as she told him the story. “Lucius is blackmailing the Thirty-Seventh Legion’s legatus, and he ordered him to shove me into the drain so my body wouldn’t be found and it would look like I’d made good on my attempt to escape.”
“Legatus Marcus of the Thirty-Seventh?”
She nodded and Bait spit into the sand. “You know him?” she asked.
“Aye. I know him.”
Lydia’s skin felt like ants were marching across it, her mouth turning sour as she listened to Bait tell her everything that happened in her absence, though there was one detail that captured all of her attention. “Marcus has Teriana?”
Bait’s eyes were inky waves as he nodded. “Keeps her with him at all times. In his own gods-damned tent. And Lydia … He’s as clever as they say.”
She knew. But gods, all she could think of was that Teriana was the prisoner of a young man entirely under the control of Lucius. “Has he hurt her?”
Bait shook his head. “I saw her a few nights ago, and she was fine. But then again, she hasn’t given him reason to harm her. Yet.”
For several painful moments, neither of them spoke, Lydia coming to terms with the fact that Teriana was imprisoned by a man who had a secret he was willing to murder to protect. A secret that Lucius knew and had no compunctions against exploiting.
Lifting her head, she said, “Whatever Lucius is blackmailing Marcus with has something to do with his family—his real family, not the legion. He said he knew me, which—”
“Makes sense,” Bait interrupted, “because he’s a Domitius.”
Domitius? Lydia stared at Bait in shock. The head of that family was not only her neighbor; he was the wealthiest man in the Empire. She’d grown up with Cordelia and Gaius and … “Gods, Bait. Senator Domitius had a second son named Marcus that went to the legions. It’s him.”
He was the one she’d played with in her father’s library when they were small children. Except something about that truth jarred with her memory. Lydia rubbed her temples, trying to figure it out, but it had been so long ago.…
Bait’s eyes had shifted into the brilliant blue waves of excitement. “Do you know what Cassius has against him? We could use it. Force Marcus to give her back to us.”
“He didn’t say. It could be anything. The Domitius family has their fingers in politics and business across the entire Empire.”
They sat in silence; then Lydia finally said, “We have to rescue Teriana. We can’t leave her with him.”
Bait rested his forehead against his knees, then in one sudden move slammed his fist against the sand. “She doesn’t want to be rescued.”
“But…”
“If she escapes, Tesya and the other Maarin prisoners will suffer the consequences,” he said. “She thinks she can sabotage them. That’s why I’m here. I heard the Gamdeshian fleet was on its way to assist Mudamora, so Magnius and I took a xenthier stem north in hopes of sending them back. But…” He lifted a hand, gesturing at the harbor full of burned-out wrecks.
It was no coincidence that the Cel had set their eyes on the West right as the army of the Seventh had marched to war. Everyone believed the Gamdeshian fleet had been burned to prevent Mudaire from being evacuated, but with this news from Bait … Lydia wondered if the Corrupter had much more far-reaching plans. From the look on Bait’s face, he was thinking the same.
“Lydia, if the legions can find land routes to and from the Empire, the West is going to be pinioned between two armies.”
And the legions would find the xenthier paths; it was only a matter of time. The Senate would pay desperate men and women by the hundreds to travel through unmapped stems in the East in the hope one of them would get lucky. And the legions in Arinoquia would have the gold needed to do the same.
“What do we do?” she asked, more to herself than to her friend, because the idea of doing nothing made her sick.
Bait exhaled slowly. “Do you think I haven’t been asking that very question since the moment the Quincense was captured?”
Perhaps her going back to Celendor and implicating Lucius would be enough to prevent the horror that was to come. “Can you get me back to Celendrial?”
Both his eyebrows rose. “Do you think you can stop Cassius?”
“He broke the law,” she said. “And trying to have me murdered is the least of it. The truth might see him removed from his position