Mark of the Thief (22 page)

I asked, “So how do I get the key from Horatio?” Because I’d sooner cozy up to a skunk. Which, as I considered it, didn’t seem all too different.

Valerius wasn’t ready to share that yet. He only said, “I can find a way for both of us to succeed. But while I work on that idea, you must work on your magic.”

I grinned with anticipation at that. “It could be dangerous. You saw what happened in the amphitheater.”

“Then I will help you learn. You must do this, Nic. To save the Senate, to save the empire. And to save yourself.”

I
t was the third bargain I had made today, and all of them had been necessary. By the end of this, Rome would be safe, my magic would be strong, and Livia and I would walk away as free persons. Or I would be dead. None of it would be easy, and maybe it wasn’t even possible. But I was committed now.

Valerius put a hand on my shoulder. Instinctively, I jumped away from it, and he raised both arms to show me he wasn’t posing a threat. “I can see how tired you are, how much the bulla is weighing you down,” he said. “Sleep tonight, and we’ll talk more in the morning.”

I let him lead me from his office, but stopped in the doorway and said, “Does Radulf know Horatio supports him?”

“There are only two kinds of Romans,” Valerius said. “Those who support Radulf, and those he intends to destroy. For that reason, Radulf assumes everyone supports him.” He nodded toward the bulla on my chest. “In you, we finally have an answer to Radulf’s powers. Trust me, Nic, if I could use the magic, I would grant your freedom myself. But that bulla is useless in my hands. At least in yours, the empire has a chance.”

The way he said it, my task seemed so big. No, it
was
so big. I had proposed a plan to move mountains, when I still lacked the ability to move a fistful of dirt.

“Things will look brighter tomorrow. You need sleep.”

I needed practice. Radulf had told me that magic was a muscle, and it was true that I was feeling it more every day. But learning to control it was an entirely different matter.

“What about Aurelia?” I asked. “The girl who came with me?”

“She’ll have her own room. She will be treated as a lady here. I promise you that.”

After a moment’s hesitation, I followed him to a bedroom directly across from the atrium. Once he’d left, I examined the room more carefully. There was a table in one corner with a bowl of olives that I immediately ate, despite not being particularly hungry. An actual book lay on the table too, though the words were too difficult for me. More important, a real bed stretched along the far wall. Even before the mines, when my mother kept Livia and me in hiding from the slavers, we never had beds. For months, we traveled anywhere that seemed safe, away from Gaul, and certainly away from Rome. We slept in the woods, sheltered by trees, or in the corners of barns. If I’d ever had a real bed, I didn’t remember it. Now I walked closer and stroked the mattress. It was so thick with feathers that I wondered if it might swallow me up once I lay upon it. So I didn’t. I grabbed the light blanket from on top of the mattress, and then lay down on the hard floor, where I felt more comfortable. With my cheek on the cool concrete, I faced out the doorway, staring at the moonlight, which still poured into the atrium through the overhead window.

Radulf and I both had the Divine Star, which made me think we had the same magic. The difference was that he understood his better. Or, more accurately, understood it at all, and that gave him a huge advantage over me. On the other hand, I had the bulla, which contained magic Radulf did not have. If I learned to use its powers, Radulf would have no answer to them.

So it was up to me to figure out the magic I already had, and for that, I had to know if Valerius was right, if there was magic in me apart from the bulla.

After listening to be sure the home was quiet, I removed the bulla and set it on the mattress, then stood and concentrated on the mark of the Divine Star. As I made myself conscious of it, the tingling was so sharp that I could almost define its shape just from which parts of my shoulder had come alive.

I focused on what I felt there, letting the mark smolder like a tired fire. Then I willed it to travel down my right arm, which still bore the injury from the soldier’s arrow. I felt the magic gather around the wound, but rather than create heat, as the bulla did, it felt more like water passing over and under my skin, soothing the sting there.

But the magic wasn’t finished. It breezed down my forearm and finally collected in my fingers and palm, so much that when I tried squeezing my hand into a fist, I felt resistance from the magic. It was similar to the feeling from the bulla, but this magic was waiting for me to act, rather than trying to escape without my permission. I felt the desire to release it from my fingers, but when I did, all that came was a brief snap of air, like an exhaled breath, and then it was gone.

The disappointment tasted bitter in my mouth. A casual whistle produced more power than I had created with the whole of my concentration. There was magic in me, but it was completely useless. If the bulla gave me far too much power, then the Divine Star offered too little.

Except that Radulf’s voice slithered into my head again. “So you’re experimenting with Caesar’s mark. I felt the shift in the air, you know, such as it was. And I will use it to find you.”

“I hope you do.” My voice shook when I spoke, not from fear, but from the fierce ache his presence created. “But you’ll regret the day you find me.”

He laughed, which rattled into my bones. “I doubt that very much. You see, I won’t come to reconnect a few mossy pipes. I will come with real power that you cannot fight, even with that bulla.”

I snatched the bulla and quickly put it back around my neck. Maybe Radulf wasn’t here, and didn’t have any way of getting at the bulla right now, but maybe he was. I wouldn’t take the risk.

Radulf had only one thing more to say. “Or you could join me, Nic. Help me build a new empire, one in which your life matters. That’s what your sister wants you to do.”

“Do you have her?” I cried. I raised my hands, ready for a fight if that was what he wanted. But how was I to fight someone who wasn’t even here? And how could I pretend to have any chance of winning?

Aurelia appeared in the doorway. “Who are you talking to?” At first, I barely looked at her. Radulf’s words still thundered inside my head, confirming my worst fears about Livia, and every suspicion I had about his evil nature.

“I have her,” he said. “But for how long? Don’t fight me, Nic.”

“Nic!” Aurelia called my name, her voice now filled with more obvious concern. I turned to her and drew in a breath of surprise. Aurelia had been given a long tunic made of fine linen, and her hair was freshly washed and fell in loose waves over her shoulders. She cleaned up even better than I would’ve guessed. “You’ve gone pale,” she said. “Are you all right?”

I wasn’t. Though my breathing was beginning to slow, my heart still pounded against my chest. Radulf wasn’t there any longer, but he’d left an echo of himself behind, like the chill that lingers after a storm.

Aurelia stepped even closer and put her hands on my face. “You’re in a cold sweat. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“No,” I said, backing away. “Tell me if I can trust you. Please, make me believe that I can, because every time I try, I think of our bargain, and I remember that all you care about is the reward you’ll get from Horatio.”

“That bargain is over.” The disappointment in her tone was obvious. “While you were talking with Valerius, he had Crispus pay me six hundred denarii, as his reward for bringing you here. He said they’d help you find your sister too, so I could leave if I wanted.”

I hardly dared asked the question. “And is that what you want?”

She shrugged and even smiled a little. “I should leave. If Rome were invaded tomorrow by barbarians carrying the plague, they’d still be less of a catastrophe than you are. Anyone who comes within a mile of you must be insane.”

I grinned. “If it helps to know, I’ve always thought you were insane.”

Despite her teasing, Aurelia’s tone turned serious. “To succeed, you’ll need a lot more insane friends than just me. Until you find them, how can I help?”

“I need to learn how to use the magic. And I need to know how to fight Radulf, because it’s going to come to that.” That thought sent shudders through me.

“Then I’ll stay. I’ll teach you everything I know, at least about fighting.”

“He could bring the entire forum down upon me. Can your knife stop that?” The corner of my mouth turned up a little.

She met my challenge with a spark in her eyes. “Until you control your magic as well as I control my knife, you shouldn’t complain. Now get some rest. It’ll be a big day tomorrow.” She glanced at the blanket I had used, still in a heap on the floor, and the undisturbed bed beside me. Her brows pressed together. “I hope you’re not sleeping on the floor.”

“Of course not.” Then I shrugged. “Maybe I was.”

She picked up the blanket and handed it to me. “That isn’t your life anymore. The world will judge you based on what you think of yourself. If you want to fight Radulf as an equal, then you had better think of yourself that way.”

“Do you think of us as equals?” I asked her.

“You and Radulf? He’s a general —”

“No. You and me.”

“Oh.” Aurelia’s eyes darted to the side, and her left hand was clenching her dress too tightly. “I, um —”

That was more than enough of an answer. I lay down on the bed, turning away from her. “Good night, Aurelia.”

She said my name, but I didn’t answer. Nearly a minute of silence passed before her footsteps padded out.

T
he following morning, Valerius had plans for me before I began any training. He sent a servant to scrub me, trim my hair, and, in his words, try to make me look like a “presentable Roman.” I wasn’t sure what that meant, but the haircut was definitely necessary, and the bath was a luxury beyond any I’d ever imagined possible. I had never had a bath before, but I was given the entire area of the senator’s tepidarium to use. It filled almost one whole room, with inlaid patterns of tile on the floor and walls, and marble seats built into the sides for people who wished to visit while they bathed. I stayed in it until my skin wrinkled, and even then I might never have left, except the servant told me the women of the household may be using the baths soon. That hurried me out.

Afterward, I was given a tunic almost as fine as Crispus’s toga. I ran my fingers along the smooth creases of neatly woven fabric, tracing the blue edging, and noting how odd it was to wear something that didn’t scratch my skin.

Crispus came in afterward, with a pair of sandals in his hands. Even after he held them out, it still took a moment to realize they were for me.

At first, I only stared, unsure of what to say or do. “I won’t know how to walk in them,” I finally said.

Crispus handed them to his servant who fit them on my feet and began lacing them up my calves. “You’ll learn,” Crispus said. “If you want to be free, then you must walk in the shoes of a free man.”

When the first sandal was finished, I wiggled my foot and smiled. “It feels so different.”

Crispus shrugged. “The leather will relax after a while.”

“No,” I quickly added. “Different is a good thing. Different is an amazing thing.” I stood and tested both sandals on the floor. It was odd to feel something beneath my bare foot other than rocks or sand. I looked over at Crispus. “Thank you.” The words weren’t nearly enough, but they were all I had.

After that, the servant set me in front of a polished brass mirror so I could see my reflection. I’d seen pieces of myself at times, my face in the waters of a mud pond following a rainstorm, or the corner of my eye reflected on a metal jar, but never so much of me all at once. I stared at my own image. With the way they had cleaned me up, I didn’t look like a slave, nor did I feel like one. For the first time in my life, I felt that I deserved my name. I
was
Nicolas Calva.

Which inevitably brought my thoughts back to the way last night had ended with Aurelia. I wondered how she would respond to seeing me this way. Probably it wouldn’t matter at all. Her opinion of me had nothing to do with outer appearances. Whatever I wore, she would always see me as less than her.