Evemeal was sullen that nevernight, none of the bawdy jokes or friendly banter that usually marked dinner around the long verandah tables. All minds seemed turned to Matilius’s sale. Thinking about the fate that awaited the man in Pandemonium, Mia found herself without appetite, and instead of the usual scraps she gave when Fang came snuffling around, she gave over almost her entire meal.
The big mastiff licked her wounded fingers, his stubby tail all a-wag. She ruffled his ears and tried her best not to dwell on it. To think instead of the contests to come, the revenge awaiting her at the end of them. She was here for one reason, and one alone. And vengeance wouldn’t be served by getting too close to any she fought beside. No matter how crushing the thought of it all was.
As if echoing her thoughts, she felt a cool breeze on the back of her neck. Fang whined softly and scampered away from Mia, ears pressed flat, tail tucked. Mister Kindly entwined himself in the shadows of her hair and whispered, soft as shadows.
“ . . . these people are not your familia, and not your friends. all of them are only a means to an end . . .”
The other gladiatii seemed in no mood to speak on it, chewing their food in silence. Butcher was dark, though, muttering to himself and shaking his head. And near the meal’s end, he could keep his tongue in his head no longer.
“This is horseshit,” he growled, pushing his bowl aside.
“’Tis beef, I think,” Wavewaker said, picking his teeth.
“I mean Mati, you bleeding cunt,” Butcher said, glaring at the bigger man. “Selling him to that devious shitbag Caito? He deserved better than the damned pit.”
“Mind your language, brother,” Wavewaker waved a warning finger, his baritone growing deeper. “There are ladies present.”
Bladesinger raised her eyebrow. “Where?”
“Enough,” Furian growled. The champion stared hard, dark eyes burning. His jaw was set. Muscles taut. “Eat your food, Butcher.”
“It’s not right, Furian.”
The Unfallen slammed a fist down on the table, and all eyes turned to stare.
“It is Domina’s will,” he said. “She is mistress of this collegium. You seem to apt to forget that. But remind me, brother, what were you, before she and Executus dragged you up from the shit?”
“A bodyguard,” Butcher said, squaring his jaw.
“A bloody mule is what you were,” Furian spat. “Carrying bags to market for some wrinkled old dona, and fucking her on command. And what of you, Wavewaker?”
“I was a thespian,” the big man replied proudly.
“Thespian? You were a damned doorman in a two-beggar theater, bouncing drunks and mopping shit out of the privy between shows.”
Wavewaker looked a little crestfallen. “I was set to play the Magus Ki—”
“Byern was headed for an Ashkahi copper mine.” The Unfallen gestured about the room. “Bryn, a Liisian brothel. Aa’s bleeding cock, Bladesinger was set to be fucking hanged! And Domina raised all of us up and forged us into gods!”
The champion’s dark glare roamed the mess, inviting dissent.
“Domina feeds us,” he said. “Shelters us. Gives us the chance to fight for glory and honor in the venatus instead of living on our knees or on our backs. And you name it not right? We all owe our lives to her. Including Matilius. That makes it right.”
Mia sat in silence, listening to the Unfallen’s tirade. None in the room voiced disagreement. She wondered at the man again; who he was, what made him breathe. She was a good judge of character, but Furian was a mystery. He fought like a daemon in the arena, true enough. And yet, he seemed perfectly content to bend his knee to this life of blood and servitude, and deny the truth of what he really was.
Why, just once, can’t I meet a darkin who’s not a bastard or a fool?
Evemeal ended, the gladiatii were marched to the barracks and bathed, four at a time. She was often thrown in with Sidonius, Butcher, and Bladesinger, though she preferred bathing with Wavewaker best. The man had a beautiful voice, and he often sang as he washed—songs learned from his brief spell in the theater, apparently.
Mia had already abandoned any notion of decency, what with walking about all turn wearing two strips of padded cloth and a pair of sandals. She found it strange, how easily she was becoming accustomed to life in the collegium. No privacy. No modesty. And when she closed her eyes, she could still hear the sound that had lingered in her mind since the games at Blackbridge. The roar, lifting her up on wings of thunder.
The crowd.
Her skin thrilled to think of it, despite herself. The memory burned in the black behind her eyes. Still, she reminded herself she was here for a reason, and that reason was the magni. Leona had sold Matilius without discussing the matter with Arkades. If there was some jeopardy for the collegium, she’d best learn the truth of it.
Sid seemed of a mood when Mia returned to their cell after her bath, and she didn’t press him. Instead she lay against the bars and snoozed, wondering how she might turn the big Itreyan’s allegiance to her father to some kind of advantage. There in the dark, she listened to the soft murmuring under Bladesinger’s door, sitting in silence until she was certain the rest of the gladiatii were asleep. She whispered Sid’s name, but he didn’t stir. Feeling a cool whisper on back of her neck.
“ . . . where do we go . . . ?”
“You tell me,” she whispered in reply.
“ . . . i have been roaming the house since evemeal . . .”
“So tell me a story.”
“ . . . arkades requested a meeting with leona. he was told to come after she had bathed . . .”
Mia nodded. “Lead the way.”
Her shadow rippled and Mister Kindly was gone, flitting over to the portcullis, now locked tight for the nevernight. Mia reached out to the shadows in the antechamber, just as she’d done yestereve. They were no easier to grip, her hold slipping for a moment as she scowled in concentration and drew a long steady breath and
Stepped
into
the shadow
beyond the portcullis.
The world turned on its head and she almost fell, biting down on a curse as she steadied herself with her wounded hand. Head hung low, long dark hair draped over ink-black eyes.
“ . . . come . . .”
The not-cat flitted ahead, keeping watch for the house guards. Slipping through her old home like a knife between ribs, Mia passed the rows of armor, up the wide stairway to the first floor. Her mind swimming with memories of her childhood here.
She remembered her father working his horses in the yard. Her mother reading by the bay windows in her room. She remembered the nevernight her brother Jonnen was born, under this very roof. Her father had wept as he held the babe in his arms.
She could recall him so clearly. The way he smelled. The way he kissed her mother, first on one eyelid, then the other, then finally upon her smooth, olive brow.
A good man.
A loving husband.
A faithful soldier.
What kind of king would he have made?
Mia shook her head, cursing herself a fool. It didn’t matter. Her father’s kingdom was two feet wide and six feet deep, and two of the men who’d killed him were still talking and breathing. That was all that mattered. That was all she should care about.
Up to the fourth floor. The level had been used for storage when Mia’s parents had owned the Nest, but with her Falcons kept secure in the basement, the upper level now belonged to the mistress of the house. Quiet as a whisper, Mia stole down the long hallways toward soft voices coming from the bathhouse.
Peering in through the door, she saw Dona Leona emerging from a deep, steaming pool, water running in rivulets down her bare body. Her hair was damp, her face bereft of paint. It occurred to Mia that she was a beauty; full hips and fuller lips. Her eyes roamed Leona’s curves, wreathed in steam, and she wondered at the thrill of it. Why, downstairs in the barracks, seeing naked bodies meant nothing, but here, her skin was prickling. Heart beating faster. Thinking, perhaps, of another beauty on Aurelius’s bed, her taste on the young don’s mouth, her golden kisses sinking ever lower.
She thought of Ashlinn, then. The kiss they’d shared when Mia left the Church. That kiss that lasted a moment too long. Maybe not long enough?
Mia shook her head. Cursing herself for a novice. Ashlinn Järnheim killed Tric. Ashlinn Järnheim betrayed the Church and her sacred vows to avenge her father . . .
She looked across the hall, caught her reflection in a small mirror on the wall.
Remind you of anyone else you know?
Magistrae was waiting faithfully beside Leona’s bath, slipping a long robe about her mistress. Leona seemed pensive, chewing her fingernail and staring at the small statue of Trelene that also served as the water spout. She sighed as Magistrae tried to rub the tension from her shoulders.
“What troubles, love?” the older woman asked.
Leona smiled. “How do you know I’m troubled?”
“These were the hands that delivered you into the world,” Magistrae smiled in return. “This was the bosom that nursed you. Though I’ll not claim to always know your mind, I know when dark thoughts fill it, sure and true.”
Leona closed her eyes as Magistrae worked a knot in her neck.
“ . . . I’m having dreams again, Anthea. About Mother.”
“O, love,” Magistrae cooed. “Long years have passed since then.”
“I know that, as I sit here now. But I’m always a child in the dreams. A little girl, small and afraid. Just as I was when . . .”
Leona chewed a fingernail and shook her head, silence ringing in the bathhouse.
“It’s an awful thing,” she finally sighed. “To live in fear.”
“Then do not, love. Look how far you’ve come. Look at all you’ve built.”
“I do. But all I’ve built stands at the edge of ruin, Anthea.” The dona breathed deep, clenched her jaw. “I need coin. Marcus left me with little beyond these walls and the funds I spent reshaping them. He was not a careful man with his money.”
“You two were well suited, then.”
Leona smiled sadly. “I deserve that, I suppose.”
“Do you miss him, love?” Magistrae asked, swiftly changing subjects.
“ . . . No,” Leona sighed. “Marcus was fair enough, but I never loved him. And . . . I hated needing him. Does that make me awful?”
“It makes you honest,” the older woman smiled.
Silence fell again, Leona gnawing at her fingertips and staring at the wall. The dona seemed younger in here than she did in the yard, her armor cast aside with none but trusted eyes to see. Almost like the little girl she spoke of being in her dreams. Magistrae kept kneading her shoulders, occasionally chewing her lip. When the woman spoke again, it was with obvious trepidation.
“Leona, I know you and your father—”
“No, Anthea.”
“But he has coin aplenty, surely if you—”
“No!” She turned on her nurse, blue eyes flashing. “You forget your place. And I’ll not hear another word of it. I will die before I accept a single copper beggar from that man, do you understand me?”
The magistrae’s eyes found the floor.
“Aye, Domina,” she said.
Watching from the shadows, Mia found herself saddened. She could sense Anthea was truly concerned for Leona, could see the barrier between them had been worn thin over decades. But as much as Anthea cared for her mistress, she’d always be a servant. Though she’d fed Leona at her breast, Anthea would never be her mother.
Still, it was one thing to listen in on a conversation that might decide her fate, entirely another intrude on such a private moment. Information was power, and power was advantage. But Mia had learned enough here.
Stealing down the corridor behind Mister Kindly, she found the broad dining hall. All the old furniture was still here—the long dining table where her parents had entertained, the wooden chairs she’d crawled and hid among as a little girl. Some of the same tapestries hung on the walls—Goddess Tsana wreathed in flame, Goddess Trelene cloaked in rolling waves.
Footsteps. Approaching. Clink thump. Clink thump.
Mia and Mister Kindly slipped behind one of the long, heavy drapes. She could have just cloaked herself in shadows and listened to Executus and Leona talk, but in truth she wanted to see their faces. See if the armor Leona wore outside these walls was the same armor she wore for this legend of the arena, who served her instead of the man who’d raised him up a champion.
Arkades limped into the room, found it empty. Jaw clenched, he sat at the long table to wait. Mia saw he’d bathed, brushed his beard and his long salt-and-pepper hair. The scar at his face and his weathered skin made it hard to tell, but she supposed him in his mid-thirties. Life on the sand hadn’t been kind, but his physique, the sheer magnetism from a life spent winning victories before the adoring crowd . . .
He’d put aside the leather armor he wore in the yard, dressed in finery instead. His dark doublet was embroidered with the Falcons of Remus and the Lions of Leonides. His walking stick was also set with a lion’s head. Mia again wondered at his loyalties. Here he was, serving Leona. And yet, he still wore her father’s lion on his chest.
Looking about, Arkades lifted a flask from inside his doublet like a thief, took a long, deep pull.
“We have goblets if you prefer, Executus.”
Arkades startled, rising to his feet as Leona appeared in the doorway behind, carrying a bottle of wine and two goblets. His eyes widened a touch at the sight of her, and Mia couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow herself. Leona’s hair was wet, she was barefoot and still clad in her bathrobe, which was tied only loosely. If one looked hard enough from the right angle, very little was being left to the imagination.
“Mi Dona,” Arkades said, bowing with his eyes to the floor and studiously avoiding looking hard from any kind of angle at all.
Mia noted the small smirk on Leona’s face as she walked to the head of the table, flopped into a chair. She poured herself a glass, putting her foot up on the wood. Her robe slipped up, exposing her leg all the way to the thigh.
“Help yourself,” she smiled.
“ . . . Mi Dona?”
Leona motioned to the second goblet, the bottle.
“It’s awful, I’m afraid. But it cleaves to the task. Here.” Leona leaned forward, poured a glass and pushed it across the table. Arkades kept his eyes fixed anywhere but on her chest, practically writhing as he returned to his chair.
She keeps him off-balance with it, Mia noted. He’s ten years her senior. Twice her size. A warrior of a hundred battles, champion of the magni, and the poor bastard doesn’t even know which way to look when she walks into the room.
“So,” Leona said, leaning back and sipping from her cup. “You have thoughts. Ones most pressing that simply must be shared.”
Arkades nodded, his embarrassment evaporating as talk turned to the collegium.
“Matilius, Mi Dona.”
“What of him?”
“His sale to Caito—”
“Was a necessity,” she interrupted. “The purse at Blackbridge was not enough to cover expenses this month. Our creditors press, and they will have their coin.”
“But Caito . . . ,” Arkades began. “Pandemonium is no place for a man to die.”
Leona downed her cup with one swallow.
“Matilius was not a man,” she said, pouring another. “He was a slave.”
“You do not truly believe that, Mi Dona.”
Arkades stared at the younger woman across the table. Mia could see a moment’s softness in her stare, replaced quickly with iron.
“Do I not?” she asked.
“Matilius was gladiatii,” Arkades said. “He won glory and honor for this collegium. For you, Dona. He was not our finest blade, true, but he served you with all he had.”
“It was not enough. I have mouths aplenty and they all cost money. Our debts mount with every turn and my purse is all but empty.”
“And how came that to be, I wonder?” Executus scowled. “When you spend a living fortune on a single recruit?”
“Ah,” Leona sighed. “We come to the rub quickly this time.”
“For the thousand silver pieces you paid for that girl, you could have fed this collegium for the rest of the year!”
Mia’s ears pricked up at her mention, eyes narrowing.
“Did you watch her at Blackbridge?” Leona asked. “Did you see the way she ignited the crowd?”
“We have Furian for that!” Arkades all but shouted, rising from his chair. “The Unfallen is this collegium’s champion! That slip can’t even lift a damn shield!”
“Then we fight her Caravaggio style. Twin blades. No shield. The crowd will adore it, and her. A girl her size, gutting men twice as big? And looking the way she does? Four Daughters, the crowd won’t be able to see for the swelling of their cocks.”
Arkades sighed, pushing his knuckles into his eyes.
“When you started this collegium, Dona, you asked for my aid.”
“I did.” Leona toyed with the neckline of her robe. “And I am ever grateful for it.”
“So with all respect, my counsel must carry weight. I have known you since you were a child. I know you grew up around the venatus. But there is a world of difference between watching from the boxes, and running a collegium.”
Leona’s eyes and voice turned cold. “Think you, I do not know that?”
“I think you wish to spite your father.”
Leona’s eyes narrowed, her lips thin. “You overstep, Executus.”
Arkades raised a hand in supplication at Leona’s outrage. “Daughters know, I remember how he treated you and your mother. And your rage has no lack of merit. But I fear outbidding him on that girl so steeply proves your mind is clouded on matters of familia. Mine is clear. I fought for years on the sand, trained your father’s gladiatii years after that. And I tell you now, that girl is no champion. She has a fox’s cunning, but she’s not half the gladiatii Furian is. There will come a time when guile and wit won’t serve her. When it’s only she, and a sword, and a man she has to kill.”
Arkades leaned on the table, staring into Leona’s eyes.
“And she. Will. Fail.”
Mia’s stomach sank to hear Arkades talk so. She thought she’d impressed him with her showing at Blackbridge, but the man seemed utterly blind to her merits.
Leona’s eyes fell and Arkades remembered himself, sat back in his chair with an apologetic grunt. The dona downed the rest of her wine, stared into the empty goblet for endless minutes. When she spoke, her voice was so soft Mia almost couldn’t hear.
“Perhaps it was ill advised, spending such a sum. But I . . . I didn’t want to see him win again. Mother warned me when I was a little girl. ‘Never stand against your father,’ she told me. ‘He always wins.’”
She looked up at her executus, eyes bright with fury.
“But not this time,” she spat. “Never again. I want him on his knees. I want him to look up into my eyes and know it was me who put him there. I want to drink his suffering like the finest wine.” She hurled the bottle into the wall just beside Mia’s head, shattering it into a thousand splinters. “Not this fucking slop.”
She hung her head and sighed.
“Even selling Matilius, we owe another dozen creditors.”
“ . . . How much?”
“Much. And the points accrue by the turn.” Leona curled a fist, knuckles turning white. “Daughters, if only Marcus hadn’t died. Another few years on a justicus’s stipend, I’d have had enough to do this properly. If I find the ones who took him from me . . .”
“It matters not,” Arkades said. “We can pay whatever is owed with the coin we make from the Crow’s sale. And from there, we will drive Furian all the way to the magni. We have three venatus between now and truelight, three laurels to win a qualifying berth. You will have your victory, Dona,” Arkades vowed. “If you let me give it to you. Have faith in me. As I have faith in you.”
Mia looked at the pair of them, each alone, and then together. Leona’s robe, the brazen sexuality, the way she used her body to put Arkades off guard—it made a kind of sense, knowing she’d grown up in the home of a domineering father.
But Arkades . . .
The fire in his eyes. The fervor in his voice when he made his vow. He was champion of the most brutal competition the Republic had devised. Ten years her senior. Separated by the barrier between the wealthy born and former property.
And yet . . .
Mia shook her head. Five minutes with them alone and she knew exactly why Arkades had left Leonides and come to serve his wayward daughter.
The poor fool’s actually in love with her.
Leona placed her empty goblet on the table and sighed.
I wonder if she knows?
“You are my executus,” the dona said. “I know you gave up much to come here. And I would see that faith rewarded.”
Leona toyed with the lip of her cup, nodded, as if to herself.
“I will heed your counsel. We will fight the Crow at the venatus in Stormwatch at month’s end. Not the Ultima, we have our champion for that. Some minor bout, so as not to damage her. With good fortune, she’ll comport herself in fashion fine enough to regain some measure of the cost we paid for her.”
Mia’s stomach dropped into her boots.
Black Mother . . .
“You will sell her, then?” Arkades asked.
Leona looked to the tapestry on the wall. The goddess of fire, sword in hand, shield raised and wreathed in flame.
“Unless she proves herself Tsana made flesh?”
Leona heaved a sigh.
“Very well. I will sell her.”
Arkades nodded, Leona pouring herself another glass.
“Now, if you are well satisfied?” she asked.
The executus grunted apology, stood slow. With a deep bow to his dona, the man limped from the room, his walking stick and iron leg beating a tired retreat down the stone stairs. Leona sat alone, swallowing deep from her cup, clouded eyes fixed on some nothing only she could see. Running idle fingers across her collarbone, down the pale skin of her throat. Taking another draft and licking her lips.
Mia stood silent in the shadows, watching close. Trying to ponder this woman, a way to sway her mind. If she could fashion some way for Furian to lose favor, poison him before a bout, perhaps? If Mia could raise herself in the dona’s esteem . . .
One thing was certain—she could not be sold.
Leona chewed her lip, blinking as she woke from her reverie. She looked to the open door, stilled herself as if listening, The hour was late, the villa was quiet. Finishing her wine, Leona stood, gathered her robe about herself and, almost on tiptoe, quietly stole out into the corridor.
Mia frowned, narrowed her eyes.
Leona was mistress of this place.
Why creep about like a thief in her own house?
Mia slipped from behind the curtain and crept to the doorway, silent as death. Peering beyond the frame, she saw Leona at the stairs leading down to the third level. She ducked out of sight as the dona looked about, then stole quickly downward.
“ . . . perhaps we have risked enough this eve, mia . . .”
Ignoring the shadowcat’s warning, Mia followed on whisper-soft feet. Moving like a shadow, she followed Leona down to the third, then second level. Here the dona paused, waiting for Captain Gannicus and another houseguard to walk past, murmuring among themselves. When the guards were gone, Leona crept on, Mia following like a wraith until she reached the first floor.
Mia watched from the stair above as the dona peered about, listening in the still for the guards. Sneaking out from the stairwell, Leona crept to a single wooden door at the far end of the corridor. Out of sight. Out of earshot.
Ah. It makes a kind of sense now.
The tirade at dinner. The insistence that their domina’s will alone was what mattered, despite the sale of Matilius. The fervor in his eyes when he spoke of his mistress, his devotion to these walls.
Furian.
Leona reached into a pocket for an iron key, unlocked the door. The Unfallen was waiting on the other side, long dark hair framing his beautiful face, the smile that curled his lips as he saw his mistress. With one last glance the way she’d come, Leona threw her arms around Furian’s neck, dragged him down into a hungry kiss. And stepping inside, the dona of the house shut the door behind her.
“ . . . interesting . . . ,” came a cool whisper at her ear.
“Aye.” Mia scowled in reply. “But just once, I’d like to look about and find my life was a little less interesting.”
“ . . . o, what fun would that be . . . ?”
Mia raised the knuckles to the shadowcat. Mister Kindly only chuckled in reply. And without another sound, the pair stole off into the shadows they so loved.