burning sands he’d sought to protect her life with his own. But in the end, Mia had been the one who saved him, and the other Falcons of Remus besides, hatching a plan that not only saw her avenged against the men who’d destroyed her familia but also freed her fellow gladiatii from their servitude.
Sid’s cheek still itched from his visit to Whitekeep’s Iron Collegium four turns back, where he and the other Falcons had handed over the redsheets provided to them by the slaver Teardrinker. The wizened old arkemist in the hall had poured over the chartum liberii for an insufferable age, and Butcher looked close to shitting his britches. But Teardrinker had owed a lifedebt to Mia Corvere, and true to her word, the slaver’s papers held up under inspection.
Sid and the others had each taken their turn under the arkemist’s hands, and after some swift agony, the former legionary and gladiatii found his cheek free of a slave brand for the first time in six long years.*
Three nevernights of debauched celebrations had ensued, and using some of the coin Old Mercurio had provided them, the former Falcons of Remus proceeded to get shitface drunk. Sidonius’s last memory of the bender was of a smokeden somewhere in Whitekeep’s brothel district, where he’d buried his face between a very fine and very expensive pair of breasts and declared he’d not emerge again until Aa himself came down and dragged him loose, while Butcher charged around the common room buck naked carrying as many sweetgirls under his arms as he could manage.†
Sid did not, under any circumstances, remember a discussion about buying a theater. So, on the fourth turn since acquiring their freedom, when Wavewaker woke him with an excited shake sometime after noonbells and Sid had reluctantly pried the breasts off his face, he was rather surprised to discover he had become part owner of a crooked pile of kindling by the Whitekeep docks known as the Odeum.
He was not pleased.
“We can get some carpenters in by midweek,” Wavewaker was saying, his voice near trembling with excitement. “Get the stage patched up, some new doors, she’ll be good as new. Then we put the word out for actors. I’ll direct, Sid and ’Singer, you can work the front, Butcher has a face for backstage. Felix and Albanus can…”
The big man paused, scratching at his thick saltlocks.
“Where are Felix and Albanus, anyways?”
“Felix went home to his ma,” called a still-very-drunk Bryn from the upper gallery.
“And Albanus seemed sweet on little Belle who drove us here.” Bladesinger rubbed the vicious scar on her swordarm, earned during the venatus in this very city two months back. “I don’t remember him getting out of the wagon, now I think of it…”
“Well, they know where to find us,” Wavewaker grinned, raising his booming baritone to the rooftops. “The grandest theater the city of Whitekeep shall ever see!”
Bryn gave a drunken cheer from the gallery, dropped her half-full bottle of goldwine, hiccupped a curse, and fell backward onto her arse.
“M’allright!” she called.
Sidonius put his head in his hands, sank to his haunches, and sighed.
“Fuck me.”
“I know it might seem ill-advised,” Bladesinger said gently. “But you know it was always Wavewaker’s dream to run a theater. Look at him, Sid.” The woman nodded at the big Dweymeri, who was striding the stage and muttering a soliloquy under his breath. “Happy as a pig in shit.”
“M’all—hic—right…,” Bryn called again, in case anyone was listening.
Sid dragged his hand over his stubbled scalp. “How much coin do we have left?”
“A hundred or so,”’Singer shrugged.
“Is that it?” Sidonius moaned.
“It was a very expensive pair of tits you bought yourself, Sid.”
“Fuck off, don’t you blame this on me,” the Itreyan growled. “Six years on the sands, I deserved some cunny after that. I’m not the one who just blew a damned fortune on a decrepit armpit of a theater!”
Bladesinger winced a little. “Technically, you are.”
The former gladiatii waved the bill of sale between them, and under the wine, ale, and other less-identifiable stains, Sid could make out a magnificently drunken scrawl that might have passed for his signature.
“Well, one-fifth of a fortune, anyway.”
“Fuck meeeeeeeee.”
“I know just the play we’ll put on first, too,” Wavewaker was saying. “Triumph of the Gladiatii.”
“’Waker, will you shut the fuck up!” Sid roared.
“I can’t feel my—hic—feet!” Bryn called.
Butcher rose up from the broken pews in the back row, screwed up his dropped-pie face, and looked about with bleary eyes.