The Valiant (The Valiant #1)(45)

By the time I got back to my room, I had thoroughly envisioned every wretched scenario imaginable . . . only to find a new, neatly folded tunic lying on the lid of my trunk. Beside the tunic, there was a broad crimson leather belt that cinched tight with fine bronze buckles, and a pair of red-dyed leather sandals that laced all the way up to the knee. There was also a lamp—a fine new oil lamp to replace the dim little lump of tallow candle that sat in a clay dish on my windowsill.

I remembered the lamp the Lanista had lowered into the grave of the gladiatrix Ismene, and a shiver ran up my spine. I had been chosen to swear the oath. The lamp would light my cell until the day I won my freedom.

Or died.

I lit the wick, setting it carefully up in the window as the light from the setting sun faded. There was a burning tightness in my throat, but just then Elka burst through my door, and I swallowed my tears. She glanced from me to the lamp in my window to the tunic on the trunk.

“Ha!” she exclaimed. “I knew it! I knew we’d both be chosen to take the oath. That cow Nyx can choke on it! And so can her little gang of thugs.”

She’d brought her own lamp from her room and thrust it at me. “Look at this!”

It was made of polished, translucent stone that looked as though it had been carved from a block of winter ice. The flickering flame within glowed gently, blue and gold. Like Elka herself. I wondered if the lamps were chosen to suit each girl.

“Alabaster,” Elka murmured, mesmerized. “I’ve heard of this, but I never expected to own something made of such magic.”

Her blue eyes were wide with wonder, and maybe something a little like joy, as she cradled the delicate lamp in both hands. I felt a surge of happiness for her. Whatever else the Ludus Achillea was, it seemed that it might one day prove to be a place Elka could call home.

But I also felt a pang of envy hiding beneath my happiness for my friend. The lamp that had been chosen for me was shaped like a bird, with delicate glass pieces—bright greens and blues and yellows—set into the wings, and it reminded me of summer days spent running wild through the Forgotten Vale. It also reminded me of one of the many lamps that had hung from the rafters of my house—the one that had been my favorite when I was a little girl. For a moment, as I stared at the bright-shining flame within, I was back there, in that place, listening to Sorcha tell me stories about the spirits that lived in those lamps.

Home for me, it seemed, was still Durovernum.

I suspected, in my heart, it always would be.

“We are going to put the Ludus Achillea on the map, you and I,” Elka proclaimed with airy disregard for the academy’s already stellar reputation. “The arena crowds aren’t going to know what hit them!”

Then she hugged me and hurried off to get ready for the oath swearing, her breathless excitement carrying away some of my own anxiousness. As I stripped off my plain-spun tunic and shrugged the fine linen sheath over my head, I tried to speculate not on what was to come in the future but just on this one night. I’d been told that the male gladiators took their oaths in daylight. With the harsh eye of the sun looking down on them, the men stood in sand circles and said the words that would bind them to that life, until either death or their hard-earned winnings set them free.

But the women of the Ludus Achillea swore their oaths at night.

Under the light of the Huntress Moon.

When I got to the practice yard, I saw it had been decorated for the occasion. Garlands of green leaves and sheaves of lavender and lemon verbena hung between the pillars of the courtyard colonnades, perfuming the night air with heady scents that mingled with the smoke from the braziers. There were torches on poles set in a wide circle, and the sand of the yard had been raked smooth.

Elka and I and the five other new recruits entered through the archway, dressed in identical white linen tunics and belts and sandals. We wore our hair unbound and our faces unpainted. All the other girls—full-fledged gladiatrices—waited for us, dressed in the same white tunics, but the resemblances ended there. Over the course of innumerable bouts in arenas large and small, scattered throughout Rome and the surrounding countryside, each of the girls had accumulated trophies and keepsakes and ornaments. Not surprisingly, there was an abundance of weapons and armor. The gladiatrices of the Ludus Achillea wore them proudly that night, as badges of well-deserved honor.

I looked around at all the swords, daggers, tooled-leather wrist bracers and greaves, and armored girdles and breastplates decorated with symbols and scenes. Some of the girls wore torcs about their necks, like the one I’d left in the embers of my hearth fire back home, and some wore no jewelry at all but had painted the skin of their bodies with swirling designs or had woven feathers and beads into their hair.

There were seven of us being formally inducted into the ludus that night, and we wore nothing to distinguish us.

We hadn’t earned that yet.

The intoxicating scent of stone pine incense drifted through the indigo night as we walked out into the circle of torches. I recalled the same scent from the gladiatrix graveyard, and I remembered the anonymous, snickering disdain I’d heard mixed in with the sounds of weeping that night. I wondered fleetingly if Ismene had made more friends here than enemies before she’d died.

Will I?

I stopped myself from reaching up to touch the raven feather I’d tied into my hair before leaving my cell. The thing had become almost a talisman to me. In the darkness a war horn sounded, like the Morrigan herself blowing her bronze carnyx, and I felt the cold finger of fate trace up my spine. As the shrill, shimmering notes died to silence, we stood, shoulder to shoulder, facing the ranks of gladiatrixes we would soon join.