Blood and Sand

by C. V. Wyk

  When she was young, Crius had given her a small wooden practice sword. She’d swung it over her head like a sling until Crius snapped at her. “You are a Maedi, Attia! For the gods’ sakes, act like one!”

  Incensed, Attia had swung her wooden sword into his side as hard as she could, cracking two of his ribs. She hadn’t realized her own strength. She’d immediately dropped the sword and taken a step back.

  But Crius had barely flinched. He’d simply picked up the weapon and put it back into her hand. “I’ll make a warrior of you yet,” he’d said with a grin.

  This is who I am.

  Those thoughts and memories, jumbled and sharp, comprised her very essence. She couldn’t go numb. She couldn’t push it away. The best and the worst—she couldn’t forget.

  The rumble of the cart’s wheels made her teeth chatter as she opened the inner door. The road to Pompeii was worn and pitted, causing the cart to rock dangerously. Then she stepped through the door and saw something that nearly made her heart do the same: Rory stood on her toes on the bench with her little face pressed against one of the slits in the side of the cart. Sunlight streamed in through the narrow opening, kissing the pale skin of her nose and cheek. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.

  “Rory, no!” Attia yanked her away from the side, using her body to shield the girl.

  “I did it!” Rory said, gripping Attia’s shoulders. “I felt the sun!”

  “You’re not supposed to!” Attia said in a horrified whisper.

  “But I did, and it was warm and soft and not at all like mother said it would be. Look!” She turned her face to the side. “I didn’t burn!”

  Attia wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Blisters maybe, or some kind of terrible rash or swelling or bloody wound. But all she saw was a flushed cheek like berries and cream, and bright blue eyes that shone with delight.

  “It didn’t hurt! It felt like … like fire, only softer and just on this spot,” Rory said, pointing at her cheek. “I used to feel the moon. But it was nothing like this.”

  Attia smiled, though her heart was still racing. “You can feel moonlight?”

  “At night, I open the windows in my room and pretend the moon is a sun just for me. But that wasn’t like this. Not at all.” Her eyes grew round. “I have to show Mother and Lucius,” she said, and hurried to the back of the cart to open the door.

  “No, Rory, wait!”

  The alarm in Attia’s voice caught her attention, and Rory turned back to stare at her. “What’s wrong?”

  Attia probably should have realized it during their time together. Rory was clever and vivacious, and her little limbs were perfectly normal. She lost breath quickly, and she was so incredibly pale, but what else could be expected from a child who’d been shut away in the dark her whole life?

  For a reason that no one said out loud, her family had kept her hidden—kept her from friends, from society, even from sunlight. They claimed it was for her health, and the household believed them. Why wouldn’t they? But the clear skin on Rory’s face was proof enough. She wasn’t really ill, and her family knew it. So what were they hiding?

  “We can’t show them yet,” Attia said.

  Rory cocked her head as she pulled her hand away from the door. “Why not?”

  Because they can’t know that I know.

  “Because … well, because the cart is still moving, and…” Attia swallowed hard. “We should keep this our secret.”

  “Even from Lucius?” Rory asked, her mouth puckering into a frown.

  Attia nodded. “Yes. Just for a little while.”

  “All right, but…” She looked up at the little slits in the cart. “Can I look out again?”

  She looked so excited, so hopeful, that Attia couldn’t bring herself to deny her. With a weak smile, she unwrapped Rory from the yards of cream-colored fabric. She still looked so small, so fragile, but determined, too.

  Attia kissed her cheek and held her close for a moment before positioning her hands under her arms. Then she held Rory up to the light.

  CHAPTER 16

  Timeus’s estate in Pompeii sat on the very edge of a cliff that jutted out over the Tyrrhenian Sea. Somehow, it was a different sea from the one that had greeted them in Ardea—no fiery colors, no glittering expanse. Near Pompeii, the sea was calm and deep, its blue a hundred times darker than the evening sky.

  Silence and stillness, Attia thought. Much like the gladiator standing beside her.

  As soon as she’d entered Xanthus’s room, she could see the guilt and sadness written across his face. She could feel it in the hesitant touch of his hand on her cheek before he turned away. He was glad she’d stayed, and yet he wished she hadn’t. Attia knew he blamed himself for her bondage now more than ever, and they held themselves on the sharp edge of so many unspoken words. Attia wished he could just understand that freedom wouldn’t mean much without him. Not anymore. She wished he knew that, for her, there was no escaping what was between them.

  Like statues, they stood together at the single window in his room, where they had a clear view of Mount Vesuvius to the north. It loomed over the city like a storm cloud, angry and brooding. Ash dyed its sloping sides in broad strokes of gray and black. Its mouth frayed at the edges, exhaling gusts of smoky breath that melted into the sky above it. Despite the coolness of the evening, the air around the mountain shimmered with low heat, ominously caressing the houses tucked into its dark folds.

  The main road snaked along the edge of the jagged coastline below. Merchants, fishermen, and vendors rushed back and forth like ants, frantic to finish their work before nightfall. As Attia watched, a driver pulled a little too hard on the reins, and his cart’s wheel nearly slipped over the edge.

  “You’d think they would just build a wider road,” Attia muttered as men hurried to right the cart. “Save themselves the trouble.” Her eyes drifted back to the mountain. “Then again, you’d think they wouldn’t have tried building a city at all next to that.”

  “Attia.”

  The moment Xanthus said her name in that heavy tone he used when he was upset, her insides clenched.

  “There are things I haven’t told you yet,” Xanthus said.

  Attia sighed. “There are things I haven’t told you yet either.”

  He watched her patiently, obviously hesitant to speak his own truths just yet.

  “Sabina is a Thracian,” Attia said.

  Xanthus’s brows rose. “What?”

  “She told me in Ardea. I still can’t believe it.”

  “Who else knows?”

  “No one.”

  “Attia, I’m not asking out of curiosity. If anyone else heard her say that—”

  “No one knows,” Attia said. “No one else was even there. Well. Except…”

  “Except?”

  “Rory was in the room—”

  “Attia!”

  “But she was asleep! She didn’t hear anything, and even if she did, what would it matter? Why would anyone care if Sabina is a Thracian?”

  “Because you’re all supposed to be dead!”

  Attia froze.

  The statement, in and of itself, was not surprising. Thrace was attacked and defeated, and everyone knew that Thracians didn’t surrender. It would follow that there were no other survivors.

  But there was something deeply disturbing about Xanthus’s tone, about the way his face tightened with frustration and horror. Attia swallowed hard and waited for the next part. Not an apology, no. Comfort? She didn’t need that either. An explanation, then.

  Xanthus leaned his elbows on the windowsill and rubbed his face with his hands. “You don’t know that House.”

  “The House of Timeus?”

  “The House of Flavius.”

  Attia frowned. “The Princeps?”

  Xanthus turned to her with weary eyes and breathed out slowly through his nose. “What do you know about Titus?”

  “His father was Vespasian,” Attia replied. “When he died last
year, Titus inherited and became the leader of Rome.”

  “And do you know what Vespasian said on his deathbed?”

  Attia shook her head.

  “He said, ‘Oh, I think I am becoming a god!’”

  The fine hairs on the back of Attia’s neck stood up. “How do you know that?”

  “His brother Crassus told his nephew Titus, who told his good friend Timeus.” Xanthus scoffed. “The world still believes that Rome is a republic at heart, with elected officials and the Senate to represent the people. Not emperors or godheads. But it was the Republic—under Vespasian and Crassus—that forced its way into Britannia, that sacked Herodium, then Cremona, then Jerusalem.”

  “Then Thrace,” Attia whispered.

  She understood what Xanthus was saying. It had taken years for the House of Flavius to become a name worth remembering. Vespasian’s title had been hard-won. He’d conquered half of the known world to secure his place. As far as Timeus and the ruling houses knew, Attia was the last Thracian—an unremarkable seventeen-year-old girl who was now a slave. Alone, she was hardly dangerous. But if they thought there were more, if there was a possibility that any other Thracian—especially any of the Maedi—had survived, if they knew that Sparro was Attia’s father …

  Xanthus nodded, as though he could read her thoughts on her face. “If Crassus had known who you were, he would never have let you live. They attacked Thrace because your people could have stood in the way of everything they hoped to build. Men like your father were considered grave threats.”

  “To the Republic?”

  “To the empire.”

  Empire. The word made Attia shudder. She stared sightlessly out the window, the colors of the sky and Pompeii and Vesuvius swimming in front of her. It was so difficult to speak that she thought the wind might have stolen her voice to dance over the Tyrrhenian. She looked back to find Xanthus staring at her intently, his green eyes bright as beacons of Greek fire in the dusk. He was saying so much with that one look. Attia could practically feel the weight of his unspoken words.

  “There’s something else,” she said. “Rory isn’t sick. She’s not ill or weak at all. And the sunlight—it doesn’t hurt her. She’s in perfect health.”

  Xanthus frowned. “So why have Valeria and Timeus been keeping her hidden away all these years?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You can’t tell anyone about this. Not even Sabina. They’ll kill you, Attia. You can’t give them a reason.”

  “I gave them my father’s name.”

  “You gave that to Ennius,” Xanthus said with a shake of his head. “And even that was reckless.”

  Attia smiled. “I ran to an arena and posed as a gladiator. To say that I was reckless is putting it a bit mildly, don’t you think?” The reminder made Xanthus scowl again, and Attia put her hand on his shoulder. “You’re not my keeper, Xanthus. Whatever Timeus and the Romans have done, my life is still my own. I am not your responsibility.”

  “The Roman child isn’t your responsibility.”

  “What does Rory have to do with anything?”

  “You risked your life to protect her when the camp was attacked.”

  “It wasn’t a risk to do what I’ve been trained to do.”

  “You can’t save everyone, Attia.”

  “Who says I’m going to try?”

  Xanthus started to speak, but before he could, a slow rumbling crawled through the ground, along the coastline and the road, stretching out from the mountain in the distance.

  “What’s happening?” Attia’s hands gripped the windowsill for purchase as the rumbling became louder.

  Xanthus pulled her down to the floor just as a violent tremor shook the walls around them.

  Outside, people were shouting, but not with panic. They calmly called out orders over the sounds of cracking stone and brick.

  The chair in the corner of Xanthus’s room toppled over, and the little table shuffled along the floor and blocked the doorway. But the walls held, and Xanthus held her. Just as suddenly as they’d started, the tremors stopped.

  Attia rose to her knees to look out the window.

  Vesuvius was huffing and puffing at the sky. Steam rose up in sharp bursts, displacing cool, low-hanging clouds before drifting down again like rain. The smell of sulfur burned her nostrils and made her eyes water. The mountain settled again, and the people below went about their business as though nothing had happened. Or as though it happened all the time.

  Attia sat back on the floor and let Xanthus wrap his arms around her. But the silence slithered between them, dark and thick as the mountain’s breath. She could feel words swirling in his chest and threatening to burst from his mouth, a torrent of rebukes and fears and worries. But how could she worry about anything else? After everything that had happened, how could it possibly get any worse for them?

  After a while, she took his hand and led him to their bed.

  And he followed, hesitant but wanting, and held her again in a tight embrace, as though he was afraid she might try to bolt at any moment. In the curve of his arms, she closed her eyes, and finally, finally found sleep.

  * * *

  Xanthus’s eyes snapped open sometime in the night. It was a different kind of waking—abrupt and complete, as though he hadn’t been sleeping at all. The height of the moon beyond the window told him that dawn was at least four, maybe five hours away. But he was restless, and he didn’t know why.

  Attia slept beside him, pressed close from hip to ankle. She’d completely wrapped herself in the blanket, and only her head and the tips of her toes were visible. Xanthus placed a soft kiss on her temple before rising and walking to the window.

  The weather was turning cold. He could feel the promise of winter in the air. The snow would already be knee-deep in Britannia—a thick, deceptively soft-looking blanket of white coating everything from the steep crags of the north to the shallow bogs of the south. Winter in Rome was little more than a frost, a season of dead things and indoor plotting. He’d never seen snow in the Republic. He wondered if the council of the Princeps would view it as an omen.

  The patricians were remarkably superstitious for supposedly educated noblemen, even more so than the priestesses of the Tor. They believed in the terrible signs of raven and crow, the messages that appeared in bleached bones. Some even subscribed to the portents of tea leaves. Tea leaves.

  Xanthus was no seer and no druid. But the Romans knew absolutely nothing of the Sight. Not that they needed it. If they just looked ahead with reason and logic, they’d see how unsustainable their greed really was. The best and the worst of them would only turn to ash. Just like everyone else.

  Xanthus sighed, ready to go back to bed when he heard the clatter of hooves. The gate squeaked as it swung open. Quiet as a shadow, he opened his door and walked to the archway that separated the training yard from the main courtyard.

  Three horsemen had arrived, all clothed in black. Moonlight and torches shone behind them, sending eerie, elongated shadows across the courtyard. They carried swords, but Xanthus could tell they were neither soldiers nor Praetorians. Timeus stood in front of one of the horseman, along with several of his personal guards. One of the riders handed him a tightly rolled scroll, and as his cloak shifted, Xanthus caught sight of the sigil embroidered on his clothing—the silver wolf of the House of Flavius.

  Timeus spoke quietly with the rider for several minutes before the man nodded and tugged on the reins of his horse. He and the other horsemen disappeared down the avenue that led back to the city.

  As the guards closed the gate again, Timeus looked over his shoulder, his eyes landing directly on Xanthus. He didn’t seem angry, just weary. He inclined his head for him to approach. When Xanthus was close enough, Timeus said, “Tycho Flavius is coming.”

  “When?”

  “In a month, more or less. He wants to…” Timeus glanced down at the scroll in his hands and read, “‘… protect those interests that are dear to the Hou
se of Flavius.’” He crumpled the letter in his hand and shook his head. “Bloated ass.”

  Xanthus frowned. “So what does he really want?”

  Timeus’s blue eyes narrowed, caught between a scowl and an amused smile. “You know, Xanthus, sometimes you’re too smart for your own good, and one day, that just might be what kills you.”

  Xanthus waited.

  “He wants to meet Spartacus,” Timeus said.

  “How did he even hear about the match?”

  “The House of Flavius has eyes everywhere,” Timeus said. “A better question would be how in the gods’ names am I supposed to say that Spartacus isn’t here? How am I supposed to tell Tycho Flavius that my champion and my idiot nephew lost Spartacus in Ardea?” He threw the crumpled scroll to the ground. “Good thing I’ve already hired men to track Spartacus down.”

  “Track him?” Xanthus asked, trying to keep his voice even.

  “Lucius told me how the man fought,” Timeus said, “and I have no intention of losing someone like that to another ludus. As soon as we left Ardea, I sent out word to hire trackers—mercenaries. They’ll be here at sunrise.”

  Xanthus felt his chest tighten. “How will you find him?”

  “The mercenaries’ leader, Kanut, claims he has experience with this kind of thing. He sounds confident, and he’d better be. I’m paying a small fortune for this. Then again, I’m not the only one looking for Spartacus. Fido has sent out his own men.”

  Xanthus’s vision reeled. People were looking for Spartacus. For Attia. Gods, what had they done?

  “What if no one finds him?” Xanthus asked. “What if you can’t track him down?”

  Timeus stayed quiet for a long minute. His eyes focused on a distant point on the road before drifting upward. The moon washed his face in yellow-tinted light. “I am a patient man,” he said.

  Xanthus glared at him. You’ll have to be.

  * * *

  As promised, the mercenary arrived at sunrise.

  Xanthus, Lucius, Ennius, and Timeus all wore deep scowls as they waited for him in the study.

  “Is this really the best course of action, Uncle?” Lucius asked quietly. “You can’t trust a hired sword.”