The Defiant (The Valiant #2)(89)
I thought about that for a moment and knew it to be true. The Optimates saw Cleopatra as a vile foreign seductress. A barbarian whore who prayed to false gods and tempted Caesar to think of himself as one of those gods. At least, that’s the way they would frame the picture if it ever came time to act against her.
“Take care of her, Sennefer,” I said. “As much as she will let you.”
He sighed. “I always do, lady. May Osiris bar the doors of his underworld kingdom to you. For as long as he can.”
He turned and clasped wrists with Cai and Quint, and then left us to ourselves at the edge of the water. On a far dock, I saw the boat we’d used during our naumachia for the queen, with its chopped-off mast still sticking up midship like the trunk of a felled tree. It seemed like only the morning past we’d performed the whole silly spectacle, but it wasn’t. It was a lifetime in the past. Leander’s lifetime. Meriel’s. Probably Tanis and Lydia were gone too. Maybe others from the handful of girls who hadn’t made it out of the ludus that night.
We chose a boat that was small and sleek, low to the water, and painted dark blue. Cai and Quint loaded their legion packs into the boat, and I climbed in, crouching as low as I could. Then we pushed off, Cai rowing as silently as he could. The oars were well oiled in the locks, and there was barely a creak and splash as we glided over the black water of the Sabatinus. As we approached the shore where the ludus walls loomed above us, the noise of the gathered crowds in the arena field beyond was like the roar of surf on the ocean. The dark skies were bright with the multitudes of flaming torches that illuminated the spectacle about to begin. I felt my heart beating like a war drum in my chest as the shallow keel of the boat grated, slithering up the sandy beach, and we dropped over the sides.
Down the strand, I saw the second boat from our naumachia moored where there was a narrow wharf that jutted out into the water. It occurred to me then that whoever owned it—one of the obscenely rich patricians who kept a villa near Cleopatra’s—must have been a close friend of Pontius Aquila’s. And more than likely, one of the Sons of Dis. I wondered how deep beneath Rome their thorny roots really did grow.
“Where now?” Cai asked in a whisper.
I gestured for them to follow me, and set off down the beach. There was only one gate built into the high, smooth wall topped with jagged stone. But that wasn’t the only way in. As irritating as he’d been endearing, when it came to locked doors, Leander had proved his usefulness. For Nyx, and now for me. She’d used him to break out of the Achillea townhouse in Rome. I would use him now, gratefully, to break into the ludus itself.
“There,” I whispered to Cai and Quint. “A service gate cut into the rock that leads down to cold-storage cellars linked by a tunnel to the kitchens. Leander described it to me on Corsica.”
It was the gate through which Thalestris had stolen away—along with my captive sister—on that terrible night. I doubted even Nyx knew about it. I prayed to the Morrigan that she didn’t. Or if she did, that she hadn’t thought to suggest that Aquila station a guard there. Not that it mattered. It was our only way in and, guard or no, that’s where we would go, because I not only had Leander’s knowledge of the door, I had his key. I’d taken it from a leather thong he’d worn tied around his neck, before we’d buried him.
I whispered a silent thanks to his spirit and hoped that whatever afterlife he’d gone over to was a pleasant one full of laughter and love—or at the very least, abundant flirting. The thought of Leander’s shade charming his way through a bevy of admiring female spirits brought a fleeting smile to my face.
It faded the minute I stepped through the unlocked door, into a dark, rough-hewn stone tunnel that reminded me entirely too much of the catacombs beneath the Domus Corvinus. Sennefer had given us a few small traveling lanterns—lamps with dark glass shades that cast just enough of an eerie glow for us to be able to make our way through the passage without breaking our necks tripping on the uneven floor. After what seemed like hours, we came out the other side to a deserted kitchen. Hopefully, the rest of the compound would be just as empty, with all the occupants up on the wall or out in the arena field.
Charon’s ruse had worked well enough, we already knew, and the Amazon girls he’d “sold” to Pontius Aquila were still being kept at the ludus. Nyx had apparently been quite pleased at the propect of a whole new crew of girls for her to bully and beat into submission. I reasoned that she would have most likely locked them away somewhere they could be kept watch on but also isolated from each other. That is, if she’d learned anything at all from having locked all the Achillea gladiatrices together in the infirmary, before we’d made good our escape.
My hunch turned out to be right—unfortunately for the guard they’d stationed at the main entrance to the gladiatrix barracks.
Once inside, we discovered that there were newly installed slide-bar locks on the outside of every cell door in the wing that had been our home. On every door except one, that is. When I reached it, I pushed my own door slowly open with a fingertip. The tiny room was empty, and just the way I’d left it . . . except for one thing. My oath lamp. It had been sitting in the middle of my cot as a message for Nyx. Clearly, that message had been received. And understood. There was nothing left of the delicate, colored-glass thing but shards scattered across the floor. In spite of the destruction of one of my most prized possessions, I felt myself smiling grimly. I pulled the door quietly shut and turned to Cai and Quint.