Chapter Nineteen
“Basileia! Are you ready to race?” Zain was behaving like he hadn’t been missing for an entire day.
“Where have you been?” I asked.
“Here and there.”
His vagueness frustrated me. “I thought something had happened to you.”
“Obviously I’m fine.”
I realized that he didn’t owe me an explanation. We were not involved. We had only briefly kissed. He was not beholden to me.
My sisters had spoken of men who pursued them relentlessly and then, once they’d bedded them, never talked to my sisters again.
Was Zain like that? Now that the thrill of the pursuit was gone, was he bored? It would make sense, given his profession. His life was probably one dangerous and exciting moment to the next.
I was not going to wait around feeling sorry for myself. If he was a big enough fool to miss out on the chance to be with me, that was his problem. Such an opportunity would be a blessing from the gods.
Levern chose that moment to walk by me, and I aggressively called out, “Good luck, Epirian!”
That at least gave me one moment of satisfaction.
I walked away from Zain. I wasn’t angry. It usually took a fair amount to anger me.
To be fair, I was annoyed. But I wasn’t going to make a scene or demand he explain himself. If that was the sort of man he was, then I would be better off without him.
Realistically, nothing had changed—there couldn’t be a future for us. I tried to imagine my mother’s face if I brought the king of thieves home with me. The thought of my family’s reactions made me smile. My mother might actually try to kill him.
I stole a glance at him and saw he was talking to one of the other competitors. Zain had an overwhelming amount of confidence. As if he had nothing to prove to anyone because he’d already proved it.
Turning away from him, I reminded myself that I would not be behaving like a lovesick girl.
I wanted him to tell me where he had gone and why.
I’d thought we had at least enough of a friendship that he would share that with me without making up vague answers.
It bothered me that I didn’t know. And while I understood that he didn’t owe it to me, I still wanted him to talk to me.
To feel like I was someone he could confide in.
I went to my designated room to prepare for the race.
I had been asked for my nation’s colors, and I found a long-sleeved, padded tunic waiting for me.
It was blue, the same shade as my woad tattoos, which was Invara’s favorite color.
Red lined the edges, symbolic of Thracian courage and our connection to the goddess.
I put it on and it went all the way to my ankles. I belted it at my waist.
The officials had asked that the competitors wear our armor. Initially I had thought that the request was because of how dangerous chariot racing was, but I’d learned it was solely so that the spectators could identify each driver easily.
I didn’t have everything with me, but I put on what I did have. A chest piece and my bracers. I wouldn’t need them were I to get in an actual fight, but it made me feel better to have them with me when I was traveling. I slid my grandmother’s shield into the slot on the back of my armor.
It had always been the shield that I felt most connected to—so many of my family members chose ornate shields with spikes and decorations, but my grandmother had preferred for hers to be smooth and rounded. She said it made the enemy’s blade slide off.
When I emerged from my room, I saw Zain waiting for me. He pushed off from the wall and came to fall into step beside me. I resolved to not notice how handsome he looked—his long, dark red tunic covered by a silver chest piece that somehow made him seem even bigger.
“A lion?” he asked, pointing toward my chest.
“Invara’s symbol,” I said. I glanced at him. “A snake? I thought you were from everywhere and nowhere.” He shouldn’t have had a symbol on his chest.
“I chose this because a snake is Eramis’s sacred animal.”
“That seems fitting,” I told him. I was beginning to think the two had something in common.
“My illora, are you calling me a snake?” He seemed delighted by the prospect. “What a marvelous compliment.”
“A compliment?”
“Snakes are powerful. They are symbols of healing, of dying and being reborn, shedding an old life and starting a new one. They are guardians because they are wise and cunning.”
“And often dangerous,” I said.
“And often dangerous,” he agreed.
When we entered the arena, I asked him, “Are we doing heats again?”
“Everyone who is still here will race together. Many of the competitors have left because there’s no chance of them winning.”
If competitors were gone . . . “Does that mean there are empty rooms?”
He looked surprised by my question but quickly recovered. “Possibly. But then Dagger would be so sad if you left.”
If I wanted him to behave like an adult and communicate, then I would have to do the same. And there wouldn’t be a chance to repair things if I was somewhere else. “I wouldn’t want to make Dagger sad.”
He grinned at me and I felt some of my annoyance slip away. I waved my hand toward the track. “I can’t believe a thief knows how to race chariots.”
“It is the sport of kings, is it not? And I am a king.”
Ha. He was as much of a king as I was a princess. I shook my head at him. He was far too attached to the title he had granted himself.
The announcer stood in the middle of the arena on a raised dais and welcomed the crowd to the stadium.
I again heard the voices of women cheering.
That made me glad, that it hadn’t been a onetime situation and they were here today.
Then he announced that the sponsors had contributed teams of expertly trained horses for the event and that each competitor would be assigned one.
The owner of the winning team would receive a large sum of money and a golden laurel wreath.
All the reward with none of the risk.
The race would be shorter than chariot races normally were—the announcer said we were to do four laps, just as we had with the footraces earlier.
I studied the track. I didn’t know how many competitors remained, but it was too many for all of us to race together.
We would all fit, but it would be deadly.
There would be accidents. Axles would bend, reins would snap, chariots would be driven into the breakwalls.
There would be shipwrecks, as my mother called the massive pileup of broken chariots, littering the racetrack before this was done.
My attendant came over to lead me to my team. I turned to Zain. “I would wish you good luck, but . . .”
“Anything but that,” he said with a wink, following his own attendant.
The announcer started calling out the names of the competitors and the men who owned each chariot team. I tuned it out as we arrived at my chariot. I inspected it quickly. It was finely crafted but as light and flimsy as every other chariot. They were designed for speed and speed alone.
The front of the chariot curved up, the back was entirely open, and it had two wheels. There were clogs built into the floor to hold my feet in place. I had seen many drivers thrown from their chariots when they hit a bump. It was a safety precaution.
Much as my knife was. I was planning to wrap the reins around my waist to give me better control. If something happened, I needed to be able to cut them so that I didn’t get dragged to my death.
“If I may offer you a suggestion,” the attendant said, “you should leave your shield here, along with the rest of your armor. No one expects you to actually wear it while racing.”
Because the weight of it would slow me down. But my grandmother always came into battle with me and I wasn’t going to leave her out of this one. “Thank you for your suggestion. Do you have any treats for the horses?”
He handed me four root vegetables that I didn’t recognize.
I went over to introduce myself to the horses.
There were two yoke horses in the middle, eager and bold, ready to leap into the fray.
They would be responsible for how fast and how hard we went.
The trace horses flanked them on the outside.
These were usually the worrying type, and it was their keen sense of self-preservation that would prevent us from hitting walls and other chariots.
They would steer and keep us stable while making turns.
I offered each horse a vegetable and pet them, talking to them gently.
I asked them to be fast and safe, and to help me win.
They nickered and nudged me, presumably for more treats.
The one good thing about the teams being assigned was that it put everyone at the same disadvantage—no one would be familiar with their chariot or their horses.
It also meant that I wouldn’t have to worry about any “improvements” on the chariots. Like a row of spikes jutting from one of the wheels.
While I had experience in a chariot with a horse, it had been a single horse. Not four. I’d never raced at all, let alone with a team this size. I had watched many races growing up—chariot racing was a favorite of my mother’s. She had spent years explaining everything to me.
All I needed to do was implement all the lessons she had taught me.
I heard her voice in my head: “The most important thing is to be the first one to the turning post. Securing the inside line will give you the race. It will be tempting to stick to the outer track, as it is safer, but it is longer and the only way to win is to face the risks of the inner track.”
With only four laps, there wouldn’t be time to hang back and then try to outrace everyone to the end. I would have to make a move immediately—get out front and stay there.
I would have to balance pushing for speed while also keeping all of us safe.
The horses had to work together, so I hoped this team had raced as a unit before.
It was a good thing I enjoyed multitasking—I would have to watch my competitors, anticipate their actions, and constantly shift my strategies to deal with whatever they threw at me.
Because chariot racing wasn’t all that different from pankration. While we were forbidden from deliberately running into other chariots, nearly everything else was allowed. We could whip our fellow competitors or pull them from their chariots, attack them with a weapon.
The audience usually loved when that happened.
I climbed into the chariot, inserting my feet into the base. The attendant handed me the reins and I took them, tying them around my waist.
“Here,” he said. He was trying to hand me a whip.
“I don’t whip horses,” I told him.
“But you’ll lose,” he said, aghast.
“Then I’ll lose.” I took the reins in my hands and tested their strength, their tension.
The attendant led my horses over to the spot that had been assigned to me.
Each team was put into a stall that angled away from the starting line, and a tight cord held the door in front of me in place.
When it was my turn to go, it would drop.
We would all be started at different times based on our location so that we would reach the starting line together.
My two yoke horses were tossing their heads, eager to be off. They knew what was coming.
Silence fell over the stadium and it was almost eerie.
My breathing sounded loud and harsh and I tried to calm myself down.
I had to remain in control. It didn’t matter that I was battle-favored.
This was not a race of strength. I would be solely dependent on my horses, which were the same caliber as everyone else’s.
I saw a white linen drop to the track up ahead of us. The race had begun. I heard the first chariot set out, the second, the third.
Gates continued to drop and drivers called out to their horses, who responded by pounding away at the track.
My heart thudded and I found myself slightly shifting from side to side as I got ready for my turn. My grip on the reins tightened.
The gate dropped.
I urged my team forward.
“Go!”