She wasn’t quite sure in which order. She wasn’t sure Sidonius was either. Strangest of all, the man had a rough brand that looked to have been burned into his skin with a red-hot blade. A single word, carved right across his chest.
COWARD.
He offered no explanation for it, and Mia didn’t like him enough to ask.
After another thirty-two push-ups, the executus signaled the three to stop, and Mia collapsed face-first onto the deck, arms trembling.
“Your upper body strength is a jest,” the big man growled at her. “And yet, my lips are absent laughter.”
“Enough for the turn, Executus,” called Dona Leona from her seat on the foredeck. “They’ll need to be able to walk when they meet their new familia.”
“On your feet.”
Mia stood slowly, staring out at the ocean. The welts on her back tickled with the sting of her sweat. The executus’s salt-and-pepper hair whipped about in the ocean breeze, his beard bristling as he glared. Long minutes ticked by in silence, only the calls of gulls and the sounds of the distant port for company.
“Drink,” the executus finally grunted.
Mia turned and practically dashed for the water barrel lashed to the main mast. The big Itreyan, Sidonius, shoved her aside with a curse, snatching up the ladle and drinking his fill. Mia seethed, half-tempted to knock the thug on his arse as she waited her turn, but the sensible part of her brain counseled patience. When Sidonius finished drinking, Matteo flashed her his pretty smile, waved to the barrel.
“After you, Mi Dona.”
Crack!
The boy winced as the executus’s whip found his back.
“I gave no permission for you to speak!”
The boy grit his teeth, bowed apology. Mia nodded thanks, turned to the water barrel, gulping down mouthful after sweet mouthful.
It chafed her almost to screaming, bowing down to these people. Told when to eat, when to drink, when to shit. The executus’s contempt for them was matched only by Dona Leona’s ambivalence. On the one hand, the woman treated them with a sort of affection, and spoke of the glory to come on the sands of the venatus. But on the other, she had them whipped for the smallest slight. They weren’t allowed to look her in the eye. They spoke only when spoken to. Performing on command.
Like favored dogs, Mia realized.
Mia’s parents had slaves when she was a little girl—every noble familia in the Republic did. But Mia’s nanny, Caprice, was practically treated like blood, and her father’s majordomo, a Liisian named Andriano Varnese, stayed on to serve the justicus even after he’d purchased his freedom.fn1
Even on the run for her life as a child, even sworn into the service of the Black Mother, Mia had never really understood what it was to not belong to herself. The thought of it burned her, like the memory of that needle being hammered into her skin. Again and again. The indignity. The shame.
But you cannot win if you do not play.
The Gloryhound dropped anchor in the harbor, and a short row later, Mia stood with her fellow captives on the bustling docks of the cityport beneath Crow’s Nest, known as Crow’s Rest. Her wrists were manacled and chafed, her clothes filthy, her hair a matted mess. Mister Kindly’s absence was a knife wound in her belly, bleeding all the warmth right out of her. She looked down to her shadow, once dark enough for two, even three. Now, no different than any other around her. Fear hovered about her on black wings, and for the first time in a long time, she had to face it alone.
What if she failed?
What if she wasn’t strong enough?
What if this gambit was just as foolish as Mister Kindly had warned?
“Move!” came the cry, punctuated by the sting of knotted leather on her back.
Gritting her teeth, as was now the custom, Mia did as she was told.
A wagon ride later, she was trundling into the courtyard of Crow’s Nest, heart aching inside her chest. The keep seemed so familiar, the sights, the sounds, Black Mother, even the smells were unchanged. But decorating the ochre stone of the courtyard walls where the Crow of Corvere once flew, she saw the familia crest of Marcus Remus—a red falcon on a crossed blackand-white field.
I have a decidedly sinking feeling about this …
Memories of her childhood were awash in her head, mingled with images of her parents’ end. Her father executed along with General Antonius before a howling mob. Her mother and brother dead in the Philosopher’s Stone. Some part of her had always known this castle was no longer hers, that her home was not her home. But to see that bastard Remus’s colors still on the walls, even after she’d buried him … she felt as if the whole world were shifting beneath her feet. A sickness swelled in her belly, greasy and rolling. And still, she had no time to muse on the end of her old familia.
Her new one was waiting for her.
They stood in a row, like legionaries awaiting inspection. Thirteen men and two women, dressed in loincloths and piecemeal leather armor—spaulders, padded shin guards, and the like. Sweat-soaked skin gleamed in the light of two burning suns, giving them the look of statues cast in bronze. Men and women who fought on the sands of the venatus, who lived and died to the cheers of a blood-drunk crowd.
Gladiatii.
As Dona Leona climbed down from the wagon, each of them slammed a fist to their chest and roared as one.
“Domina!”
Leona pressed her fingers to her lips, blew them kisses.
“My Falcons.” She smiled. “You look magnificent.”
The executus cracked his whip, barked at Mia and her fellows to get out of the wagon. Sidonius pushed his way out first as usual. Matteo again smiled, motioned she should go before him. Mia climbed down onto the dirt, felt fifteen sets of eyes appraising her every inch. She saw lips curl, eyes narrow in derision. But the gladiatii were as disciplined as any soldier, and none breathed a word in the presence of their mistress.
“I will leave you to introductions, Executus,” Dona Leona said. “I have an appointment with a ledger and a very long, very deep bath.”
“Your whisper, my will,” the big man bowed.
The woman disappeared beneath a tall stone archway and into the keep beyond. Mia’s eyes followed, watching the way she spoke with the servants, the way she moved. The girl was reminded a little of her mother. Leona w—
Crack!
The snap of the executus’s lash caught her full and complete attention.
The big man stood before them, whip in one hand. In the other, he held a handful of ochre earth from the ground at his feet, slowly letting it trickle through his fingers. He looked Mia and the other newcomers in the eye, spoke with a voice like breaking rock.
“What do I hold in my hand?”
Mai saw the ruse right away. Felt it in the hungry eyes of the gladiatii assembled behind the executus. She was new to this game, but not fool enough to fall for—
“Sand, Executus,” said Matteo.
Crack!
The whip flashed across the air between them, left a bleeding welt across Matteo’s chest. The boy staggered, his pretty face twisted in pain. The assembled gladiatii sneered as one.
Mia studied the fighters, assessing each in turn. The eldest couldn’t be more than twenty-five. Each wore the twin interlocking circles of a fighter’s slavemark branded into their cheek. Each was a stunning physical specimen—all hard muscle and gleaming skin. But apart from that, they were each as different as iron