The Triumphant (The Valiant #3)(78)

I heard his hand slam against stone. He was over near one of the small altars. I froze, doused another torch, and then scurried, mouse quiet, in the opposite direction I’d been moving.

“He toughened me up,” Acheron continued. “I’m not angry, Victrix. I just really, really wanted to be the one to kill him. Now? I’ll just have to settle for killing you instead. But you know what? The beauty of it is . . . that will still serve my god, Dis, and my master, Pontius Aquila, just fine.”

There it was. That was how Acheron knew I’d killed his brother. Because when Pontius Aquila had found Ixion’s body, he’d just assumed—correctly—that it had been me who’d killed him. And Acheron was Aquila’s man. He had been from the beginning.

His reasons for hating me were legion.

“Fate’s a funny old thing,” he continued, his voice tracking to my right. “I almost thought that idiot Yoreth had you convinced to let him out of his cell so he could join your noble little band. But he was so stupid you probably would have guessed his allegiance before you reached the gate out of the city.”

Yoreth too? My own countryman . . .

“You’re both Sons of Dis?” I could hear the horror in my voice.

I also heard a whispery snicker ten—maybe fifteen—paces to my left. The jackal man, it seemed, was enjoying my distress. Enough to forget himself for an instant.

“Most of us in there were.” Acheron’s voice was closer. Softer. “The arena is a place of sacred death, Victrix. You . . . you girls don’t understand that—you never could—but we men of the arena? The true gladiators? We embrace it. Revel in it. Your soldier boy is lucky to have survived as long as he did. I’ll have to remedy that too.”

“But you stood with him in the arena. You—”

“Once I saw you in the stands at the theatrum games,” he continued, “I thought, well . . . honey catches flies and all that. How best to get close to Caesar’s Victrix? Get close to her son-of-a-whore lover. And then, of all the great good fortune, you yourself rescued me. Welcomed me into your little band. And when I found out you lot were sailing—with the great bitch queen herself, no less—to Aegypt? The very land where the Sons of Dis were born. Where there are temples dedicated to our great dark lord. I told you I had a destiny . . .”

He was moving again, off to my right, circling behind.

The jackal man was still to my left . . .

They were trying to box me in. I looked up to see that the moon had drifted far enough past the temple that her light no longer shone down through the open roof. The goddess’s face no longer reflected in the mirror pool . . .

“You know . . . no one ever expected those soft-handed senators to carry out the deed and kill Caesar,” he continued, clearly reveling in the opportunity to flaunt his own cleverness. “Truthfully, I never really thought the tyrant could fall. But he did. Praise Dis Pater . . .”

I took a chance and peered around the pillar I hid behind. Acheron was standing, facing the other direction. The last of the light glimmered on the blade in his fist—and on its reflection—and I saw it clearly. I felt all the blood in my body rush from my head to my feet. I felt as if I might faint, but I couldn’t tear my eyes from the red stone in the hilt of the weapon . . . and the rust-brown stains on the blade. It was the same knife Aquila had dipped in Caesar’s blood.

I wondered if his ghost was still near, watching . . .

But how? I wondered. How did Acheron come by that blade?

And then I remembered when we’d been trying to leave the city after Caesar’s murder . . . and Acheron had been the one to lead the Dis gladiators away from the gate. Once out of sight, they, in turn, could lead him to Aquila. Who’d given Acheron the dagger and his orders.

Orders to stay with us.

To ingratiate himself with our company. To wait for an opportunity.

And now I knew, too, how Hestia had really died.

A fire that blazed hot for vengeance kindled to life in my chest. I made a dash for the last lit torch and lobbed it into the pool, plunging the temple into absolute blackness.

“And I also knew,” Acheron continued, “that even with Caesar dead, Aquila was still never going to give up his quest for your soul, sweet gladiatrix. One way or another, he is going to have it. And now? I’ll be the one to deliver it to him . . . Hah!”

I heard him strike stone with steel in the place where I’d been standing only a moment earlier. Except that, in the darkness, I’d silently slipped back into the pool, careful not to make so much as a ripple on the water.

I heard him whispering, “Where is she, Intef?”

There was an answering murmur.

Intef. The priest who’d brought me to the temple from the palace. The one who’d taken my swords. That explained, at least, how Acheron had gotten in through the locked doors. And it gave me some idea of just how deep the corruption of the Sons of Dis ran here in Aegypt. At least as deep as in Rome.

I still clutched the scarab pebbles I’d taken from the altar, and I threw one into a far corner. It made a clattering sound, and I could hear them move off in that direction. When they couldn’t find me there, Acheron started talking again, taunting me in hopes I’d give away my position.

“Of course, your countryman Yoreth will get his reward too,” he called out. “Don’t worry about that, Victrix. He’s on his way back home now. Well, back to your home, that is. With Aquila and a whole regiment of Dis mercenaries. I imagine once the walls of your little village fall, he’ll probably make himself right at home in the cozy house that used to be yours . . .”