The Valiant (The Valiant #1)(61)

He looked over to the rumpled cot where Antonia had been convalescing. From where I stood, I could see that there were rust-colored stains on the edges of the sheet.

“Or maybe you’ll wind up like her.”

“You tell me I’m so strong, and yet you don’t really believe it.” I shook my head. “You don’t believe in me.”

“Of course I do. But there’s strength and then there’s stubbornness. Recklessness. You think you need to prove something? To whom, Fallon?” His gaze burned my skin. “To me, to the Lanista, to Caesar himself, maybe? Do you really care what a bloody-minded tyrant thinks of you?”

“I’m not going to fight for Caesar, Cai,” I said, adamant. “If I’m going to fight, I’m going to fight for me. No one else. Because that’s the only honorable thing left for me to do.”

“Honor is nothing but a dangerous lie, Fallon,” he said. “In battle, there is no honor, not really. Caesar never won because he was honorable. He isn’t. He won because he was clever and tenacious and used whatever means necessary, just like you did today.”

“I didn’t—”

“You cheated. And you won. And here’s a piece of advice.” He gripped me by the shoulders hard, and his next words sounded more like a warning than advice. “The next time someone offers you an advantage in a fight—a shield, a better sword, an opening for a cheat, or a moment of weakness in your opponent—do yourself a favor: Stuff your high-minded sensibilities and take it. Your adversary might not be so noble as you. And your honor will only wind up getting you killed.”





XXII



MY SMALL ACT OF REBELLION—the refusal to have my slave collar removed—did not go unnoticed. One sweltering afternoon, Sorcha tracked me down after the other girls had drifted off to the baths or dining hall, finding me alone in the weapons shed as I filed the burrs from my practice blade with a metal rasp.

“We have body servants here at the ludus, you know,” she snapped by way of greeting. “Baths, barbers, clean tunics in the quartermaster’s stores. A blacksmith—several, in fact—all perfectly capable of cutting that collar off your neck.”

“I shouldn’t think you’d want to get rid of it,” I said as she stalked circles around me. “After all, wasn’t it part of my outrageous purchase price?”

“Don’t be a brat. I could force you.”

“Of course you could.” I shrugged and returned to the task at hand. “You own me.”

“That’s not how I treat my girls, and that’s not how they treat themselves—not if they want to win.”

She stopped pacing and picked up an oilcloth, holding out her hand for my sword. I gave it to her, and she wiped the filings carefully from the blade, checked the smoothness of the edge with her thumb, and placed the sword back on the rack with the others.

“You are as much the weapon as the blade you wield, Fallon,” she said. “And you need to start taking care of yourself the same way you take care of your equipment, or you’ll be of no use in a fight when that day finally comes.”

I glared up at her, but I had to admit that Sorcha had a point. I’d been pushing myself hard on the training ground. Too hard. By the end of each day, I was often so exhausted that I would forgo the bathhouse so that I could simply collapse on the pallet in my cell. I think part of me reasoned that if my body was tired enough, I would fall asleep regardless of the thoughts that galloped like runaway horses inside my head. Thoughts of Caius Varro and Maelgwyn Ironhand. Thoughts of my father and of home and how I’d never see those green shores again.

I blinked back the tears I refused to shed in front of my sister.

“When was the last time you had your hair trimmed?” Sorcha asked me in a gentler tone.

I glanced up at her. “What does it matter?”

“Come with me.”

She turned on her sandal heel and stalked out of the shed, leaving me no choice but to follow her across the practice yard and through the breezeways that led to her private accommodations. Once inside her chambers, Sorcha sat me at a bench in front of a cosmetics vanity.

A floor-to-ceiling tapestry hung on the wall of the room. It depicted the moment when the Greek hero Achilles defeated and killed the Amazon queen Penthesilea, her blood woven from bright crimson threads. I guessed that was how they’d come to name the first two gladiatrix ludi—after that epic struggle between heroes.

Sorcha fetched a comb and a pair of silver shears and worked through the tangled mess of my hair with ungentle tugs of the comb. I sat there glowering, arms crossed. After she was through torturing my scalp, she picked up the shears.

“You’ve become such a shaggy thing, like one of those ponies you used to drive to exhaustion,” Sorcha muttered as she snipped away at my neglected tresses. “It’s an absolute wonder Caius Varro has taken such a shine to you.”

My jaw dropped open.

“Don’t deny it,” she said. “I’ve never seen him ask to spar with any of the other girls at the ludus.”

“Perhaps the Decurion respects my skills in the arena,” I said stiffly.

“The arena had best be the only place he’s encountered your skills,” she said, and her reflection raised an eyebrow at me. “I mean it, Fallon. It’s one of the strictest rules we have here at the ludus. I have no use for a gladiatrix who’s lost her wits to lovesickness.”