Page 38 of Once a Villain (Only a Monster #3)
of these animals being used for the crowd’s entertainment up above.
And then she felt even sicker as the next stalls came into view. The gladiators were chained, just like the animals had been, their legs shackled to metal posts driven into the straw-covered floor.
Once they’re chosen, they’re prisoners , Jamie had told them. He’d read up on gladiators in the library. They’re kept in pens—only allowed out to train and fight and eat.
Carvel wrenched open one of the doors. “Kneel to your patron!” he ordered the man inside. Joan had thought Carvel was big,
but this man was a mountain, bald with powerful shoulders and no neck. He glared at Aaron for a long moment before reluctantly
sinking to his knees.
“We call him the Bull,” Carvel said to Aaron. “Strong shoulders, excellent reflexes. He’ll bring honor to the Olivers in the
arena today.”
“He’s in excellent condition,” Aaron said coolly to Carvel. “You’re to be commended.”
The words faded into background noise. Nick’s counterpart had lived like this. He’d been shackled in one of these stalls.
Then he’d been forced to fight for his life over and over in front of baying crowds.
Beside her, Nick was furious—and trying to conceal it. Trying not to draw attention. Joan touched his hand, and Nick’s fingers
closed over hers in response. Just for a moment. He breathed in, and some of his rage banked. He met her eyes, and that seemed
to calm him even more.
Joan became aware then of strange sounds in the next chamber: groans and thuds and grunts. If she hadn’t known better, she’d
have assumed they were animals. But she did know better. She knew that room was full of wagons.
“Can I see—” Aaron pointed to the cave-like chamber.
“Of course.” Carvel led them through.
No, not wagons, Joan corrected herself now. They were cages on wheels, built for display, with winged lions carved from wood
decorating the roof of each cage.
Each was crammed with people, so full that they were all forced to stand. Joan counted about twenty people in each cage, dressed
in ordinary clothes.
“Let us out!” someone begged Joan and the others. The nearest cage shook as its occupants tried to tip it over. “You can’t
do this!”
A guard strolled by then, striking hard at the iron bars with a baton. Joan flinched at the crack of bone and a scream—he’d
broken fingers.
“They emptied the prisons for the spectacle today,” Carvel said. “A thousand condemned in two dozen carts. Quite the logistical
nightmare, believe me.”
Joan caught Ruth’s eye, and Ruth nodded slightly. Time for a distraction. And maybe a chance for some of the prisoners to
run.
Joan made herself turn back to Carvel. “The gladiators seem healthy,” she said. She walked back toward the gladiator chamber
to draw attention from Ruth. “What have you been feeding them?”
Most people they’d encountered in this world had been irritated when Joan spoke in Aaron’s company.
Carvel seemed pleased by her interest, though. “Oh, the usual. Mashed beans. Stews.” He produced a sheet of paper from his
jacket pocket. “The Oliver gladiators will be in rounds two and three.” He smoothed the paper, revealing a program for the
day.
JUBILEE SPECTACULAR
i. A spectacle of beasts on land and at sea
Damnatio ad bestias, damnatio ad gladium
Beasts versus criminals and gladiators
ii. A reenactment of the overthrow of humanity
Damnatio ad gladium
Gladiators versus criminals
iii. A battle of families
Gladiators versus gladiators
iv. A tribute to Queen Eleanor, Semper Regina
Ruth reappeared. Behind her, something crashed to the ground. Those locks were hard to pick , Ruth said to Joan, using Hunt hand signals. From the sound of people running, she’d done it, though. People were escaping
some of the cages.
“What the hell!” Carvel turned as guards ran to the wagon chamber. “I must deal with this,” he said to Aaron apologetically.
“Shall I have someone escort you to your seat?”
“I can find my own way,” Aaron said.
They waited an excruciating minute for the chaos to peak. Joan looked at Aaron while they waited.
They’d always planned for him to split from them at this point. He hadn’t wanted to separate, but the Olivers had a whole
wing of seats up above, and Aaron’s absence would be noted if he wasn’t there. They couldn’t do anything to tip Eleanor off
today.
Aaron looked torn as he mouthed Be safe to them. Nick nodded, and Joan mouthed back, You too .
And then Jamie gave them all the nod to move, and they darted after him.
They hurried up passage after passage, trusting Jamie’s perfect memory of the labyrinthine map. He guided them on little-used
paths, avoiding guards and gladiator trainers. The route gradually rose uphill until they reached a chamber with a packed-dirt
floor that sat alongside the arena at ground level. Slotted openings showed the sand-covered battleground, so close that Joan
could have reached through and taken a handful of sand.
Outside, the stadium was filling. People wore roses in their hair and waved flags with family emblems. The atmosphere was
festive, with music playing over a loudspeaker, the bass notes thrumming, and horns sounding in the crowd. Huge banners hung
under the stands, one for each of the monster families.
“Is Aaron in place?” Nick asked.
Joan strained, trying to get a glimpse of him. The Oliver mermaid was directly opposite them, the banner waving in the breeze:
gold against green. She spotted the ripple of interest first, flowing through the stand. And there was Aaron, walking down the stairs in the wake of that interest, his blond hair unmistakable. He sat in the front row of
the Oliver section, in the seat of honor.
His counterpart must have sat in the same seat—or maybe the one beside it, back when Edmund had been the head of family. How
many times had he seen Nick’s counterpart in the arena, forced to fight and kill?
Beside her, Nick had shifted his gaze from Aaron and was watching the stands fill with grim revulsion. Joan imagined his counterpart looking up from the arena in the same way. He’d been an Oliver gladiator himself. Was that how he and Aaron had
met in this timeline?
She pictured Aaron strolling down to the gladiator stalls, listening to Carvel point out Nick’s features, just as he’d described
the Bull. Strong thighs and shoulders. Good reflexes. He’ll bring honor to the Olivers.
“All right,” Jamie said, breaking through her thoughts. “Let’s do this.” He knelt quickly and used a pencil to dig a dot in
the packed-dirt floor. “We’re here. And the imperial box has a chamber beneath it.” He drew an oval, ending a few inches from
their dot. “Between us and the chamber, there’s a brick wall”—he nodded at the wall ahead of them—“about three feet thick.
Then there’s a large cavity and another wall. We break through both walls, and we’ll be right below her.”
Joan craned now, trying to see the visible section of the box. It was about a hundred paces from here—not as close as Jamie’s
drawing implied.
Eleanor wasn’t there yet, but the executions would start soon.
Joan’s stomach turned over at the thought. Eleanor had arranged for hundreds—maybe thousands—of people to be murdered gruesomely
today. Those deaths were never supposed to happen, and each of them would weaken the timeline a little more as it tried and
failed to repair itself.
When the timeline reached the edge of collapse, Eleanor would attempt to lock it down. But even at its weakest, the timeline would fight her, and Eleanor would be completely distracted as she attempted to cage it. That would be their moment—when Eleanor would be at her most vulnerable.
“You can do this,” Nick said to Joan softly.
Joan tried to smile at him. “All I have to do is break through the wall.”
Nick would have the far more difficult task. He was the only one of them with the skill to fight off Eleanor’s guards. And—detached
from the timeline—he was the only one who could kill her, just as he’d been the only one who could kill the King.
One step at a time, though. Joan took a deep breath.
She was still new to her Grave power, but she’d been practicing all week on piles of bricks with the same basic makeup as
the ones in front of them. She placed both hands on the brick wall now. She didn’t try to calm herself—she’d found that her
power worked best when her emotions were elevated.
Be unmade , she told the brick.
Nothing happened.
Joan reached deep inside herself, for the well of her power. She drew a slow breath in, and then out.
Be unmade.
Power surged through her—physical and mental, a wild emotion that she couldn’t define—and under her fingers, the brick softened,
her fingers sinking into the wall as the brick turned to wet clay. There was grit in it too—the mortar was crumbling to fine
ash and crushed limestone and sand. Water trickled between her fingers. This was the Grave power of unmaking—she’d broken
down the brick and mortar into its constituent parts.
She shifted her hands to increase the size of the hole. It had to be big enough for them all to climb through. Then she forced another surge.
She quickly found a rhythm with Tom, who periodically stepped forward to trowel away clay and sand and ash so that she could
continue. As she worked, she wondered—not for the first time—how Aaron’s counterpart had planned to get to Eleanor today.
Joan and the others hadn’t managed to break the cipher—although they’d tested it against what had seemed like every book in
the city.
You can get to her. You have what you need , Nick’s counterpart had said.
Joan bit her lip now. Whatever Aaron’s counterpart had planned had died with him. Joan could only hope their own plan worked.
She stepped back again now, so Tom could clear more clay. She was boring through the first wall faster than she’d practiced.
She’d be done in about ten minutes, she guessed.
“You know—” Tom started to say, but he was cut off by an excited roar from the crowd that made them all jump.