The trainer gives me a blank look.“My guess is that he couldn’t handle the training here.”
“And didn’t tell anyone?”I say, not quite believing it.
“If he’s that embarrassed, of course he’d leave like that.It might not be like the old days, where the failures would be sold at market, but it’s still a shameful thing.”
He makes it sound as though he might prefer it if he could still get rid of the failures that way.I realize I’m not going to get anything more from him.
This isn’t going as well as I’d hoped.No one here seems to know anything, or they simply assume that the fighters who’ve left so suddenly did so because they couldn’t cope with being a gladiator.It doesn’t quite fit, though.People might leave, certainly, but why just disappear?
I consider asking more of the trainers, but then I spot someone who might be able to give me better answers, working out at one of the practice posts.The dark-haired young man is stripped to the waist.He's lithe and slender, moving in ways that are hard to keep track of, using his telekinetic gifts to let him flip and twist in impossible ways as he wields an iron staff that seems too heavy for him.
“Sorrel!”I call out, and he stops, mid-swing, bringing the heavy metal of his staff to a halt without any consideration for the momentum of the blow.
He looks around at me, then comes over.The last I saw of him, he was being released from the city’s prison, wrongly imprisoned by Domitian for giving away part of his plans.Sorrel looks at me with a note of suspicion, as if afraid that I might be about to get him into trouble again.
“Lyra,” he says.He hesitates.“You’re here because of the disappearances, aren’t you?”
I nod.“I’m trying to work out what’s going on.If fighters are simply going missing, it’s a problem, Sorrel.Have you heard anything about it?”
Sorrel looks reluctant to say anything.“I don’t want to get involved.”
“Please, Sorrel,” I say.
“Last time, I got caught up in an attempted revolution.I was imprisoned.I was beaten,” Sorrel says.
I put a hand on his arm.“I know, and I’m sorry,” I say.“But that also means you know what it’s like for someone to simply be snatched away.Doesn’t it bother you that people are disappearing?”
“Of course it does,” Sorrel says.“But… all right.I can tell you something, at least.You know before, I told you that death matches were starting again in the city?”
I nod.“I assumed that stopped when Domitian and his cronies fell.”
Sorrel shakes his head.“It got rid of some of the people at the top, but the demand was still there.The rumors are still around, of fights with higher stakes and better rewards.I assume people have gone to those.”
"And then leaving without a trace?"I ask.
“I don’t know,” Sorrel says.“Maybe they didn’t want anyone to know about the fights.”
Or maybe something happened to them.Maybe they lost, and died.I don’t know, but I feel as though there’s more to these fights than Sorrel is suggesting.I need to find them.
CHAPTER THREE
"I'm telling you, Lyra, I don't know anything about death fights," Marcus says when I ask him in his offices at the palace.
“You did before,” I point out.
Marcus shakes his head.“Only because I was so close to Domitian.Now he’s imprisoned and it’s clear we were never on the same side, people aren’t telling me the same things.”
I’m disappointed.I was hoping Marcus might have information that could lead me to answers.
“Are you sure about all this?”Marcus asks.“One piece of information from a gladiator, and now you want to go looking for secret death fights?”
“If they’re out there, we need to find them,” I say.“We need to put a stop to them.”
“I understand how important this is,” Marcus says.He reaches out to take my hands.“But I’m not sure how you’re going to find these fights.”
“I’ll think of something,” I assure him.
I head back to my rooms, knowing what I need to do.I need to find Alaric.His underground movement is likely to know all about these new fights.The trouble is that I have almost as little information on where he is as on the fights themselves.
