25. Marcus #2
The bard smiles brightly. “They were told he was a sure thing. That he was properly motivated to do all he could to take your life.”
“As we suspected,” Cato notes, gesturing for the bard to continue. “Anything else worthy of note?”
He places both hands on the table, glancing between them. Marcus shuts his eyes for a moment to stop them from rolling. He knows he has a secret worth hearing .
“This morning, I overheard a ship captain in one of the tabernaes talking about the difficulty of feeding a lion on a ship voyage.”
“What were you doing at a tabernae so early in the morning?” Marcus asks, right as Dru practically yells, “A lion!”
“You think there might be a lion in the maze?” Dru asks.
“Or the final gladiator trial,” Cato supplies.
Now that he hasn’t heard. The bard might be worth keeping around after all.
“I’m merely relaying to you what I overheard.” The bard shrugs. “Either way, I doubt someone brought one as a pet.”
Marcus grunts. “I believe the Phaedrans capable of anything.”
Cato nods. “We’ll find a way to prepare ourselves for that. Anything else?”
“Well, there’s a rumor among the Phaedran soldiers that your praetor”—he winks at Marcus—“was seen with a whore two nights ago after the festival, which apparently is very unlike him.”
Dru surprises Marcus by laughing. “And here I thought I’d be known as a murderer, not a whore.”
Cato coughs, nearly choking on his last bite of food. “Don’t tell me you’re the whore in this sordid gossip.”
“I am, unfortunately.”
Heat rising up his neck, Marcus cuts in. “Some of my men saw us catching our breath after running from the brawl and assumed the worst.”
It isn’t exactly the truth, but he doesn’t want to implicate Dru with what really happened.
Dru leans back in her chair, a glint in her eyes. “Being caught in a provocative embrace with me is your idea of the worst?”
His cheeks warm and he glances away, unable to look her in the eye. “Of course not.”
“Very convincing,” Cato comments. “But it’s not as if the rumor can hurt your chances in the rest of the trials, Marcus. If anything, it humanizes you, makes the people think you’re more like them than they first thought.”
“Why wouldn’t they think that already?” Dru wonders.
“This is getting interesting,” the bard says, popping a green grape in his mouth from the bunch on the table.
Marcus ignores the bard. “Most know I come from the Imperium, and as such, assumed I would be as depraved as any other man from there.”
“And you never gave in to that depravity?” Dru wonders, watching him intently.
“I’ve been tempted,” he admits, leaving the second half of his statement unsaid. “But there are many ways to kill a king, and placing oneself in the good graces of the praetor in an intimate fashion is one such way.”
Dru leans forward across the table. “Not even once?”
In a few moments of weakness, yes. But I only thought of you while I was with them.
“Oh, come now, Drusilla,” Cato chides. “You can’t expect the man to admit it outright. It’s been six whole years.”
Dru’s gaze lingers on Marcus, as if trying to divine the truth of him by his expression alone.
“Dru?” Sabina interrupts from the front of the palace, the doors remaining open behind her. “Do you have time today to train me?”
Finally, Dru releases him from her scrutiny.
Out of the corner of Marcus’s eye, the bard stares longingly at Sabina; she doesn’t spare him a glance.
“Of course.”
Dru gets to her feet, and the two of them head out without another word spoken.
“I’m going to rest,” Cato tells them. “All this studying has tired me out.”
Marcus laughs. “Your poor tutors.”
Cato sniffs. “I’m going to ignore that for the sake of restoring my energy.”
With that, he heads to his chambers and shuts the doors. Leaving Marcus with the bard .
“Why did you belittle my news to the king?” the bard complains. “I can only contribute so much.”
Marcus glares at him. “Because I don’t trust you.”
The bard groans. “How many times must I prove myself to you? I haven’t done a single thing to make you doubt me.”
Marcus nearly chokes on his spit. “Besides the unconfirmed information regarding the lion, give me one instance when you’ve proven yourself.”
The bard holds up a finger. “One, I haven’t tried to kill the king, or anyone else. That feels significant. And two”—he holds up a second finger—“I paid for Dru’s passage into this country when I didn’t have to.”
Marcus sits back in his chair. “That doesn’t account for the whole of your character. You’re gone for hours at a time, sneaking in and out of the palace.”
“As the king’s spy,” he argues.
Marcus ignores him. “And of all the people in the Imperium, you happened to run into the praetor of Anziano and the king’s invited guest at our most vulnerable.”
“I’d call that mere correlation, not causation,” he postulates.
Marcus points at him. “That’s another thing: you’re far too educated to be a bard barely getting by.”
The bard picks up an orange and studies it. “Maybe I chose this life despite a good education.”
Marcus huffs. “And you have an answer for everything.”
The bard shrugs. “Only because I speak in truths.”
Marcus takes a moment before speaking again to temper his anger. It doesn’t do much.
“Stay away from Sabina. You can’t gain anything from her.”
The bard tosses the orange in the air and catches it again, laughing. “Not everything in life is about gaining something from someone. Some things are for pleasure and pleasure alone. But you wouldn’t know what that’s like.”
Marcus turns without giving him the satisfaction of an answer. Because a part of him sees the truth in the bard’s words. Not about him being innocent—Marcus refuses to take an eye off him, especially after this last conversation. But about taking pleasure in things.
For so long, his sole purpose has been to serve the Faithless; to help them realize their higher purpose, therefore achieving his own.
But the Faithless leach every morsel of individualism from their initiates at an early age—it’s the reason they only take on children as initiates, so they can mold them into perfect soldiers.
The longer he’s been away from their heavy hand, the more he’s been forced to reassess where his loyalties truly lie.
He regards the bard one last time. “Cato might trust you, but I don’t—I can’t. Not when the fate of this country and its king hangs in the balance.”
He goes to the window in dismissal and stares down at the top of the arena, barely visible through the mulberry roots.
The trial tomorrow won’t be anything like the first. That involved strength and strategy. For the maze, either you know the answer to the riddle or you don’t, and then you face whatever challenge they present to you should you get it wrong.
Their opponent tomorrow is the gamemasters and their tricks, not the other competitors.
He wishes he could protect Cato in the maze, but each participant has their own entrance. Cato’s educated enough to get the riddles right—that doesn’t mean they won’t throw something else his way. Something he can’t handle.
And Dru. Even if she gets every riddle wrong, she’s trained well enough to hold her own against the traps. She’ll be fine. At least, that’s what he must tell himself.
The sound of Dru calling his name breaks through his thoughts; blinking, he turns in her direction. He must’ve been staring out the window for longer than he realized.
“Is the bard gone?” Dru asks, Sabina at her side. Sweat glistens on their foreheads, their cheeks flushed. But while Sabina goes back to work, Dru heads directly for the pool, taking off her dusty sandals and dipping her feet in the cool water.
“Yes,” Marcus says, heading over. “I had a talk with him.”
She snorts. “I’m sure he talked back.”
“He did.”
“And?”
“I still don’t trust him, obviously. Though he did have some philosophical musings I found interesting.”
“I’m sure they’re similar to the ones he’s given to me,” Cato says, yawning as he heads over from his chambers. “Something about how life is precious, and we should take pleasure in it while we can. The man has clearly never had a responsibility in his entire life.”
Dru sits back on her hands, regarding him. “Then why keep him around?”
Cato considers this. “I suppose because he lives a life I’ve dreamt about now and again.”
Dru laughs. “You want to be a bard?”
Cato places a hand over his heart. “Gods, no; despite my heritage, my singing voice is truly awful. Cats in the night sound better than me. No, I mean a life where I don’t have to answer to or for anyone. Where I can do as I please.”
Dru glances down. “That would be nice.”
Marcus’s gaze snaps to her, surprised to hear her admit it. The old Dru would’ve done anything and everything for the Faithless. There was no other life for her.
Maybe Ovi’s death changed that.
“That can’t be the only reason,” Marcus insists. “Why ask him to spy for you? Why keep him in the palace when you have no idea who he is or what his motives are?”
Cato’s nostrils flare, his gaze turning fiery.
“I’m going to say this one last time, and then I won’t hear another word about him.
I asked him to spy for me because no one notices the artist in the room.
He can be a fly on the wall among the Imperium elite, gathering information from their loose jaws, and no one will be the wiser. ”
“As for why I keep him in the palace,” Cato continues, “he’s the only one who’s been able to help me move on from my father’s death. To help me realize that being the king of Anziano won’t be the end of who I am.”
“The bard did all that for you?” Marcus wonders, wounded by the implication that all of Marcus’s own efforts have been fruitless.
Cato’s features soften. “He brings a unique perspective to the table. Besides, Jove has no reason to betray me?—”
“You’re the king,” Dru argues. “He has every reason to betray you.”
“Fine,” Cato bites out. “He reminds me of my sister.”
Ah, that makes sense. The fight leaves Marcus at the admission. It appears to do the same for Dru.
“What was she like?” she asks gently.
The king peers out the window. “Despite her duties, she was so carefree. She knew how to brush off her worries, to find the excitement in life.” He glances back. “Until my father promised her to that Imperium brute and named me heir.”
He doesn’t elaborate further. Marcus decides to drop the subject, as Cato requested. He’s never going to believe the king’s assessment of the bard’s infallibility if Cato sees him as a replacement for his sister.
Marcus clears his throat. “Did all your resting help you figure out how to win the next trial?”
Cato takes a deep, centering breath Marcus knows well.
“Well, being alive at the end is the only way to win, so yes. All I know is that each participant gets their own entrance into the maze. There’s no strategy we can adopt that allows us to face fewer riddles and therefore have a better chance of not meeting the deadly end of the traps.”
“And do we know what these traps are?” Dru wonders.
“The gamemasters are supposed to come up with those too. There are some tried-and-true snares, but they might decide to do something completely new this time, given the Imperium’s involvement.”
Marcus studies Cato. “If each participant has their own entrance, how can we stick together?”
He shakes his head. “We can’t.”
“So much for our plan.”
“I’d like to think we’re all smart enough to survive this one,” Dru argues.
Cato laughs. “Glad to hear you think so highly of us.”