The Defiant (The Valiant #2)(5)
It was fun.
II
THE MERRIMENT WAS contagious. Well, among the Achillea crew, at any rate. The Amazona girls were uniformly sullen. It seemed they took things very seriously in their ludus. Of course, when I thought about who owned the Ludus Amazona, that wasn’t at all surprising. Defeat, I didn’t doubt, bore consequences in Pontius Aquila’s academy.
I might have felt a twinge of sympathy for them but, to be honest, in that moment, I couldn’t have cared less. My friends and I were victorious, and that was all that mattered.
Over on the queen’s barge, the spectators lobbed sheaves of flowers out over the water. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Elka grinning past me at Ajani. Then suddenly—and for the third time that afternoon—I found myself plunging over the side of the boat and into the water below.
I surfaced in time to see Damya, our fearsome Phoenician fighter, pick Elka up and heave her over the side. Then Meriel. Then Damya leaped over the side herself, warbling a joyful war cry and sending up an enormous splash. Others followed until the waters of Lake Sabatinus began to resemble the mosaics on the bathhouse wall of the ludus, replete with frolicking nymphs.
“Victrix!” One young patrician shouted at me from the deck of the barge, leaning far out over the water with a jewel-set goblet sloshing over with drink. “A cup for your bravery!”
I swam beneath his outstretched arm and reached for the cup, but he yanked it out of my grasp and leaned further out over me, a lascivious grin on his face.
“Uh!” he said, licking his lips. “After a kiss for your beauty!”
“Beauty doesn’t win battles, sir.” I smiled up at him sweetly. “But strong legs and a fearless heart can overcome a wobbling mast-pole.” With that, I snatched the cup from his hands and drank the wine in one gulp.
His grin froze on his face, and his friends howled with drunken laughter.
I swam back toward the rest of the girls, and the expression on Elka’s face told me she’d heard the exchange. My actual stunt with the wobbling mast-pole, she apparently found far less amusing.
“You know, you could have been killed when that sail fell,” she said.
I shook the wet hair back off my face and nodded. “I know,” I said. “But Tanis probably would have been, if I hadn’t helped her.”
Ajani swam up to tread water in front of us. “That’s the kind of help that gets you hauled out of the arena facedown by hooks,” she said. “Elka’s right. You could have let her fend for herself.”
“I could have. But I decided not to.” I grinned, unwilling to let their scolding mute my good mood. “And that’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”
“What?” Elka asked.
“The right to decide for ourselves!” I splashed a handful of water at her. “As soon as Achillea receives the deed to the ludus from Caesar, we’re free!”
“You’re not, little fox,” Elka reminded me. “That was the idiotic deal you made.”
“Shush. Be kind,” Ajani admonished. “I for one am glad of her idiocy.”
“See?” I said. “And at least I’m more free than I was. More free than they are.” I nodded at the Amazona boat deck, where our adversaries still stood, sulky and defeated. “And I intend to make the most of that.”
We paddled languidly back and forth in front of the pleasure barge for a while longer. The revelers poured down wine and tossed sweets to us, and Sorcha indulged the revelry for longer than I thought she would. Finally, with a signal blast from a conch shell, we made our way back to the ludus shore. The naumachia certainly hadn’t gone as planned, but it had managed to fulfill its purpose of entertaining a barge-load of high-society butterflies.
The sun was westering as we neared the shore where the ludus gates stood open. The girls from the Ludus Amazona had already been herded like goats through the gates and out of sight by their guards—an ever-present contingent of grim, glowering brutes in black armor and helmets. The Amazona girls were to remain quartered in a newly built barracks wing as our “guests” for the next several days, and there would be a series of “friendly, collegial” competitions. The prospect had prompted equal amounts of groaning and glee from the Achillea girls. In the meantime, we were allowed the rare treat of a cookout on the beach that night—food, drink, and just that little extra bit of freedom that was a taste of things to come for the ludus.
As we set out rugs and cushions on the sand, I looked back over the water to see the shadow-black silhouetted figure of Thalestris—the academy’s primus pilus, the Lanista’s right hand—far in the distance. She stood balanced on a reed skiff holding a fishing spear poised above her head, ready to strike. In the days leading up to Cleopatra’s naumachia, the fight mistress, who boasted of being a real Amazon, had made no secret of her disdain for the spectacle—something she regarded as useless frivolity and an insulting waste of the carefully honed and nurtured gladiatorial talents of her charges.
Sorcha had known full well Thalestris wouldn’t be able to keep her sharp tongue sheathed in the presence of a bunch of lolling elites, and so she’d been given leave to spend the day fishing. As far away from the spectacle as she could paddle. I watched her spear pierce the surface of the water with the swiftness of a striking serpent.