Mark of the Thief (8 page)

“That’s the
Cloaca Maxima
,” Felix said when I pointed it out to him. “Rome brings in new water from all over the land on great aqueducts above our heads, and then sends the old water out again in the sewers beneath our feet.”

The very notion of sewers running below ground was amazing. One of my few memories from Gaul was having sewage accidentally tossed on me while walking down a road. I couldn’t imagine a place where water freely came and went, where thirst wasn’t a daily problem.

As Rome came into view, my eyes fixed upon the aqueducts, large enough that I doubted anyone but the gods could have built them. Their massive arches towered over tall brick buildings that served as homes, shops, and majestic public forums. Shoddier ones were constructed of wood, many of which had burn scars on them, and I wondered what would happen to this city if a fire ever raged out of control.

Around us, the streets bustled with people and carts and wagons, everyone with someplace to go and a job to do. I’d never seen so many people in my life. I had no idea that so many people even existed.

As we came closer to the center of Rome, the buildings grew finer and so grand they stole my breath away. Each one seemed like a palace, lining the streets with white marble walls and columns, or thick, square-cut granite, all of them trimmed with gold, silver, or copper. These were the very materials I had mined for the last five years, which meant that in some way, I had been part of building Rome all this time, and never known it.

“Is this Elysium?” I whispered to Felix, for it seemed impossible that so much beauty could exist anywhere but in the afterlife.

Felix laughed. “No, my boy. You see this place with your living eyes. It was built over hundreds of years and only grows finer. A million people live in this city, all of them engaged in the promise of what it means to be Roman. You are Roman now as well. You are part of this promise.”

My eyes widened as we rounded another corner and a building rose from the horizon, greater than anything I’d seen before in my life.

“It’s stood there for two hundred years and will likely stand for eternity,” Felix whispered. “We call it the Flavian Amphitheater.”

I already knew the name from the men in the mines, but their description wasn’t nearly magnificent enough.

The amphitheater stood four levels tall, higher than any structure I’d ever seen. The bottom three levels were a series of grand arches. The public could come and go through any of them on the ground level, but the arches along the two levels above that were only frames to display marble statues of the gods and the images of emperors who thought they should be immortalized too. The panels of the top tier alternated between bronze shields and rectangular windows. It was breathtaking, in every sense of the word.

As we drew closer to the amphitheater, I also saw a colossal bronze statue planted in front, as tall as twenty grown men. My mouth fell open just to gaze at it.

Felix laughed. “That’s Emperor Nero, may he rot in peace. He nearly destroyed the empire during his reign, and then built that statue to celebrate himself for it. It took twenty-four elephants to drag that statue here after Nero’s death.”

I chuckled at the spectacle that must’ve been, but then fell silent as I continued to soak in the sights as quickly as we passed them.

Finally, we stopped right in front of the amphitheater. Felix looked over at me. “Well, Nic, what do you think?”

I only smiled back at him. Whatever my opinion of Rome had been before, I knew that I had just entered the greatest city in the world. A part of me felt that I had come home.

T
he city bustled around us. I would have loved to explore and discover Rome’s secrets for myself, but that was not for a slave to do. Instead, once we reached the far side of the amphitheater, Felix immediately turned to me. “The griffin is for you alone. A ramp ahead of you leads to the hypogeum beneath the amphitheater. Her cage will be the first one you come to down there.”

“She won’t go in it,” I said.

“She’ll race in,” Felix countered. “I had the men prepare her cage with a large nugget of gold. Griffins will never leave their gold.”

Which explained why Caela had fought so hard over the gold in Caesar’s cave. She wasn’t protecting it for him; she wanted it for herself. That is, except for the bulla, which would have belonged to Caesar in a far more personal way. Once I put it on, our fight was over. Caela may have loved her gold, but she respected the bulla.

I jumped off the wagon while Felix shooed away some workers trying to open the back doors.

“Nic is the only one who will manage this animal,” he told them. “Make sure the others know.”

I didn’t miss the glares from the men, but they didn’t bother me either. I had the feeling that nobody spared much concern for the animals here. They weren’t worthy to handle Caela. She was the emperor’s gift.

Aurelia hopped off the back of the caravan as soon as she saw me. “Your bird is as dangerous as you are,” she said. “Did you hear her reaction when those soldiers tried to take you?”

I grinned. “Oh, I thought that was you making such a fuss over me!”

Her face reddened. “I’d never fuss over you.”

Despite knowing it would only make her angrier — or perhaps
because
of that fact — my smile widened. “Isn’t that what you’re doing right now?”

She grimaced and marched over to Felix to collect her pay for the trip. I watched him place a single coin into her hand. She started to argue back, saying something about needing to feed others too, but he said if she didn’t leave, he’d hire someone else next time. She gave me a quick glance before walking away. A sad glance that made me wonder if I’d been wrong about her before.

When I pulled the back doors open, Caela reacted to the bright light with an angry squawk that startled me. I couldn’t blame her. If she had lived in Caesar’s cave for a long time, then I was sure that like me, she wasn’t used to so many other people and the hurry of such a vast and complicated city.

For the most part, it was an easy walk toward the amphitheater. However, there was nearly a problem when a patrician passed us on horseback. Caela reacted by flapping her wings and cawing a warning at the horse. I put myself in front of her body to keep her from charging at the horse, whose rider spurred him away. She squawked in irritation, but let me hold her back. Caela didn’t seem bothered by anything else here, but she definitely hated that horse.

“Are you trying to get us both in trouble?” I scowled at Caela, who was still craning her head to see where the horse had gone. Then as we kept walking, I felt her beak brushing through my hair, and I smiled. Caela was preening me. Her attempt at an apology perhaps. And in all fairness, I probably did need a lot of preening.

We entered the amphitheater beneath one of its many massive arches, and then found the ramp leading to the hypogeum, which appeared to be an endless underground maze. I hesitated at first, and so did Caela. I didn’t like the idea of going beneath such a massive structure. I had seen cave-ins at the mine when nothing at all weighed down the dirt over our heads, and it seemed impossible that even the gods could keep this behemoth of a building from collapsing on top of us. I already felt the heat rising from below, like a summer day in the underworld. I was used to the constant chill of the mines, not the oven that awaited me now.

The smell assaulted me next. Wherever there is heat, there will be sweat, and most of the hundreds of men around me smelled like something that had died. Worse still were the animals in their stacked cages. I had no idea there would be so many. Where had they all come from? I wondered. Everything down here felt inhuman, including the humans. Now I was one of them.

Caela started to back up, but others were behind us now. “No,” I said, placing a hand on her side. “Remember that you’re a gift for the emperor. He only wants to see you — nothing bad will happen.”

Once we were at the bottom of the ramp, it was obvious which cage had been reserved for Caela. A massive gold nugget lay inside it, chained to the cage’s bars. I had heard Caela’s power against the metal walls of the caravan. If she wanted that gold, no chain was going to stop her.

Caela forgot everything else around her and ran into the cage. Two other men near me slammed her door shut and locked it. I followed her to the bars and told her everything would be fine, but her attention was on the gold now. She had forgotten about me.

I felt guilty for locking her in there, as if I had betrayed her somehow. But it had to be done — they would’ve killed her otherwise. Besides, once the emperor saw her, she would be treated as well as she deserved.

Felix found me sometime later sitting beside Caela’s cage. I hadn’t gone anywhere else because I wasn’t sure where to go, nor would I willingly help with the caging of these animals.

“Are you hungry?” Felix asked, and then shook his head. “From the looks of you, I don’t need to ask.”

“What about Caela?” I asked. “The griffin — will they feed her?”

Felix frowned. “Not yet. But she will have her chance to eat.”

So I got to my feet and followed Felix, who led me up the ramp and back outside. I was so grateful to be away from the fetid heat that it would’ve been enough just to stay here in the open air, but then, he had also offered me food.

As we walked, Felix gestured to a throng of people gathered on a corner of the road who were holding out sacks of coins and yelling at one another. Felix asked if I knew what they were doing, but I only shrugged.

“Setting up their bets for the games,” he said. “Mostly on which gladiator they expect to win. By the end of the day’s events, some wealthy men will have lost everything as a lucky plebian walks away with his toga and his home.”

I squinted into the sun to look at them. “It looks like a mob.”

“It
is
a mob,” he said, then stopped and looked down at me. “All of Rome is a mob. The emperor and his senators prance about as rulers do, but they know how fragile Rome really is. Without the Praetors, it would’ve collapsed already.”

“Praetors?” I asked.

Felix motioned around us. “They’re the ones who really run this empire. The Praetors are our judges, governors, and administrators. They provide bread for the bellies and distraction with the games. But that’s only their public face. In private, they are —” He stopped, as if he couldn’t force out the rest of his words.

“Are what?” I asked.

“They are dangerous!” He drew in a sharp breath. “But Rome needs them. Without the Praetors, the mob becomes … a mob.”

I thought about Radulf’s claim back at the mines, that he would crush the empire in his fist. Were the Praetors part of his plan? I wondered.

We walked in silence until Felix pointed to a wide hill in front of us. “Do you know the name of that place?”

I shrugged, but held my tongue. How would I possibly know that?

“It’s Palatine Hill, the center of the seven hills of Rome. The emperor has his palace there, but that’s not why I’m showing it to you. That, my friend, is the most sacred place in Rome. Do you know why?”

I figured it had something to do with the gods, because as far as I could tell, everything did in the Roman Empire. But I knew nothing else.

“A thousand years ago, the twin sons of the god Mars, Romulus and Remus, decided to form a new city on this very spot. Romulus stood on Palatine Hill. Remus stood on Aventine Hill, behind it. Whichever twin saw the first bird would know he was the rightful king.”

I pictured Caela in my mind. More perfect than any bird of the skies, or animal of the land.

“As the story goes, Remus saw the first bird,” Felix continued. “But immediately after, Romulus saw a flock of ten birds. Which was the greater sign? Each brother claimed the right to the throne. As Remus and Romulus fought for control of the land, Romulus killed his brother, then founded the city of Rome on that spot.” Felix eyed me sideways. “Before you can understand Rome, you must understand where we began. We are a product of our history of violence, betrayal, and blood.”

I was still thinking of Caela, the way I had abandoned her in that cage. “I know about the execution of criminals at the games, and the gladiators who battle one another,” I said warily. “I know those animals must be sent into the amphitheater as part of the battles, but what will happen to the griffin? Surely she is not part of the venatio. She is a gift to the emperor, right?”

Felix drew in a breath and released it with a sigh. “In two days, the emperor will be watching the games. Then he will see who is stronger, his mighty gladiators or the griffin, animal of the gods.”

I closed my eyes and tried to absorb the horror I felt. The venatio was a hunt — Felix had told me that, but I had never thought it included Caela. Inexperienced and too eager to please, I had just led Caela into a cage to await her turn to die. I had only one friend left in this world, and with that betrayal, I was already becoming a part of Rome.