatening to break them. I strained against the praetorians’ hold as they dragged Victrix and me away from the Overseer.
Victrix roared a desperate plea to his father. “Don’t let them do this! Tell them!”
Behind his mask of melted flesh, Clearchos contemplated our despair like he’d have a rainy window, with absent, frost-specked gray eyes. He took a few steps toward Victrix. His hands rose to cradle his son’s face, his fingers clawing into Victrix’s sweat-soaked cheeks. Victrix’s eyes were wide and his breath came in quick gasps as Clearchos pressed his lips hard to his forehead. He hissed the words, their razor-sharp edge cutting me from the inside. “Sacrifices must be made.”
Victrix stared at him, shell-shocked, as if he were seeing his father’s true self perhaps for the first time. I wanted to scream, but my throat wouldn’t let any sound out. He couldn’t. Wouldn’t. She was the mother of his child, the only reason this poisonous fatherly love he’d smeared over Victrix existed in the first place.
“Clearchos,” I croaked out. My eyes hot with unshed tears. “We don’t give a shit about the land. Don’t—”
“Clearchos,” the Overseer cooed. “Perhaps it is best these young men take some time to rest and calm down.”
To my horror, Clearchos gave a single nod, his lips set in a tight seam of jagged flesh. “Take them away.”
The last thread of Victrix’s sanity snapped. He went berserk, shouting insults at the guards, the Overseer. At Clearchos. I had no words to put on the crushing weight in my chest, so I silently begged him through the empty eyes of my mask. He was our god, the one who’d shaped us from the mud of our farms, who’d destroyed Gemina’s life and made her his witch. He cradled our very lives in his palm and sacrificed them as he pleased. I struggled, writhed, and craned my neck to look back at him, for as long as I could. Until I could no longer see him, and even then, I couldn’t accept that he had betrayed us.
37
“Fuck, fuck… Fuck!”
It must have been the twentieth time Victrix banged his fists against the sleek everwood door sealing our gilded cage, a luxurious bedchamber at the heart of the palace. Leaning against the bedpost of a bed covered in silk and cushions, I watched him bang his forehead against the unyielding surface. We hadn’t slept at all, and I now battled fatigue on top of fear and hunger. My stomach growled as I glanced at the plate of fresh fruits and pastries a servant had set for us on a table. Now was a good time to recall Hastius’s advice. Don’t drink or eat anything they give you.
Victrix gave up on the door—again—and returned to sit by my side. When he extended a hand to the plate without thinking, I grabbed his wrist. “You still trust their food?”
He ran a hand across his face. “Hell, no.”
“Good. We need to stay alive until we find a way to get out of here.”
He sent the plate flying to the floor with a swipe of his hand. “But how?”
I glanced up at the single barred window, some twenty feet up a richly painted wall where birds flew around an enchanting garden. We wouldn’t fly out of there. “I don’t know,” I admitted. Outside, the sun had long since risen. Dread knotted my gut. We needed to get out of here before it was too late.
Victrix lunged back to the door, his fists rising once again. They froze midair as the door’s lock clicked. He leaped aside as it opened and a dozen brawny praetorians marched into the room. I circled away from the bed warily, readying the muscles in my legs and arms for a final fight.
A crested helmet came forward. “Follow us,” the centurion ordered.
“What if we don’t?” Victrix snapped, for the sake of testing them—he wouldn’t pass an opportunity to escape.
The centurion motioned to the irons ready in one of his men’s hands. “You’ll come one way or another.”
>
I stiffened. Shackled and at their mercy; that wouldn’t do. “No need for that, centurion,” I said evenly. “My friend and I intend to make amends”—I noticed a bandaged nose and a bruised cheek among the men standing behind him— “for our rash behavior last night.”
The officer nodded his approval, but his men nonetheless immediately shuffled surround us in a tight rectangular formation—they were truly taking no chances. We were led out the room and down a long hallway to the rhythm of boots clattering on silky-smooth marble. Through it all, my eyes never left Victrix’s tattoo peeking from under his tunic. A wolf. His father. We needed to find a way out of this mess, find Gemina and Nerie, and run the hell away from this flower garden whose inhabitants had spiraled into madness.
I tried to memorize our way along sun-kissed terraces and narrow alleys where hederia cascaded down the walls in purple tresses. They were taking us back to the city, away from the palace. To the amphitheatron, I realized, when a colossal shadow surged above the pristine sculpted walls of the buildings lining a vast plaza. I had never seen an amphitheatron up close—not even in Nyos—and its sheer size alone stoked the fear I tried to keep under control. This thing must be two hundred feet tall, with three stories housing more superposed arcades than I could count. A stone monster, a giant mouth crushing those it swallowed in the sands of its arena.
A silent crowd poured into the amphitheatron through large entrances guarded by urban cohorts and public officers in their blue-striped toga, who collected tiny clay discs allowing citizens access to their designated seats—I remembered Hastius calling those tesserae, when he’d told me about the Thiphilian amphitheatron in Cispirina, the biggest ever built. I looked up at the dozens of arches lining the backlit façade. I could barely comprehend that somewhere, something existed that was even larger than this.
The praetorians led us to a smaller entrance—private, it seemed. I looked back at the spectators before they pushed us through the archway. Sleep-swollen eyes, shuttered faces—some avoiding the soldier’s gazes, their features taut with quiet fear. There was no entertainment to be had in these walls for Palicans.
They led us up darkened stairs to the second floor, where a long hallway curved around the building, studded with narrow arches giving access to the thousands of seats. Simple stone ledges for the poorest spectators, cushioned seats for the merchant, gilded front-row ones for senators. The near-silence crawled under my skin, an unnerving hum made of rustling togas and the soft clatter of sandals on stone. As we moved toward a closed door between two arches, I saw a bead of sweat trickling down Victrix’s nape. I gritted my teeth; It wouldn’t come to this. I refused to believe we were here to watch Gemina die.
A praetorian unlocked the small wooden door and pushed it open. I held my breath. Framed by linen curtains to shield rich spectators from the sun’s glare, our box directly overlooked the sands of the arena, and above, the three tiers, shielded from the sun by the velarium, a monumental canvas awning held by ropes and pulleys, like the sails of a hundred ships. From where we stood, the crowd seemed a silent, swarming mosaic; tens of thousands of togas and tunics, more people than I had ever seen in my life, more than I ever thought was possible.
Opposite ours, the imperial box’s temple-like structure dominated the amphitheatron, a blinding-white jewel of marble topped by a golden statue of Aus extending his open palms as if in welcome. Nested in a pair of armchairs, Nisephorus and the Overseer looked little more than ants. A shadow stood still behind them.
Victrix stiffened, his nostrils flaring slightly. Could Clearchos see us too? Surely no better than we saw him. Had we ever been more than ants to him anyway? I wondered, anger pulsing steadily in my ears. The centurion who had seen us into the box motioned to a pair of folding chairs in its center, surrounded by a profusion of silk cushions. It all seemed absurd now, so much luxury in hell.
“The Overseer offers his prayers and condolences,” he recited in a dispassionate voice. “You will be reunited with your commander after the ceremony.”
My eyes narrowed. Reunited? In life… or death?
Next to me, Victrix remained perfectly still. I sensed the tension in his muscles, same as mine—the point of imminent explosion. Then I saw it, tucked under the cushions, a long packet, bundled in a rag that seemed out of place in this den of refinement. My eyes darted to the centurion. Had he noticed too? If he had, he gave no sign of it.
When Victrix cracked his neck a fraction, ready to jump at their throat, I placed a hand on his forearm, the skin there hot and clammy. “Sit,” I ordered.
He flashed me an imperious glare; I responded by digging my nails into his flesh in response, hard enough to leave half-moons of blood. “Sit the fuck down,” I whisper-hissed. “Now.”
His muscles rebelled against my bruising grip, but his gaze questioned mine through the heavy-lidded holes in my mask. And he sat. I did the same, angling my legs to conceal the mysterious packet. I peered down at the folds of grimy and threadbare cloth resting under my feet. I hadn’t dreamed it: the silvery glint of steel. Sitting perfectly straight, I rested my hands on my knees and flicked my forefinger discreetly to draw Victrix’s attention to the packet.
His eyes widened a fraction before his features became a stony mask. Sweat rolled down our temples as the centurion took a few steps back to join his men guarding the entrance to the box. I nudged the mysterious present with my left foot, used it to part the flaps of fabric. I recognized the familiar leather grip of my sword, and the ivory pommel of Victrix’s Spathian blade. His fingers curled into fists as trumpets blared and a powerful voice announced a reenactment of Parthicus’s defeat at the Castraviemna to please the crowd before the main event.
We had barely escaped a massacre the first time we’d fought him there, and there’d been no trace of him in the fortress the second, but in that moment, I couldn’t have cared less about whatever ridiculous shit went on down in that arena. A gate opened, vomiting gladiators in colorful costumes and poor imitations of Lorian uniforms. They brought a big chained man dressed as a bear, too—probably for dramatic effect. No one cheered. Not even when a masked fighter with silvery greaves started sparring with another wearing a golden muscle cuirass, who seemed barely able to lift his sword. That parody of a fight wouldn’t last long.
Victrix and I exchanged tense looks. In his eyes, I read that he was ready.
“Hey,” I called to the centurion.
He feigned to ignore me, staring straight ahead at his emperor’s lodge.
“Hey, asshole,” Victrix snapped. “Too busy watching the fake Silverlegs to talk to the real one? Come here.”
The soldier shifted on his feet, hesitated. An aggravated sigh reached us before he covered the few feet separating the box’s door from our seats. I breathed in, breathed out. It was just a matter of distance and angle. Of speed. I bent down at the same time as Victrix and grabbed my sword. The blade traced a single arc, too fast for either the centurion or his men to even notice, it sliced the silk cord tucking the curtain to the wall on one side, then his throat. Blood gushed and spattered the pristine linen. His legs gave way, his mouth opening in vain to let out a scream that came out as a muffled gurgle.
By the time the rest of the unit drew out their swords, Victrix and I had pounced on them, slashing through thighs and arms, aiming for their throat so they wouldn’t scream. The warm blood raining on me gave me focus. Maybe I needed that red haze in my mind after all. It was never so sharp, so calm than when I killed.
Urban cohorts guarded the empty hallway. We didn’t bother hiding. There was no way out unless we eliminated them all, slayed our way to our friends. One of them tried to shout that the amphitheatron was under attack. I whirled to his blind side and decapitated him first. His head rolled across the marble floor and bounced to a stop at his comrade’s feet. I recognized the familiar blend of horror and stupor in their eyes, the same as the Lorians’ when we would raid their camps and among the seething h
orde barreling at them, they saw Silverlegs.
They’d heard the stories, seen the Overseer’s fucking plays. They knew they would be too slow. Sweat glistened on their brow and white grew around their pupils as they drew their blade, readied their spears. When their optio yelled for one of them to go get reinforcements. I leaped to the would-be messenger, plunging my blade into his heart like a needle. Behind me, Victrix parried a guard’s desperate strike before he slashed his neck and jaw in one swift and precise swipe upward. Bones cracked and bloody teeth clattered across the stone floor as the man fell dead.
I took care of the spears next as they tried to run away to call for help. They should never have; they would never know the rush of ink-black pleasure in my veins as I hunted them, sliced through their knee tendons to cripple them before I ripped their warm throats. A young cohort with good legs almost made it to the door. Almost. Someone should have warned him that the demon Silverlegs ran up walls too.
I could practically taste the shock painted on his parted lips as I rushed past him and sprinted against the door to propel myself in the air and fly above him. A memory of Parthicus’s wide golden eyes looking up at me on a flaming battlefield flashed in my mind, blurring the face of this boy I would kill and forget. I landed right behind him. He gasped, tried to scramble around, only for his neck to meet my blade. After he had collapsed, I glanced down at his prone body and noticed I hadn’t decapitated him completely. A flap of bloodied skin still linked his head to his nape. I snorted to myself. Sloppy.
“They’re probably keeping them under the arena. We need to move,” Victrix grunted as he drew out his reddened blade from an indigo tunic stained purple with blood. Last one; we were done here.
I tipped my head to one of the tall arches the men had been guarding. “Stairs.”