The Defiant (The Valiant #2)(12)

It was true. I had tried. Although to what degree of success, I wasn’t sure. Sorcha, in her time living among Romans, had managed to figure out how to fit into their society. How to dress like them, eat like them, and navigate her way through their baffling customs and social niceties. Me? I’d sat there, a cup of wine in my hand, listening to endless small talk about politics and Caesar’s wars and senate squabbles, and the state of the Republic, and on and on . . .

When all I’d wanted to do was ask Senator Varro if he’d heard from Cai. How was he? When was he coming home? Did he ever mention me in his letters?

My raging curiosity was to remain unsatisfied.

“I didn’t mean just now,” Sorcha said, turning back from watching the senator depart. “I meant in general.”

“I don’t understand.”

Together we walked back toward where the marble slab still lay gleaming in the sunlight upon the cart.

“This frieze is meant to be seen by everyone who passes through that gate,” she said. “And everyone will know that it was Senator Varro who gifted it to the ludus. A man of power and prestige. Your win at the Triumphs has helped legitimize what we do here, little sister. I’m proud of you.”

I half wanted to roll my eyes at her, and half wanted to bask in that praise. It was something I’d never thought I’d hear from Sorcha, even though I’d lived my whole life wanting to. I glanced over at her, but her attention had drifted and she seemed lost in thought, gazing down at the carved figures. Her lips moved and she murmured something in Greek. I could recognize the language, but I couldn’t understand the words.

When she noticed me looking at her, she smiled and repeated herself, not in Latin but in our own tongue. “‘Not in strength are we inferior to men,’” she said, “‘the same our eyes, our limbs the same; one common light we see, one air we breathe. What then denied to us have the gods on man bestowed?’”

“What’s that from?” I asked. “Some bard’s tale?”

“Penthesilea was said to have uttered those words at the battle of Troy.”

“That women are equal to men . . .”

She nodded. “Not better, not different, not lesser. The same. She was a wise woman.”

I ran my fingertip over the wheel of the stone chariot the Amazon queen rode in. “I think the legends got it wrong,” I said. “I think Penthesilea’s side won this battle.”

“Why do you say that?” Sorcha asked, one eyebrow raised. “Because she looks like me?”

“No . . .” I pointed to the figure with swords raised, running toward the fight directly behind the queen’s chariot. “Because that one looks like me. How could she possibly lose?”

Sorcha laughed and swatted at my ear. In the distance, the faint sounds of combat practice echoed through the ludus yards. I looked at my sister and saw that, as ever, a corner of her mind was attuned to those noises. The sharp ring of metal, the shouts of the fight masters and cries of the girls as they challenged each other. I imagined Sorcha could see in her mind everything that was happening just by the sounds she heard. Every blow that hit its mark, every swing that went wide . . .

“Do you miss it?” I asked.

“What?”

“Fighting. The excitement . . . the glory.”

Her hesitation was so slight, it could almost have been my imagination. But it wasn’t. “No.” She shrugged. “Of course not. And with my limitations I’d only be a liability in the arena now, anyway.” Her left hand clenched once, convulsively.

“I think you’re wrong.”

She lifted an eyebrow at me. The gesture gave subtle emphasis to the scar that ran from her hairline down her forehead, stopping just above her eye. “Really.”

“I think, in your case, your ‘limitations’ are actually assets.”

She frowned, but I put up a hand.

“I’m serious!” I said. “I’ve seen you fight, Sorcha—and I don’t mean just when we were girls growing up in Durovernum. That night I saw you sparring with Thalestris? The way you compensated and improvised . . . it makes you unpredictable. And that makes you dangerous. I mean, even more dangerous.”

She hesitated again, but then shook her head, smiling. “I’ll leave the arena to you and your friends, little sister,” she said. “And the glory. My warrior days are done and I’m content.”

Maybe that was true, but the strange thing was . . . I wasn’t sure contentment actually suited her. Like an exquisite Roman stola, she wore it well. Maybe just not quite as well as she used to wear war paint and leathers. I tried to think if I’d ever seen her relaxed, even when we were girls, and I didn’t think I had. I’d seen her fiercely happy, determined, focused, busy, but never just . . . present. Never soaking in a moment. There had always been a kind of tension in the air around Sorcha, even in stillness. She carried it with her, like she was her own little cloudburst just waiting to explode into a full-blown tempest.

A restless heart, our father had said of her. Of me? A reckless one.

“Virico would be proud of you,” Sorcha said quietly, as if she could sense I was thinking of him in that moment.

I shrugged. “I’m not so sure. I wear Roman armor and fight at the pleasure of his greatest enemy.”