greet her. Their beards were long and knotted, their eyes hungry, their grins bent with suggestions that made Halcyon’s heart beat cold.
“Welcome to the quarry,” the biggest of them crooned at her. He was missing a front tooth, and his face was weathered from days squinting against the sun. “Although it is difficult to imagine you taking a life. Who did you kill, my sweet?”
Halcyon sat up from her cot slowly, her back still tender. She studied him, knowing he was strong. Most men who worked in the quarry were. Brute strength did not intimidate her; she had beaten plenty of men his size before. But she had also never felt such nagging pain in her body; everything felt arduous. Even something as simple as rising to her feet.
This was also her first time being approached by men such as him. In the hoplite camp, Straton had uprooted this festerous behavior in his legion. Rape and sexual misconduct were rare, because the commander considered them both intolerable, unforgiveable. His punishments for such crimes were harsh. Halcyon had always felt safe in the camp, among her fellow warriors.
“Did they cut out your tongue, then?” the missing-toothed man continued, taking a step into her cell.
Halcyon’s fingers curled. Her fists were ready, her breaths lengthening. She was about to take out his other front tooth when there was a banging on her cell door.
“Out, all of you,” a guard ordered. “To the mess hall.”
The three convicts slunk away, their eyes still consumed with Halcyon. She waited until they were out of sight, the guard impatiently motioning for her to exit her cell.
“Move along,” he said, prodding her back with his club.
She winced and followed the winding corridor. The cells were underground and hewn from stone. It was cold and dimly lit, the prison seeming to curl like a serpent. But the mess hall was up, toward the light, and Halcyon could smell the gruel and fresh air as she stepped into a wide chamber set with long tables and benches. There was a food line, and Halcyon hesitantly approached it. Every eye hooked to her; she felt crushed beneath the weight of those gazes.
Her hope of reuniting with Uncle Ozias vanished as she searched the faces around her. None of them she recognized. Although perhaps she might still cross paths with her uncle. There had to be hundreds of men here. She let that hope bloom; it kept her standing and moving and breathing.
The first three weeks, Halcyon told herself. The first three weeks will be the hardest.
And she was twelve years old again, standing in the camp of Abacus, shoulder to shoulder with other first-year trainees. The commander had paced before their perfect line and told them the first twenty-one days would be the hardest. They would be homesick; they would be exhausted; they would only be eating gruel and vegetables and water; they would vomit after training; their muscles would be relentlessly sore; they would want to quit; they would feel alone and bereft; they would hate him; they would respect him; they would wonder why they’d ever agreed to come in the first place; they could, likewise, leave at any time they felt like giving up.
But if they could make it to day twenty-two, he had said, then they would last in the Bronze Legion.
Day twenty-two, day twenty-two, she silently chanted, moving along the line.
A guard was doling out the gruel from a large iron pot. He paused to stare at Halcyon when it was her turn, his eyes raking down her body, and he purposefully gave her a smaller portion.
She accepted the gruel, but she was starting to realize how murder felt in one’s pulse. The pounding chorus of it. Five men. Five men did she want to kill here, and it had only been a few hours since she had arrived.
“Let me help you with that,” yet another man said as he suggestively bumped into her, snatching her bowl of gruel.
Six men, then. Halcyon stared at him, and he only smiled and laughed at her.
“That belongs to me,” she said calmly. “Give it back.”
“Oh, did you hear that, my friends?” he said, turning to glance across the room. “Mistress No-Hair is already giving orders, and she has not even proved her salt in the quarry yet.” He chuckled and brought his face close to hers. Beneath the grime and dust and facial hair, he was not much older than her. But the hatred burned in him like a