The Triumphant (The Valiant #3)(65)

She sat alone on the deck near the bow, with her knees drawn up and her back resting against the curve of the ship’s side. Her eyes were closed and her face tipped skyward, bathed in sunlight. The sea air lifted stray strands of her long blonde hair; she’d left it loose instead of plaited into her usual long, tight braids. For the first time, I could see what Quint had been talking about when he’d called her a “divine nymph.” Any trace of her customary fierceness, the haughty ice maiden warrior, was nowhere to be seen. She was just a girl on a ship in the middle of the sea. We all were. And some of us were missing. One of those had belonged to the same tribe as Elka.

I sank down beside her, and for a while we just sat there, not speaking. Eventually, she rolled her head toward me and opened her eyes, waiting for me to say what was on my mind.

“I’m sorry for the loss of your kinswoman,” I said. “For the loss of our sisters. For Hestia too.”

Elka snorted. “Vorya was Varini,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “She would probably laugh at your sorrow and tell you that she’s gone to drink the All-Father’s finest mead in his hall of heroes.” She shrugged. “I don’t know Hestia’s customs or where her soul will wander in death, but I have sent a prayer to the All-Father and asked him to welcome her too, should she pass that way. You should envy them, little fox, not weep for them.”

“Right.” I nodded. “And so I shall. Just as soon as I finish weeping.”

“Ja. Me too . . .”

Elka put her head on my shoulder. I put an arm around her and pretended not to notice when her tears dropped onto my tunic.



* * *



—

The journey to Alexandria would take us a little less than a month, slower than I would have liked, but then . . . I don’t know why I was in such a great hurry. We had escaped our pursuers. Still, I glanced behind us out to sea so often it became almost a habit. When we eventually put in at the port of Messana on the island of Sicilia to take on supplies of food and fresh water, I was a bundle of raw nerves the entire time. It had been decided that none of us from the ludus would go ashore while we waited for the provisions to be loaded. Even though the odds of any of Aquila’s assassins having caught up with us were long, I would not bet against them. None of us would. Cai and Quint, though, took the opportunity to go ashore and gather what news they could of Rome and the Republic in the wake of Caesar’s assassination. The news was war.

“I don’t know what they expected,” Acheron said, shaking his head.

“Not what they got,” Cai said.

He wiped the sweat from his face and sank down onto a stool beneath the striped canvas awning Darius’s sailors had rigged up midship to shade us while we were docked in Messana.

“Certainly not what they’ll get in the coming days,” Cai continued. “Which may very well be the death of the Republic and a return to the days when Rome was an empire. The very thing they so feared under Caesar. Fools. They thought they would be hailed as heroes. Now Rome is half on fire and half hiding behind doors, and the only thing keeping the Republic from tearing itself straight down the middle seems to be some kind of compromise between Marc Antony and the senate.”

“It won’t last.” Quint said, dipping a ladle into the water barrel on deck and pouring it over the back of his neck for relief from the sun’s heat, which had grown steadily ever since we’d left Cosa. “There’ll be full-blown civil war before long. It’s inevitable.”

“Weren’t they, though?” Acheron asked. “Heroes? I mean . . . Caesar was a tyrant, wasn’t he?”

Cai tilted his head and looked at his fellow ex-gladiator. “Most great leaders are, in one fashion or another,” he said. “As tyrants go, Caesar was less monstrous than some.”

“Tell that to most any Gaul,” Acheron said. “Tell it to the Romans who never wanted a king. Tell that to Fallon’s people.” He nodded at me.

“What do you know of her people?” Quint asked, seemingly genuinely curious. I admit I was too.

“Enough.” Acheron shrugged. “I had a cell at the Ludus Flaminius next to that painted fool Yoreth for long enough that some of his constant whining stuck. Didn’t you ever want Caesar dead, lass?” he asked me.

The bluntness of his assessment took me aback, but yes. Of course I’d wanted Caesar dead. For most of my life growing up, truth be told. Right up until the moment when I’d met the man face-to-face.

“You sound like one of them, Acheron,” Quint said with a thin smile. “Like a bloody Optimate.”

“Eh? Oh no.” Acheron blinked at him. “Not me. Let the big men have at it. I’ve got more important things to do with my life.” He grinned a wide grin and held his arms out, gesturing to all of us. “Thanks to you lot, I have a destiny. I’m on my way to Aegypt. Always wanted to see that great sprawling sand heap—”

His mouth snapped shut all of a sudden, and I turned to see that Cleopatra had joined us beneath the awning and had been standing there for who knows how long, listening to us discuss matters that were so very much bigger than us. Not her, though. I wondered what she was thinking.

“Your, er, your pardon, Majesty . . .” Acheron stammered an apology, still flummoxed any time the queen was within sight. “I . . . uh . . .”