The Triumphant (The Valiant #3)(20)
Win the crowd, my old mentor Arviragus had once told me. Win their love.
Easy enough for Cai, I thought. He already has mine.
And to think I’d wanted to kill him when we’d first met.
Now he had his first—resounding—victory as a gladiator. All he had to do was court the mob, let them get to know him, and all would be well. Then, I thought, he’d be the darling of Rome, Caesar’s man again, and we could finally be together outside of the arena. What I didn’t realize—what I’d refused repeatedly to acknowledge—was what Kassandra had once warned me of. That the world outside the arena was far more treacherous than the world inside could ever be.
VI
THE LUDUS FLAMINIUS was a very different place from the gladiatorial academy I was used to. Quint had been reluctant to take me there after the games that day, but I’d insisted, and so he’d escorted me to the gates of the compound, where he and Elka told me they would wait for me until after I’d spoken to Cai. The notoriety I’d garnered for myself as Caesar’s Victrix took care of getting me through the gates.
It was unfair of me, maybe.
Cai had, after all, made it pretty clear—by way of all the letters returned to me unopened—that he didn’t want to see me. But now that I had presented myself in person to the ludus, he couldn’t actually refuse. Not without consequence. Gladiators, especially ones who weren’t in the trade of their own free will, were beholden to the wishes of their lanistas. And there wasn’t a lanista in Rome who would deny a wealthy patrician lady—or, in this case, Caesar’s own favorite barbarian-princess-turned-gladiatrix—an encounter with one of their stable. They would drag them out of their cells by the ear, if need be. So what I was doing was really just an abuse of an already abusive system. And I wasn’t leaving Rome without having spoken to Cai.
But as I descended the steps into the gladiator barracks, I began to understand Quint’s reluctance to bring me there. I started to seriously question my already questionable decision. The Flaminian facility was nothing like the Ludus Achillea. On the surface, it seemed relatively benign, with several group training pitches and a handful of smaller dueling enclosures. A utilitarian compound, with serviceable—if spartan—baths and mess halls, an infirmary, and a smithy. A chariot training circuit and stables and, beyond that, a burial ground.
I had noticed as we walked that there didn’t seem to be any aboveground accommodations for the gladiators. Instead, it seemed that all the fighters were housed in subterranean cells—the kind I’d seen reserved for slaves and criminals and prisoners of war at other ludi. The catacombs wound deep beneath the ludus compound with its austere mess hall and practice facilities, and they reminded me uncomfortably of the chambers beneath the Domus Corvinus. Or my prison cell in Tartarus. I shivered at the thought and pulled the palla I wore up higher on my shoulders.
The trainer who’d led me down into those lower depths gave me a glance that was almost apologetic, gesturing me forward at the bottom of a stone stairway. The vaulted ceiling of the main corridor disappeared into the shadows above our heads, and our footsteps echoed on the stones beneath our feet as we passed the gaping maws of the cells, barred with iron—barriers that did nothing to keep hostile glances from raking over me like claws as I passed.
A rank atmosphere of brutality fogged the air, thicker than all the ghosts of blood and sweat and fear lingering there, more acrid than the smoke from the guttering torches on the walls. My heart hammered in my ears, but it didn’t block out the sound of the foul catcalls and jeers slung in my direction from all sides. I kept my expression stony and my eyes fixed in front of me. I’d heard worse hurled at me from the stands in the arena, and slowly the voices faded into a muted cacophony. Most of them. One voice did not.
A voice speaking in the language of my home said: “Princess . . .”
I froze in my tracks and turned my head slowly to see a man—a young man wrapped in a long tattered blanket, like a cloak, for warmth against the dank chill—staring at me with a burning intensity that lit up his red-rimmed eyes.
Ignoring my trainer escort’s warning glance, I took a few steps toward the cell and asked, “Do I know you?”
“No, princess.” The young man shook his head, a humorless grin on his lips. “No reason you should. I was only one of your father’s loyal warriors since I was old enough to hold a shield.”
“You’re . . . Cantii?” I asked, frowning.
“You’re surprised.” He snorted derisively and shook his head. “Then again, you’ve been gone a long way from home a long while. The memory fades, one imagines. But I remember you. I remember the very night you disappeared from Durovernum.”
“What is your name?”
He paused for a long moment, then pulled himself up to stand straight and looked me in the eye. “I’m Yoreth,” he said. “Of the royal war band of King Virico Lugotorix.”
He was one of my father’s elite? I felt a rush of shame that I didn’t remember the man. What had Rome done to me that I should forget such a thing?
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“What does it look like?” he snapped. Then he sighed and shook his head, offering up a wan, apologetic smile. “Forgive me. This place is murder to a man’s better nature. Please excuse my bad manners.”