CHAPTER SEVEN
Because Marcus is busy trying to play politics, I’m left waiting in the colosseum.
I can hear the roar of the crowd outside and the sound of blasts of magic echoing through the stadium.
Just those sounds are enough to make adrenaline pump through my veins, my body ready to fight even as my mind knows I won’t need to do so again today.
I might be stuck in the receiving rooms, but at least I can see some of what's happening, thanks to my magic.
Currently, a couple of fighters are leaping between platforms in the colosseum, exchanging magical attacks as they go.
One is dressed like a sailor and throws blasts of wind that threaten to tumble his foe from the platforms. The other wears the robes of a scholar and weaves a web of magical symbols around himself.
The need for careful balancing is clear when I look down and see the spikes that have been set up below. This is a contest of one specialized form of magic against a broader and more learned approach. It’s another contest I’m sure Selene helped set up to make a point about the city around her.
I keep part of my attention on the fight, but send more fragments of my consciousness into other animals around the arena. I might be stuck in the receiving rooms for now, but I can still try to find out more of what’s going on within the corridors and back rooms of the colosseum.
I look through the eyes of a rat, seeing Senator Olivia in one of the chambers leading off from the receiving rooms. She's with a small group of nobles, and for once, I don't have to pull back sharply to avoid seeing the worst excesses of her hedonistic partying.
Her golden hair is bound up with a jeweled headband, and she wears more jewels on her wrists and ankles, so that she seems to shine with them.
“This is your moment to get on board with Selene,” Olivia says. “It’s inevitable that she’ll win. When she does, it’s vital that we’re her friends.”
Can I let that stand? I can see the fight continuing outside, the two combatants closing on one another. The scholar has a slender blade, the sailor something curved and deadly. The two exchange blows, pass one another, and keep going.
I go to the door of the room Oliva’s in, waiting for her to come out. She starts as she does so, looking at me with surprise, then hostility.
“What are you doing here?” she demands. “Has your master decided to leave you for anyone who wants you?”
“Marcus isn’t my owner,” I say. “I’m not a slave, Senator.”
“In all but name,” Olivia says, with a certain note of satisfaction. “Selene tells me you’re a test case. She’ll have a few more traitors given into the ‘custody’ of nobles she wants to reward, and from there, it’s only a short jump to reopening the slave markets.”
She sounds satisfied by that in a way I can’t comprehend. Does she really just see herself sitting at the peak of the social hierarchy, with everyone else forced to come crawling to her?
“And what will you do when she puts you into those markets?” I ask.
Olivia looks offended now. “You know I could have you punished just for speaking to me this way.”
“Selene has already offered you to Marcus to replace me if she kills me,” I say. “With all the times you’ve tried to kill me or Marcus, going against her wishes, do you think she’s happy with you?”
“I’m still one of her strongest allies,” Olivia says.
I shake my head. “One of her most obedient allies, perhaps, but strongest? Selene is crafting an empire where those with the most magic rule over those without it. How strong is your magic, Olivia?”
We both know that she doesn't have much. Her position in the senate stems from her noble lineage and her wealth, not from any particular magical talent. In other words, she's exactly the kind of person who Selene wants to push out of power in her new version of Aetheria.
Olivia looks a little troubled by that, but she quickly hardens her expression.
“Selene is going to win here. She’ll remember those who supported her.”
“Will she?” I say. “Weren’t she and Domitian allies, for a time?”
Domitian is the former senator and military leader who sought to usurp the power of the Republic. He was in contact with Selene the whole time, right up to the moment when his coup failed. The Republic imprisoned him in the same dark space below the city’s streets where I was held.
Selene was the one who had him executed in the colosseum.
“I’m not like Domitian,” Olivia says. “I’m not a threat to her power.”
“And you aren’t of use to her for much longer,” I point out. “Selene tends to get rid of those who aren’t useful to her. And you keep talking as if it’s inevitable that she’ll win. There’s still a chance I beat her.”
“And if you do, I have no doubt that you’ll be quick to take revenge on me,” Olivia says.
I shake my head. “I don’t care about revenge, or killing my enemies.”
“And that’s why you can’t win,” Olivia shoots back. “I should have you punished for this. I should-”
A servant comes forward, a young man in the simple white tunic of those who attend the receiving rooms.
“Forgive me, Senator,” he says. “Lyra’s presence has been requested by Senator Marcus.”
Olivia looks annoyed, but she nods. “Very well. Take her.”
The servant leads me away from the receiving rooms, which is a surprise when I know Marcus is still in discussions with Quintus in one of the side rooms. What’s going on becomes a little clearer when the form of the servant shifts between one step and the next, so that now I’m walking alongside a middle aged bookmaker.
“Alaric?” I guess.
"Of course," he says. "Did you think I was going to leave you there until that viper took it into her head to whip you? What were you doing there? Did you really think you were going to change Olivia's mind?"
"I had to try," I say. If I can just persuade some of Selene's allies that she isn't truly their friend, maybe the former arch-magistrate won't have such total control over the senate anymore. Maybe it will be possible to stop her political ambitions in their tracks.
“But in trying, you exposed yourself to danger,” Alaric says. “And there are better ways to build influence.”
He takes me down to the large chamber on the ground floor of the colosseum, where bookmakers vie for the custom of the public and hawkers sell everything from food to items they claim once belonged to famous gladiators.
I hear a cheer from beyond the chamber, accompanied by a groan of disappointment from many of those within.
I realize that the match I was watching must have concluded.
I look through the eyes of the birds outside once again, and I see the most surprising sight of all: the bodies of both the scholar and the sailor are impaled upon the spikes below the platforms. Both must have fallen while they struggled with one another, tumbling to their deaths even as they sought to achieve victory.
Healers are running onto the sands, trying to pull them from the spikes, but I can already see it’s too late to help either gladiator. They both have the stillness of death, and both stare sightlessly at the sky above.
Was this the outcome Selene wanted for the bout?
I assume she wanted the scholar to win to show the superiority of magical learning, but maybe if the sailor won, she would have claimed the importance of practical magical power in a single discipline over theoretical knowledge.
With a closely matched bout like this, it’s possible Selene was ready to claim that either winner demonstrated her point.
She’s clever enough to have prepared to take advantage of any outcome.
But there's a risk that I give her too much credit with that kind of thinking.
Selene is highly intelligent, and she plans ahead well, but she isn't omniscient.
She doesn't have the former emperor Tiberius' command of time magic to see the future.
There's no way she saw this double death coming, and I'm sure it took her by surprise.
Around me, betters are snapping the wooden betting tokens they’ve been given, or arguing with the bookmakers about why their favored fighter died last, and so their wagers should still be paid out.
“You need to convince the ordinary people,” Alaric says, “not the nobles. Speak to them.”
I look around, trying to think of something I can say, but I don’t need to think for long.
“You’re disappointed,” I say, raising my voice.
People turn to look at me and a low murmur goes through the crowd there at the presence of a gladiator.
“You all thought you knew which fighter would win here in the arena, the way Selene Ravenscroft is certain that she knows how the city will change in the next few weeks.
" I pause for a moment. “But no one knows for sure how things will turn out.”
I gesture back towards the floor of the colosseum.
“Selene probably wanted that to be a lesson for you all, about the superiority of magic, about why you all deserve to be less than she is.
And there is a lesson there, but not the one she wants to give you.
It's a reminder that the colosseum is a place of death, pain, and blood.
It's a reminder that it's those things Selene is offering you. She’ll set you against one another to try to gain power for herself.”
“What can we do to stop her?” one man calls out. “She’s an Archon!”
“Yes, she’s powerful,” I say. “But that doesn’t mean it’s inevitable she should rule.
How many people are there in this room? I’m one of the strongest gladiators in the games, but if you all attacked me at once, I wouldn’t stand a chance.
The power of one person, even an Archon, doesn’t count for much against the will of all the citizens of Aetheria. ”
I can see a couple of guards on the edges of the chamber starting to move closer, but I’m protected by the press of the crowd around me.
I don’t know if I’ve convinced them, but I do know they want to be close to the beast whisperer who was a champion of the arena.
People reach out for me as if merely touching me will bring them luck.
“I saw your fight against Vex,” one of them calls out.
“Everyone saw that,” another man says. “I was there for her very first bout, where she summoned a shadow cat. I bet on her.”
“You did not,” a woman says. “No one did.”
They crowd around me, a sea of humanity wanting to bask in my fame. I don’t know if I’ve been able to persuade any of them the way Alaric wants, but at least they seem less hostile than they were when everyone believed I was a traitor who’d tried to free Domitian.
"Will you sign my betting chit?" a man asks, and instantly, there are a dozen others wanting the same. There are too many people pressing in too close. Suddenly, I'm drowning in that sea of people, overwhelmed by the sheer numbers.
I see Marcus approaching a few moments later, his senatorial toga making him stand out from the crowd.
“Enough,” he calls out. “Enough!”
He sends out jolts of lightning to force people back, then plucks me from the crowd.
“I’m sure Lyra is grateful that so many of you care so much about her, but for now, I must take her home. She has another fight coming, and I’m sure you all want her to be prepared.”
His authority is enough to let him drag me from the crowd, leading me from the colosseum. Even so, as we leave, I hear a low chant sounding behind me.
“Lyra, Lyra, Lyra!”
It’s just that, just my name repeated over and over again. I look to Marcus, expecting him to be pleased with me for having built up so much support, but instead, he looks angry and worried.
“What were you thinking, Lyra? Putting yourself in danger like that? What were you thinking?”