The Defiant (The Valiant #2)(82)

Cai frowned, clearly at odds with the idea of deceiving his father—even if only through the act of omission—but I think he also knew I was right. We hadn’t even told Cai’s freedman servant, a boy named Actaeon, who delivered messages to and from when we sent him running to Charon’s. Where Sorcha remained, hidden away and safe, and—I imagined—restless and cranky.

“I understand,” Cai said. “I won’t say a word about your sister.”

? ? ?

The rest of the details of our plan—and the challenge—we were more than happy to share with Senator Varro. In fact, it was to our advantage to do so. For the past year, ever since the Quadruple Triumphs had ended and Caesar had left the city on campaign, there had been an increasingly clamorous demand for games. Distractions. The mob was easily bored, particularily in the wake of the Triumphs—an entire month of gruesome spectacle that had whetted their appetites for excitement and bloodshed.

Of course, the mob didn’t know about the Sons of Dis.

They only knew what they’d been told.

About me and my friends . . . about our so-called rebellion.

What we had to do was get them excited enough—without actually stirring them to fear or panic—so that we could use them as shield and surety against our arrest the second we stepped foot out in public again. So we’d circulated rumors that the renegade Victrix would present herself and her war band for judgment—in trial by combat—to the Tribune of the Plebs and his noble fighters. And there, in front of everyone, decide the matter as to just how guilty we were.

Then we had the announcements sent out.

Excitement in the city, or so I was told, was instantaneous. And fevered.

The senator, for his part, was instrumental in convincing other key members of the senate that this was a better—a safer—way of dealing with a rebel uprising than what had happened before with Spartacus. And it had the added benefit of distracting the mob from the current political situation. With the tacit agreement, then, of the men in power, spectator stands went up in the fields outside the ludus where, we’d been informed, Pontius Aquila had taken up residence. And we would be allowed to travel there in peace on the day of the challenge tournament. It set my teeth on edge to think of that despicable man living in the Lanista’s quarters, but I comforted myself with thoughts of all the frantic hammering and sawing of the carpenters building the makeshift arena just outside the wall. I sincerely hoped that it was keeping the gracious Tribune awake long into the night.

? ? ?

Finally, it was the day. Everything that could be done had been. All that was left was for us to show up. And fight. And win. I felt as though my nerves were threads of lightning sparking and flashing beneath my skin. My heart, full of thunder like a storm cloud. That evening, we would take back our home.

Or die trying.

Cai and Quint were at the stables with the gladiatrices, and Aeddan and I were on our way to meet them there. We strode down a long, light-filled corridor in a wing of the house I was less familiar with, Aeddan three paces ahead of me and as prickly and silent as ever. I knew we should make haste, but for reasons that escaped me, I found myself slowing as we approached a richly carved door made of ebony wood and silver. I’d never seen it open, but that day it was a handsbreadth ajar, and there was a flickering illumination spilling out from within. I couldn’t say why, but I was drawn to that light. I stopped in front of the door and, after a moment’s hesitation, pushed it slowly open.

“Fallon?” Aeddan said, stopping to turn back, an irritated frown on his face. “What are you doing?”

Satisfying my curiosity, I supposed, was the easiest answer.

Listening to the whispers of the Morrigan was probably more truthful.

The room beyond the door was windowless and unfurnished, with high, wide double doors set into the opposite wall that must have led out to the main courtyard, if I remembered the layout of the house correctly. I’d certainly never seen them open, though. In fact, it felt as if this room had been kept shut up and locked tight for a long time. The air was oppressive, and it had the stuffy, close feeling of a vault.

Or a shrine . . .

As I stepped inside I saw that, all along one wall, there were rows of sculpted alabaster faces resting in metal sconces. I’d heard of the Roman practice of creating funerary masks of the dead, and I supposed that was what this was. The faces had been placed in front of lit lamps, and the delicate, translucent stone transformed the lamp flames into the soft, eerie glow that lit the room.

“They worship their ancestors,” I remembered Aeddan saying to me on the ship. When he’d tried to warn me about Senator Varro. About Cai . . .

On the opposite wall, there was a breathtaking display of ceremonial armor and weaponry. Polished to gleaming, the breastplate and helmet reflected the light as if the armor itself was made of molten gold. It must have belonged to Senator Varro, I thought. Of course it had. He’d been a celebrated general in his soldiering days, and this room must have been a sacred place to him. A place where he could pray to his gods. Thank them for his victories.

Pledge to them his sacrifices . . .

Suddenly, my blood ran cold.

In a recessed alcove at the far end of the room, there was another lamp. A single, wavering flame that illuminated what seemed to be an altar stone. And on top of the stone, there stood a set of scales. In one of the scale dishes, there lay a single feather, wrought in gleaming silver.