The Triumphant (The Valiant #3)(67)

“Did I ever tell you girls how Hatshepsut led her armies into battle against the Kushite hordes,” the queen said, “riding at the head of her troops in her golden war chariot, drawn by snow-white horses, fighting brave as any man?”

“Did she still have to wear the golden”—Devana waved her hand vaguely in the direction of her nether regions—“you know . . .”

Cleopatra laughed. “No, I shouldn’t think so,” she said. “She was pharaoh by then, and that probably would have gotten in the way. But her troops accepted her as their general and revered her as their commander.”

“Because she was good, or because they didn’t have a choice?” I asked.

I hadn’t meant to be that blunt, but the rest of the girls grew instantly silent and exchanged a few laden glances. Cleopatra turned to me, her dark eyes glittering. For a moment, I thought she was angry. But then she held out a hand and beckoned me to come and stand beside her. She took my hands and held them up between us, her smooth thumbs pressing into the calluses on my palms, built up over countless hours of practice with my swords.

“Both,” she said, her grip on my hands like iron. “Because she made herself one thing, she became the other in their eyes. Many a weak king has fallen in battle in my land—and not always with a wound on the front of his divine body, if you take my meaning. Destiny is not something that is given. It’s something you prove yourself worthy of taking. Hatshepsut would still have been Hatshepsut if she hadn’t done what she’d done. She just wouldn’t have been pharaoh. You would still be Fallon even if you’d never proven yourself Victrix. That wasn’t something mighty Caesar simply bestowed upon you. It was something you earned from his hand.” She looked around at the gathered girls. “That goes for all of you.”

I felt the tension in my shoulders release as she clapped my hands together and let them go. The girls all began to chatter among themselves, and I joined in as it led to several rounds of regaling ourselves with the deeds we’d performed both in and out of the arena that—Cleopatra was damned well right—we’d earned the right to boast of. Even if just to each other.

“And then when Damya sat on that Tarquin retiarius,” Nephele was saying, snorting with laughter, “in the middle of the arena and refused to let her up until she’d agreed to trade helmets!”

“It’s a nice helmet,” Damya said. “I still have it. Very comfortable.”

“Poor thing’d still be there if she hadn’t said yes!”

Damya shrugged. “She was pretty comfortable too.”

The deck was rolling with laughter when I looked out over the sea to the east and saw the jagged shapes of mountains rising up in the distance.

“What place is that?” I asked.

“Home . . .”

I turned to see Kore and Thalassa beside me, leaning out over the ship’s rail. Both of them were staring intently at the white sand beaches skirting rugged hills climbing upward to mountains in the distance.

“Is that Crete?” I said to Kore, who’d been the one to speak.

She nodded. “The Island of the Sacred Bull.”

“Would you ever want to go back there?” I asked. “To live?”

“Oh . . .” Thalassa shook her head vigorously. “No. No, no . . . Kore didn’t mean ‘home’ in a good way.”

Kore snorted at her fellow Cretan’s reaction and glanced at me sideways. “Remember the story?” she said. “Daedalus and Icarus built wings to escape that place.”

“I’d build wings to keep us from ever having to go back, if I had to,” Thalassa said with a shudder. “I would not step foot into that arena again.”

“What do you mean?”

“You think the Roman arena is bad?” Kore scoffed. “You never leave the ring of Knossos, and you never win your way out. You’re just another sacrifice to the Bull God waiting to happen. Day after day, you go and face the horns. Until you die. And they all die, eventually. We were lucky enough to have a troupe master who was also a vile, roaring drunk.”

“That’s lucky?” I said.

“He owed the local wine seller so much money that he had to sell us off before the bull’s horns claimed us.” She grinned. “But because of that—because we had the audacity to leave the ring of blood alive—we were considered a disgrace and shunned by our countrymen.”

“I’m sorry.” I shook my head. “I had no idea.”

“Pff.” Thalassa waved a hand dismissively in the direction of the island brooding on the horizon. “There are other fields of battle where we can earn our glory. And have at least a chance of keeping our lives while we do.”

“Tell me again why you two thought it was a good idea for us to practice flying over angry bulls, when it all sounds so delightfully lethal?” Elka called up from where she sat cross-legged on the deck with the other girls.

Kore grinned down at her. “At least we didn’t sharpen Tempest’s horns like they do in Knossos.”

“And you were really quite good at it,” Thalassa said. “Nice height. Good form—”

Elka frowned fiercely. “There’s no flying in the oath.”

“Maybe there should be,” Ajani said. “We’ve done almost everything else.”