Mark of the Thief (25 page)

V
alerius took me back to Crispus and Aurelia, insisting I spend the rest of the afternoon practicing. Knowing how little time was left now, I gave it the best I had, but my thoughts were too much on Caela. I had often wondered about her since she last flew away, but in my mind I had always seen her nestled atop a pile of gold or flying over the skies of Rome or swooping in for a hunt. She was a creation of the gods. So I had thought it only natural that she could have healed that wound herself.

“What did Valerius say to you back there?” Aurelia had asked me at least ten times since I’d returned. I had told them my battle with Radulf would happen soon, but nothing about Horatio’s role in it, or about Caela. Aurelia placed a hand on my arm, right where the infected wound had been only hours ago. “You don’t have to fight Radulf. Just run. Leave Rome on your own.”

“I agree,” Crispus said. “My father is persuasive, but he can’t force you to do this.”

“The empire knows what I can do. Do you really think they’ll just let me go? I don’t want to be hunted the rest of my life.”

“At least you’ll be alive!” Aurelia’s face fell. “If you lose —”

“Or if I win.” I shrugged. “Either way, I get Radulf’s voice out of my head.”

Crispus nodded as a smile spread across his face. I wasn’t sure if he was encouraged by my words, or trying to be the one who encouraged me. “If you win, the emperor will reward you with freedom.”

“And your father will find my sister,” I finished. “He promised me that.”

Aurelia clapped her hands together. “Then let’s get back to work. Good things are coming for you, Nic. I can feel that.”

I was glad she could, because once we returned to practice, I still felt nothing except for concern for Caela. Even though we worked into the evening, my progress was barely noticeable. I could get the bulla to warm simply by thinking about the proper emotion, but not enough to produce any magic. And nothing Crispus or Aurelia did or said brought up any actual emotions. Nothing was stronger than my worry for Caela, and no amount of magic would change that.

Unless it could.

As we trekked back to Crispus’s home, I casually asked him where the Appian Way was. He didn’t know about Caela, so the question shouldn’t have aroused any suspicion.

“Why are you asking?” Aurelia wanted to know. Of course she would be the suspicious one.

“Valerius simply mentioned it in passing. I was only curious.”

Crispus pointed out the direction, then, as we continued walking, he said, “Almost three hundred years ago, there was a rebellion by a slave named Spartacus, who had once been a gladiator. At the time, a third of this city was slaves, so the rebellion was obviously a considerable problem. The fighting lasted for two years, and Spartacus had many victories … until he brought his armies to the Appian Way. Rome called in its armies from outside the city and advanced those that were here. Spartacus was trapped. Shortly after his final defeat, six thousand slaves were executed along that road. If you ask me, they got what they deserved.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say!” Aurelia scolded. “And did you even think about who Nic is?”

Crispus stopped and faced me. “I’m sorry. No, I didn’t. I guess I don’t think of you as a slave.”

“That’s because I’m not one anymore.” I eyed Aurelia with irritation. “It’s who I was. Not who I am.” Then I walked on ahead of both of them.

She tried to apologize that evening at supper, but my mind was elsewhere, so our conversation didn’t get very far. There was a fine spread of food, but I barely ate any of it, and excused myself early, pleading exhaustion. I was beyond tired, but I had no intention of sleeping. Once the house quieted down, I was going to find Caela.

Since the others believed me to already be asleep, I was left alone for the night. I waited until there were no more footsteps outside, and then carefully opened my door. I crept through the atrium toward the entrance hall. Because of its weight, the main door made little noise when I opened it, and then, without a sound, I stepped out onto the road.

Having been so cautious, it was foolish of me to yelp so loudly when Crispus darted at me from one side and Aurelia from the other. Truthfully, I did more than yelp. I nearly fainted from surprise.

Once I recovered, I scowled, “What are you two doing out here?”

“A fine question, coming from the person sneaking out!” Aurelia retorted.

I started walking away. “I wasn’t sneaking out. Just leaving, which I have every right to do. I’ll be back by morning.”

They caught up to me and continued walking on either side. “We’re coming with you,” Crispus said.

“You don’t even know where I’m going.”

“It’s not the hardest thing to figure out.” Aurelia shrugged. “Valerius told us about Caela. He said you seemed upset. Why didn’t you tell us, Nic?”

I stopped and drew in a deep breath. “I don’t know. Maybe I should have.”

“Come this way.” Crispus turned off the road back to his property. “We have a wagon waiting.”

My knees locked. I wasn’t willing to follow him just yet. “To go to the baths on the Appian Way? Nowhere else?”

Crispus smiled. “You assume everything I say is either a trick or a trap. What kind of life have you led?”

“Let’s just say there’s a reason I think that way.” Then I paused and started walking again. “Thank you for this. I don’t know if I could’ve found it in the dark.”

We climbed into the back of a wagon and the driver steered the horse away. Crispus pointed to some sacks inside the wagon. “It’s meat,” he said. “I had them filled with as much as we had available. Your griffin might need to eat something.”

“Thank you again.” The more Crispus and his father did for me, the greater my debt to them. I figured they must know more than I did about how hard it would be to defeat Radulf. They wanted to build up that debt while they could.

At my side, Aurelia took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “I understand why you have to do this,” she said. “That griffin saved your life. You want to say good-bye.”

“Her name is Caela,” I said. “And I’m not coming to say good-bye.”

T
he drive to the baths was longer than I had anticipated. On foot, it would’ve taken more than half the night to get there, and that didn’t even include the likelihood I would’ve gotten lost. For that alone, I was grateful to Crispus.

Once the baths came into sight, I warned Crispus to have his driver let us off at a distance. “From what I understand, Caela hasn’t eaten for several days. In an ordinary meeting, she’d have no love for your horses, but especially not tonight.”

He nodded and ordered the driver to stop where we were. That left us each hauling a sack of meat the rest of the way to the baths. With the bright moon above us, I was able to clearly see the red brick building, and the sight was astonishing. The entire structure was so wide that I had to crane my head to see it from one end to the other, and every side seemed to be lined with long rows of arches. Crispus said these were his mother’s favorite baths, and that sometimes she would spend entire days here.

“Just bathing?” I asked.

“No, of course not.” The smile on his face revealed his constant astonishment at how little I knew. It would’ve been insulting, except I was just as ignorant of the world as he suspected. Maybe more. “There are places to exercise, socialize in the gardens, or get a massage, and there are places to shop in the daytime. This one even has two libraries.”

I chuckled. “I never thought about the baths as places to read.”

“Well, she still spends most of her time in the water. My mother might be the cleanest woman ever to roam the earth.”

We all laughed, and yet a part of me wondered about that kind of life. I hadn’t been above ground for this long since I was sold to the mines, and even watching the sun from first light to sunset was a strange luxury. The idea that a person could spend an entire day doing nothing but lounging beside a pool, with nothing required of them, was completely foreign.

Crispus nudged my side. “If I can judge by your expression, you don’t seem to want a life like my mother has.”

I grinned. “Actually, I was thinking I should try it for a while, just to see how I bear the burden of wealth.”

Once we went inside, beneath an open sky we found well-tended gardens that stretched from one wall to the other. I couldn’t see Caela anywhere, but I sensed her, and picked up my pace. We walked along the corridor until I saw the entry doors.

“One side for the men, the other for the women,” Crispus said.

“Which side are we going in?” Aurelia asked.

“The men’s, of course.”

Aurelia teasingly punched his arm and he joked, “If you fight like a boy, and carry weapons like a boy, then I don’t see why you can’t learn to use the boys’ entrance.”

“No, I fight and carry weapons like a girl, and I’ll use the girls’ entrance! See you on the other side!” Then she skipped through the other doors.

Crispus and I walked through a spacious dressing area to find Aurelia already waiting on the other end. Then he pointed out the directions to each of the four baths. “The
caldarium
at the rear of the building is the hottest of them all, and most bathers begin there. Then the tepidarium is in front of it. Maybe your griffin would’ve gone there.”

I shrugged, hoping not. Crispus’s tepidarium had been so perfectly comfortable, I’d never have left if women hadn’t been coming to bathe. If Caela was in this one, I’d have no easier time getting her out.

“She wouldn’t want the
frigidarium
, it’s too cold.” Crispus shivered to make his point and Aurelia giggled and poked his arm, which I didn’t think was particularly funny at all. “But I think she’ll be in the
natatio
,” he added. “It’s for open-air swimming, and your griffin would like that best.”

We entered from the dressing room, but even before we did, I recognized the sound of Caela’s breathing, though it seemed raspier than the breaths I had heard in Caesar’s cave.

I held up one hand. “Let me go in alone. If she’s injured, she might be calm and easy to manage, but she also might want to fight. Stay back until we know for sure.”

“We rode in the caravan into Rome,” Aurelia said. “She knows me already.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean she likes you.” My smile was mischievous. “Don’t feel bad. I’m not even sure she likes me.”

Once inside, I spotted Caela in the far corner, nestled behind two large columns. I called her name, and saw one of her long, triangular ears perk up, but she didn’t raise her head. Not a good sign.

Because of the large pool between us, it was necessary to walk the long way around to get to her. I went to the right, and about halfway there, noticed the nugget of gold she had taken with her from the venatio, dropped on the marble floor like cheap fill rock. If she had abandoned this so casually, then things were more serious than I had thought.

I called to her again, and this time she cawed softly, painfully. She was trying to move enough to greet me, but not succeeding.

“I’m so sorry,” I said once I was closer. “I didn’t know you were hurt this bad.” I lowered the sack of meat right in front of her, but after a sniff, she showed no interest in it. So I ran my fingers across her feathers the way she had seemed to enjoy it before. Once I reached her wing, I understood how bad things were.

The spear from the bestiarius had broken the wing. Either that, or it had injured the wing, and once I had forced her to fly us out of the amphitheater, that had finished breaking it. I would’ve apologized again, but it seemed senseless at this point.

I knelt beside her and removed the bulla from around my neck to place against her wing. It glowed brighter in the moonlight, and felt heavier too. I hoped if the bulla connected me to her, it would transfer the healing powers better. Because of the seriousness of Caela’s wound, I would have to rely even more upon the Divine Star, which Radulf could detect, and it made my heart pound. But this had to be done. All that mattered was Caela.

Pushing aside the nerves that were stirring inside me, I set the bulla directly over her wound. She flinched from the pressure, but had no strength to move away. I whispered another apology for the pain it caused, but I would likely have only one opportunity and I wanted every chance to do it right.

Just as I had done earlier that day, I focused on the magic to heal. It came easier this time, wrapping itself around both Caela and me, and I thought about Radulf’s words, that magic was a muscle and using it made it stronger. Having practiced all day in the vineyards, I definitely felt the added strength, and knew I would need it now. I concentrated on the flow of magic, letting it fill every pore in me, giving it more life with every breath I drew in, and pushing it deeper into my core with every exhale.

When it had built up inside me, I willed it to move from my hand, through the bulla, and into Caela’s wing. If it healed the infection in my arm, it could heal her as well. I only needed enough strength to outlast her injury.

Caela trilled nervously as she felt the magic, and even shuffled a bit, but my hand stayed in its place. With my other, I stroked her neck, hoping to keep her calm.