Chapter XXIV Lela
XXIV
LELA
The seaman kept his begrudging stance, arms crossed. “I was told three. I cannot take five.”
“We aren’t coming,” said Jovian, stepping up to the man and glaring down at him from his imposing height. “But we will remember your ship, and if anything happens to them, you will pay dearly.”
The seaman scoffed and dropped his arms, snapping back defensively, “We were paid well, and we honor our debts. We’ll get them down the river.” He turned to Trajan and gestured toward the gangway. “Follow me.”
Lupus smiled at his brother. “Honorable smugglers. How fortunate.”
Trajan reached out an arm. Jovian grasped it in farewell. “May Neptune guide you well.”
Trajan smiled. “Tell your father I will be back, and I’ll bring news of our army.”
Lupus raised a brow. “We have an army? Father said we’d need to gather his gladiator brethren if we were to have one at all.”
“They are all welcome,” said Trajan. “But we will have an army.”
“Let’s go,” said Gaius, staring down the docks toward the main harbor entrance. “We need to set sail.”
Jovian and Lupus nodded and turned back the way we’d come by the sewage ditch. Trajan ushered me between him and his grandfather. There were other seamen hoisting sails and moving about deck, but they didn’t even spare us a glance. Professional smugglers, it seemed.
We followed the big man who’d greeted us down below deck. He walked into a large room for the cargo and to a wall lined with barrels. He rolled the one in the corner out then unlatched a hook at the bottom and a hidden door swung open.
“You have what you need in there until we’re safely out of range of the deathriders,” he told us. “Once we’re in the Tyrrhenian Sea, you can move above deck.”
Trajan’s grandfather held out his palm for me. “May I assist you?”
I took his palm and steadied myself as I ducked through the short door into a room with two flat mattresses on the floor, perpendicular to one another. A small oil lamp burned in the corner alongside a corked jug, a bucket, and something wrapped in muslin cloth.
Sitting on the mattress closest to the lamp, I leaned back against the ship’s wall, while Gaius and Trajan struggled through the small door into the room.
It was barely tall enough for them to stand, but large enough I didn’t feel too cramped.
I removed my veil and set it aside, my heart still aching at having to leave the white dragon in that cage.
I’d wanted to argue with Trajan and demand we find a way, but I knew he was right. If we’d delayed and attempted to free her, we would’ve been caught and thrown in cages ourselves. Still, the pain of it, seeing her there, mournfully crying up to the moon, steeped me in a gloom.
Gaius sat on the other mattress and Trajan took a seat beside me.
“Not the most luxurious accommodations,” said Trajan, looking down at me.
I replied with a touch of bitterness, “Getting out of the city alive will feel most luxurious.”
As if the captain heard me, the ship suddenly moved, no voices above as we slipped away from the docks.
“How did you find these smugglers?” asked Gaius.
“Koska found them for us.”
“We’re fortunate they didn’t question us further before they let us on board. I was surprised they didn’t interrogate or downright refuse us, seeing as we’re nobility.”
“The only reason they trust us at all is because I paid them ten times what I imagine the going rate for smuggling is.”
Trajan reached for the muslin and opened it to find a hard, round loaf of bread. He looked down his shoulder at me. “Hungry?”
I shook my head. “What happened at the celebration? Why was everyone running from the palace?”
Trajan tore off a piece of the bread and handed it to me. “You need to eat.”
Rolling my eyes, I took the bread. “Tell me what happened.”
He tore off another piece and handed it to his grandfather. “Praetorians carried in your handiwork left at Fausta’s. Hektor’s head.” He bit into a hunk of bread. “I’m starving.”
Gaius frowned at me. “You did that?”
“Not me exactly,” I explained hesitantly.
“How exactly then?” he asked, tearing a piece of the bread off and putting it in his mouth.
Trajan stared at me, taking another bite. “If you want to tell him, you can. You can trust him. But you don’t have to.”
My heart fluttered at the realization that Trajan had kept my secret to protect me, allowing me the choice to reveal my gift to whom I wanted. It was a dangerous gift. One that could get me branded and executed as a witch.
Gaius chewed and waited patiently, watching me with no expectation. He was unlike so many aggressive, bullying Romans I’d known. Patient and wise. I understood why he was so respected in the senate. I could also see now how Trajan had become the truly noble man that he was.
“I have a gift. Some call it a witch’s power,” I told him. “My grandmother told me it comes from the goddess Minerva. If I taste someone’s blood, I can control them.” I shrugged when he stared openly, seeming to wait for more. “I don’t know how exactly. They simply obey me.”
“That is how you killed Valerius,” he said.
“I did.” Something suddenly occurred to me. “He’d had many senators visit his home over the years, but I never saw you there before.”
He made a disgusted grunt. “I’d never go to that awful man’s house.”
Trajan growled next to me and reached for the jug, uncorking it and taking a sniff. “Ale. Good.” Then he took a swig.
“They call what I am a bloodsinger,” I added.
“Ah. The code you gave. I’d wondered.”
“You’ve heard of this magic before?”
“Yes.” Gaius’s brows rose, the lamplight flickering over his regal features. “My great-aunt had met one once, she’d told me.”
“Really?” I asked eagerly. “When was this?”
“She’d been a little girl when she met her.” He chuckled, taking the jug of ale when Trajan passed it to him. “My great-aunt, Lucretia was her name, was fond of stories.” He passed the jug to me, but I shook my head. “She’d told me many far-fetched stories that I doubted were real.”
“But you believed the one about her meeting a bloodsinger?”
“No.” He laughed lightly again. “Perhaps you can tell me if it sounds true to you.”
I nodded for him to go on. Trajan nudged me with his elbow. “Eat,” he murmured.
I began to eat the bread, tasteless and dry, just to get Trajan to relax.
“Her father,” Gaius began, “was a Roman statesman and had been sent to Sarmatia to tend a new province. It was when they crossed through the land of Dacia that she met the bloodsinger.”
“My homeland,” I whispered.
“Is it?” asked Gaius, his brow furrowed.
“Yes. Please go on.”
“Aunt Lucretia was a spoiled daughter of Rome, and a bit wild for her father’s tastes.
They’d stopped in a village for food and to rest the horses.
While her father talked to a local leader about the best passage north into Sarmatia, Aunt Lucretia crept away, following the sounds of music and laughter in the tavern. ”
I listened, imagining the young Roman girl slipping into a tavern full of rowdy Dacians.
“My aunt said she saw a woman dancing upon a table.”
“A Dacian woman dancing?” I asked, my heart skipping faster.
A Dacian dancer. Like I once was. Like my sisters.
“Indeed. Aunt Lucretia said she was more beautiful than the goddess Juno herself. Probably looked much like you, dear.” He smiled with kindness, not lechery.
“As she told it to me, the woman finished her dance and all the men at the table tossed up a coin, but one of the men refused to chip in for the dance. He was a big, burly man. The Dacian told him, ‘If you don’t pay up, I’ll make you give me a dance for free. ’”
Gaius chewed his last piece of bread then went on merrily, the ship rocking as we slipped faster down the Tiber River.
“The men all laughed and the big man said to her, ‘Go on then. Make me dance.’ So she jumped down from their table and pulled a brooch clipped to her waist and told him, ‘Give me your hand.’ The man laughed, not threatened by the young woman at all, and held out his hand. She pricked him with the pin of the brooch. He didn’t even flinch as she lifted his hand by the wrist and licked the tip of his finger.
My aunt said the men all laughed and cheered with vulgar words to her, but then she said to the big brute, ‘Get on the table and dance for me.’ The man did instantly, making a bloody fool of himself. ”
He laughed and I laughed with him, imagining the scene.
“All the men at the table and everyone in the whole tavern went quiet and watched in awe. The Dacian told him, ‘You need to wiggle your hips more and prance in a circle.’”
I laughed. “Did she really say that?”
“That is what my Aunt Lucretia said. Apparently, he obeyed every command she gave him until finally she told him to stop dancing and hand over her coin. Panting and sweating, he reached into his pocket and handed her payment, then she told the dumbfounded men at the table, ‘Always pay the dancer. And never test a bloodsinger.’ Then she marched out of the tavern with her chin in the air. Not a soul whispered as she passed them by.”
My heart expanded at the story. Not that it was so exceptional or sentimental, but that it made me think of home. That it reminded me of something Bunica had told me once.
We are descended from a line of mystical women. Their blood runs through ours. So does their magic.
Trajan watched me intently. “Are you all right?”
I nodded. “Just tired. Today has been long and…” I blew out a heavy breath, my body weighted by all that had happened since I woke up in Fausta’s home this morning.
Now I was on a ship leaving Rome, finally escaping this nightmare I’d been living for so long, and Gaius had told me a story about a Dacian dancer.
A bloodsinger. My entire soul sagged with exhaustion.
“Lie down,” said Trajan, urging me to recline onto the mattress. “Get some rest.”
“You still haven’t told me what happened at Caesar’s or where we are going from here.”
“It can wait.” His expression was grim. “You need to rest for a while. I’ll tell you all when you wake.”
My instinct was to argue, but I was bone-weary. So I lay on my side, facing the wall, tucking my hands beneath my cheek since there was no pillow. There was a light caress on my head, fingers trailing through my hair. Trajan’s gentle hands pushed me toward sleep.
He and his grandfather whispered together.
“He dissolved the senate. I cannot believe he would go so far.”
“No matter, Grandfather. When he is dead, we will bring back the republic.”
“You’re a lovely dreamer, my son. That seems impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible.”
While Trajan dreamed on and his grandfather listened, my mind wandered back to the Dacian dancer, the bloodsinger in Lucretia’s story.
She had to have been an ancestor of mine. Bunica never told us who in our immediate family held the gifts we had. Only that the magic was passed on through our blood. I could still hear her voice.
“It has always been so. Always through the females of our family,” said Bunica, chopping radishes at the small square table beside the fire.
“But how do you know it will come to me and my sisters? I’ve felt nothing at all,” I said while wiping the radishes and onions clean from the garden.
“Nor has Kostanya or Kizzy. Only Malina has the slightest touch of magic. Though sometimes I think her abilities as an empath are nothing more than female intuition.”
“Do not disregard the importance of female intuition,” said Bunica, her gnarled fingers moving swiftly with the knife.
“It is its own kind of sight. And as for how I know”—she paused and narrowed her gaze at me, her wrinkled brow pinching tight—“I have my own magic, dear one. I’ve seen it.
The three mystical gifts of Minerva already live in you and your sisters’ blood. ”
She scooped the radishes up with her hands and dropped them in the empty pot on the table. I rolled the cleaned onions to her, opening my mind to the idea that my grandmother could be right. One day, the magic would awaken inside me.
“You said three gifts of magic. Will Kizzy and Kostanya have the same one because they’re twins?”
She’d paused in dicing the onion and sniffed, the fumes watering her eyes. She wiped a sleeve across her nose.
“The power can only go to one,” she said then snapped her finger toward the door. “Now you best fetch the water for the stew or we’ll have no dinner at all.”
That memory came from nowhere, from so many years ago. And yet I could hear the sharp chop of her knife through crisp radishes. I could hear the sadness in her voice when she’d sent me outside. I’d never thought anything of it then. I wondered what Bunica had seen and refused to tell me.
Were my sisters still out there alive somewhere? Had they been held captive like me? Or had they all died trying to survive all alone without someone to care for and protect them?
My mind drifted as Trajan’s fingers continued to gently caress me toward sleep. I finally gave in, the smell of onions, the sound of Bunica’s voice whispering me into dreams.