The Defiant (The Valiant #2)(7)

Elka snorted in amusement. “It will be,” she agreed. “On latrine duty for all eternity, if she hears you talk like that.”

“What?” Lydia asked, clearly not understanding. “She is. An Amazon, I mean. So was her sister. Right?”

That had always been my understanding. My sister’s very first fight—the first ever female gladiatorial bout—had been fought between her and a warrior named Orithyia. Thalestris’s sister. Sorcha had triumphed in the arena. And Orithyia . . . had died. I’d secretly marveled at how Thalestris had been able to overcome that loss to serve as Sorcha’s primus pilus, but I supposed the code of the Amazon sisterhood transcended bonds of blood. And that first fight had been immortalized in the names of the two original gladiatrix academies: Achillea and Amazona.

Gratia didn’t seem to think the reputation was warranted, though, and her scorn was almost hotter than the bonfire’s flames. Thalestris always rode her hard on technique, and Gratia, clearly, was fed to the teeth with it—along with the trout Thalestris had caught that afternoon. “In their mead-addled dreams they are,” she scoffed. “Where I come from, we know these things. The Amazons—if they ever even truly existed—died out hundreds of years ago. They’re just a myth now.”

“Well, she seems pretty Amazon to me,” Lydia said, sloshing more wine into her cup. “Why are we arguing about this again?”

“Because we’re all a bit drunk,” Damya offered philosophically.

Gratia nodded. “And Thalestris is a bitch.”

“And,” I said, “we all wish we were able to fight just like her.”

The grumbling and muttering ground to a silent halt. Elka raised her cup.

“Ave, Thalestris,” she said with a wry grin.

“Ave, Thalestris,” Meriel echoed, punctuating the sentiment with a snort before downing the contents of her cup.

And then, one by one, the other girls raised their cups in salute.

“Ave!”

“Ave to that hard-arsed, cold-eyed, wicked, brilliant, hobnailed gorgon,” Damya agreed enthusiastically.

“Who, if the gods are kind,” murmured Ajani, “is fast asleep in her bed and has heard none of this.”

“Here’s to many more blissful years toiling—of our own free will—under her merciless lash!” Elka said, elbowing me. “Right, little fox?”

We all laughed at that. At the joke, but also at the giddy prospect of soon—very soon—becoming rulers of our own destinies. Free to leave the ludus if we chose, but staying to fight because we wanted to. Outwardly, it wouldn’t even look like much of a change. But inwardly . . . my Cantii soul burst with happiness at the very idea—

“What . . . what happens if we don’t want to stay?”

The laughter died to mute silence. One by one, we all turned to look in the direction of the voice that had asked that question. Tanis. Ajani’s archer protégé. The girl I’d cut down from the rigging on the ship that afternoon. Even in the flickering firelight, I could still see the angry red welts from the rope on her ankle.

“I mean . . .” Tanis shrugged, looking from face to face, and shut her mouth.

“You mean what?” Meriel leaned forward, tilting her head as if trying to understand words spoken in an unknown tongue. “Leave here? Where in the great world would you go? You don’t even know where you’re from, Tanis. Your tribe was a bunch of wanderers. At least here you belong.”

“That’s what you think.”

“And you don’t? Last time I watch your back in a fight.”

“That’s not what I meant, Meriel. Don’t be such a bitch.”

“What exactly did you mean then, gladiolus?” Meriel sneered, calling Tanis by the nasty little nickname we’d all suffered under when we’d first arrived at the ludus. Gladiolus: a play on the word for the spear-shaped blooms that grew tall in the ludus gardens, pretty but so easily cut down. It was how Nyx, the top dog at the academy at the time, would remind a raw recruit of her lowly status in the ranks of the students—not fighters, but flowers.

“Hey!” I snapped, silencing them both before things got out of hand. “Both of you, back away. Nyx is long gone, and we don’t play those kinds of games anymore. We’re equals, like Achillea said—”

“Achillea?” Tanis scoffed. “You mean your sister, Sorcha? I’m sure she sees you as exactly equal to the rest of us.”

I blinked at her in surprise. When the girls of the ludus had discovered, in the wake of the Triumphs, that the Lady Achillea was actually my sister, I’d worried what their reactions would be. If they would think that I’d be shown some kind of favoritism because of it. But when that hadn’t happened and Sorcha had continued to work me just as hard as—and sometimes harder than—the rest of the girls, they’d all come to accept it without any resentment. At least, I’d thought so . . .

“Tanis, I was defending you—”

“I don’t need you to defend me, Fallon! I can defend myself.”

“Not really.” Elka shrugged. “I mean—good with a bow, but you’re terrible in hand-to-hand.”

Ajani winced. “Elka—”

“Shut up!” Tanis screeched. “You’re all horrible!”