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n the steps and picked them up. My aim was true and I hit a couple of men who were rushing up the steps toward us. What little good that did also distracted me from noticing the Praetors who had been above us in the stands. With Radulf focused on those directly in front of him, two men grabbed me by the arms. One put a knife to my throat while the other picked up my legs. I squirmed and tried to get a hand free enough to do magic. With the energy contained inside me, I knew I could drop these two men to the ground faster than hard rain.
But something had happened. The instant one Praetor's hand grabbed my wrist, the magic drained out of me. It was gone, all of it. I tried sending out anything I could, just as a test, but nothing was there.
"Nic!" Radulf turned around, but the man holding the knife against my throat pressed it closer to my chin, and Radulf lowered his hand. I kicked with one leg and felt the knife cut. It wasn't terrible, but it did stop my squirming. The next cut might not be as lucky.
"You want something from me," I said. "So I know you won't kill me."
"We need that mark on your shoulder," the Praetor hissed as he slid the knife to my arm. "Not much else of you."
Then that same man suddenly howled in pain, dropping the knife and my hand that he'd been holding. I twisted around as he turned, revealing an arrow deep in his backside.
The Praetor holding my feet dropped them too, and I tumbled to the steps, landing hard on my side. That Praetor ran back down, clutching an arrow lodged in his arm.
I rolled to see Aurelia at the top of the steps with a bow in her hand and another arrow nocked. She nodded at me only momentarily, and then released the arrow toward a Praetor near Radulf.
At some point, the sack with the lead tablets in it must've been cut, and it had fallen down a couple of rows. I scrambled down to it and heard Radulf shout for me to get up to him instead. I would, in a moment.
With the Praetors at a distance, magic was starting to fill my body again, something I couldn't quite understand. But I had no time to contemplate it before Radulf was at my side.
"That sack doesn't matter as much as your life," he said.
Actually, this sack might save my life, but there was no time to argue. Instead, I mumbled, "There're still more Praetors."
"Try to breathe normally," he said. "This hurts a little."
And then with his hands on my shoulders, I was sucked into darkness, and the circus disappeared before my eyes.
We returned to Radulf's home, built amongst the military camps in the northeastern part of the city. Far from nearly everything, except his soldiers.
Once I came back to myself, I immediately pulled away from Radulf's firm grip. I was still bleeding from where the Praetor had cut me, but he had no concern for that and only said, "Go to your room. I have work to do."
"No!" I shouted. My left arm stung from the vanishing, or reappearing, or whatever he had done, and magic still surged through me. In the past hour, I had seen my mother, and then Aurelia -- with Crispus -- and then I'd narrowly escaped capture by Brutus and his Praetors. The tumult of emotions within me sounded like anger.
"You will obey me, boy!"
"You almost got me killed just now. Valerius warned you they were coming, and your only response was that you welcomed the fight?"
"I want the Malice. If we have to fight a few Praetors along the way, then so be it!"
"I can't fight those Praetors for you, Radulf, nor will I. What difference does it make if they destroy Rome, or you do it?"
"Because," he hissed, "they don't care if you are still standing when this is all over."
With my body square to him, I shook my head. "And you do? I'm nothing but a tool for your treason!"
He smiled. "If I win, then I write the history books. We will write them, together."
I darkened my glare. "You won't win without me. And I won't have any part in your plans."
I turned on my heel and marched to my room, slamming the door shut behind me. I wished I had somewhere else to go. This wasn't really a bedroom. Before I'd come, Radulf had used it as a place to plan his military strategies, and it looked the part.
The frescoes on the wall were images of the goddess Minerva, just as fierce a warrior as her half sister, Diana. When he first brought me here, Radulf had described a ten-year war in which the giants had fought the gods. Minerva fell into battle with a dragon, an enormous serpent the Romans called a draco. As the serpent twisted around to kill Minerva, she threw the dragon into the northern skies, where it instantly froze. Painted on the ceiling was the draco coiled around the constellation, its forked tongue lashing out in anger. Looking up at it was hardly the most pleasant way to fall asleep each night.
I avoided that image now as I paced in my room, reviewing the dozen things I wished I had said to Radulf, and then kicked at the door, in case he had somehow missed my anger.
My eyes fell upon a wax tablet near my bed. After cleaning up my neck and changing into a new tunic, I sat with the tablet, attempting to concentrate enough to practice my writing. Radulf had me tutored every day in reading and writing, and I was working hard to become as educated as any other boy my age. It was a steep goal, but I was making tremendous progress. As frustrating as it could be to create words out of the shapes I scratched into the wax, the ability to learn had become as exhilarating as when I first took control of the bulla's magic, and perhaps for the same reason. Knowledge was raw power.
Soon after, Livia slipped into my room. Deep wrinkles lined her brow, evidence of her worries for me. Since we'd come to Radulf's home, I'd seen those worries increasingly often. "I heard you yelling," she said. "Even the gods in the heavens would've heard that."
