“Phaedra.”
“Yes, master.”
“Who is the god of the underworld?”
‘That would be the goddess Proserpine, my lord.”
“You are very bright.” Lucella smiled at her. She was thirteen and just coming into her womanhood. Her brother, a year younger, had already reached puberty, and he would be a large man, much like his father. Lucella had determined that Fabron would have to be sold before he became large enough to be a threat. He thought that game his sister played with the gladiator most dangerous, but that was her way. While his only interest was money, hers was power. He knew she hated men, particularly her husband, but she loved power more than she hated the male species. So she played all the men who crossed paths with her.
The ground shook, and Lucella reached out and grabbed the side of the couch he was on. He stared hard at Vesuvius, as if by sight alone, he could see the inside of the mountain. He waited. A minute. All was still.
“Ah.” Lucella put his head back on the pillow. “Faster,” he ordered.
Falco entered the arena to the accompaniment of a blare of trumpets. He saw the criminals who had just passed but now there were six, not four. And the two additions, even though they were armed as the others and as poorly dressed, Falco could immediately tell by their stance and demeanor that they were trained gladiators.
He turned toward the imperial box, raising his sword in the obligatory salute. “We who are about to die, salute you!” his voice echoed across the stones and the murmur of the crowd. The six did not give the salute, as they were not entitled, although he imagined the two impostors had been forced to resist their urge to raise their swords.
He saw the emperor, and below, Epione and Domidicus. He saw the surprise on her face, the satisfaction on her husband’s. He was about to turn back to the ring when he felt as if he had been hit by a bolt of lightning, searing through his very being. At the very back of the imperial box was Cassius, huddled next to a strange woman. It was her eyes that had transfixed him, straight to his soul. He had not experienced such a thing since seeing Drusilla the first time, but this was different; this wasn’t man and woman but a kindred soul, one that saw into the darkness.
He had no more time to ponder this as the trumpet signaling the beginning of battle sounded.
Kaia had felt a sense of confidence in the old man the emperor had sent to talk to her. He had listened carefully to her story of the Shadow and the threat it posed. He had questioned her only once, when she told him that she had promised the emperor there would be a sign of the Shadow’s power this very day.
“In what form?” he had asked.
“Out of the Earth.”
He had simply nodded and asked her to continue, but when the trumpets blew, signaling another bout of butchery, she had fallen silent, her heart missing a beat. A man had walked into the sunlight and raised his sword to the emperor.
She knew it immediately. This was the man she had seen in dreams and the man the oracle had told her to look for. The killer. With the heart of darkness.
And she saw what he had seen: the same mountain she had seen in a vision. Now she knew what was to come, what form the sign was to take.
With great difficulty, Falco forced his attention back to the arena. The six men were spreading out. The two gladiators, neither of whom Falco had ever seen before, fanned to each wing, leaving the four criminals in the middle. One of the gladiators was tall, with a shaved head. The other was short and powerful, with muscle layered on muscle. While they were the real threat, Falco knew he could not ignore the four armed criminals, because while he was engaged with one of the gladiators, one of them could slip the blade into his back as easily as the best trained man. Falco always let opponents come to him. He had found the reactions were harder to anticipate than actions.
The Delphic priestess was the most intriguing woman Cassius had ever met. He found that reaction strange, considering he’d been talking to her for only ten minutes. But there was something about her, an aura, which had drawn him, as had her story of a Shadow and a gate to another place. Her abrupt shift of attention from him to the arena had been shocking as a splash of cold water in the face. He turned and followed her gaze and was surprised to see Falco facing six criminals. This was not on the program for the day’s events.
Cassius’s eyes narrowed. The two criminals on the flanks were anything but. He could tell by the way they held their weapons, the movement of their feet, that they were trained killers.
“Something is wrong,” Cassius told Kaia.
She turned to him. “What do you mean?”
“He is being set up. The two men on the end are not what they appear to be.”
Her gaze shifted back to the arena. “No, they aren’t,” she said after a second. She closed her eyes. “He is to die. It is what the emperor wants, but most particularly what that man there” — she pointed at Senator Domidicus — “wants.”
“How do you know that?”
“It is my gift.”
The two gladiators were moving forward, a pair of pincers, circling to drive him forward against the four, who held fast, uncertain what they should do. Falco decided it was time to change tactics. Shield held tight against his off side, he charged the four silently, knowing silence was more disconcerting than screaming. They brought their swords up awkwardly, then, as he had hoped, they scattered.
Falco ran one down, spitting him on the point of his sword and pulling it out in one quick jab; then he went after a second criminal who was running for the wall. The man threw his sword down and jumped, his hands scrambling for a hold, but the entire rim of the wall surrounding the arena was topped with two-foot-wide rollers to prevent this very thing. His hands spun off the roller, and he slid back into the arena. Falco cut through the man’s hamstring, sending him screaming to the sand. Falco turned, breathing hard, feeling the sweat run under his armor.
The two gladiators had accepted that their original plan wasn’t going to work. They were shoulder to shoulder now, edging in. The remaining two criminals were hanging back.
“You did not give the salute,” Falco said to the gladiators as they approached.
“We don’t plan on dying,” the tall one said.
They were opposite-handed, another advantage they held, the tall one holding the sword in his left, the short one in this right. Falco blinked. For a second, their images had wavered. Then it happened again.
You’ve been drugged.
It wasn’t as if the words were spoken but the thought sent to him. And he knew from who. The woman in the back of the imperial box with Cassius.
Falco blinked once more, trying to clear his vision, but he knew she was right. The glass of water the slave had given him just before Marcus had ordered him to the ring. He could see the smiles on the faces of the two gladiators as they saw him take an uncertain step backward. They knew, too. He had heard of all types of different drugs; ones that slowed a fighter’s reactions, ones that dulled pain, but this one seemed to be specific to his eyes, causing his vision to waver and dance.
The two were coming closer now.
Close your eyes. I will see for you.
Falco yelled and swung his sword back and forth like a madman. The two gladiators retreated slightly, letting him waste energy on ghosts. Time was on their side as his vision grew worse.