Blood and Sand Read online

  Timeus smiled. “You’ll fight him on the first day of spring at the Festival of Lupa.”

  Nearly six months away. Xanthus stood frozen as a statue, but Timeus could see the rage that clouded his champion’s features.

  “Decimus has been earning himself a reputation these past few years. Now that a Flavian has purchased him, he’ll garner even more attention. A fight this big requires preparation, and Tycho wants to wait until his father can be present for the match,” Timeus said. “Imagine the advantage of hosting the fight here in Rome. In your arena!”

  Xanthus knew he would descend to hell itself to take that dog’s life.

  “The entire city is talking about your victory over the Taurus,” Timeus continued. “Think of the rewards of defeating a gladiator from the House of Flavius. The Republic will remember your name for generations to come. Monuments will be erected in your visage. The House of Timeus will be glorified above all others and you with it.”

  Xanthus didn’t care if the House of Timeus fell into the sea, but he said nothing. His mind was still whirling with the news.

  As the silence filled the space between them, Timeus sighed. “Have patience, Xanthus. Besides, I’ve seen to it that you’ll have other things to keep you occupied until then.”

  Xanthus shrugged the comment away. There was nothing he wanted more than to kill Decimus.

  “Patience,” Timeus said again. “I promise it will be worth it.”

  Xanthus nodded and clenched his hands.

  Six months.

  He could already feel Decimus’s neck in his grasp.

  CHAPTER 5

  I am Attia of Thrace, a Maedi warrior. I am my father’s daughter.

  Yet for the second time in her life, Attia found herself bound like an animal, waiting in a strange room to be given to a worthless pig of a man—the so-called Champion of Rome. But she kept her face calm and her eyes trained on the door that led out to the gladiators’ training yard.

  It had taken nearly two weeks before she could walk normally again. Most of her wounds were healing well. The bruises had faded to broad patches of yellow and green, only partially covered by the cheap, sleeveless tunic she’d been ordered to wear. The cuts and gashes would soon add to the tapestry of scars stitched onto her bronze skin. Her head still ached, and she knew from experience that the cracks in her ribs would take at least another three weeks to heal. She’d been captured, beaten, bent. She’d been sold. She’d been branded. But she knew that the deepest cut of all was just beyond that door.

  Attia hadn’t been surprised when the guards had come for her just after dusk, not after what Timeus had said. She’d been staring out one of the western windows, listening to the gentle roar of the waves beating against the rocks below. Back home, she’d loved to watch the sun sink over the western edge of the Aegean every night—the way its rays pierced through the heavy cloak of mist that sometimes blanketed their shores. Light reflected off of the waves, casting shadows against the mountains. It was a time when the edges of the world blurred, when sea and air and land were nearly indistinguishable, and one could almost believe that the veils between realities existed.

  The wild beauty of this foreign sea was enough to keep her still as the guards tied her hands tightly in front of her with a smooth linen rope. She didn’t struggle as they pulled her along through the atrium, down the hallway to the main courtyard, and through a broad archway to the champion’s quarters. They whispered among themselves, never calling the champion by name, but speaking in low voices about his victories and kills. They called him a god of the arena.

  But Attia was more concerned with what Timeus had called her. “You are a spoil of war … a gift to my champion,” the old man had said. His words, along with his mark, had been seared into her skin.

  Now she waited, her eyes trained on the door. The room was surprisingly simple, almost bare. Nothing like what she would have expected for the so-called Champion of Rome. A hard bed was wedged against one corner and draped with a brown blanket. Across from the bed, two short candles burned on a wooden table. Attia saw what looked like a necklace made of feathers and hemp. The moon shone in through a small window in the outer wall.

  She may not have struggled when the guards came, but even before they put the rope on her again, she was ready—ready to spit in the faces of Rome’s elite, to scratch and claw and fight. To kill. As for the champion, well. Soon enough, Attia would meet him face-to-face, and she would see for herself whether this god of the arena bled like a man.

  The candles on the table had burned to nearly half their length by the time someone pushed the door open. The guards remained outside as Timeus entered, followed moments later by another man, and Attia finally looked into the face of Timeus’s monster.

  The Champion of Rome towered over her. He was younger than she’d expected, with clear skin tanned by the sun and hard lines of muscle and sinew—tokens of his years spent in the arena. His dark hair was cut short in the Roman fashion and accentuated the strong lines of his face. His eyes were bright and green like new grass. He held himself like a warrior, and his mouth formed a grim line as he frowned at her.

  That dark look of his had probably made countless men tremble. Attia nearly expected the walls themselves to move to escape his displeasure. But she held her ground. She had never been cowed by a man. She was not about to start now. Attia lifted her chin and glared back, hating both the gladiator and Timeus with every hot drop of blood in her veins.

  Timeus grinned at his champion. “No one else has touched her,” he said. “She will be yours to do with as you will—your own little slave, all the way from Thrace.”

  Attia wanted to spit in the old man’s smug, bruised face.

  The gladiator didn’t seem at all happy with his master’s gift. He barely looked at Attia, and when he did, his expression shifted from shock to dismay to curiosity and then to something that almost looked like shame. He quickly looked away again.

  “Unless, of course, you don’t want her,” Timeus continued. “I can’t say I’d be surprised. You’re too picky, honestly. I can never guess your tastes. But my men will enjoy her well enough, and—”

  Only then did the gladiator speak. “No,” he said. “Your gift is well received, Dominus. You honor me, and I thank you.”

  “As I thought.” Timeus clapped his back. “The gods and the Republic smile on my house because of your victories, my boy. Now I smile on you. Try and enjoy it.”

  But the gladiator’s expression remained clouded. Despite his words of acceptance, it was obvious to Attia that the man neither celebrated Timeus’s offering nor seemed remotely grateful. No, he was … resigned. Then Timeus and the guards left, and Attia was alone with the gladiator.

  They stood facing each other, both scowling deeply enough to darken the room as a heavy rain began to pelt against the outer walls. Attia clenched her jaw with such force that she felt a dull throbbing start in the base of her skull.

  The gladiator looked away first. “I didn’t ask for this,” he said, speaking almost to himself. When he looked at Attia again, his eyes lowered to the rope binding her hands. “Let me untie you.” He reached for a small knife on the shelf behind him.

  As the gladiator approached her, Attia had to remind herself again—she had to force the words into being. I am the war-queen of Thrace. I am my father’s daughter.

  With every beat of her heart, she reached for the anger that simmered just below her skin, for the hate that threatened to consume her from the inside out. She forced herself to remember the screams of the women and children, the valiant war cries of her brave Maedi. The jolt of the cart that bore her to Rome. The rough hands of the merchant who sold her as a slave. The brand and the chains and the face of the legatus who murdered her father.

  I am Attia. I am a Maedi. And I have killed before. This will be easy.

  Just as the gladiator sliced through the rope, Attia neatly twisted the knife out of his hands, whipped around, and kicked him ha
rd in the hip. She followed the strike with quick blows from her elbows aimed at his head and neck. Using the wall behind her for leverage, Attia leapt forward and drove her knee into his side. The gladiator gasped softly and bent at the waist, cradling a newly cracked rib.

  Attia adjusted her grip on the knife and pressed the blade against his throat. “You will never touch me,” she said. “No man will. And you’re not even a man. You’re nothing but Timeus’s monster.”

  The gladiator took a deep breath before slowly straightening. “You’re right. So what are you waiting for? Kill me.”

  “I plan to.” Just a quick flick of her wrist. That was all she needed.

  “Sometime this century?”

  Attia pressed the blade harder against his skin. “Aren’t you afraid?”

  “Afraid? I would be honored to die at the hands of a Thracian. A daughter of the Maedi. That’s what you are, aren’t you?”

  When she didn’t answer, the gladiator slowly fell to his knees before her. Attia froze, her brow creasing in disbelief. Whatever she’d expected from the champion, this was certainly not it. Her small blade pressed against his skin, and a thin trickle of blood ran free.

  “I didn’t ask for this,” the gladiator said again. “I didn’t ask for any of it. You can believe me or you can kill me. Whatever Timeus says, I won’t touch you.”

  Attia started to shake her head. Why should she believe him? He was a champion of Timeus’s house, of Rome. By everyone’s account, he owned her. Why should she trust anything that came out of the man’s mouth? That was when she saw it—the deep sorrow etched into the gladiator’s face, the fatigue that weighed on his strong body. He hadn’t tried to fight off her attack, and even now, he kept his arms limp at his sides, resigned to the fact that she was about to slit his throat. Why?

  They said nothing to each other as the rain continued to beat against the walls. The gladiator spoke of her home, but Thrace suddenly seemed so far away. Another world. Another lifetime. She clenched her teeth to hold down the sob welling in her throat, because the truth was, the gladiator was wrong. She wasn’t one of the Maedi anymore. She had already betrayed every legacy, every piece of the heritage that her father had passed on to her. She’d let him die on that hillside. She’d allowed her people to be massacred. She was no warrior. Not anymore. How could she ever again call herself anything more than a slave? For the first time, she thanked the gods that her father was no longer alive to witness her shame.

  Attia slowly lowered the blade from the gladiator’s neck. She almost couldn’t feel the hilt of the knife in her palm.

  “If you’re not going to kill me tonight, will you tell me your name?”

  “My name is Attia.” She could hear the defeat in her own voice and was sure the gladiator could, too.

  He was silent for a long minute though his gaze held hers. “They call me Xanthus.” He gestured half-heartedly toward the bed. “Timeus will want to know he’s gotten his way. Let him think it. You can have the bed. I won’t touch you.” Then he took the rough blanket and spread it out on the floor at the farthest end of the room. Attia watched as he lay down, his back to her and his face to the wall. Within a few minutes, it seemed he was fast asleep.

  Attia stood where she was for a while longer, never taking her eyes from the gladiator’s back. Only when her legs threatened to give out from sheer exhaustion did she gingerly crawl onto the gladiator’s bed, pressing her own back against the wall and bringing her knees to her chest. She kept the little knife clutched tightly in her hand. She didn’t make a single sound, though every piece of her felt raw and frayed.

  The heavy rain continued outside, and Attia wished the sky would release an ocean onto the house. In the silent depths of her heart, she grieved for her people, for her father, for herself. For the promise of honor and glory and freedom. For the warrior that she was and the queen that she should have been.

  Her thoughts turned to the gladiator sleeping just a few feet away, and she wondered if he grieved for something, too. He obviously didn’t fear death. No, in some manic, desperate way, he almost seemed to welcome it. Maybe that was why he hadn’t tried to stop her attack. Maybe that was why she couldn’t bring herself to kill him. Because maybe in this house, in this prison, they both wanted the same impossible thing: to be just a man and just a woman, standing free in the rain.

  CHAPTER 6

  The house of Timeus was a maze of stone. Doorways hid in the shadows. Corridors branched off to other corridors in wide and narrow angles. Stairways plunged down to cold cellars and dark basements. Arched passages led to rooms lined with marble and granite. And everywhere, there were guards. Dozens of them, maybe more. All armed with swords, daggers, even small mallets that hung from their belts. The guards on the upper floor wielded bows, and their eyes moved constantly over the courtyard and the gates.

  Every now and then, Attia glimpsed a dark-haired woman walking listlessly through the halls, often dressed in a black stola that clung to the curves of her body. But Attia could never get close enough to really look at her before the woman disappeared down some corridor.

  All of it was so foreign and cold that Attia found herself shivering despite the mild southern climate. As swordlord of the Maedi, her father moved constantly from camp to camp, village to village with his soldiers—ensuring peace and protecting their borders. Attia’s room had been a tent on a hillside or a single pallet in a dense wood. She had been surrounded by hundreds of Maedi nearly every minute of every day, and still, the guards in Timeus’s house made it difficult for her to breathe under their oppressive watch.

  None of them spoke to her or even met her eyes, but she could feel their gazes boring into her back. Attia ignored them. All she knew was that as soon as she regained her full strength, she would kill Timeus and escape this house. In all likelihood, she would be struck down somewhere in the process, but she couldn’t bring herself to care about that little detail. After all, what else was left for her? Another tense night in a gladiator’s bed?

  Xanthus had told the truth; he never touched her. He was gone by the time she opened her eyes that morning, even before the sun had completely risen. In the half-dark, she slipped out of his room, pausing at the archway of the training yard when she heard something that made her body tense instinctively—the surprising sound of synchronized movements and the unmistakable clang of swords.

  In the shadowy yard, she could see six men paired off and sparring with one another. They wore no armor. Their weapons were cheap. And their movements—while brutal and effective—were much too chaotic for the auxilia. Not soldiers, then. Timeus’s gladiators. And Xanthus was among them. None of them had seen her, and she didn’t stay long to watch.

  During the long night, she’d come to a decision. Until she had the strength to fight her way out of the estate, she would stay quiet. She would learn the halls and the corridors. She would count the guards. She would sleep in the gladiator’s quarters each night so long as he kept his word and kept his hands to himself.

  And she would do what small chores Sabina asked of her, even if she did get off to a rather disastrous start. As the house slaves soon learned, the young Thracian might be the champion’s new pet, but she was certainly not a domesticated one.

  That morning, Attia followed Sabina to the steaming room where the house slaves cleaned the linens and clothes. It was a single rectangular space with raised vats of hot water standing in rows throughout the room. The strong stench of ammonia brought tears to Attia’s eyes, and she covered her nose as Sabina introduced her to the laundress.

  “She doesn’t know much,” Sabina said. “But she’s a quick learner.”

  Attia raised her eyebrow. Sabina had no reason to think she was quick at anything except fighting, and she obviously didn’t know that Attia had cleaned her own clothes before, as all Maedi had. Attia knew well enough how to launder tunics and other linens. But she didn’t say a word.

  The laundress looked her over and sighed. “Fine. C
ome with me, girl.” She led Attia to a vat of hot water near the back of the room. A massive wooden paddle rested against the side, and the laundress handed it to Attia. “Stir,” she said. “And don’t put anything else in there. This one is for the dark tunics.”

  So Attia stirred. Every slow movement of the paddle made the stench stronger, and she turned her face away in an effort to take a clear breath. Behind her, rows and rows of clean and folded linens filled wooden shelves. Other slaves came in pairs to take armfuls of the sheets out of the steaming room.

  Attia paused and cocked her head, her eyes on the last pile of clean linen just an arm’s reach away. In the end, she couldn’t help herself. She swept the linens up into her arms before clumsily dropping them into the vat. She stirred with vigor before lifting the cloth up with her wooden paddle. The linen was no longer snowy white but had turned to a muddy gray color.

  The laundress saw and nearly screamed. “By the gods!” she shouted, hurrying over to snatch the paddle from Attia’s hands. “What have you done?” She pulled the ruined linens from the steaming vat with her bare hands and dropped them on the floor when the heat proved too much. With the long end of the paddle, she raised a corner of the linen to reveal singed, frayed edges.

  “Apologies,” Attia said, not looking apologetic at all.

  The laundress turned a dark glare on her. “Get out! Get out! Get out!”

  She ran Attia out of the steaming room with the paddle still in her hands.

  It took Sabina nearly half an hour to calm the woman down, and she only succeeded by promising over and over that she would never bring Attia back to the steaming room again.

  Attia was just fine with that.

  Sabina shook her head at Attia before taking her to the kitchens. The slaves there were already hard at work preparing the midday meal. As she’d done with the laundress, Sabina told the head cook that Attia was new, a quick learner, however ignorant she seemed. She turned an exasperated look at Attia when she said that last part.