CHAPTER FOUR
“This is all I could do for you,” Rowan says, as the guards adjust the dampener around my wrist in one of the rooms of the palace. “The only thing that could keep you safe.”
“This doesn’t keep any of us safe,” I say. “This is exactly what Selene Ravenscroft wanted.”
Almost everything seems to be going the way she wants. Selene always seems to be one step ahead, her plans designed so that, even when we go with what seems to be the best option, we’re still playing into her hands.
“I know that,” Rowan says, looking uncomfortable. “I thought long and hard before doing any of this, but I didn’t have a choice. Not unless I wanted to see you dead.”
“Thank you,” I say. I glance around at the guards, not knowing how much more I can say in front of them. I don’t know which guards are truly loyal to the Republic and which secretly report to Selene. “I know how much doing this must have cost you.”
“I’m more and more isolated politically,” Rowan replies, “and now I must allow things I hate in order to protect the people I care about.”
There was a time when Rowan and I were together. We helped each other to survive the colosseum and fought for the same things in overthrowing the empire.
“How much has changed in the time since I was imprisoned?” I ask.
“It’s more of the same as before,” Rowan says.
“Selene hasn’t held her grand tournament, yet, but there are still fights to the death involving criminals and those who volunteer.
She’s expanding her control through the city.
People go to her as much as the senate when they want anything done.
She’s receiving more and more delegations from Aetheria’s neighbors. ”
Those were all things that were happening back when Selene tricked me and the resistance into breaking into the prison, but with Selene, it’s always been a matter of degree, the slow build up of power until she’s almost unstoppable.
“What about the resistance?” I ask Rowan.
I know Rowan was in contact with Alaric before I was imprisoned, working to keep members of the resistance out of the city’s dungeons.
Rowan shakes his head and looks at the guards pointedly.
It’s clear he doesn’t trust them either.
“I don’t know anything new. There have been some attacks within the city, but we’re no closer to catching them. ”
That’s information in itself, Rowan’s way of telling me that Alaric and the resistance are still at large in the city, still fighting against Selene. But I can’t go to them, because I’m not free.
Rowan nods to the guards. “Remove her chains.”
“You’re sure, First Senator?”
“Do it,” Rowan instructs, and thankfully, they listen to him. The guards remove my chains, leaving me rubbing my wrists. Rowan inclines his head to me. “It’s time for you to go, Lyra. Marcus will be waiting for you.”
There’s emotion in his voice that suggests he wants to say more, but he doesn’t. Maybe Rowan doesn’t want to risk the guards carrying back anything he might say to Selene. Instead, he gestures to the door.
“Take her to Marcus.”
The guards march me through the palace to its front gates.
I stand for a moment in the gardens beyond, taking a breath of truly fresh air for the first time in what feels like weeks.
The gardens are among the most beautiful places in the city, shaped by magic as much as by the physical efforts of the gardeners.
There are animals here too, kept as part of the emperor’s old menagerie or just wandering around freely.
Peacocks that employ illusion as part of their tail displays strut around the grounds.
Butterflies larger than my head flit between blooms. Cages hold everything from a claw handed ape to gazelles that seem to flicker from spot to spot as they move, illusions disguising their exact location.
Marcus is waiting for me beyond the doors to the palace, waiting beside an elegant palanquin attended by a quartet of bearers. That’s a surprise, when normally, Marcus prefers to walk through the streets openly in his senatorial toga, letting the people see him.
“I’ll take her from here,” Marcus says to the guards, before turning to me. “Get in, Lyra.”
I hesitate at the tone of command, but that only makes one of the guards shove me forward.
“You heard the senator. Do it.”
Marcus holds up a hand, lightning crackling in his palm. “I am more than capable of disciplining her myself, should I wish.”
I can’t tell if the lightning is a threat to the guards, or to me. Marcus’ expression is, as usual, hard to read, his feelings hidden behind the usual mask of a politician. The guards nod.
“Of course, senator.”
“Get in the palanquin, Lyra,” Marcus repeats.
I do it, sitting within a comfortable space, filled with cushions. Marcus moves to join me and, at a signal from him, the bearers lift the palanquin and start to march us down through the city.
He doesn’t speak at first, just stares at me, looking me over. I’m all too aware of how close we are in the confined space of the palanquin. Marcus have been far closer before, have shared a bed many times. We were engaged to be married, were so much to one another.
Now, as he reached out a hand towards me, I tense. Does Marcus simply think he can take what he wants from me now I’m his? His hand brushes one of the marks the beatings from the guards have left on me and I flinch at that sudden burst of pain. Marcus pulls back quickly.
“I’m sorry,” he says, in a soft voice. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
I don’t know what to say to him, don’t know where to stand, when the last time I saw him before today, he was one of those condemning me to imprisonment.
“You must be pleased,” I say. “What with Selene arranging for me to be given to you as a gift.”
Marcus’ eyes are clouded and he glances around at the cloth and wood walls of the palanquin. “I don’t want to discuss Selene here. I want to talk about you, Lyra.”
“What do you want to know?” I ask, looking him in the eye. “Do you want me to tell you what it was like suffering in the prison? About all the ways the guards hurt me? And you voted for my guilt.”
“I didn’t have a choice,” Marcus says. “But I need to know you aren’t going to do anything stupid now. Your new position is all Rowan and I could do to get you out of there. If you make a mistake now, it will be worse for you.”
“And you?” I guess. Marcus has taken responsibility for me, after all. I pointedly don’t look at him. I don’t like being this much in Marcus’ power.
I look out from the palanquin at the city, instead.
Aetheria is still a place of magical beauty and wonder, of noble houses decorated with illusions and streets where even the smallest tasks are aided by minor magical talents.
But there’s a sense of tension in the air.
I spot a patch of graffiti that says Selene Ravenscroft is a traitor, while elsewhere, I spot a young man running from the guards while people get in their way, obviously eager to see him escape.
I expect us to be heading to the spot where Marcus’ villa is located on the edge between the noble and merchant districts. Instead, we’re heading for the heart of the city, to where the colosseum stands, festooned in flags and with horns blaring to announce a day of games.
“Why are we heading to the colosseum?” I ask.
“Because there are games due to take place, and I must be seen at them,” Marcus replies, but I can sense that there’s more to this.
“What’s going on, Marcus?” I ask.
Marcus doesn’t answer directly. “When we get there, remember the part you’re to play now. Don’t speak unless told to. Be deferential. You’re here as my prisoner.”
“And if I don’t do that?” I ask.
Marcus hesitates. He touches my arm lightly, sparks of lightning dancing between us, called by his magic. It’s the lightest of tingling touches, the kind of thing I used to find playful, but there’s a threat within it.
“I would have to be seen to punish you,” Marcus says. “This whole arrangement is founded on the idea that I can control you, Lyra. So please, don’t make me.”
There’s a pleading note in his voice, but I still resent the idea that he gets to control me at all. A part of me wants to fight back, to leap from the palanquin…
But what then? Without my powers, Marcus could stop me with a single jolt of lightning. Even if he didn’t, I would be hunted through the city, probably executed on sight. It isn’t something I can risk.
So I sit in silence as the palanquin takes us to the entrance to the arena.
Marcus helps me down from it, and I can feel the eyes of the gathering crowds upon us.
I wonder what we look like, the senator in his toga accompanied by an unwashed prisoner in rags.
It occurs to me that he could have taken me to a bathhouse or to his villa, could have left me out of this moment.
It’s obvious that I’m here because I’m meant to be seen like this.
We make our way up to the private box reserved for senators and their guests, which looks out over the colosseum.
I can see now the ways in which the seating has been expanded to let in even more people, the building work largely completed in the time I was imprisoned.
The colosseum isn’t full today, but there are still plenty of people here.
I’m more concerned with the person sitting in the senate box on one of the couches there.
Selene Ravenscroft is waiting for us.
I open my mouth to demand to know what she’s doing here, but Marcus speaks before I can say anything, his familiar politician’s smile in place.
“Ah, Selene, I trust I haven’t kept you waiting long?”
Selene smiles. “No doubt you had to catch up with Lyra. I trust she’s everything you remember?”
“A little more battered and bruised,” Marcus says.
“Well, hopefully that has made her more pliable. I take it you like my arranging for the senators to let her go into your custody?”
“You’re most kind,” Marcus says.
Selene gestures for Marcus to sit beside her, leaving me standing to one side, casually ignoring me.
“And since you’re here, we can proceed with the next part of the day’s events. If you’d care to announce it?”
Marcus nods, and then raises his voice, the magic imbued in the senate box carrying his words over the assembled crowd.
“Citizens of Aetheria, thank you for joining us here today for something beyond our usual schedule of games. I can promise you we have a spectacle that will make your presence here worthwhile.”
The crowd is looking at him expectantly.
Marcus’s words make it sound as though this has all been organized at the last minute, but I know how much planning goes into a day of the games.
Just getting the news out that there’s to be an event would take days.
Someone has been preparing for this moment, at least.
“We have only a single bout for you today,” Marcus says.
Someone boos in the crowd, but Marcus ignores it.
“I promise you that bout will be worthwhile. Today, you will witness the death of a traitor to Aetheria. First, let me introduce the gladiator he’ll be facing. On this side of the arena, a gladiator with all the speed and power of a flickering flame. I give you Rexel!”
The crowd roars in approval as a man comes out onto the sands of the arena, dressed in bright red scraps of armor and wielding a pair of short, crescent blades that fit over his fists. They erupt into bursts of flame, so it seems as though he’s holding a ball of fire in either hand.
“And on this side, I give you a traitor to Aetheria. The man who tried to usurp its throne. Domitian!”
Now I know why Domitian was taken into the senate chamber before me. His fate was always going to be different than my own. He hasn’t been released into anyone’s custody, hasn’t been given another chance.
Domitian has been brought here to die.