Forced to kill him.
The sun was rising. There was no escape.
* * * *
The morning dawned clear and bright. The sun beat down upon the massive sprawl of the Grand Palestra, searing across the awnings of the houses, turning the brass and copper flashings on their gates hot—a scorching brand for any foolish enough to touch it. The gates glowed in the morning light.
Lucan rolled off his cot an hour early for training.
In two days, he would enter the Grand Melee.
Already, he could hear the sounds of the city—the raucous calls from the markets, the slod and plod of pack animals, the shouts of the praetorian guards at the gates, the crush and push of so many people, men shouting and women calling out, children playing in the streets, the occasional babe wailing from the heat, the lowing of camels, the chuffing of horses. And the smells—too many to count. The spiciness of the sweetmeats, the curry of hotter dishes, the nutty savoriness of baking bread, the wafting of incense, and the pall of perfume slathered on to cover sweat. The scent of battle on the air, of steel and sand, and the need and want for blood.
But Lucan felt another kind of need. Visceral, wanton. A need only Hektor could fill. And yet Hektor had rebuffed him. Lucan dug at his chest where the Ebon lay rooted deep beneath the skin. He could not blame Hektor, could he? The brand upon Lucan denoted him as another man’s. Lucan would not have been able to bear it if Hektor carried such a brand.
He walked into the rack room, and his heart gave a nasty jolt.
Hektor was there, a grim look upon his face.
Lucan met his mentor’s gaze in defiance. He was not ashamed of admitting his love. He was not ashamed for having it. Was Hektor here to chide him? To tell him he didn’t love him? Lucan could take it. In two days, he might go to his death.
Today he could take having his heart broken.
But Hektor only said, “She summons us.”
Shock gripped Lucan. Of all the things he’d been expecting, that hadn’t been one of them. “She” could only mean one person. The Empress. It made no sense for her to summon them both. Hektor, certainly. He was the primus palus of the theatre. Before Lucan came along, Hektor had probably dined with the Empress on a regular basis, but Lucan? He was young, barely risen from his naming day.
Lucan could not help the words from spilling out. “What does she want with us?”
A thread of worry bound the light in Hektor’s eyes. “I do not know.” He gazed at Lucan a moment longer, and then his expression hardened. “Forget your weapons. The praetorian guard will not allow you to go before the Empress so armed.”
A flare of anger blazed through Lucan. He knew this. Everyone in Arena knew this. Bringing weapons into the presence of the Empress was a crime punishable by death. More than a few people had been cast into the arena, to the delight of the plebes, for trying to murder the Empress.
She was hated as much as she was loved. Perhaps more so.
Hektor tugged him by the arm. Numbly, Lucan followed his mentor out of the rack room and onto the tiers of the Grand Palestra. The morning sun was hot on his face and shoulders, and he felt hideously exposed next to Hektor. With the man’s refusal came an uncertainty. Lucan did not know where he stood with Hektor. And he could not shake the feeling that Hektor was somehow leading him to the slaughter.
The levels spiraled upward, and Lucan took the stairs easily, his legs and body up to the challenge, but his heart growing heavier with each step.
He kept his gaze fixated on Hektor’s back. He wanted to grasp him by the elbow, turn him, ask him what was happening. With only two days till the Grand Melee, Lucan could not imagine what the Empress might want with either of them.
It’s nothing, Lucan. Nothing.
Yet the dark rumors kept creeping into his mind. Secret Spectacles in her chambers high above the Grand Palestra. The Empress ordering men to fight, to fuck before her, for her own sick, voyeuristic enjoyment.
His legs ached with fatigue, but his heart ached even more as they reached the tier high atop the Grand Palestra and above the lower houses. Lucan felt dizzy just looking down over it all—pennons waving, the great stands of the theatre vacant, a few carrion birds banking lazily through the air, bemoaning the day with harsh, croaking cries. Below, merchants labored to put up makeshift stalls. A cart with summer-wine barrels labored up a ramp, the men shouting as they strove to push it up without it toppling over the edge. Guards swarmed everywhere, from each of the houses, and Lucan knew tensions would be strained today and for days to come. The Grand Melee was a time of great commerce and wealth, and Arena grew even more bloated with merchants and foreign gold.
Looking upon Hektor, Lucan was seized by a sudden fear. The Empress wanted something. Something Lucan would be loath to give up. Lucan wanted to run, but where? He wouldn’t get two steps before her praetorian guards were upon him.
Better to face it head-on, bravely. She wanted a Spectacle in the Grand Melee, didn’t she? She couldn’t exactly harm him. He was one of five favored by the odds-makers.
Hektor’s tug was not so friendly this time, and Lucan nearly stumbled to fall in step with him. The entrance to the Sky Court of the Empress loomed over them, all bright white stone and shimmering marble. Glints of halosteel peppered the archivolt, lending it a glittering as of embedded stars. Ahead, he could see marble floors, everything pristine and white and…sterile.
The praetorian guards stationed beneath the archway stood aside, unbarring their pikes.
Lucan and Hektor passed the threshold and entered a massive foyer with vaulted ceilings soaring high above. Warm breezes filled the air, and the flap of all the pennons above made a soft rhythm as they deflected the worst of the sunlight from the Zaerus compound.
Zaerus. Lucan spared a moment to wonder at the Empress’s real name. Which house had she been born into before the Oracles cast her into another? Whichever it had been, she’d cast it asunder to become her title—Her Imperial Majesty of Arena, a cruel but capable dictator despite her apparent youth.
Hektor was already striding though the foyer to the far side where white curtains billowed, catching the sunlight. Beyond, Lucan glimpsed a sitting room partway open to the arena below.
The Empress’s balcony.
He followed, his sandals slipping on the polished floors, his reflection distorted in white marble. Everything seemed pristine and untouched, as though age and years and time simply stopped at the archway. Was that the Empress’s secret?
Why am I thinking about her so much?
The Ebon deep within his chest awoke from a dull throb to a pulsing pain. With every step, it worsened.
“Lucan, come here.” Irritation colored Hektor’s tone, and Lucan hastened to obey. He pushed through the curtains and moved to Hektor’s side in the main room. The pain in his chest flared to agony, and he struggled to focus on what lay before them.
The Empress sat on a dais of deep green jade. Its duskiness was offset by the white of the chamber, making her appear surrounded by darkness, her skin even more pale, her green eyes even lighter—an angel rising from a sea of shadows. Her chestnut-brown hair stirred in the breeze, and her eyes were fixed straight ahead.
Lucan had heard tell of other blind people who had a milky film over their eyes, but the Empress’s were bright and clear. Unblinking, she gave the impression of seeing nothing, yet somehow seeing right through him.
She was startling and beautiful, and Lucan felt a lurch in his chest beneath the scorching fever, a sudden hatred that spread like poisonous wildfire through him. It raged and burgeoned within him, lighting his every nerve ending. He loosed a groan of pain before stifling himself.
She appeared not to notice.
Hektor genuflected before her, pulling Lucan down to his knees. Head down, he heard the approach of a familiar gait, then the
swish
of the curtains being brushed aside.
“She wished to see you.” Stratos’s voice was silky and just as thin. “You may rise.”
Lucan glanced up as he rose, his gaze meeting Stratos’s. The quaestor’s eyes were dark, his face unreadable.
The air in the room seemed to shimmer. The fire of hatred threaded down Lucan’s spine, coiling in him in a sweltering fever that slicked his skin with perspiration.
On one side of the room stood a weapon’s rack, every kind of sword, spear, polearm, and pike imaginable adorning its gleaming expanse. The darkness of the wood matched the darkness of her throne, the darkness on her face. She cocked her head. She knew he was looking at it.
“Do you fancy the weaponry?” she asked, her voice sultry-sweet and dangerous.
The Ebon pulsed at the sound of her voice. Lucan trembled. “Yes, Imperial Majesty.”
“Would you like a closer look?” Now there came a dangerous edge to her, those pale fingers lightly gripping the arms of her throne, like ashen spiders dancing along a black void.
Lucan looked to Hektor, but he was stoic, his face unreadable. A sinister chuckle from Stratos made Lucan even more wary.
Lucan answered in the most diplomatic way he could think of. “If it please you, Imperial Majesty.”
“It does.”
She neither moved nor blinked. Had she not spoken, Lucan might have thought her a great doll, the work of some brilliant but mad marionette maker. Oddly, he feared to take his gaze from her, for he sensed a coil of violence winding tighter within her fragile-seeming form.
The flames raging through his flesh, he stumbled to the rack and let his admiration win out over pain and fear. So many wondrous weapons. The swords, gleaming and well polished, the pikes with their jagged tips, the spears hooked and deadly. Everything gleamed, though he could sense they’d all been used. Beneath the shiny veneer, nicks and notches, scars and great burrs marred them.
And though Lucan never fancied himself a sorcerer, he could sense a dark and deep magick upon them.
The Empress’s gesture missed the rack by several inches. “These are the weapons triumphant. From each winner of the Grand Melee.” She turned her head, her blind eyes somehow finding him. “You deem them glorious, do you not?”
“Yes, Imperial Majesty.”
Lucan longed to touch them, but he dared not. He lifted his hand, then let it fall. If he picked one up, if he so much as touched a weapon, he would put it through her chest. Maybe then this fire would be quenched.
The Ebon pulsed, overtaking his heart. He swallowed hard.
“Take one.” Her tone was light, but her command was not.
He hesitated, and now he did look back. The light of fear shone in Hektor’s eyes. He shook his head, the slightest shake that Lucan nearly missed. He let his hand fall again.
“Take one.”
“Majesty?”
“Take one.” Now she sounded bored. “I desire a spectacle.”
Lucan looked at her, trying to gauge her meaning. A weapons display, perhaps? Harmless enough, and yet there was danger beneath her words. Danger and disaster. He knew he should not take up a weapon.
“You heard your Empress, gladiator.” Stratos’s command was strident in the warm breezes. A servant dressed in white slipped in to refill the goblet at the Empress’s hand. The slosh of the red liquid reminded Lucan of…
All the blood that will come in two days’ time.
Hektor’s inquiry was quiet, though strained. “What manner of spectacle?”
“When two men are brought before me, they have a choice.” The Empress’s expression was mild, immutable. “Fight or fuck.” The words sounded bizarrely innocent and absolutely filthy at the same time.
Sudden rage swept through Lucan, and the pulsing of the Ebon grew pounding, urgent. Fight or fuck? He wished to do neither. He glanced at Hektor, saw the set of his jaw, the hard light in his eyes. Hektor had refused him, and not gently, either.
Lucan would be damned to the flowering Abyss before he let his mentor touch him again. He raised his chin. “I am a gladiator, not a courtesan.”
The Empress’s laugh was silvery, and her long fingers trailed down the front of her gown, lilting across her bodice and lingering over her bosom in a way that was meant to arouse herself rather than any onlooker. “You are a slave.”
It was true. Lucan’s life was worth only what worth he brought to his house, and Stratos was right there. The trap was closing.
Hektor must have realized it too. He shifted uncomfortably. His gaze darted to the exits, but even as he looked for a way out, praetorian guards were filing in quietly, the only sound the slight clinking of their armor, the whisper of their sandals against the floor. For now, they stood off to the sides of the chamber, but the threat was clear.
Stratos took the floor. “Fight or fuck.” The choice sounded disgusting on his lips. “As much as I’d love to see Hektor plow the boy…” He looked to the primus palus, hatred in his eyes. “You will fight.”
Hektor remained calm, though when his gaze went to Lucan, the boy could feel his worry. “If I injure the boy, the odds-makers will be unhappy. The Grand Melee will be spoiled.”
The Empress’s answer was devoid of emotion. “I am certain you trained him not to die.”
Stratos took up that defense. “Certainly you are skilled in battle, primus palus. Surely you can avoid a blow that will wound the lad. Now choose your weapon.”
Lucan watched Hektor hesitate.
He won’t do it. He won’t. He loves me. He would never make a Spectacle of me.
Those thoughts churned wildly in Lucan’s mind.
Somehow Hektor would defy Stratos, defy the Empress. Somehow they would come away from this unscathed and without having to fight.
Hektor will not betray me. He will not fight me for her filthy sport.
And then Hektor was picking a longspear and shield from the dark rack. Grim-faced, he moved to the center of the chamber, and the praetorian guard stepped around them. A loud clatter and clunk shook the room as they set their tower shields to the ground, forming a rectangular “ring” that cut off any escape.
Seated on high, the Empress had a perfect view over the crests of their helmets.
“Come now, boy,” Hektor said, his disdain for Lucan clear. “Unless you fear to face me.”