Wolf’s Empire: Gladiator (14 page)

A holographic watermark, the rolled-up scroll of the guild of archivists, attested to the video's authenticity.

The pin, Crassus' claims about my brother's survival, the correlation between my dreams and what I was seeing—it all threw me completely off guard. I felt as if I had woken up inside a dream, that the world had ceased operating in a way that was predictable.

“What of my mother?” I asked.

“We made a positive identification of her body during the cleanup of the planet, prior to colonization. There is video footage if you wish to see it. Her body was in some state of decay, but I believe you would still be able to recognize parts of her.”

“No.” My voice was shaky, my whole body trembling. I knew I'd burst into tears if I spoke, so I remained silent. Aulus. My legs were going to give out under me, so with as much dignity as I could muster, I lowered myself into the chair beside me, placed my hands on the table, and took a deep breath.

“If you truly have him, where is he now?” I said. “I want to see him.”

Sitting down opposite me, he took a leisurely sip of wine. “Of course, I would like nothing more than to take you to him, I despise using children as leverage. What I can tell you is that he is held safely in one of our facilities on Olympus Decimus. Yes, that's right. Your brother is on the arena world. Are you sure you don't want to join the Ludi Romani yet?”

My brother's frozen face still floated above the table, right in front of me.

“You want me to fight for you? To stand by your side?” I asked. My body and the words it generated were numb, expressionless.

“To win the tournament together. To make a joint statement with our actions,” Crassus said. “As soon as we have won the tournament, your brother will be released into your custody. You have my word of honor.”

“You ask me to swallow a bitter pill. I'm no traitor.”

“Traitor? What is a traitor? When the new era comes, all those who stood against us now will be called traitors, war criminals, terrorists. What matters are not labels but results. The billions of lives you spare, the culture you preserve will prove you to be a peacemaker. Let us help one another as we did last time.”

“That was a mistake.”

“Don't you see? Twice you've been denied your right to join the tournament and yet here you are, your place secured yet again. Olympus Decimus is calling to you. You have a destiny to fulfill, we both do. Our potential must be realized. House Viridian would remain untouched, unharmed, improved. You could make changes to how women are treated—expand the code of honor your people consider to be so important so that it applies to both sexes.”

The words he wanted me to say were like small bones caught in my throat. I couldn't make them come out.

“Accala?”

Standing stiffly, I touched the cameo, terminating the image, and moved to leave, but he caught me by the wrist and pulled me to him. It took every ounce of willpower not to strike him. “Why do you ask for an answer at all?” I said. “You know I have no choice.”

“We Sertorians understand business,” he said. “A deal is a deal only when we both agree to the terms. You do have a choice. You can choose to walk away, to stay safely here in Rome, marry and bear children, watching your team fail in the games, your brother die, your house fall, its citizens turned to slaves. You don't want that, though, and I don't want that. Let us save your people together.”

He waited for me to speak, but I still couldn't make any words come.

“I can't let you leave here without giving me an answer. I need to know. Right now.”

He was keeping me off balance, making clear thinking difficult. What if the Caninines really did have a fighting chance, and by joining the Sertorians I'd steal that slim hope away? But if Aulus was alive, if there was even a chance … I had to get away from Crassus, to buy time to think things through. With time, I could find a way to turn things around.

“Yes,” I said quietly.

“Then we have a deal?”

“You heard me the first time. Now I need to go home. To pack.”

“As long as you return here before dawn—and please leave the pin. You can reclaim it in the morning.”

The fire in my heart burned bright, and I wanted nothing more than to set it free, to allow my rage to engulf him. Instead, I obeyed him and placed the pin on the table.

“Remember, I am not your enemy. I am your ally. Licinus is our target, peace is our goal. We'll work together and this unpleasant business will be over before you know it.”

Crassus stood aside, smiling as if we were the best of friends. He knew the lead he had me on was both invisible and long. “And you understand, as you did with our prior arrangement, that mutual circumstance binds us to silence and believe me that we will be watching you, everything you say and do. If you utter a word of anything we've discussed, I won't be able to help you or your brother. Aulus will be handed over to Licinus, who keeps two Crimson Inquisitors in permanent employment. You know what that means, don't you?”

He didn't have to spell it out. Sertorian inquisitors skinned their victims alive for starters, dragging out their dying for the longest possible time.

*   *   *

I
FLED FROM THAT
place as if dark floodwaters were about to rush over me. Crassus had made an offer that was impossible to refuse, but it didn't lessen the urge to run back into his fancy town house and beat him black and blue until he set Aulus free.

An empty, unmarked chariot was docked in front of Crassus' place, and I took it. The weather shield kept the rain at bay as I soared high above the city at night, right into the path of a storm. The wind and rain buffeted me, knocking the chariot this way and that as I tried to piece together what the Sertorian had told me. My mother must have given her pin to Aulus. The image of her calling out to me in the dream filled my mind, of her desperate attempts to communicate, scratching out her message before she and Aulus died. Except Aulus wasn't dead. Crassus had never lied to me, and he wasn't lying now, I was certain of that. Somewhere on Olympus Decimus, my brother was frozen, immobile and helpless in some Sertorian facility. It was worse than if he were a shade in the halls of Hades, because nothing could be done about that.

Thunder rumbled, lightning flashed about me, and I flew on, daring the gods to strike me down. Better that than to kneel before Crassus in submission. Better that than to fight against my own house or face my father and be unable to tell him that his only son, my brother, still lived.

About three hundred feet up, surrounded by black clouds, the chariot's weather shield inexplicably failed, exposing me to the elements. My robes billowed wildly, the wind and rain lashed me. I felt like an actor in some tragic opera. From out of the clouds ahead of me, a dark shape emerged. A ship. The conical nose of a sleek trireme split open into six steel parts like a black orchid, revealing a bright interior chamber. Hitting the throttle, I tried to swerve out of the way, but the storm and the speed of the vessel made escape impossible. My chariot was consumed by the larger ship, the control of the chariot's engines seized, my speed reduced to a snail's pace. With me securely inside, the nose closed back up. My engine cut out entirely without warning. The chariot fell to the deck below with a loud clatter. I tried to land gracefully but couldn't get my feet under me in time, falling awkwardly to the unyielding steel. Unarmed, no Orbis, no dagger, I scrambled to my feet and awaited the enemy who had captured me. The walls of the hangar bore Viridian insignia, a wolf's head surrounded by emerald laurels, signifying that this was the personal trireme of the Viridian proconsul himself.

“Hello, dear niece. I see that, as usual, you are having difficulty staying out of trouble.”

My uncle, our leader, Proconsul Quintus Viridius Severus, looked down at me from the raised platform of the ship's hangar bay. Thin and wrinkled, his eyes flashed with a mixture of amusement and penetrating intent. There was only one reason my uncle would seek me out: He knew all about my visit to Crassus. That I'd agreed to betray my house. His eyes said as much. Dragged before the Senate and my father, I would face a traitor's death—to be whipped, crucified, and then thrown from the Tarpein Rock while all the empire watched on.

“Come. We have much to discuss,” my uncle said, dismissing the guards on either side of him.

Climbing the metal stairs like a prisoner going to the gallows, I followed him to his great cabin, a space that incorporated his office—a simple minimalist square workstation and large, bulky cube-shaped chairs with only a little padding—the workspace of an utterly focused, practical man, lacking any of the ornamentation I'd seen in Crassus' town house.

Uncle Quintus motioned for me to sit on a low divan opposite his desk.

“Accala, I know all about your brother,” he said in a calming tone. “I know where you've been tonight, but you have nothing to fear. My agent inside Gaius Sertorius Crassus' house has told me everything that transpired. I know that you are loyal and true.”

The human servant who answered the door. He must have been my uncle's inside man. Or perhaps one of the small white Iceni. Crassus had warned me not to speak, but if my uncle knew and was pressing me what choice did I have?

“I'm not sure what to say,” I said.

“You're worried that Crassus is watching you? Don't worry, we scanned you when you came in. There were two spherae following you, but he'll assume they got caught up in the storm. We've got about ten minutes and then I have to send you back to the Wolf's Den so we don't raise too much suspicion. Go ahead. Ask what you want.”

“It's true, then? He has Aulus?”

My uncle's words came as a great relief, but I had to be cautious. I sensed I was still on shaky ground.

“It is. My own agents have confirmed what Crassus told you. I'm going to use every resource at my disposal to find and liberate your brother.” Uncle got up from his desk and came to sit beside me. “Don't worry, dear niece, I'm here to help.”

“Thank the gods,” I said, throwing my arms about him. “I didn't know what I was going to do.”

“You can tell me anything,” he said, placing a reassuring hand on my knee. My words came flooding out. Taking his hands in mine, I confessed everything to him—about the arena, why I went to see Crassus, the offer Crassus made. My hands were hot and sweaty; his, surprisingly cool. “Now you can help him,” I said. “You have to help him, he's your nephew, he's family.”

“Rest assured, I intend to do precisely that.”

“I will make offerings to Minerva for your health. You bring a desperately needed hope, Uncle.”

“Good, good. We're going to start with the offer Crassus made you,” Uncle said, putting his heavy arm about my shoulders and pulling me close.

“I can't believe the things Crassus said to me.”

“He's an unusual Sertorian, that's for certain,” my uncle said. “He truly does seem to have some strange vision of preserving the noble houses, albeit as slaves to House Sertorian. What interests me, though, is his fascination with you. He's truly struck by Cupid.”

“For who?” I asked, and then felt like an ass when I realized my uncle was referring to me.

“He's in love with me? I don't know about that.”

But it made sense. All the talk about me joining their team for a propaganda campaign, it sounded so far-fetched. A creature like Crassus couldn't know actual love, but if my uncle was right, if he desired me, wanted to possess me, somehow it made more sense. Men were stupid when it came to sex, and I wouldn't put it past a Sertorian megalomaniac to come up with some bizarre scheme to satisfy his desires.

“Take it as a given. He's head over heels.”

“He certainly had some strange ideas. I can't get over his asking me to join the Blood Hawks, to be his slave. Imagine that? It was like some bizarre schoolboy fantasy.”

“I can imagine it well. In fact, that's precisely what I want you to do.”

“I don't understand,” I said, pushing his arm away. “Don't joke, Uncle, I can't take it right now.”

“This is no joke, Accala. Gaius Sertorius Crassus is cracked, there's no doubting that, but his madness is a gift from the gods that we can turn to our advantage. If he wants you by his side, then that's exactly what he shall have. I want you in the Ludi Romani, on the Sertorian team, hand in hand with the enemy. You're going to break House Sertorian apart for me, dear niece, from the inside out. By the time you're done, every last hawk in the empire will curse the day they tried to tame House Viridian.”

 

ACT II

MOCK HAWK

Ah my sister, long ere now I knew thee, when first thine arts shattered the treaty, and thou didst mingle in the strife;

and now thy godhead conceals itself in vain.

But who hath bidden thee descend from heaven to bear this sore travail? Was it that thou mightest see thy hapless brother cruelly slain?

—Virgil,
Aeneid

VIII

I
T WAS PARADE DAY,
and the gladiators of the Ludi Romani departed Rome with great fanfare. The processional float bearing the Blood Hawks slowly emerged from the darkness beneath the Colosseum and began to make its way down Via Appia. At the back of the float, I, Accala Viridius Camilla, sat beside my new master, Gaius Sertorius Crassus. The summer sun was bright, the clear blue sky hummed with hovering media spherae, and two hundred thousand people screamed and cursed my name.

At dawn I'd slipped out of the Wolf's Den. My uncle had arranged for my father to travel to Londinium on house business so I wouldn't be disturbed, and also arranged for Orbis to be brought to me at home. Strangely, the cameo from my bedside table was missing. Had Father taken it with him? A way of punishing me, forcing me to let go of the past? I returned to Crassus' town house with my trunk and belongings loaded onto the chariot. He presented me my mother's pin like a tutor bestowing an award to a clever schoolchild and showed me the press release he'd posted notifying every media outlet in the empire that I had switched sides. Then I was whisked away to the arena and shuffled onto the back of the float, away from the rest of the team. “It's Licinus' decision,” he said. “You'll be introduced to everyone once the journey to the arena world is under way.”