CHAPTER TWO
I slip from Marcus’ bed early the next morning, leaving him sleeping as I dress and head from his villa.
I could wake Marcus and insist that he comes with me to Ironhold, but I’m sure he has a busy day ahead trying to deal with the other business of the city.
Besides, he doesn’t seem to see what’s happening as a problem.
He might try to talk me out of going to Ironhold, and I don’t want that.
I head out through the city, moving quickly in the sunlight.
I go through the merchant district and the entertainment district, trying to ignore the constant presence of the colosseum at the very heart of the city, the huge, circular structure dominating all around it.
I make my way to one of the gates in the city walls and step through into the layers of the city that lie beyond.
Once, there were no slums around Aetheria, but as the city and the empire grew, whole districts sprang up for those who couldn’t afford a place within its walls.
Despite the rebuilding efforts of Rowan and the senate, the resulting slums remain a place of ramshackle buildings, the stink of too many people pressed too close together, and the promise of violence.
I see gang members patrolling the streets out here in place of guards or maybe in collaboration with them.
There are tenement buildings and spaces from which the strange scents of drugs drift out into the air.
People watch me as I walk, because they know me by now.
I could have wrapped a cloak around myself to travel incognito, but at least my status as a senator means no one bothers me.
Or maybe it’s the knowledge that I’m both a former gladiator and a beast whisperer. Even the bravest of the gangs don’t want to deal with a wave of animals rushing in to rip them limb from limb, or with the trained skills of a champion of the arena.
I walk from the city, and I’m sure not all my fellow senators would bother walking. They’d ride in fine palanquins, or take chariots. I prefer the connection to the city that I feel on foot, even if it means my journey to Ironhold will take longer.
The great granite fortress is a little way from the city, close enough that gladiators have always been able to march down from it in a great procession on the mornings of the games.
Those processions continue even in the reformed games, and I must admit they're one part I'm happy to see.
They're a piece of pageantry and entertainment that catches the mood of the crowd, bringing joy to the people of Aetheria without the need for anyone to be hurt.
Idly, I wonder if one day, just the processions will be enough, and there will be no need for people to fight in the Colosseum at their end.
It seems like a vain hope. The people of Aetheria seem so accustomed to the violence of the arena that it appears impossible for them to set it aside. No amount of beauty or pageantry will change that.
For now, I march the other way, up to Ironhold, where the great gates stand open.
There are a couple of guards on duty there, but they step back to let me pass as soon as they see who I am.
Much has changed since this was as much a prison as a training ground, designed to keep gladiators within until they could risk their lives for the amusement of the crowds.
The sound of clashing weapons or blades hitting practice posts hasn't changed.
Only now, it's accompanied by drill instructors barking orders at would-be soldiers of Aetheria, trying to train the latest batch of recruits.
Domitian's treachery led to many dead on both sides of the conflict, and the Republic needs a strong army if it is to hold off threats both without and within.
My attention isn't on the soldiers, though, but instead on the gladiators working in the sun.
Cesca is there, dark-haired and a little shorter than me, dressed in the barest scraps of armor and twirling her sword as she engages in a practice bout with a young gladiator.
A couple of nobles look on the way they might watch a prize racehorse in the paddock.
Officially, the system of patronage in the games has ended.
Nobles can't buy an official connection to one gladiator, with special access to them and reflected glory every time they win.
Unofficially, they still compete to be seen with the best gladiators, or the most charismatic.
They still give gifts or symbols of their favor.
And they still like to seek pleasure with the strongest and best-looking of the fighters.
Perhaps because she has an audience, Cesca is toying with her opponent, sending sparks of lightning along her blade every time she makes contact with her foe’s flesh, making him cry out with each jolt.
He tries to fight back using illusions to distract Cesca, but she ignores it, and eventually brings him down with a greater jolt of power that leaves him twitching on the ground.
She saunters over to the noble couple so that they can congratulate her, and she bends to receive a kiss from the man. The woman doesn’t seem jealous, but envious.
“You could have done that at any time,” I say, heading over to her.
“Well, perhaps I know how to entertain my audience,” Cesca counters, turning to me. “Hello, Lyra. I’m surprised you even remember where Ironhold is.”
She’s always reminding me that I’m not a gladiator anymore.
She conveniently ignores the part where, in one of my last bouts, I left her helpless on the arena floor after she tried to betray me.
But I can’t deny that she’s here at the heart of Ironhold, in a position to learn more about what’s going on here than I ever could.
“I’m here because I was told gladiators are going missing from Ironhold,” I say.
Cesca shrugs. “Some people can’t handle the training. They don’t want to be gladiators. They’re more interested in going off and doing other things.”
She says that in a pointed tone as if my becoming a senator or fighting to stop Domitian from taking over the city is some kind of step down from my former status as a gladiator.
“But then, people would see them go,” I say.
“Maybe we did,” Cesca replies.
“So, presumably, you have some idea where they’ve gone?” I say.
She shrugs again. “Maybe. But I don’t have time to talk to you.” She lets the nobles take her hands. “As you can see, I have another engagement. Unless you’d like to join us?”
Cesca says that with a mocking smile, then turns from me, heading back into Ironhold. I should have known better than to expect I might get anything from her.
I try one of the trainers next, heading to a big man calling out instructions to a group of gladiators.
“Bigger movements! Do you think the people at the back of the crowd will see any of your subtle swordplay? Slashes, not thrusts. If the crowd is to get any blood, let’s use the one part of the blade that has an edge!”
It’s strange, the way the safety measures introduced to the games have changed things.
The gladiators use mostly blunted weapons now, the tips completely dulled, the edges only partially sharp.
It's a compromise designed to give the crowd some blood while keeping the gladiators safer.
There are wounds, but nothing the healers in the Colosseum can't handle.
Those changes have led to the gladiators making bigger, more obvious slashing attacks, things that will catch the attention of the crowd. It’s as much a performance as any theater troupe. I wait until I catch the attention of the trainer.
“All right, you lot!” he bellows. “Take a break, and we’ll see if you can do it properly next time.”
The gladiators move off to the side of the training area, getting water, some of them talking to fans who’ve come up to Ironhold to see them. There’s far more access to the gladiators here than there used to be. The trainer comes over to me.
“Senator. Come to see if the training’s up to the standards of when you used to be here? You won’t remember me, but I was a trainer here when you were winning the Champions’ Trials.”
I don’t remember him, and I find myself hoping that the training is nothing like it was when I was here. We were treated brutally, because, as slave gladiators, we had no choice. We could either do as we were commanded or find ourselves impaled on the spikes atop the walls.
“I’m here because I hear that people have been disappearing suddenly from Ironhold, with no explanation,” I say.
The trainer shrugs. “True. A gladiator named Lalin was here yesterday morning, then gone in the afternoon. He didn’t say where he was going, didn’t say goodbye to anyone.”
“I heard that much,” I say. “Do you have any idea what’s happening?”
The trainer gives me a blank look. “My guess is that he couldn’t handle the training here.”
“And didn’t tell anyone?” I say, not quite believing it.
“If he’s that embarrassed, of course he’d leave like that. It might not be like the old days, where the failures would be sold at market, but it’s still a shameful thing.”
He makes it sound as though he might prefer it if he could still get rid of the failures that way. I realize I’m not going to get anything more from him.
This isn’t going as well as I’d hoped. No one here seems to know anything, or they simply assume that the fighters who’ve left so suddenly did so because they couldn’t cope with being a gladiator. It doesn’t quite fit, though. People might leave, certainly, but why just disappear?
I consider asking more of the trainers, but then I spot someone who might be able to give me better answers, working out at one of the practice posts.
The dark-haired young man is stripped to the waist. He's lithe and slender, moving in ways that are hard to keep track of, using his telekinetic gifts to let him flip and twist in impossible ways as he wields an iron staff that seems too heavy for him.
“Sorrel!” I call out, and he stops, mid-swing, bringing the heavy metal of his staff to a halt without any consideration for the momentum of the blow.
He looks around at me, then comes over. The last I saw of him, he was being released from the city’s prison, wrongly imprisoned by Domitian for giving away part of his plans. Sorrel looks at me with a note of suspicion, as if afraid that I might be about to get him into trouble again.
“Lyra,” he says. He hesitates. “You’re here because of the disappearances, aren’t you?”
I nod. “I’m trying to work out what’s going on. If fighters are simply going missing, it’s a problem, Sorrel. Have you heard anything about it?”
Sorrel looks reluctant to say anything. “I don’t want to get involved.”
“Please, Sorrel,” I say.
“Last time, I got caught up in an attempted revolution. I was imprisoned. I was beaten,” Sorrel says.
I put a hand on his arm. “I know, and I’m sorry,” I say. “But that also means you know what it’s like for someone to simply be snatched away. Doesn’t it bother you that people are disappearing?”
“Of course it does,” Sorrel says. “But… all right. I can tell you something, at least. You know before, I told you that death matches were starting again in the city?”
I nod. “I assumed that stopped when Domitian and his cronies fell.”
Sorrel shakes his head. “It got rid of some of the people at the top, but the demand was still there. The rumors are still around, of fights with higher stakes and better rewards. I assume people have gone to those.”
"And then leaving without a trace?" I ask.
“I don’t know,” Sorrel says. “Maybe they didn’t want anyone to know about the fights.”
Or maybe something happened to them. Maybe they lost, and died. I don’t know, but I feel as though there’s more to these fights than Sorrel is suggesting. I need to find them.