Daughters of Rome (39 page)

Derricus pulls even, shouting something, but Diana never looks at him. All she can see are the four red noses stretched ahead of her, the smooth red bands of rein spinning back into her blistered hands, which are now breaking open inside her gauntlets. Her waist is a circle of pain from the knotted reins, the horses are cutting her in half and her arms are on fire holding them, but she’s laughing behind her helmet as she at last gives the Anemoi their heads.

The Blues keep up for a moment, and Diana can see Derricus’s startled black hole of a mouth.
Does he know who I am now?
Maybe he does, but then the first turn comes and Boreas digs savagely into it and drags the others with him, and as they pull onto the straightaway they settle in next to the
spina
because the Blues are gone and it’s just the Reds in front, the Reds all the way to the finish, and nothing will ever catch them. Diana knows she should pull them up, try to conserve their speed—they keep running like this, they won’t be fit to race again for months. But they have the bits in their teeth; she couldn’t stop them even if she wanted to. And she doesn’t want to. She wants them to run forever, to run the Blues into a ruined oblivion. She steers them into the final turn, neat and tight against the
spina
as Llyn taught her, and then she leans forward and snaps the reins against their backs. Boreas stumbles, tiring, but fleet Zephyrus jumps out against his harness on the outside, pulling the others along, and they streak down the final stretch all alone, four red winds flying to eternity.

The last dolphin drops. The Blues come in five long seconds after, the Greens and the Whites trailing at the end, and by that time the Reds are halfway around the track again on their victory lap. They pull Diana’s blistered hands to ribbons before she can get them to walk. They keep breaking into a trot, throwing their heads up, preening, and for the first time Diana hears the screams of adulation raining down from the stands, the rose petals drifting down on her head. Red rose petals. She puts her hand out, dazed, and catches a handful as two hundred fifty thousand people scream their delight.
“Reds! Reds! Reds!”
The plebs are overflowing the stands now and flooding into the track, running after her, scooping handfuls of sand for souvenirs, stretching for a hair from Zephyrus’s tail or a chip of paint from the chariot’s axles. Hands brush at her tunic, and her ears are ringing from the shouts.
“Reds! Reds! Reds!”
The world comes slowly back into joint as she realizes it.

She’s won a race at the Circus Maximus.

 

D
IANA
pulled the chariot up at the finish line, where a mob of jubilant grooms in red tunics waited. She dropped the reins as they rushed forward to seize the bridles and realized her hands were trembling. The tug of the horses had pulled the reins so tight around her waist the knots were almost fused, and she had to cut herself free. She staggered as she stepped down from the chariot, and the world tilted dizzily overhead, but the grooms were surging around her, shouting gleefully. “Lady! Lady!” They all seemed to know she wasn’t Siculus.

She stripped off her gauntlets, seeing the huge blisters that had broken open across her hands. She was shaking all over now, not just her hands, but she staggered around the chariot to where the Anemoi were being unharnessed. They were trembling too, knees vibrating, noses drooping toward the sand. No horses should ever run the way they had just run; they tapped every reserve of strength and speed and then went deeper when she asked it. They wouldn’t be fit to race again for weeks, maybe months, but that was all right. If it was months before they were asked to lose to the Blues again, then it wasn’t too long. They won today and that was enough. They won today and they knew it, her brave four winds.

Diana couldn’t breathe inside her helmet and she flung it away, not caring about the murmur that went up when the crowd outside the Red faction saw her face and her long sweaty hair. She cradled Zephyrus’s nose against her cheek and thanked him for picking them all up in the last turn; she tugged Notus’s ears and crooned that he could have beat the sun horses across the sky; she moved Eurus’s braided forelock out of his eyes and whispered that he’d never been so sure-footed—and then finally she flung her arms around Boreas’s knotted neck and sobbed into his sweat-foamed shoulder.

“Fortuna, girl,” a voice growled, and she looked up to see Xerxes’s scowling face. “I realized it was you in the second lap. Don’t you ever get behind one of my teams again!”

“No.” She wiped her eyes, smiling radiantly.

“You’ll tell the Emperor that I had no part in this little stunt?”

“Yes.”

People were lifting her up now, carrying her toward the steps that led to the Emperor’s box, and she trailed her blistered fingertips across Boreas’s nose one last time before she let them usher her up. She caught a bare glimpse of Derricus, standing by his blood bays, and his face was tight and furious.

She barely had the strength for the steps toward the Emperor’s box. She would have crawled up on all fours like a dog if her hands hadn’t hurt as much as her legs. A bare glimpse of the Emperor in his purple robe, dim and hazy on his carved chair with a wine cup in hand, and then a whirl of silk and perfume descended on her.

“Diana, you
idiot
—”

“Juno’s mercy, what possessed you—”

“We didn’t even realize it was you until the race was over—we’d have been wrecks if we’d known—”

It was her cousins. Lollia wrung her hands, Marcella mussed her hair, Cornelia hugged her from behind, and Diana started laughing shakily. All of a sudden they were laughing with her, and she realized how long it had been since they had all laughed together. They stood there swaying, giggling like hyenas and getting smeared with Diana’s sweat as everyone gazed in disapproval, and finally Diana pushed free.

“Caesar—” Another mild bout of cackles seized her as she bowed before him. “It was all my idea, so don’t blame the Reds faction.”

Fabius Valens was staring at her. If looks could kill she’d have been dead on the tiles—but a patrician girl couldn’t be murdered in an alley like that poor Whites charioteer who had dared to win over the Blues.

“Girl,” rumbled Vitellius, “you know I passed an edict, forbidding patricians to drive?”

“I know.” She pushed her sweat-matted hair off her neck. “But the edict didn’t say anything about patrician
girls
, Caesar.”

“By Jove, I overlooked that.” The Emperor’s face split in a reluctant grin as he slapped the victory palm into her hand. “Promise me you’ll leave the racing to the professionals from now on, and I’ll forgive you.”

“Oh, I promise,” Diana beamed, and the cousins were there to catch her when her legs gave out.

“Your hands,” Cornelia mourned. “They’re in absolute shreds—”

“You should have seen the look on Tullia’s face,” Marcella crowed. “The Emperor might forgive you, but she never will!”

Diana didn’t hear them. She just stared down at the branch in her hand. A simple cutting of palm, curling a little at the edges. By tomorrow it would be a dried husk, lighter than air. Her palm, for her first and only race.

“Come on, girl.” Vitellius swung his bulk up out of his chair. “I’ve a mind to go down to the stables. Only so much perfume a man can take before he wants a sniff of good honest hay. What did you name those horses of yours?”

“After the four winds, Caesar.” Hurting everywhere, still clutching her palm, Diana staggered after the Emperor. Derricus fell in behind her, still unsmiling, and in this giddy mood she couldn’t hate him. She waved everyone into the Reds faction stables, where an impromptu party had clearly broken out among the grooms. They hid the wine jugs when the Emperor and his party trailed in, but no one could hide their grins.

“Ah, very nice.” Vitellius paused in appreciation before the Anemoi, unharnessed now and being curried. Rose petals still caught here and there in their manes, but the grinning grooms left those alone. “From what stud?”

“From the stables of Llyn ap Caradoc.” Diana rattled off the lineage of each horse, heaving up a bucket for Eurus. The horses were cool enough to drink now without cramping, and Eurus slurped the whole bucket down in a few swallows. She laughed and filled another, moving to Notus, who slobbered on her shoulder as he drank.

“Yes, I like them.” Vitellius ran a hand down Zephyrus’s neck. All horses loved Vitellius; even bad-tempered Boreas nuzzled at the Emperor’s rough horseman’s hands. Behind Vitellius, his German officers swaggered and placed bets while the senators stood around gingerly pretending they didn’t mind getting manure on their sandals. “Let’s see what they’ll do with a real driver, eh? Not that you didn’t drive a decent race today, girl, but you know it was half luck.”

“Oh, I know.” Diana was radiant.

“Good.” Vitellius turned to Xerxes, who stood beaming with a wine cup next to the unharnessed chariot. “See that these horses get turned over to the Blues faction.”

“What?” Diana turned back from giving Boreas his drink, swinging an empty bucket from one torn hand, still smiling.

“Can’t wait to see what they do for Derricus!” the Emperor said in high good humor, and he chucked Diana’s chin hard enough to snap her head back. “A good race, girl. What a wicked one you are!” He chuckled as he moved away, a little glint showing hard in his eye, and his entourage melted with him. Behind him silence rippled outward in little frozen waves. The grooms stood uncertainly, wine jugs in hand, and Xerxes looked like he’d been turned to stone. Derricus leaned against the stable wall, arms folded across his chest, smirking. Only the horses moved, still drinking thirstily.

Finally, Xerxes spoke. “Aulus,” he called to one of the grooms through lips that barely moved. “Lead these horses over to the Blues faction stables.”

“No!” Diana lurched in front of Boreas. “You can’t do that—no one can do that, they belong to
us
—”

“He’s the Emperor. He can do what he likes.” Xerxes rounded on her, snarling. “And if you hadn’t interfered, Lady—”

But his voice trailed away. Word had already spread somehow to the Blues; their faction director was waddling down to see for himself, all smiles. “Well,” he beamed, running a hand over Boreas’s haunch.

Someone—she didn’t know who—latched a hand onto Diana’s elbow before she leaped forward and tried to kill him.

Derricus looked at the victory palm in Diana’s hand, and he laughed.

Diana watched in numb misery as one by one, her four winds were draped in blue horse blankets and led away.

 

S
HE
didn’t know how she got to Llyn’s villa. A hired litter maybe, or a wagon, or maybe she ran the whole way. She just found herself stumbling up the slope, shivering violently. Her blistered fingers throbbed, her waist was a belt of pain from the knotted reins, her legs barely worked anymore, but all she could feel was the frozen place inside.

Llyn was striding out of the stables with a broken bridle, unknotting the stitching on the reins, when he saw her. He paused. “Lady?”

Diana stopped, shivering in great waves. She realized she was still clutching her victory palm.

“Lady?” Llyn came another step closer, and she blundered forward into his broad chest.

“My horses,” she mumbled against his rough tunic, and the frozen place finally cracked inside her. “They took my
horses
.”

“They took my everything,” said Llyn.

He stood like a pillar, holding her as Diana finally began to weep.

IS
it true the horses lifted off the ground and flew in the last lap?”

“No.” Cornelia smiled. “Well, not quite. Almost. I can see how
that
rumor got started—they were a full quarter lap ahead when they crossed the line. A new record for the Circus Maximus, I believe.”

“I’d have liked to see that.” Drusus looked envious for a moment, but he looked down at Cornelia’s head in the crook of his shoulder and grinned. “Is it true your cousin was glowing silver when she stepped down from the chariot?”

“Glowing
silver
? How on earth—”

“From the divine blessing of Diana the Huntress,” Drusus intoned solemnly. “It’s well known around the Forum.”

“Juno’s mercy, my cousin does not glow. As a matter of fact, she had so much dust on her face after that race that she looked like a Nubian, and her hair was plastered flat with sweat, and she could hardly stand. But she was grinning like a fiend.” Cornelia looked up at the ceiling, considering. “You know, I think the family might just have to give up on the idea of getting her married? Men look at Diana, and all they see is her looks. But the real Diana is the dirty grinning fiend who came staggering out of that chariot.”