CHAPTER THREE
“You want to do what?” Domitian Blacksteel demands, his voice booming across the side chamber of the palace where close to a dozen members of the senate are meeting to discuss the games.
I look at him steadily across the great marble table where we’re seated.
“I want to re-examine all the safety measures of the games,” I say. “They’ve slipped, and people are being hurt as a result.”
“Slipped in what way?” a noble senator named Olivia asks, in a bored tone. She’s young and beautiful, dark hair twined with jeweled pins. “You’re being too fastidious, Lyra.”
“People get hurt in every set of games,” I say. “I’m convinced the weapons aren’t as blunt as they were for the first matches.”
“Well, I’m sure the armorers have learned what’s best,” Olivia says, as if that answers everything.
“They’ve certainly learned to take away more plates from the armor,” I shoot back. “It started out protective, but now it’s back to being a bare minimum to keep people from being killed immediately, and to show off as much skin as possible.”
“You say those things as if they’re bad things,” Domitian says. He makes no secret of not sharing my view of the games. He might have trained gladiators, but he sees nothing wrong with spending their lives.
“You don’t think it’s bad that things are becoming more dangerous for the gladiators with every set of bouts?
” I demand. Of course, I know he’d rather have the games back the way they were, with fights to the death and only a few gladiators surviving more than a couple of seasons.
But I’m not sure even he can say that openly in front of other senators in the palace.
The former palace. Aetheria’s senate is housed in what was once the home of the emperor, complete with its vast gardens filled with spectacular creatures. Now, it’s the heart of the Republic, a place where all the main decisions affecting the city and the lands beyond are made.
"I think it's normal that we would start out by being overprotective," Domitian says. "But slowly, we can refine things to find the spot where the people are given the most excitement without compromising the safety of the fighters too much."
“Compromising their safety?” I repeat. “A young man died in the first games.”
“But that hasn’t been repeated since,” Olivia points out in a more level tone. “The games have shown themselves to be safe.”
Is she even watching the same games as me? Did she see the blood on the sand today? “There are wounds in every bout now.”
“Which is why we have healers on hand,” Domitian points out. “At great expense. Do we really need so many of them? Couldn't we have a few non-magical healers rather than relying on those with the magical talent for it?"
I frown at him. “I just saw a young woman’s life saved exactly because of that magical healing being in place.”
“And I’m not saying we shouldn’t have any such healers,” Domitian says. “But I’m sure some of them could be redirected to Aetheria’s armies, or to the private households of the nobles.”
He looks around the table as if asking those there to imagine what their own households would be like with an additional healer or two.
“There have been complaints from some of my girls," Senator Yarrow says.
She's a woman in her forties, heavily made up and wearing cheap jewelry.
She runs many of the illicit businesses down in the slums. She's little more than a gang leader in some respects, but she has power in the city and enough people backing her to make it onto the senate.
"We could do with another couple of magical healers. "
“The gladiators need them,” I snap.
"Maybe we should put this to a vote," Domitian says with the faint smile of a man who knows he's going to win.
Just as he wins so many of the other votes here in this room. It isn't that the committee for the Colosseum's safety is stuffed with his people, although I'm fairly sure that he distributes bribes and uses every form of corruption he can think of to get his way.
It’s more that most of the undecided senators have started to come to his side as they’ve seen the wealth the games have produced.
Not just wealth; they’ve helped to keep the city peaceful, stopping the unrest that came from many of the people in the slums, giving them an outlet for their violent impulses.
Aetheria seems to be thriving, and even senators who were against the games at the start have come around to them.
“Then there’s no point in discussing this further,” I say, standing. I look around the table, knowing that I don’t have the votes on my side to force through greater safety measures. “Just know that the next time someone is killed in the games, it will be on you.”
I turn to leave, but Domitian calls after me.
“Where are you going, Lyra? We still need to discuss the proposals to begin having the worst criminals executed in the arena again.”
He must know those words will get a reaction from me. He’s saying it deliberately, as a way of twisting the knife when he’s on top in the discussion.
“That’s a discussion for another day,” I say. “Or, better yet, for the whole senate.”
Maybe there, I can find the votes to block such a proposal.
For today, the only thing I can do is to delay the proposal by refusing to have the discussion today.
How long I can hold the proposal at bay, I don’t know.
Not when the city still has its share of criminals, and the citizens are all too ready to demand the brutal justice they remember from the empire, if they think it will keep them safe.
Slowly, people are forgetting that they could be on the receiving end of the emperor’s idea of justice with little or no cause.
They’re starting to remember some imagined version of the empire where everything was peaceful and orderly, something that never truly existed.
I leave the side room, heading through the palace for Rowan's rooms there. The guards at the door step back to let me pass, and I walk into his office. He's sitting behind a desk there, piled high with papers, listening while servants read out missives and documents.
Rowan looks like he’s built from the stone his magic gives him control over, he’s so solidly muscled.
His auburn hair falls almost to his broad shoulders, swept back from his face now, as if he doesn’t care about the thin scar running across his cheek.
His deep green eyes skim over the parchments in front of him, as if trying to find something that will help the city.
“…architects down in the docks are saying it will need another hundred workers if the flood defenses are to be built properly,” one servant says.
Another cuts in. “The grain stores are running low. We’ll need to get another shipment in soon if we’re going to have enough reserves to last more than a few days.”
“There’s been another offer of marriage for your eldest sister,” a third adds, in a tone that says he knows it won’t get a favorable reaction.
Rowan looks weighed down by the weight of the requests and the endless array of things he needs to deal with. It's a reminder that, no matter how complicated my life has become in the last few months, his life is more complex still.
Rowan looks up at me as if I might be about to save him from it all, gesturing for the servants to go away. They do so without hesitation, obviously reacting to the authority of the first senator. Rowan sighs with relief as they go, leaving us alone.
“You timed that well. If I have to listen to another marriage proposal for my sisters, I won’t be responsible for what happens.”
I smile back at him. “I suspect being responsible for too many things might be the problem.”
Rowan sighs. “You may have a point. Have you heard anything from Alaric?”
I shake my head, caught by surprise. “Why? Has something happened?”
Rowan stands. "I'm not sure, and not knowing worries me. I've just had messages from his mother asking people to try to find him. And there are whispers that he's involved in things he shouldn't be. In people who don't have the interests of the Republic at heart."
"He hasn't said anything to me," I say in an apologetic tone. "I see less and less of him these days."
“But he’s still in the city?” Rowan asks.
I nod. “I think so. He’s not going to leave while the games are still running.”
Rowan sighs. “I worry that he’s stirring up trouble in the slums.”
“Maybe that has something to do with the conditions in the slums,” I suggest. “There are still plenty of gangs there, and people don’t get enough food.”
“I tried sending in more guards to help,” Rowan says. “But that just seemed to make things worse. The people don’t trust them.”
“Are you really so surprised?” I ask him. “The people have always seen the guards as being there to keep them down. The fact that they do so for the Republic rather than the empire doesn’t make a lot of difference.”
“That’s not how things are,” Rowan says. “We aren’t the empire.”
“But it’s how they see them,” I counter.
“Maybe you’re right,” Rowan replies. He waits for a couple of seconds. “I guess, if you’re not here to talk about Alaric, you’re here to add to my load as first senator?”
I shake my head. "I'm sorry. But I've just come from a meeting of the committee on the Colosseum. You know they're getting laxer and laxer about the safety measures? And now they're talking about putting a proposal forward to allow criminals to be executed in the Colosseum."
Rowan sighs. “Maybe it will come to that.”
I look at him with shock. “You can’t mean that.”
“The Republic has enemies,” Rowan says. “Inside and out. With some of them, there aren’t good options when it comes to what to do with them. Should we let them go? Exile all of them? Imprison them? If so, for how long, and where? There are some foes it’s safer to kill.”
“And if you’re going to kill them anyway, why not do it for the entertainment of the crowd?” I say, guessing the argument Domitian and others close to him must have made.
“That’s an oversimplification,” Rowan says.
“And the truth is it isn’t simple. Nothing here is, Lyra.
You want the games to be safer? I’m not sure I have the votes to do it.
And honestly? The city needs the money from the games.
We need all the things they do for Aetheria, and I can’t get into a political battle with Domitian and all the others right now. ”
I realize I’m not going to get the help I want from Rowan.
That he’s not going to go to Domitian and tell him to make the games safe exhibition matches once more.
Possibly he can’t. After all, this is a republic, not an empire.
Part of the point is that Rowan can’t just order what he wants to happen in the city.
“I understand,” I say, even though I don’t, not really. “Thank you.”
I turn and leave his office, heading back to my own rooms. I have a whole suite of them within the palace, marble-walled and filled with furniture richer than anything I've owned.
It's a world away from the humble shack I grew up in, in the village of Seatide, or the sparse cell I had as a gladiator in Ironhold.
There, waiting for me on a small side table, is a pile of missives that are probably a mixture of letters from merchants and nobles, requests from ordinary people, and notes bout senate matters.
Atop them is a sealed scrap of parchment, with my name on it.
There’s no symbol on the seal, nothing to suggest who it’s from. I open it anyway.
Lyra,
Things are getting bad in the slums. The gangs have too much power. The guards are as likely to beat people as help them. The games aren’t the answer, just a way back to the old empire. You think you’ve contained the unrest, but there’s still plenty of violence. It’s just under the surface.
There’s a meeting in the slums. Come, see for yourself.
A.
It’s from Alaric. I’d know his writing anywhere.
I know he doesn’t see the city the same way I do. He doesn’t think I should have joined the senate, and thinks I betrayed the city by allowing the games to come back. But I also trust his judgement in other ways. If he thinks things are dangerous down in the slums, then I can’t just ignore that.
I need to go there to see what's going on for myself. I need to go to this meeting and find out what all this secrecy is about.