CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I find Alaric in the square with the bone statue, and even if he isn’t wearing his own face, he’s easy to spot because of the casual insouciance with which he lounges by the statue of the bull. Another man is walking away from him, looking troubled.
Alaric looks over at me, his features those of a square featured slaughterman today. He looks surprised as he glances my way, then hurries over, taking me by the elbow.
“Lyra, what are you doing out here?” he demands. He glances around. “Anyone could see it’s you.”
Too late, I realize I haven’t put my mask back into place. I pull it up now, hoping no one around us has recognized me in the time since I started speaking to Cassandra.
“I came to tell you that Selene’s people have been meeting with groups supporting her around the Republic,” I say.
Alaric nods. “That’s what Helvin came to tell me. Groups supporting her have formed in all the major towns of what used to be the empire. Several of them have infiltrated councils, or gained influence with governors. And the towns have been sending representatives to speak with her.”
“Not just towns,” I say. “On the way here, I saw Lady Cassandra.”
“The Arborian ambassador?”
I nod. “Her queen sent her to make contact with Selene and prepare for the possibility that she might become empress.”
Alaric doesn’t look happy. “Everyone’s treating it as if it’s inevitable she’ll rule Aetheria. They’re trying to curry favor with her now, so she won’t see them as enemies later.”
It's almost exactly what Marcus seems to be doing, too. From the Senate to the furthest reaches of the Republic, Aetheria is slowly falling into line for Selene.
“We need to get back to the safehouse,” Alaric says. “It still isn’t safe for you to be out here, Lyra.”
“I have better control than I did a few days ago,” I say. “That only happened because I was so upset.”
“It’s not just a question of what you might do,” Alaric says. “It’s about what might happen if you’re seen. You think Selene won’t have people out watching for you?”
I’m sure she will; I’m just not prepared to hide away forever when I could be helping the resistance.
“I can do more out here,” I say. “We’re in a battle for control of Aetheria. I can’t just stand by while you take all the risks.”
“Only it’s not just Aetheria now,” Alaric says, sidestepping the argument. “We need to find a way to disrupt the support she’s gaining outside of the city.”
That will be easier said than done. What are we meant to do? Assassinate those in the provinces who are building support for Selene? I quickly decide not to express that sentiment to Alaric. There’s too much of a chance he might decide to go forward with the idea.
We hurry through the streets, heading for one of the tunnel entrances. Alaric lets his face shift back to his own as we head below ground, making our way through the twisting branches of the catacombs. We slip past the traps the resistance has set back into the spaces below the inn.
Thalia’s waiting for us.
“We need to send out messages to any supporters we have in the provinces,” Alaric says, almost as soon as he sees her.
“Tell them they need to work to disrupt Selene’s activities beyond the city.
They need to work to get her supporters dismissed from positions of authority, intercept any messages going to them, damage their business interests… ”
“I’ll do all of that,” Thalia says, in the tones of someone used to having to hurry to keep up with Alaric’s ideas. “But right now, you two have a visitor.”
That one word catches me off guard. A visitor? Here? It makes no sense when this is meant to be a hidden place, known only to the members of the resistance.
“Who?” Alaric says.
“Go upstairs and find out,” Thalia replies. “I left him in the room at the end of the hall.”
She’s being mysterious about it.
“Who is it, Thalia?” I ask her.
She shakes her head with a small smile. “I’d rather imagine your surprise when you find out. Go on. Go up there.”
She seems determined not to tell us more, so I shoot Alaric a questioning look.
“We might as well head up there,” Alaric says. “Thalia can be quite stubborn when she wants to be.”
“I can be stubborn?” Thalia says with a laugh, but she doesn’t tell us anymore.
I glance at Alaric again, he shrugs, and we head up through the inn.
There are a few resistance fighters in the taproom, eating and drinking in between forays out into the city.
Alaric and I head past them, going upstairs and making our way to the room at the far end of the hall.
I open the door cautiously, and there's a figure sitting inside behind a low table, waiting patiently, square-featured and auburn-haired, wrapped in a cloak. I stare in shock.
It's Rowan.
“What are you doing here, First Senator?” Alaric asks, sounding almost as surprised as I feel.
“You’re the one who told me where to find this place, Alaric,” Rowan replies, and that’s almost as surprising as his presence.
Alaric and Rowan might have fought beside one another, both in the colosseum and in the revolution that brought about the Republic, but they’ve never been close.
And now they’re on opposite sides. Alaric works outside the laws of the Republic, while Rowan is almost the embodiment of them.
“Wait,” I say. “You two have been talking?”
Alaric ushers me inside, closing the door behind us. It’s clear he doesn’t want the other members of the resistance knowing Rowan’s here.
“We both want to keep Aetheria safe,” Rowan says, “even if we differ in how we go about it.”
“You can’t stop a would be tyrant by talking in the senate,” Alaric says, but with a smile, as if they’ve had this argument plenty of times before.
“And you can’t make a peaceful, prosperous city by burning down everything within it,” Rowan counters. He looks over at me. “It’s good to see you’re safe, Lyra. Although ‘safe’ might not be the right word when every guard in the city wants to arrest you.”
“Can’t you do something to stop that?” Alaric asks.
Rowan spreads his hands. "What do you think I can do? Just order them all to ignore a decision of the Senate? I might be the First Senator, but there are limits to what I can do."
“Or what you will do,” Alaric replies.
Rowan shakes his head. “It’s not just that I won’t make myself into another emperor, Alaric, although that should mean enough to you. This isn’t a city that needs another tyrant.”
Alaric still seems determined to argue. “If it’s a choice between you and Selene, I’d rather have you, commoner.”
It’s a surprising thing to say. Alaric has no love for Rowan’s steady sense of order, and he’s always been quick to mock the fact Rowan is common born. He must be getting desperate.
“And what happens when someone deposes me? Or when I live out my life and pass on the throne to someone who turns out to be worse?” Rowan asks. “No more emperors, Alaric. Besides, as I said, I’m not sure I could do it now, even if I wanted to.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I mean Selene has all the power in the senate,” Rowan says. “She has all the votes she needs to get any decision she wants through. And she has enough guards in her pocket that I’m not sure I’d win the fight that followed if I tried to overrule it.”
I feel a creeping sense of dread running through me as I realize the implications of that. It means Selene rules Aetheria now in all but name. We’re fighting against the whole city, not just Selene.
Rowan sighs again. "I can understand why you left the Senate, Lyra, although a part of me still wishes you were there for others to rally around. Maybe together we could have made a difference."
“We couldn’t,” I say. “The moment Marcus voted against me on the proposal for the grand tournament, I knew I wasn’t going to achieve anything by talking there.”
“So instead, you set your animals on the guards to protect the resistance, and you stalk the city, looking for trouble to get into,” Rowan says. “It could be dangerous for you if you’re caught.”
Alaric smiles. “You’ll find a way to protect her, Rowan. The way you have with the others.”
I frown slightly. “What do you mean? What have you been doing, Rowan?”
Rowan hesitates. "I've been doing what I can for the resistance.
I've tried to make sure members aren't targeted by the guards, and that any who are caught are quietly released again, or at least given the most lenient punishments possible.
But there's only so much I can do, especially now.
Even in the Senate, I need to work cautiously, opposing Selene subtly rather than railing against her openly.
She has too many supporters in the Senate, and I don't want to give them an excuse to remove me. "
“And Marcus?” I ask.
“Supports everything her followers propose,” Rowan says. “Half the time, he’s the one proposing it.”
That sends a stab of pain through my heart. I’d hoped Marcus might be better than that, but there’s no sign of him doing anything to resist Selene.
“I wonder sometimes if we shouldn’t just remove her,” Rowan says.
“Kill her?” Alaric replies. “Trust me, if I could find her, I would.”
He says it as if it’s something easy, when it isn’t, either morally or practically.
“We wouldn’t even have to kill her, just imprison her,” Rowan says.
“The senate would order her removed from any prison tower,” Alaric says. “And we’ve already seen Ironhold can’t contain her powers.”
“There’s a place that can,” Rowan replies. “A place where Emperor Tiberius used to put those enemies who he wanted to torment, or who it was more convenient to keep alive.”
“What place?” I say with a frown.
Rowan gestures downwards. “The resistance aren’t the only ones to make use of the catacombs. There’s a prison down there, deep below the palace, carefully hidden from the rest of the world. It’s where I ordered Domitian put, after his uprising.”
I’d assumed he would be in the normal prison tower, but he wasn’t there when I went there to see Selene, and he wasn’t at Ironhold either. It hadn’t occurred to me there might be a secret prison somewhere beneath the city.
“Why didn’t I know about this?” I demand.
Rowan shrugs. “The fewer people know, the more secure it is. Already, I’m hearing reports of Selene’s people sniffing around it. But none of this is the reason I came to you both today.”
Alaric cocks his head to one side.
“Then what is?”
"There's going to be another set of exhibition bouts at the colosseum as part of the build-up to the grand tournament," Rowan says.
I frown, because that doesn’t seem like enough of a reason for the First Senator of Aetheria to come to a resistance safehouse.
“Isn’t that normal?” I ask.
Rowan shakes his head. “No, because their planning to execute criminals on the sands as part of it.”
The shock of that hits me. The Senate has long talked about the inclusion of such executions in the games as a way of giving people the blood they seem to crave without risking the lives of true gladiators.
Now Selene has control of the Senate, it's going ahead.
People are going to be sent into the arena just to die, without a hope of winning.
I know instinctively that I need to be there. I need to understand this latest spectacle in the games. I can’t just stand by and ignore it. I need to see it for myself, and hope that I can find a way to stop it.