I undid my braid and combed out the waves of my hair so it hung loosely over my shoulders. Then I slipped into my auction dress and fastened the shoulder brooches, belting the ensemble with a pretty fringed scarf someone had thrown me from the stands after one of my winning bouts on the circuit.
Elka and I met Nyx down by the scullery, and Lydia was with her. Nyx was dressed in an elegant pale yellow stola that fastened with silver brooches at her shoulders and left her toned arms bare. Her long black hair was dressed off her face with silver combs. Lydia wore blue, a necklace of amber beads, and an abundance of eye paint. We were all cloaked and hooded, and I was trembling with apprehension and excitement.
Nyx inserted a key into the big iron lock on the wooden door that led out to a back alley. I didn’t ask where she got it, but it wasn’t hard to guess. I’d noticed a handsome young kitchen slave making eyes at her when we’d first arrived, and Nyx was nothing if not resourceful. Again, that much was evident by the skin of wine she produced from beneath the folds of her cloak. Threading the narrow streets, we headed toward the Caelian Hill, where Rome’s wealthy patrician families had built many lavish residences that looked far more like palaces than houses.
“You can’t be all uptight on a night like this,” Nyx said, passing the wineskin to Elka, who expertly tilted her head back and shot a stream of red liquid down her throat. “Ha! That’s it. You drink like an Amazon!”
“Fight like one too.” Elka wiped the back of her hand across her mouth.
“Better not let Thalestris hear you say that.” Nyx grinned as Elka handed her back the wine. “She’s touchy on the subject, seeing as how her mighty Amazon sister embarrassed the whole bloody tribe, distinguishing herself as the first ever gladiatrix to get killed. And by our own Lanista, no less!”
She offered the wine to me, and rolled her eyes when I hesitated. I stifled a sigh and reached for the skin. The wine was unwatered, rich and sweet. Nyx must have pilfered the expensive stuff, I thought. I took another long swallow and handed it back.
“Where are we going?” I asked, looking around at the unfamiliar buildings that loomed above the dark streets. We’d barely passed a soul, and most of the windows were shuttered tight. If not for the almost full moon above, it would have been like walking through ink-black fog.
“We’re going to the Domus Corvinus, up on the Caelian Hill,” Nyx explained. “It’s owned by a very rich nobleman who has far more money than he knows what to do with and doesn’t want to leave any of it to his greedy relatives. So he spends it all on these extravagant spreads and invites all of his friends, and everyone goes a little mad. His cooks make all sorts of outlandish dishes like monkey tongues and stewed starfish. And the entertainment is extraordinary!”
I wondered what constituted extraordinary entertainment at a Roman feast. I thought back to the gatherings my father used to host where the young men of the tribes would compete to see who could leap over the tallest bonfire flames and the bards dueled each other in song, shaping words and music beautiful enough to break hearts. Where the women would dance barefoot across a floor of naked swords . . .
My steps faltered as a wave of homesickness swept over me, and I stopped in the middle of the street. I was outside the ludus, unguarded, at night . . . what was there to stop me from running away?
But even as the thought crossed my mind, I wondered if I could bear to lose my sister again. Thalestris said Sorcha would go mad with grief if she thought something had happened to me.
After everything she’s put me through? I thought. It would serve her right.
Even in the darkness, I could probably manage to head in the general direction of the Capitoline Hill. And I could smell the river. But if I got lost and wound up in the Aventine district, then I was in trouble. The Aventine—so we’d been warned—wasn’t a part of the city to get lost in.
“Come on, Fallon!” Nyx exclaimed suddenly, reaching for my hand. “Don’t be such a tortoise! We’re in Rome. This is the most amazing city in the world, and we’ll never get another chance to experience it like this. It’ll be fun—you’ll see!”
She handed the wineskin to me again.
I took another swallow, and my urge to run faded as the liquid heat from the wine coursed through my limbs. There was a faint buzzing in my skull like a swarm of lazy bees. Nyx was right. Escape, after all, would be awfully hard work. And I could certainly use a little less work and a little more fun in my life.
A little more sisterhood and a little less sister.
• • •
It’s said that if you look hard enough, you could find any kind of indulgence in Rome. And that, in most cases, you didn’t even have to look very hard. There was no admittance to the Domus Corvinus that night unless you were wearing a mask. Those who hadn’t brought their own—and who, exactly, had brought their own? Elka wondered aloud—were obliged to choose one from a basket held by one of the pretty girls standing at the gated entrance of the estate grounds.
“I don’t understand why everyone has to wear one of these,” I said.
One of the girls holding a basket leaned in close to my ear.
“Because stuffy old men wrapped in purple-striped togas in the senate don’t approve of such gatherings,” she whispered. “They outlawed the Bacchanales decades ago, and Domus Corvinus parties are the closest thing you’ll find to those!” Then she kissed my cheek, her perfume making my head spin. “Isn’t that deliciously wicked?”
Some masks were made of linen strips wrapped over wire frames and stiffened with paste, and others were made of leather, molded into grotesque or fanciful shapes. They were all painted and decorated with jewels and beads or peacock feathers. Some were gilded or finished with silver, and some were even attached to elaborate wigs dyed in bright hues.
Nyx chose one adorned with a fan of peacock plumes. Lydia protested that she’d been about to choose that one, but she had to settle for one designed to look like a mosaic. I wasn’t about to tell her that it made her look rather reptilian. Elka slipped on a mask festooned with downy feathers that made her look like an owl.
I’d only ever seen masks like that worn by the actors who performed between matches at the games. Something about normal folk donning them to disguise themselves in a crowd made me uneasy. The anonymity the masks granted the revelers felt almost dangerous.
“Oh, stop dawdling!” Nyx complained. “Just pick one. We’re going to miss all the fun!”
I shook off the moment of apprehension and plunged my hand into the basket, snatching up the first mask my fingertips brushed—a pretty thing with layers of delicate green and gold leaves fanning outward like a sunburst. I settled it on my face, and the girl tied the ribbons behind my head.
“That suits you, little fox!” Elka said, her mouth turned up in a crooked grin beneath the cloud of feathers she wore. “You look like one of the alfr—a woodland sprite come from the sacred groves to dance!” Then she giggled.
I’d never heard Elka giggle before.
I turned to Nyx. “What was in that wine?” I demanded.
“Just a bit of mandragora,” she said, shrugging.
The minute she said it, I felt my own head start to spin like the wheels on an upended chariot. Mandrake? That was something the druiddyn used back home—a powerful intoxicant to help them fall into divining trances. And how casually Nyx had just brushed it aside. At the look on my face, she sighed impatiently.
“Everyone takes it at a party like this,” she said, a sharp edge creeping into her voice. “Or poppy wine. Sometimes both. Don’t be so provincial!”
The insult stung, but I wasn’t about to let Nyx know it. And so, like an idiot, I snatched the wineskin from her and poured a stream of the liquid down my throat. When I handed the skin back, I tried to ignore the fact that my lips were tingling.
We climbed the path, and by the time we got to the house, Elka and I
were both giggling. Arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders, we tripped through the wide front doors of the palatial house and into a vast vaulted entry hall. And I suddenly understood why it was called Domus Corvinus.
Raven House.
It hadn’t even occurred to me when Nyx had first said the name. But then I saw the enormous black-marble statue of a bird perched, wings spread wide, atop a pedestal in the middle of the atrium. I stared at it in astonishment. The sculpture was so lifelike that I half expected to hear the rustling of its wings. For a moment, my mind reeled back to the crow that had been nailed to my door, and I felt a rush of dread. I shook my head, hard.
The raven was sacred to the Morrigan, I told myself. If anything, this was a sign that she wanted me at this place. I ran my fingertips across the carved marble ridges of the raven’s talons as I passed. Suddenly I realized I was alone in the crowd, and I glanced around for Elka, fumbling at the brooch holding my mantle closed with numb, clumsy fingers so I could pass it off to the waiting attendant who stood barring my way.
I made my way into the main part of the house and through to the enormous dining hall furnished with scattered arrangements of reclining couches and long tables groaning beneath the weight of the food and drink laid out on them. The sheer abundance was staggering. The sheer abandon with which the party guests indulged was even more so.
I marveled at it all. So this was what it was like to live a life of wealth and luxury. Noise and color and heady perfumes overwhelmed my senses, and I stood there gazing around at the glittering, torchlit spectacle. Lydia and Nyx had drifted far ahead of me—I could just see them, heads together and whispering before they were swallowed up by the crowd—and Elka was headed toward the nearest banquet table. I watched her weaving unsteadily through the press of bodies and thought to myself that I should catch up to her. That I should keep her in my sight. But by the time I’d fully formed that thought, she was gone.
Someone pressed a goblet into my hand, and I drank deeply.
Lithe-bodied, mostly naked dancers, boys and girls both, whirled past me trailing gossamer. Musicians on flutes and drums and harp-like lyres sat on raised daises in the corners of the room, the strains of their competing songs tangling in the air over the heads of revelers too busy gossiping or groping or shrieking with drunken laughter to even notice.
But then suddenly it was time for the main event of the evening.
That everyone noticed. It was what they’d come for.
A single cornua—just like the horns they used in the arenas—sounded a shrill, commanding note that echoed loudly off the elegant marble columns, and the room fell to utter silence. Even in my hazy state, I could feel the tension crackling like lightning as a figure in a tall gilded mask stepped forward. Raising an ornately decorated staff, he announced the combat that was about to take place between two rising stars of the gladiatorial world.
Gladiators, I thought, at a party?
The revelers cheered, some for Ajax and some for Mandobracius.
Mandobracius? Where had I heard that name before?
I couldn’t remember. And the fog in my head wasn’t helping. I stood, swaying, as two young girls clad in short, filmy tunics drew aside curtains and the gladiators stepped into the room. Torches flared, the light from the flames catching on the edges of their armor and blades. The men cheered rowdily, and the women leaned forward in anticipation.
Both men wore visored helmets but less armor than they would have in the arena—only broad leather belts and battle kilts, shin greaves, and wrist bracers. The one named Ajax was heavily muscled, oiled and gleaming, his skin a deeply tanned olive. Mandobracius was paler, leaner, and bore the swirling blue tattoos of a Celt on his chest and back. His long dark hair spilled over his shoulders from under the brim of a helmet crested with a plume of glossy black feathers.
I shivered at the sight. Here was a warrior the Morrigan could be proud of. He was worshipped by the crowd of revelers, who screamed his name out like he was a god. In that moment, as the two men squared off and the crowd froze in anticipation, I could think of nothing I wanted more. To fight like that, to be adored like that . . . to win such glory with nothing but my blades. I thought of the Victory role in Caesar’s Triumphs slipping through my fingers, and for a brief, irrational moment, I wanted to gnash my teeth furiously right there in the middle of the revelry.
But then the two men stepped forward and saluted each other, and I found myself leaning in with the rest of the crowd. It looked as though both gladiators would fight dimachaerus-style—just like I did—and I heard myself cheering wildly at the prospect. The cornua sounded again, ringing in my ears and drowning out my shouts, and the fight began.
Ajax went on the attack, and the smaller, more agile Mandobracius was forced into a hasty retreat, swords whirling like wheels as he blocked blow after blow. Ajax followed relentlessly, and the two combatants barreled through the crowd, heedless of causing injury to the spectators. Partygoers dove for cover, laughing as they picked themselves up off the floor after the frenzy had swept past.
The near brush with death was a heady elixir to the watching crowd. In those moments, the gladiators were like heroes and villains out of legend. The women shrieked giddily and the men drunkenly shouted encouragement while flashing blades came within inches of hacking off their patrician limbs.
I cheered as loudly as anyone in the room.
Ajax chased Mandobracius the length of the dining room and out into the courtyard, and the crowd spilled out after them, carrying me along in their wake. A gust of wind spiraled down through the roofless courtyard, and two of the stands of torch sconces guttered and extinguished, plunging a corner of the impromptu arena into darkness. I caught a glimpse of Mandobracius as he spun on his heel and disappeared into the throng.
The house slaves scrambled amid cries of outrage to relight the torches. When they flared to life again, Ajax stood in the middle of a small clearing in the courtyard, turning in wary circles. His opponent was nowhere to be seen.
Then suddenly, I saw a black-feathered helmet crest bobbing up above the heads of the crowd. Ajax saw it too and lunged forward, thrusting his swords before him. The revelers shrieked—in real terror—and dove frantically out of the way as one of the beefy gladiator’s swords plunged into the naked chest of the man in the feathered helmet. Ajax’s prey staggered forward, into the open space beyond the crowd.
It was not Mandobracius.
The man’s torso was far too skinny and lacked the swirling tattoos. His helmet wasn’t even real. It was only a costume piece—one of the more elaborate masks at the party, designed to mimic Mandobracius’s armor. The man wearing it had probably been an ardent admirer.
Ajax realized his mistake a moment too late.
He let out a soft gasp and looked down to see two blades protruding outward from his chest, the points red with his own blood. Ajax’s spine arched, and he clawed weakly at the blades, sinking to his knees not more than a spear’s length in front of me. As he collapsed face-first on the marble floor, the crowd went mad with bloodlust, howling and cheering and shouting the victor’s name. I looked up from the dead man to see Mandobracius standing there, his tattooed chest heaving, the swords clenched in his fists painted dark with blood. Carried away in the moment, drunk on excitement as much as mandrake wine, I felt a savage elation. But when the bloodied gladiator raised his head and met my gaze, I felt my heart tear in two.
The gray eyes that looked out from behind the visor grate were as familiar to me as my own soul. The room began to spin, and suddenly I felt as though I was suffocating. I reached up and clawed the mask from my face, and the gladiator’s mouth soundlessly made the shape of a name. My name.
“Fallon?” He blinked rapidly. The bloodied blades wavered in his hands.
Mael?
“Is that really you? Fallon—it’s me.” He reached up and lifted the helmet off h
is head. There were raven feathers tied throughout his long dark hair. “It’s Aeddan!”
Aeddan . . .
No. That wasn’t possible. The last time I’d seen Aeddan, he’d killed his brother. It was the wine, the mandrake. I was hallucinating. As the apparition of Mael’s brother reached out for me, I turned and bolted from the room, fighting my way through the crowd as if the Raven of Nightmares herself had come to claim me.
“Fallon!” the apparition called after me. “Fallon!”
My name echoed through the marble halls behind me as I ran.
Domus Corvinus, I soon discovered, was like a labyrinth. Corridors turned into rooms that turned into atriums that turned into yet more corridors. The crowds thinned the farther away from the dining hall I got, until I was thankfully, mercifully alone. I stumbled through a breezeway out onto a terrace. I leaned heavily against a marble plinth topped with a sundial, trying to steady myself, but it did little to quell the sensation that I was back on the ship sailing across the Mare Nostrum. The ground seemed to swell and heave, and the clouds in the sky above my head—I could have sworn—were breathing.
It wasn’t Mael. Mael’s dead. And it wasn’t Aeddan.
No. It couldn’t be. Aeddan had run home after murdering his own brother.
I stared down at the Roman numerals carved into the weathered face of the sundial, trying to remember what they were.
One . . . two . . . three . . .
What was the next one called? I could never remember the names of the numbers, and Elka and I had laughed about it every time she’d asked me to call out a number on her target wheel.
Thirteen!
Someone at the ludus had once told me thirteen was unlucky.
The sky, dressed in garish hues, reeled above me, and the ground beneath me heaved like a wave. I thought I heard a raven cry out in the distance. And then a pair of grasping hands, like talons, reached out from the darkness behind me, and a voice said, “Fallon.”
I screamed.
And spun, flailing, wrenching violently out of the grip of whoever had me by the shoulders. A backward kick rewarded me with a grunt of pain, and suddenly I was free.
The Valiant Page 24