The Valiant (The Valiant #1)(41)
I felt a sudden prickling behind my eyes. How could I even hope to keep such a spark alive when it seemed my life was destined to play out behind the high walls of an arena?
I blinked the tears away quickly, but not before the Decurion saw. His expression softened.
“A gladiatrix, if she’s good enough, may one day earn enough in the arena to buy her freedom, you know.” He reached into the basket and pulled out one of the wooden blanks I’d hewed to kindling. He tossed it to me and grinned. “Just be good enough.”
My mind reeled with the implications of actually, one day, being able to make enough money to buy my freedom back. No one at the ludus had told us that yet. Then I remembered just how very much money I’d been sold for. Good enough would have to be very good indeed.
The Decurion laughed at my stunned expression. “I’ll be back soon, on Caesar’s business,” he said. “Perhaps I might look in on your progress.”
“If it pleases you, Decurion,” I said, distracted.
“It would.” He hitched his cloak higher on his shoulder. “My curious mind and all. Also . . . another thing that would please me is if—when it’s just the two of us together—I’d like it very much if you would call me Caius instead of Decurion. Or better yet, Cai.”
I thought about how very unlikely it was that we’d find ourselves in such circumstances again. “As you wish . . . Cai.”
A moment of silence stretched between us, and then he sighed heavily.
“What?” I blinked at him.
“That’s the part where you’re supposed to say: ‘And you can call me . . .’”
I hesitated for a moment.
“Fallon.”
Cai smiled. A slow, inward-turning smile, like he’d just learned a secret. “Be well, Fallon,” he said. “Be careful. And tomorrow . . . try tucking in your chin and imagine breathing all the way down your arms, right out the ends of your fingertips and into your swords. Let go. Relax into the work instead of fighting through it.”
Shaking my head, I watched him mount his horse and ride off in a haze of dust. Sound advice, maybe, but it seemed to me that there was far too much fighting ahead for me to ever think about letting go.
XVII
THE DAY OF our gladiatorial oath swearing approached with the swiftness of a late summer tempest and just as much foreboding. For weeks it had seemed nothing more than a distant threat, an occasional rumble like thunder on the horizon. But now, the very air of the ludus training grounds seemed to bristle with the furious, pent-up energy of a storm cloud ready to burst.
Thalestris and the other fight masters—two hard-bitten ex-legion soldiers named Kronos and Titus—had been observing our progress with eagle-keen eyes, and the tension among the girls was palpable. I know I felt like a walking bundle of flayed nerves, both on the pitch and off. Just because the ludus had bought us as slaves didn’t mean they couldn’t sell us again if we didn’t measure up as potential gladiatrices. As much as I loathed the idea of living under the yoke of the ludus, performing like a trained animal for the delight of bloodlusting crowds, the prospect of getting dragged back to the auction block to be sold as a failed fighter was far more odious—and, truthfully, terrifying.
At the same time, what Cai had told me that day by the stables had kindled in me a tiny spark of hope. If I could become a gladiatrix, there was a chance—a faint hope, maybe, but still—that I could one day earn my freedom with my sword. “Just be good enough,” he’d said.
So I fought with the Meriels and the Gratias of the academy, and I even sparred with Nyx—at Thalestris’s cruel behest—one miserable raining afternoon in a bout that lasted forever and saw us both end up covered in mud and bruises. I bit down on the urge to whimper every morning from the ache in my muscles, and I spent every spare second I had hacking away at the stable post with my two practice swords under the disinterested gaze of the donkey.
I worked on my presentation—on flourishes and salutes to the (as yet imaginary) crowds of onlookers—and on my style. Some of the girls who’d fought in the arenas already had patrons who sponsored them, wealthy patricians who flaunted their riches by equipping their favorite fighters in the games with better weapons and fancier armor.
Me, I spent the hours I wasn’t practicing or sleeping digging through the baskets of scrap leather in the weapons-makers’ shops, fashioning wrist bracers and a pair of shin guards for myself. I incised the spiral patterns of the Cantii on them with the point of my dagger. They weren’t anywhere near as fancy as some of the bronze ones the other girls wore, but they were something. A start. They’d have to suffice until I could attract a patron of my own.
By barely measurable increments, the days became less grueling. And through it all, Elka was there to lift my spirits with her blunt humor and fierce friendship. As much as I hoped that I would make it all the way to the oath ceremony, I hoped just as fervently that she would too.
“You’re getting good, little fox,” Elka said as she ambled over, wiping the sweat from her tall brow with the back of one arm. “You could almost pass for a Varini, the way you fight.”
I grinned at her. “And you could almost pass for a Cantii.” I nodded at the spear she held in one fist. She’d been practicing her throwing all morning, and she had a sharp eye. “Only we throw our spears from the decks of racing chariots.”