Call to Arms (The Girl In The Arena Book 1) (12 page)

That night her food was brought to her by someone she had never seen before: a tall and slender man with light brown hair and gentle blue eyes. Unlike River he did not appear to be hungry or dirty. His robe was of a good quality cloth and his sandals had slender silk ties.

“Who are you?”

His lips curled into a smile, “I’m Clive. I am to bring you your food from here on out. It seems you were exposed to a near-death situation.”

Reena’s face paled. How did he know this? Why was he saying it out loud? Clive balanced the tray in one hand and added, “We can’t have servants with the bad cough bringing you food.” Then he winked at her, a slow and careful wink that made her senses light up.

In as neutral a voice as possible she said, “No, we can’t.”

Clive held up one finger as she reached for the food and then, so fast she barely saw it, he lifted a few morsel of each offering to his mouth before nodding at her.

Reena took the food slowly and carefully. Clive did not die and eventually he said, “I must have the dishes back. They have been set aside for your use, and yours alone.”

Reena stacked her food on her pallet and handed him the dishes back through the bars. He gave her a little nod and strode away, whistling cheerfully. Reena sat on her pallet, staring down at the food and wanting to weep again.

Poor River. What had they done with his body? Simply tossed it and his meager belongings onto the rubbish piles and burned it all? She would not have doubted it.

Life was cheap here in Aretula.

Reena’s days off flew by and yet dragged all at once. She was taken out to the training fields by hector, who taught her a few new tricks and nearly put her eye out with one of them. She was allowed to use the communal shower, it having been cleared for her use, and she was taken out once a day and paraded up and down the streets in the company of the guards.

Hector had told her that she had to win favor among the people and Reena had asked, “Why is nobody allowed to give me anything?”

“There is no restriction on the gifts you may receive in the Arena, only against you having a Protector.”

“What’s the difference?”

“The difference is that in the arena anyone may give you anything and you may keep or discard what you wish. I told you before, many a gladiator bought their way to freedom with those rewards. A Protector is one person. The arena is many. Don’t forget that. One person may make a large difference but an arena filled with people can make all the difference.”

“You aren’t talking about just battles in the arena are you?” Reena was shrewd and so was he. He knocked her into the dust and dirt and then he helped her to her feet only to hiss into her ear, “Never say those things out loud or we are all dead.”

In her cell she stared out at the streets, watching the people and wondering who they were, where they were going, and why they were on the street to begin with. The Temples all blazed with light and the taverns did too.

Nemia would have been sent to one of those taverns if she had not chosen the arena. What was so bad about them that she would have chosen death? She asked Hector the next day and he roared laughter but did not answer her except to say that was a child’s question.

Later that evening, after her parade down the streets and her dinner, after the sun had set and she had grown bored with watching the people, she sat on her pallet, her legs tucked below her and began to recite, under her breath, her alphabet and numbers.

It was an old game. When she had been young and the Culling was taking place, the woods had been a terrifying place. Not only because of the risks of running into the soldiers but because the fire that they used to keep wild animals—predatory and nocturnal—at bay was an even bigger risk than it was a safety precaution.

The dark had always frightened her when she was young and her father would tell her stories, and teach her numbers and the alphabet. Reena began to trace out letters on the floor with her fingers, invisible to the eye but clear to her. She wrote her name and her father’s and then she did a lot of sums in her head.

It helped to ease her growing boredom and helped her to feel reconnected with her father although he was nowhere near her.

Praxis had said they were moving him around a lot because they were afraid. But afraid of what? It seemed silly to be afraid of one Outlaw.

**

The next day was her last day before the arena. Hector showed up at her door and asked her if she had ever visited a library.

“No but I have heard of them. I heard…my father told me that if someone knew how to read they could use books to learn things, to escape from the world they are in for a little while. He also said the books used to be kept in libraries.”

His head tilted to one side. “Have you ever seen a book?”

Reena’s face burned but she kept her eyes level. “No but my father has. He told me about them.”

“I see. Well, you have a free day. Today you may go anywhere you like. You have gone to Temple as mandated by the Law, you have done your duty as a gladiator—you have hyped the crowd and thus helped to ensure that the games are what people are thinking of, and not the starvation and other ills in the city—and you have had training.

“Come on, today we go to the library.”

“Why are we going to the library?” Reena was stupefied by his harsh words. Hector was usually far more careful; he was talking like a man possessed and angry. Why? What was happening?

He took her out and into the streets. As usual she wore her gladiator garb, as she had nothing else. People stopped and stared; many pointed and a few even touched her for good luck.

Hector took her down a thankfully quiet series of side streets after they left the main thoroughfare and they walked briskly until they came to a tall and imposing structure. Hector said, “This is as far as I go. I will return to fetch you.”

Reena gave him a surprised look, “Why aren’t you coming in?”

“Because I cannot read and one must be able to read to enter.”

“How do you know that I can read?”

“I don’t but I am hoping that you can.”

“Maybe I cannot.”

“You better learn to fake it then; they are opening the doors.” Hector practically vanished and Reena looked at the old wizened man who opened the door and blurted out, “I can read.”

“I would have expected nothing less from Liam’s child.”

Her face paled. “How do you know whose daughter I am?”

A ghost of a smile touched his chapped lips, “The entire city knows child. It is all the citizens can talk about.”

His hands grasped her shoulder and he practically yanked her through the doors before clanging them back shut again. He ushered her through a series of long rooms, all of them filled floor-to-ceiling with books. Reena stared around her, all of her thoughts caught up in a maelstrom that she could not control long enough to ask any questions.

When she finally did regain her wits slightly it was to ask, “Was my father here?”

“Long ago. Before the Culling that threatened to take the woman he loved. I’m Argo, by the way. What would you like to study today child?”

“I don’t know.” There were people, mainly male, scattered around the long tables, all of them bent to their books with a seriousness that made her almost nervous.

“Maybe you would like to see Liam’s favorite of the books.”

Reena blinked back the tears that threatened. “Yes, yes I would like that very much please.”

Argo beckoned her with a crooked finger, “Right this way please.”

**

The tome that he took out was old, thick with duct and so fragile that some of the corners crumbled away as she tried to turn the page. She looked up at Argo, who gave her a sad smile. He had seated her far from the others, using the excuse that she was a gladiator and this was a place of peace—but she knew there was more to it than just that. It had something to do with the book in her hands.

“One day it will fall apart just like the rest of them. The paper is too weak and thin but as long as there are those willing to pass along the stories and rewrite them so that others will know them, our gods will live.”

He drifted away and she opened the book again, staring down at the yellowed pages and the crumbled dust stuck in the creases. The ink was faded to the point that it was barely legible and the text had been underlined in places.

The cover had been stamped with some kind of gold—the words had heavy curlicues there, making it hard for her to read, but she had finally made out the words: Greek mythology.

The inside of the book was filled with tales of the gods. She knew most of them by heart since her father had told her those stories just like every parent told their children the tales of their gods. There were many not listed within the pages but that was not unusual. Nobody seemed to know where Isis had sprung from after all.

Why would this have been her father’s favorite book? She closed it and stared down at the cover, her eyes going back to the spine, the broken and creased corners of it and her head tilted to one side. There was something within the spine!

Her heart beat loudly as she looked around to check to see if anyone was paying any attention to her; they weren’t. Reena opened the book again, pretending to be perusing the pages while her nimble fingers plucked the folded paper from the spine.

She had seen her father’s handwriting before, when he taught her how to shape her letters in the sand and dirt, so she recognized it and a lump filled her throat.

The message was simple and to the point—hastily written.
Don’t let them trick you into seeing me as a grove of apples.

A grove of apples? What was he talking about?

Her mind cleared and she saw it all again just like she was standing there:

They were in the woods, below an apple tree. It had been a long and hard winter, they had come across some bodies—frozen and withered away by hunger—near the cave that they had taken up residence in that season.

Many Outlaws chose to travel in larger groups. It was something Liam was not willing to do; he said the safety found in numbers was not worth the greater risks. Bigger numbers of people meant more in-fighting, more potential betrayals and intrigues. It meant not being able to be as unobtrusive, and that heightened the risk of being seen by the soldiers.

It was one of the larger groups that they were facing down now. Spring had arrived and with it small hard green apples, not yet ripe but they were being plucked from the trees in a tiny grove and devoured anyway.

Liam said, “If you leave them a little longer they will be sweeter.”

The leader of the Outlaw band facing them drew his spear, a shabbily whittled thing and aimed it at Liam, “These are our trees. We will eat from them as we like.”

Liam said, calmly, “Here nobody owns anything. Here we all share, it’s part of the pact we made when we entered these woods.”

“These are ours!”

Liam put his hand on Reena’s head. Her belly was roaring and whining, her mouth already twisting and filling with spit. It had been two days since they had eaten and the apples, though green, would have been good. She knew what that touch meant though; it meant to stay silent and to follow him.

“You are too in the open here in the grove. There are soldiers around.”

Liam was giving them fair warning. Earlier they had seen the soldiers riding hard across the desiccated lands of the meadows that stretched out on one side of the woods, bound for the Old Post Road; here in the groves there was little shelter and nowhere to hide.

“What of it?”

“You would be better off telling your people to gather what they need and to leave here.”

The leader sneered at him again. “You just want us to go so you can take the fruit!” His teeth were black with rot, his face almost gray. Desperation had turned him from man to something else entirely, something almost animal-like and Reena stepped closer to her father.

“May the gods be with you,” Liam had said softly before leading Reena away.

They had gotten about a mile away when Liam spotted a thin but healthy rabbit and ran it down, returning triumphantly to her side with their dinner dangling from his belt. Reena asked, “Why wouldn’t they leave even after you told them there were soldiers, Father?”

“They think they need those apples, that those apples are important in their lives and maybe they are. They could take some with them and live but they are too afraid to notice that fact. They think by clinging to those trees they will survive.”

“Will they?”

“Wait and see.”

The next afternoon they had heard screams from the distance. Reena knew those sounds were coming from the groves. She huddled closer to her father, squeezing her eyes shut tight as he snuffed out the small cooking fire he had been building inside the cave and then rolled the heavy stone over the tiny opening that served as a door.

The stone cut off the sounds of the slaughter but later that night they went out to the groves and buried the bodies. Liam had looked her in her eyes and said, “Never let your own fear and your wish to hang onto something—or someone—get you killed Reena. Do you understand me? There is always another way, a way out without death if you are smart and fast and ready to run. Tell me you understand me.”

She had said that she did but she hadn’t, not then, but she understood it now. Liam was telling her that she should run away.

She had always been obedient to her father if not the Law, but this was one time when she could not, would not, obey him.

He was far more important to her than anything else in the world.

**

The day dawned clear and bright. Clive brought her breakfast as he always did. She knew that he was risking his own life for hers, just by tasting her food, but she could not bring herself to like him the way she had liked River.

After she had eaten, she stood at her window looking down at the city. Her clothing had begun to itch and she wished she had something else to wear. She longed for the soft supple leather of the deer  hide that had been worked by her father’s hands. Or her own.

The sound of the soldiers’ footsteps in the hallway was loud. She squeezed her eyes shut trying to pretend that she was somewhere else and that they were not coming for her. That today would not be the day when she had to step once more into the bloody battlefield and try to save someone else’s life as well as her own.

Why was she doing this? It seemed so futile. It was obvious that there was no way the Governor was going to spare her or her father and she was tired… So tired of the blood in the battle and the crowd.