The Triumphant (The Valiant #3)(29)

“A Kassandra?” I blinked at him, confused. “Forgive me, I’m not certain I understand you.”

“No, no,” he said with a wave and a long sip of his wine. “You must forgive me—I forget that you’re not exactly from around these parts and the stories of your people are not the stories of mine. You see, in the old tales ‘Kassandra’ was the name of a seeress.” He looked back and forth from me to Elka, who was gazing at him blankly. “You know—a soothsayer. Only she was cursed by the gods so that no one ever believed her. She could see the future but remained powerless to change it. Poor old thing.” He smirked, clearly far more amused by the mythical Kassandra’s plight than sympathetic.

Elka shook her head in bemusement. “And I thought the gods of my folk had a twisted sense of humor,” she said.

Antony laughed and saluted her, drifting back toward the torchlit terrace when a friend hailed him.

“Come on,” Elka sighed. “I’m going to get more food. Maybe no one else will dare talk to us if I’ve got a cheese knife in my hand . . .”

She gestured for me to follow her and I nodded, but my steps faltered and I lagged behind, lingering in the garden. I couldn’t stop thinking about Kass—the one I knew, not the one from Antony’s legend.

“My mother named me well,” she’d said.

The night now felt to me as if it had developed a deep chill, and my gaze kept searching the shadowed corners of the courtyard. Not a soul in sight who even remotely resembled Aquila. Maybe Elka was right. Maybe I was letting my imagination run away with me.

Or maybe, a voice whispered in my mind, you should tell Marc Antony of Kassandra’s warning words to Caesar.

But just then I heard Elka calling to me—a bit frantically. I hurried to join her, just in case she really was about to stab another guest. The evening wore on, and I never did get the chance to speak to Antony again. I would come to regret that missed opportunity.

Sooner than I would have ever imagined possible.





VIII


“WHERE ARE YOU going?” Elka asked for the third time that morning, as we were packing up to return home to the Ludus Achillea with Quintus as our escort.

“To find Caesar,” I answered—for the third time that morning—as I shook the folds from my light traveling cloak and laid it out beside her on the couch where she sat.

She shook her head, nimble fingers weaving her pale blonde hair back into the long, tight braids she was used to wearing. “Kronos will have your hide if he finds out you went wandering about the city on your own,” she said. “You’re still a slave, you know. And a woman.”

“I’m well aware of both those things.”

“Right.” She stood, still braiding. “I’m coming with you.”

“No.” I put a hand on her shoulder. “You don’t need to get in trouble too. Not that I’m going to either. Look. Just . . . stay here and wait for Quint. I won’t be long, and we’ll be on the road back to the ludus before Kronos concludes his business in the city. He won’t even know I went out.”

She gave me a disapproving look.

“The senate meets today, and I won’t have another chance to speak to him,” I reasoned. “It’s a perfect opportunity, don’t you think?”

“No.” Elka rolled a sardonic eye at me. “What I think is that a senate meeting isn’t exactly like the tribal councils around the chieftain’s fire back home. I don’t think you can just raise your drinking horn above your head and be allowed to speak your piece to the thane. I don’t even think these Romans sit around a fire for their meetings. Or drink at them.” She flipped the finished braid over her shoulder. “It’s uncivilized.”

“But it’s also my only option.” I sat down on a little folding stool and tugged my boots on, wrapping the laces around my calves. “The Ludus Flaminius is a nightmare. And I only need a moment of Caesar’s time. I’ll offer to buy Cai’s contract, if I have to.”

“Because that worked out so well when he offered to do the same for you.”

“Yes, I know.” I huffed a frustrated sigh and stood. “I overreacted. But now that I know what he was really trying to do at the time, don’t you think I—”

“Just go.” Elka held up her hands, realizing it was utterly fruitless to try to convince me not to go. “Hurry there and hurry back. I’ll stall Quintus when he gets here.”

“You’re a true friend.” I hugged her, and she plucked my cloak up off the couch she’d been sitting on, holding it out to me.

“I’m an idiot,” she said. “And so are you. Just . . . hurry. The sooner we get out of Rome, the better.”

“What? Why do you say that?” I asked.

And yet, even as the words left my mouth, I suddenly wondered why I wasn’t feeling the same way she was. Why had the streets and buildings and temples of Rome ceased to feel so strange and unwelcoming to me as they had before? Was it just that I was getting used to the place? Where was my yearning for green, whispering shadows beneath trees?

What am I becoming?

Elka jolted me out of my sudden bout of internal turmoil with her customary pragmatism.

“The gutters,” she said as if it were completely obvious. “It’s spring, and they smell even worse after the heavy rains. The sooner we leave, the less stench up my delicate nostrils.” She waved a hand daintily in front of her face.