Rome, and Romans, were different. And so I’d resolved to learn their written words as best I could. Sorcha had made a tutor available to any of the girls at the ludus who wished to avail themselves, though few of them did. Ajani, with her quiet thirst for knowledge, was one. I was another. Admittedly, I had a very specific reason for doing so. An armor-wearing reason with laughing hazel eyes and an infuriatingly kissable mouth who was, at present, a whole wide world away from me, smiting the enemies of the great and mighty Caesar.
Before he left, I’d promised Cai that I would try to write. Or rather, that I would try to dictate letters to Heron, the ludus physician, and perhaps the only man I would trust with such words. And Cai had promised me, in turn, that he would send me letters back whenever he could. Letters written in basic—very basic—Latin. Usually the missives were no more than two or three lines of neat black script on a square of papyrus or vellum. But beyond the words and phrases I could recognize, like “smile” and “miss you”—or, depending on how Caesar’s campaign fared, “fight” and “enemy” and “seige”—Cai always sent me something else. He sent me pictures. They made my chest ache for him.
Because they were magic. And they were just for me.
Like the murals painted on the walls of the Ludus Achillea—scenes from the arena captured and frozen into single unending moments—Cai’s charcoal drawings of people and places, birds and animals and flowers struck me speechless when I gazed at them.
Every few weeks, a scroll sealed in a copper tube would arrive at the ludus, delivered by courier along with whatever other correspondence there was for the Lanista or the other girls. There wasn’t much of the latter—most of us didn’t have anyone to correspond with outside of the walls of the academy—and so I always felt a little guilty when the courier would ride through the gates and the other gladiatrices would sigh or snicker or, some, gaze longingly at the letters I received. In the privacy of my cell, though, that guilty twinge would vanish the instant I twisted open the seal.
Inside were scenes of the countrysides Cai and the legions marched through: rolling hills dotted with strands of trees, craggy ravines seamed with creeks, soaring forests, and endless plains. Sometimes, he drew the creatures that inhabited those places: a herd of deer grazing, an eagle perched on the high, bare branch of a lonely pine, a crow sitting on the peak of an army camp tent, wings hunched against the wind and black eyes gleaming bright. And always, beneath the sketch, Cai would write the name of the thing in neat black letters to help me learn their names in his language.
Cervos. Aquilam. Corvo.
My favorite of all the drawings he’d sent me, though, wasn’t a pretty landscape or an animal. It was a picture of his hand. When I’d first unrolled the vellum scroll, my breath had caught in my throat because I could recognize it plainly. That familiar, calloused palm lay open and upturned as if Cai held it out for me to take. The scroll lay on top of all the others in the trunk at the foot of my pallet in my cell. I’d taken it out to look at it almost every day since he’d sent it. But what I’d told Elka had been truth. I hadn’t received anything from him in almost a month. And I was beginning to worry that something was wrong.
The spirit of the beer I’d drunk that night began to work its maudlin magic on me, and I felt a proper sulk coming on. But before it had a chance to take hold, I noticed that the ludus guards had wandered close. I stood and stretched and announced somewhat unneccesarily that I was going to turn in for the night, as we were once more rounded up and herded back through the gates. It was an ungentle reminder that, until those papers arrived from Caesar, we weren’t free.
Still, as we passed the new-built barracks where the Amazona girls were quartered that night, and I saw the black-clad brutes who guarded their cells, I counted myself infinitely fortunate that, over a year earlier, in the Forum of Rome, a certain slave trader had been canny enough to sell me to my very own sister. I shuddered to think what would have happened to me if Pontius Aquila’s bid had won out that day.
III
THE NEXT MORNING I awoke with a head full of sheep’s wool and bootnails. My dreams had been full of drowning—dark figures in black cloaks lurking beneath the waves like statues on the seabed, waiting to drag me down and away from the sun and my sisters, away from the ludus forever . . .
I blamed a certain kitchen slave’s barrels of beer and doused my face with cold water from my washstand until I could open my eyes without wincing.
“Are you still mooning over your decurion?” Elka asked, peering at me as we stretched out our muscles in the lee of the equipment shed wall before practice.
“No,” I snapped.
“Ah. I thought so.” She nodded. “That would explain your mood, then.”
“I said no—”
“Maybe his father can give you some insight into your true love’s whereabouts these days,” she said with a casual shrug, turning away to pluck a practice javelin from the weapons rack.
“What?” I blinked at her.
“The good Senator Varro?” She turned a guileless expression on me. “I heard he’s in the main yard with a big old oxcart. Some sort of gift for the Lanista, according to Kronos. I think they’re waiting for you—”
“What—why didn’t you say so?” I sputtered and spun in a circle, checking my tunic for obvious stains or creases and patting down my hastily plaited hair.
Senator Decimus Fulvius Varro was one of the wealthiest, most influential men in Rome. He was a war hero, having served with distinction under Pompey the Great, and now, in his retirement, was an esteemed senior member of the senate and a successful businessman.
More to the point, he was Cai’s father. And he liked me.
At least, that was the impression he’d given. My mind flashed back to the very first time I’d met him. It was in the heady moments after my victory in the Triumphs—and in the wake of a very public display of affection from the senator’s son. Cai had vaulted the spectator barrier of the Circus Maximus to, quite literally, sweep me off my feet in an embrace. Our kiss had sent the crowd in attendance into a frenzy of cheering and swooning.
I’d been half-convinced it would be the end of us when, afterward, I saw a man pushing through the celebratory crowd with focused purpose. A man who looked like Cai. Tall and handsome, an elegant figure with a soldier’s bearing, draped in a purple-striped toga with dark hair just beginning to shade to silver.
“Victrix,” he’d greeted me with a serious look on his face. “I salute your victory. But I couldn’t help noticing that not only have you defeated your adversaries, you seem to have ensnared the affections of my one and only son whilst doing so.”
Cai had been pulled away from me by a group of young men, friends of his from the stands who were heartily backslapping and cheering him over his impulsive, romantic declaration. I was on my own.
“Senator Varro.” I bowed, my mouth going dry. “I . . .”
“We shall have to have you to the house to dine.”