4. The List

The List

Luella

No one pays any mind to a running woman around here. They avert their eyes. Even with both suns illuminating my bruises, my disheveled appearance. My pain and my…baggage. They’re thinking someone else will help.

That’s too generous. They’re probably thinking I deserve it. That I must not be obedient, smart, or compliant enough.

Not something enough.

That suits me just fine, since I’ve long since forgotten what enough would feel like and their apathy is its own disguise. What’s one broken woman in a city of thousands?

It’s not long before I’ve made it out of the fields and into the forest surrounding my domus, and then even less time before I’m there. I wash the blood and filth from my skin in my rare private bath, scrubbing until I have a clean canvas to work with.

Wrapping myself in a dry robe, I cross my small domus to the kitchen table. The violet tea I’d set to steep before bathing loses curls of steam into the evening air. My mater had loved violet tea.

I groan, falling into the nearest kitchen chair and sliding the mug closer. It’s so familiar. I can almost hear my mater’s laugh, feel her gentle kisses on my cheeks. My chest aches. It’s been years, yet I never stop missing her. She’d be appalled if she could see me now. Perhaps, I’d even be appalled by her, by the complacency that permeated most of her docile life.

My black leather journal lays in the middle of the kitchen table, and I flip it open to the list and profiles we have curated over the past ten years. I have agonized over each mark, and the pages show it. Harsh lines scratch through details and preferences that fell off the list as I learned what mattered and what didn’t. Then my fingers rubbed the pages thin when I was ready for each target, etching every ink-stroke into my features, into my soul.

I trace my finger down the page I’d marked earlier, near the back of the book. The others are all done, their bodies rotting stones knows where. There will always be more, but I’m growing sick of skimming the surface. It isn’t enough.

I’m almost ready for him, but not quite yet.

The Praetor comes first. He’s my way into the Domus Aurea. I review his preferences again, although I know them all by heart.

Preparation precedes perfection.

The Domus Aurea and the Praetors aren’t like Silas or my other praeda. Those hallowed halls are devoid of empathy. A few scratches won’t protect me from being tried for treason, and they’ll gladly place a rope around an already bruised throat.

A loud knock reverberates through the domus and I start, almost dropping my tea. “Gods,” I mutter, touching the towel wrapped around my head to make sure it covers each copper strand. I tighten my robe.

The knock comes again, louder this time.

“Hold your stones,” I shout, moving to the door.

“This one took forever,” Mia complains the moment she sees my face. The tall, dark skinned, raven-haired woman shoves past me, plopping down at the kitchen table, reaching for my mug of tea.

“Help yourself,” I say, the corners of my mouth lifting.

“I will. Next time don’t make me fret.”

“I didn’t make you do anything. I told you it would be today,” I tell her, shrugging in a way I know will annoy her.

“Yes, and the twins have both set. A few more hours and you would have lied.” Mia points to me, emphasizing the ‘you.’ The edges of the world are still light, fading into indigo as the single moon begins to rejoice in the departure of its dual daytime competitors.

“They couldn’t spare a horse or a donkey. I ran here,” I chuckle. “Barefoot.”

Mia rolls her eyes and sips the tea. My tea. “Mmm, I love this one. Anyway, I’m glad you’re alive. You look like the gods cursed you, though. I hate when you do the neck.” Mia leans forward, eyeing the offending area.

“I know. It’s just so effective.” I sigh. My hand moves up instinctively, fingertips brushing the discolored section of skin where countless hands have sought to control me. Or punish me. Or teach me a lesson. They were foolish enough to think they were the first. I was discerning enough to know they wouldn’t be the last.

“Something about it, I suppose.” We sit in companionable silence for a moment, but then I shift in the chair and wince.

“Jupiter’s stones. I guess I could fix that.” Mia grimaces, reaching across the table with one hand and withdrawing a stone from her other pocket with the other. Its vibrant blue disappears as Mia’s fist closes around it.

I smile, clasping her hand. “Thanks, Mi.”

Mia closes her eyes and warmth seeps into my hand, down my arm, like immersing into bath water. The feeling washes through my body, dissolving the pain in my cheek, in my neck. My cracked and broken nails mend along with the rest of me, until I feel whole and healed. As always, Mia’s power surprises me. What a gift she is.

“Thank you,” I say again, opening my eyes. “Are you faring well?”

“Well? I’m positively blessed.” Mia deposits the stone, now shiny black basanite, into her pocket. “Didn’t you hear? My apprentice quit.”

“And that’s… a blessing?”

“It was that stable boy, remember?”

“Oh right.” I remember. I really need to be more careful with my head. “He kept dropping your completed potions?”

“After I’d imbued them. Just draining my stores of herbs and my magic?” Mia shook her head. “He finally realized he doesn’t have the coordination for working around glass.”

That was an understatement. He didn’t have the coordination to breathe, but somehow managed to maintain the act long enough to find new things to break. “What will you do for an apprentice, though? Surely, you’re too busy to do it all on your own.”

“Well… I was hoping?” Mia gives me a sad, plaintiff look.

“Absolutely not. We’re almost there. The next one lives in the Domus Aurea.” I lean forward. “I’m almost there.”

Mia shakes her head. “Luella. You’re not going to get him. He’s impenetrable. I can’t pin down a profile. There’s no rhyme or reason to the girls, and none of your personas will bear the scrutiny of such a high-ranked betrothal. It’s too risky to approach him in a brothel, not to mention I wouldn’t even know what would help him pick you and he doesn’t have a pattern to where he attends. It would be all chance.” She makes these arguments every time. Some, I admit, have truth. Brothels are pointless, because many patrician men have their own prostitutes. Not to mention being a prostitute isn’t a great cover to begin with. No one trusts a whore, as one eloquent praeda had informed me. Besides, I’d tried it once and it was a gods damned pain. Wives are easier. Good ladies are docile, obedient. The perfect vessel for someone like me.

And the principle of it always struck me, something poetic in ending the life of a monster on its wedding night, of making myself a widow.

“That’s an even greater reason for me to target the Praetor. Maybe I’ll learn something. They’re friends,” I remind Mia. “I just have to wait for an opening.”

My blood sparks when I think about going after the Praetor. The challenge. It was the fun part, after all. Being exactly what a man wanted when they didn’t always know it themselves, when they were so quick to judge and dismiss the woman they were to marry. Mia helps profile my praeda by working with her network of healers and patients to figure out preferences: hair color, eye color, complexion, age, demeanor. Anything I can use to become the perfect woman and wife, packaged in a body they’ll prefer.

The perfect victim, concealing the perfect killer. Because my brand of magic can help with many things, but not that. Once it enables me to get close, I have to rely on a plethora of proven, if unsavory, practices.

“I think you should take a break.” Mia leans forward, her dark eyes meeting mine. “You can’t do this forever. You’re one person, Lue. Yes, what you do is important, but this world is broken, and you’re going to die trying to eliminate them all.”

If I just kill him, though, that will be enough. Not the Praetor, he was a means to an end, but my final target? That could change everything. For more than a few women.

For all of us.

“I don’t need them all. I just need him.”

“I wish you’d take a break,” Mia repeats, looking away from me.

“After,” I say, not sure if I mean it.

Mia lets out a breath. “Well, I had hoped you wouldn’t want to know, but I can see that as usual you have more beauty than brains.”

“I can’t make brains, just beauty.” I smile, and reclaim my tea to take a sip. “Wouldn’t want to know what?” Mia rolls her eyes.

“The Emperor ended Praetor Ledo’s mourning period.”

“It’s so early.” Quads early, in fact. I’d expected some time to plan after Silas. I set the tea down, considering.

“I know, which means he’s probably looking.” Mia leans in and takes the tea back. “You could still take a break, or I can find you a new praeda. We can wait for someone else in the Domus Aurea.”

And let more women die under Ledo’s hand? No. That’s not something I can stomach.

“You just want an apprentice,” I tease, trying to distract us both from what waiting will mean. “And I might have a solution. I hadn’t quite figured out what to do with my extra baggage.”

“Extra baggage?” Mia arches a brow.

I stand and walk to the back of my domus, down the short hallway. “Boy,” I shout. Sitting back at the table with Mia, I wait.

A boy of about twelve comes running out of the back room, nearly tripping over his own feet. His brown hair is poorly cut and his right eye is swollen shut, hiding the brilliant blue match to his left. “Yes, good lady?” he stammers.

Mia looks from the boy to me and back to the boy. “Oh, good lady?” She hates the address. Says it implies something she doesn’t quite like. I’d called her ‘pain in my arse lady’ for a solid quad after she told me, but the boy can’t be blamed. He’s trying to be respectful.

“Taln, would you like to work in an infirmaria?” I ask, not looking away from Mia.

Taln doesn’t hesitate, a trait likely beaten into him. “Yes, good lady.”

Mia ignores the boy and glares at me. “How in the gods did you acquire that?”

I laugh. “He has a name, Mi. And remember how I said they didn’t have a donkey or a horse? Well, they did, but I couldn’t incriminate Taln. He offered to help me but…” I trail off, but Mia doesn’t let it drop.

“But what?”

“Well, look at him.” I point to him, and Mia lets out a huff, but her shoulders drop and some of the hostility in her gaze falls away. We have an understanding. About what I do, and more importantly, why. To whom.

Only abusers. Only those who deserve it. Those who prey on women and children, like Silas. Taln hadn’t told me if anything happened to him, but he’d taken one look at my bruised neck and offered me a horse and clothing. He had no parents and I asked him if he wanted to come with me.

He said yes.

Perhaps I was going soft, but it was too late now. They wouldn’t notice him gone for a day or so since we had left the horse.

“Fine,” Mia snaps. “Taln, is it? Get in that back room and keep your trap shut until I come for you. You can live above the infirmaria where my last assistant did.”

“Y-y-yes, good lady.” Taln looks to me and I give him an encouraging nod. He doesn’t press his luck and scampers to the back room just as quickly as he had rushed out.

Mia glares at me, but I just smile. “See, problem solved.”

“Problem not solved. It was risky to take the boy. And I still don’t like this business with the Praetor.”

Mia doesn’t understand. She sees this every day and watches victims walk right out of her infirmaria and back into arms that sent them there. Sometimes by choice, and sometimes because they have none. “I couldn’t leave him, Mi. He’s one of us. And don’t worry about the Praetor. His profile is predictable, it’ll be easy.”

“Don’t you dare start thinking like that,” Mia warns. “That’s how you make a mistake, Luella Amulius. That’s how you die.”

I shake my head. “I know, I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant.” I let out a breath, tension and hope and something darker rushing into my lungs in its place. “I just… I have to get him, Mi. I have to.”

Mia nods. “I’ll work on your batch for the Praetor.” The resignation in her voice hurts me, but I can’t stop now. I’m so close. Ten years. Ten whole years I’ve waited for this opportunity, and I’m finally ready. There’s finally a way into the Domus Aurea.

“Can I have some extra blue ones? And extra sleeping droughts.”

“How many extra?”

“Double the usual. Oh, and can you make the paralytic a little stronger?”

I don’t elaborate. Mia helped profile him, she knows his proclivities. Knows that I was being flippant before.

Nothing about my next praeda will be easy.