B007IIXYQY EBOK (114 page)

“Enough of this,”
he said irritably, an ominous light flaring in his eyes. “You displayed an art learned from teachers, and good ones. I’m easy enough to get along with when a man or woman is honest with me, but play with me and you’ll wish you hadn’t. Don’t trample on my patience.”

Eyes afire with affront, Auriane turned from him and faced the door. “You’re a foolish man to speak so rudely to me. Leave me—I’ll have no more words with you.”

Erato grinned. “Ordering me out of my own chambers, are you? I like that! Calm
those ruffled feathers. It is just that I saw a thing today that cannot be,” he said more amiably. “This sounds like utter madness as I say it, but in my fifteen years of training, I’ve seen all types—from lucky brutes like Aristos to great masters of training-manual technique—but I’ve seen nothing
like this. It is more than mere skill, it is…what?…something god-touched, like a great musician’s or dancer’s art, but full of an animal’s thoughtless grace. If a
cat
had human genius, it might fight like that. It is a sort of thing a trainer might see once in a lifetime, if even then. And yet, you had no teacher.”

“There was a
captive kept by our tribe who was a man of your people, a soldier,” she said with reluctance. Protecting Decius was instinctive, but why do so now? And something in this man’s nature elicited from her an urge to be truthful. “He showed me the standard cuts that legionaries are taught.”

“Ah. Truth trickles out. I once heard of such a man, a soldier taken by the natives who rose to some importance among them. Was he not called Decius? Yes, tales of that man man have come to us here.”

She shrank within, looked down and whispered, “Yes.”
But she realized the pain she felt at the sound of that name had somewhat faded.

“Interesting, yes, but alas, it’s still not enough. I know what legionaries are taught, it’s quite straightforward, and what you did was far beyond it. The perverse humor or Fortuna—to find such bewildering skill in a woman.” He smiled companionably. “You look somewhat baffled by all this.”

And truly, she was. Decius’ early mockery of her fledgling efforts had done their work. His repeated taunt, “Do not ever let on
I
taught you,” still jangled in her mind. She never supposed her skill to be much beyond the regular competence exhibited by Coniaric or Thorgild. Decius had
eventually said, “You have flown beyond your teacher,” but only after she took up the sword of Baldemar. Today, however, she had used a clumsy sword of wood—and so was forced to concede that if there were artistry here, it must have been her own. Then suddenly she knew she
had
dimly sensed it; when Decius mocked her progress, some deep part of her had always protested. She trembled now at the certainty.
I am extraordinarily skilled.
It is apparent even in this place where they make a cult of skill and see fine points my people did not. Part of her yearned to try that skill to the limit—not to do so brought to mind the fast horse never allowed to race. She thought suddenly of Marcus Julianus, sensing he was no stranger to such feelings, that he would at once understand.

Stop—this is madness.
You are leaving this sad and terrible place. But humor this man Erato. He is better than most.

“If you say it, I accept it is so.”

“So earnest and solemn you are! From this day forth I mean to instruct you myself. It still has to be arranged. For now you’ll go on living with the novices, but you’ll not go to Corax—you’ll come to me in the west yard at the third hour, do you understand?”

She nodded, still wondering at all this. Erato said softly to himself, smiling as if at a fine prank, “No one is going to believe this.” He rose, signifying the audience was near an end. “Is there any favor you wish of me? Ask it.”

“A favor?” she said softly.
Yes,
came a bitter voice within,
give me back my life, my country, my child.
“A…a cell for Sunia and me alone, without rats, and with a window. And…protection from whoever is trying to poison me.”

“Poison, you say? The lawlessness about this place would make a pirate camp look like a sheepfold. Yes, yes. Done. I will see to both those things.”

“And…leave to sit for a time at night in front of the hearth fire in the kitchens, after the day’s work there is done.”

“For what purpose? Witches’ spells?”

“It is for a rite of my religion.”

“I thought your people worshiped trees, not fire.”

“Trees
are
holy—”

“Never catch me
prostrating myself before a tree.”

“Trees, at least, are alive with the soul of Fria, noblest of all the gods.
Your
idol”—she nodded at the bust of Domitian—“has the soul of a weasel.”

Erato looked offended for a flash of a moment, then burst into loud, staccato laughter.

“Your strike. I’m down,” he said with pleasure. “Have your hearth fire then, you’re worth indulging. Anything else?”

Auriane remembered how Sunia complained of the monotony of their daily fare of beans and barley. “And…for my people, something different to eat, occasionally. Normally we thrive on venison and game birds, and we grow less hardy without them.”

“That is not in my hands. They feed you that way because every physician employed here holds that barley and beans build muscle. There
is
a school of thought that claims quantities of meat are better, but our physicians do not subscribe to it. Wait until you’ve proven yourself, then they’ll care less what you eat.” He raised his voice to an impersonal bellow—“Guard!”

The guard opened the door for her.

“Wait,” Erato said then. “I’ve a final bit of advice for you.” He rose, came close, and put a hand on her shoulder. His smile was conspiratorial, fatherly. “Never
let on how much pleasure you take in this. The arena’s supposed to be punishment.
There are those that might be irritated by it.”

She started at first, alarmed that he divined so much, then smiled with amusement.
“
You
say that, yet you signed on again after your release.”

“Yes, well, that’s different,
one would expect
it of me. But
you
—don’t take this badly now, it’s not meant that way—but it’s well, it’s a freak of nature.”

The guard then conducted her to a chamber on the opposite side of the practice arena where the novices who had passed were being assigned new quarters—and new names. No one, she saw, fought under the name of their birth.

“I will keep my birth-name,” Auriane said quietly when Corax and the secretary called her forward.

“You’ll do nothing of the sort, spawn of the snarling bitches of Hades,” Corax muttered, still smoldering from the aftermath of the battle with Erato. “We’ll call you
Achillia.
Put her down as Achillia the Amazon.” Corax grinned at her, pleased by the fleeting panic he saw in her eye.

They cannot. I have one name, and a name is a house that contains the spirit. I have lost too much already—to change it would alter my soul and keep me from rejoining my family at death.

“Aurinia,
then,” she said boldly. Surely that would please them as well; did not these people seem to have a fondness for calling her that?

The secretary whispered to Corax, “We’ve already got an Achillia. Aurinia sounds all right. There was a celebrated barbarian prophetess called that when my grandfather was alive—Aurinia the Sorceress. It suits her. People will recognize it.”

“I dislike it,” Corax said with an irritated wave of the hand. “But she’s wasted enough of our time. Get that crafty vixen out of my sight.”

Auriane felt a small start of relief. At least she saved the part of her name that meant
sacred earth
—she
would not lose completely the magical protection of her name.

CHAPTER XL

T
HE NOVICES’ DINING CHAMBER WAS A
cavernous, soot-blackened room that opened directly onto the kitchens. One long table ran the length of this den of beasts; the smoking gloom was lit by two leering Gorgon’s-head lamps hung from the low ceiling. Half the smoke from the kitchens’ beehive ovens went up the chimneys and half, all agreed, found its way in here. The guards so hated this post the lowest in rank gambled for it and gave it to the loser. As those assigned to it regularly defected from it, going outside for air and reappearing only when a senior officer was in evidence, it happened that at the moment that night’s barley ration was brought, the room was left unguarded.

From the distant First Hall came the low din of a banquet of celebration. They heard raucous shrieks, women’s singing, and occasionally an outbreak of cheers punctuated with the cry—“Aristos Rex!”
With it came the maddeningly seductive aroma of whole roast pig. The banquet was given by Aristos, who had that day defeated and killed Xerxes of the rival Claudian School, preserving the first place of the Great School in this year’s games and his title as King.

“May they stew in Hel’s cauldron,” Coniaric said to all those near. His face was tanned to red-brown; there was a new hardness and distance in those eyes that for too long had looked on nothing familiar. “If we’re not made into cutlets, we win a quarter of our value. That bloated bull just pulled down four million.”

“But the purse was five hundred thousand,” Sunia protested dully into her vinegar water. Her eyes were hazed with sleeplessness. The new cell she shared with Auriane was cleaner, but it was located over the entranceway used by the delivery carts, and they delivered at night. Auriane had that day begged Erato to be moved again. “How did he—”

Thorgild elbowed Sunia roughly. “Keep those ears sharpened, Know-Nothing. Some noblewoman gifted him with a villa by the sea worth over two million. On top of it the Emperor sent round a gift of a million, brought by a pretty, golden-haired slave-wench. Aristos got to keep the wench, too.” Thorgild shifted his attention across the table to Auriane. “Do you think it’s odd we’ve never set eyes on him? Celadon says he
crosses Aristos’ path from time to time…Auriane, what is wrong?”

A young kitchen slave had begun ladling the cooked barley from an iron pot; it made a rhythmic slapping sound as it plopped into the wooden bowls. Auriane was holding hers close to the smoldering oil lamp, tilting it as she carefully examined the barley.

At last she pronounced in a low voice: “Wait for the beans.”

“Rat dung again?” said Thorgild, reaching for the bowl. “Cannot they invent some fresh
torment?”

Looks of resignation were exchanged along the length of the table, followed by a pitiful, despairing silence. Sunia broke it with a piercing plaint.

“I cannot bear it any more. I want to die!”

Sunia rose to her feet, took her own bowl and threw it at the wall with such force that it cracked the wood. Barley oozed slowly down the oily wall. Dozens of bewildered faces turned to Sunia as she pounded the table and began sobbing.

“I want a chicken. A common, ordinary chicken!”

Auriane rose up slowly, her expression grim. All the daily indignities of slavery for long had fed her wrath, and the demon confined had grown stronger in the dark, biding its time; now it broke its chains. When Coniaric saw the fury in Auriane’s face, he felt a start of panic. By Hel, he thought, that’s her fight-to-the-death look, I know it only too well.

“Auriane, if you love life,
sit back down
,”
Coniaric implored with quiet passion.

She met his gaze. “During the war I took food from our mouths to feed the Roman captives at our mercy. In return, these people—the wealthiest in the Nine Worlds—throw filth at us and call it food. Someone must tell them we will not have it.”

“Auriane, we are not at home. They will kill you.”

Auriane ignored him and said to Sunia, “I’m going to fetch you something you can eat.”

The company of novices stared at her, most with mildly stupefied looks, a few with fanatic eagerness, as though she might actually succeed.

From long habit, Auriane first looked swiftly about for anything that might be used as a weapon; finding nothing, she turned toward the low, arched doorway. She knew she struck out wildly and this effort was foolish and doomed, and she remembered Marcus Julianus’ warning, but in that moment she felt like an animal suffocating, scrambling for air. She had no thought of outcomes.

Coniaric leapt up and caught at the cloth of her tunic. “This is madness. Do you know where you are?”

Auriane tore her tunic free. Tears blurred her eyes, but she strode off confidently.

Coniaric slumped forward, head in his hands. “When will she learn that here, she is not Baldemar’s daughter?”

Sunia looked at him coldly. “You’re the fool, Coniaric. She will always be
Baldemar’s daughter.”