by Lydia Pax
In Perseus’s hands now was a small seal about half the diameter of his palm. A clay imprint of a family crest.
“Who does it belong to?” asked Lucius.
“Who cares?” said Ajax. “We didn’t get to bring nothing with us when we got to this damned place.”
“You buy plenty of things now.”
“Yeah, that we earned. Break it, Perseus.”
Protests started in Lucius’s throat. There was no call for that—no real reason other than to be cruel. But the wine slowed him down, and Perseus crumbled the seal in his hands.
“Bad clay,” he said, smiling.
No matter what else could be said about the man, Perseus was strong. The fire-hardened clay did not last more than half a minute under the ripping, quiet force of his fingers. Soon, it was all dust on the floor. Perseus took his foot to it, rubbing the mess around on the stone ground. Ajax thought this was hilarious, slapping him on the back. Wine spilled over the clay, and it took the color of mud.
That seal had belonged to someone. Someone that Lucius was, in name if nothing else, responsible for. A thick pulse of guilt swept through the drunk waves of his thought.
He stood up, finishing his wine. “Unnecessary.”
Perseus and Ajax protested lightly as he left, but not overmuch. They enjoyed each other’s company more than his own. His position as a doctore was most of the reason they let him hang around.
The two were good as the arena had ever seen, but their temperaments left much to be desired. Just the fact that they refused to be acknowledged by any name but their arena handles was proof of that.
Lucius was Orion, when he had to be, but Orion was never Lucius. It was a duality of identity that kept him sane. Separating the actions of the arena and his own life was important. If they overlapped too much, it would drive a man mad.
There was greatness to be found in the arena, it was true. But terror as well. And if you let in too much of the greatness, you risked losing yourself to the terror of it all. Ajax and Perseus would find that out soon enough if they hadn’t already.
When he returned to his cell, Conall was there.
He sat on a stool in one corner. A short man, but heavily built, Conall had a reputation in the ludus for exceptional endurance and toughness. Next to him was a small series of empty amphoras—all emptied by Lucius. Conall had thick beard, and his hair grew long down past his shoulders Murus had instructed him many times to cut it down, but Conall had dodged this request. Now his face looked wild.
Conall was a hellacious fighter and a steadfast friend. Lucius didn’t know if he had driven him away because of jealousy of the first or fear of the second. A good fighter was something Lucius could never be again, and a good friend would no doubt frown heavily at Lucius’s behavior.
After taking up a friendship with the mighty Flamma, Conall had started fighting in the dimachaerus style. It suited his die-hard attitude. He fought with abandon in the arena, often putting his body at risk to land some crucial or impressive blow. The crowd loved him for it.
“Hey, Lucius.”
“What are you doing here?”
“We haven’t talked in a while. Months, it seems like. We used to talk all the time.”
Lucius lay down on his cot. He was not in any particular mood to talk now.
“So talk.”
“I just…you ever miss Caius?”
“Caius?”
Of course he did. He missed Caius dearly. But who could say such a thing?
Caius had rescued Lucius when he first arrived at the ludus. Taught him the difference between a good thrust of the sword and his death. The doctore at the time hadn’t given a damn one way or another—Murus hadn’t taken up the mantle yet. Still just a gladiator, then, like Conall was now.
Caius had kept Lucius alive through his first few fights. He taught him how to respect his fellow gladiators.
Did Lucius still do that? Sometimes, the way he acted…
Never showing up to training on time. Never apologizing for his behavior. But that wasn’t his fault. That was the wine. It wasn’t him.
“Sure. He’s a good man.”
“I miss him terribly. I miss…he made me believe, you know? That something good could happen here. With him and Aeliana, I mean. What they have is nice. Really nice. But lately, I don’t know.” Conall shook his head. His hair was thick and reddish brown. “All I feel is this bleakness in my soul. I’ve tried talking with some others. But Septus is always busy now with Murus, planning and training. He and I only ever got along because of Caius and you. And Caius left, and you…sort of disappeared.”
Lucius resented that. He hadn’t disappeared. He was right there.
But he had been less available. There was no denying that. If Conall wanted to talk to him, it would have to be in the evening when he was drunk, and often people didn’t want to talk to a drunk. That was part of the fun of drinking.
“What about Flamma? You work with him most days.”
“Flamma doesn’t understand. He lives for the arena.”
Flamma. There was another man who lived by his arena handle. Lucius didn’t even think he remembered his own birth name. But Flamma had a particular way about him; the brutality of the arena and the brutality outside of it held no real difference to him.
“You do not live to be in the arena?” asked Lucius.”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. My last fight, do you remember it? A man they called Mordeo. I beat him fair and square. It was a good fight. He would have fought again. But the editor, he called for the execution.”
“Such is part of our share.”
“His eyes were scared, I remember that. I will fight any man this world throws at me, Lucius. I’ll fight him until the bitter end. But that—taking out a defenseless man…it felt like murder.”
“I think of it,” said Lucius, “as the editor’s hand, not mine. It was him or you. Or really, him or both of you. That cannot be murder.”
Conall made a small humming sound and shook his head.
“The days before a fight, I forget about this feeling,” said Conall. “I’m too nervous. Too consumed with what might happen. How I might die. And then the days after the fight, I’m just glad to be alive. But then, days like this? Days when we just train? There’s no caring about any of that. I don’t know that I care about glory or honor on the sands. I don’t even know what those words mean. Fighting is a way to stay alive. Any meaning there is…empty. It’s just what they say, and they put a chain on me.”
Lucius sat up, suddenly angry.
“Empty? Empty?” He walked over to Conall and slapped him in the face. “Honor and glory are all we have. Don’t tell me they’re empty. Don’t talk to me like what I did in that arena means nothing. When I can’t anymore. When I am stuck here, in this idiot cell with this idiot job…don’t tell me that.”
Conall’s face was red with anger. One side was more red than the other from Lucius’s slap. He stepped back from Lucius.
“I shouldn’t have come here.”
“No. You shouldn’t have. And you want to find meaning, you think of glory. You think of your brothers. You think of them before you get so wrapped up in yourself that you can’t see straight.”
But Conall was gone already. Lucius’s words still hung in the air, reverberating against the walls, and he didn’t know if he had been talking to Conall or himself.
Chapter 12
“Where is it?”
Gwenn was in a corner of her cell, tracing lines across the stone with a chunk of chalk. There was not much to do in the evenings. She stood and turned to see Sabiana in the doorway to her cell.
“Where’s what?” she asked.
“You know what I mean. What did you do with it? I saw you looking at it.”
“Saw me…” Gwenn shook her head. “I don’t have anything of yours. And you should step out of my cell before I make you leave.”
“You don’t tell me what to do, peasant. Where is my seal?”
>
What she meant, Gwenn realized now, was the clay disk with her family’s crest upon it. But she was only barely able to process this before Sabiana crossed all the way through the threshold and shoved her against the wall.
“Where is it?”
Gwenn’s temper flared. She pushed Sabiana back, and in seconds the two were tangling through the cell. Headlocks and holds morphed into kicks and elbows, and they tussled on the floor for minutes. Their limbs scrambled out, banging on the walls and knocking against the grid bars of the cell.
They traded positions on top, back and forth, each doing their honest best to brain the other on the wall or floor. There was no dignity to the scuffle, no honor. Just two lonely, desperate women protecting what little they had in the world.
A cry went out. Shortly, Kav pulled Sabiana up by her neck and Ros held Gwenn against the wall.
“What are you idiots doing?” Kav held up her hands. “If you get caught doing this, they’ll punish all of us. Is that what you want?”
“She took it,” Sabiana growled. “She took it and she destroyed it.”
“I didn’t take anything!”
Ros pushed Gwenn down to the floor and pointed. “Stay.”
Gwenn crossed her arms and huffed. “I didn’t take anything. Look at this cell. There’s nothing here. What would I do with your stupid seal?”
“It’s not stupid.” Sabiana struggled again. “It’s the only thing I have left of my family and I want it back.”
Kav bounced from one end of the cell to another, turning up the loose pad on Gwenn’s cot. “If it’s here, it’s underneath the stones or something.”
“It’s not,” said Gwenn. “I didn’t take it.”
“You had to have been the one,” said Sabiana. “You had to have been the one. Who else would care? Why would someone take it unless we fought already?”
Gwenn didn’t have an answer for that.
“When we were first sold,” said Ros, “we stayed in this in-between house where they kept us to see how obedient we were. Kav and I, we both brought a few things with us. Scarves. Some necklaces. A parting gift from the family we left behind.”
Kav nodded, still kicking at stones in the cell. “Nice stuff, too. They felt bad about at the end. Still sold us, though.”
“There were other slaves there who were supposed to train us. They lived at the house. None of them liked that we had our own personal items. There weren’t any of them that got to keep what they came in with. And so, they all took it and sold it. It got turned into a meal for the whole house.”
“You’re saying that someone sold my clay seal? It’s only worth anything to me.”
Kav shook her head. “I think that someone probably took it because people are sort of horrible that way. You had something they didn’t get to have, and ‘why should she have something when I had nothing?’ That sort of thing.”
Gwenn’s body was covered now in scrapes and bruises from the long tussle across the cell. She had a heavy mark on her neck from where Sabiana’s elbow landed hard across her collarbone. She stood up and walked over to Sabiana. Ros tensed, holding up her arms between them, but Gwenn pushed her aside and held out a hand.
“I’m sorry your seal was taken. It wasn’t me. I wouldn’t have touched something like that. I could see what it meant to you, and I don’t traffic in theft.”
Sabiana frowned for a moment and then took Gwenn’s hand. “All right.”
“There’s some time still before lights out. We can ask the other girls what happened, see if we can scrounge up any answers.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” said Kav, patting Gwenn on the shoulder. “But you may want to let me do the talking.”
They all looked at her, surprised.
Kav shrugged. “What? Ros is too quiet and you’re too angry,” she said to Sabiana.
Gwenn crossed her arms. “What about me?”
“You’re just scary. All that smiling.” Kav shook her head. “We’re all terrified of you, to tell you the truth.”
At that, Gwenn had to laugh. She had never thought of herself as particularly scary. But in this place, it was better to be scary than scared.
Chapter 13
“Are you wanting for anything, my dear?”
Gwenn had been near asleep in her cot. Her father’s hands had floated over her face, that strange gruff smile lighting up his face.
The thought dissolved as she sat up to see a short, balding man holding a torch at the front of her cell. The gate was locked, and it was past the time when slaves were allowed to walk around. This did not seem to bother him. He was, from his shape, clearly not a gladiator. Perhaps that was why the guards had let him through.
Murus had explicitly forbade fraternizing between male and female fighters in the ludus. There had been much talk, already, about floating this rule on the sides of the women and the men.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Iunius. I obtain goods and services for the gladiators here.” He smiled. “And, now that it is possible, the gladiatrices.”
“I don’t have any money for that sort of thing.”
“Naturally. You’ve only just gotten here. But we can put a lien down on the winnings from your first fight.”
“You think I’ll win?”
“I think you have as good a chance as any other in the arena. But both losers and winners receive a purse, should they live. Winners receive more, that’s all.”
“And if I don’t live?”
Iunius shrugged. He wore a tunic that wrapped around his neck. His shoulders were smooth and bare. “I am not offering to buy you gold or a horse, my dear. Bread. Sweets, perhaps. Maybe you would like a letter sent. Should you not pay me, in the event of your death, I will not be out all that much.”
“You do this for all the fighters?”
“One must earn a living, even as a slave.”
“What have you bought Lucius?”
“Lucius?” he smiled. “An interesting question. One wonders where comes its origins.”
“Will you answer it?”
“Best not to discuss the affairs of drunks, I’ve found.” Iunius re-positioned the torch in his hands. “Sometimes they find out, and when they do, they are either drunk or worse, hungover. It’s bad business. Suffice it to say he and I have known each other long enough to arrange a number of deals. Some which,” he smiled, “were more fortunate for me than for him, I expect.”
“You buy him wine, I bet. I have smelled it on him.”
“When he has the coin. I’ve stopped offering him credit on that account.”
“And gifts for women?”
“And why would that interest you, my dear?”
It was dark enough that she felt strongly that he could not see her face blush. “He holds us in contempt,” she said quickly. “I wonder if he is like that with all women.”
“So far as I can tell, he loves women. Perhaps too much. Perhaps that is the source of his drinking. Perhaps the drinking is its own source, as if often is. At any rate, I have more cells to visit.”
“I have one more question,” said Gwenn.
Iunius stopped. “All right.”
“A girl here, Sabiana. She possessed a…I’m not sure. Something of her family.”
“A clay seal?”
Gwenn approached. “Yes. She was very upset earlier. She said it had been stolen. I let her search my cell when she blamed me. She is very broken up about it. Do you know what happened to it?”
“No. Not directly. But I imagine it was stolen. Probably by one of the gladiators. I would imagine it was probably…hmm.” He drummed his fingers along the bars of her cell. “Never mind names. But I would advise her to forget the seal. Novices are not given much in the way of leeway when it comes to tradition in the ludus, my dear. One of those traditions is to destroy all artifacts of past lives. You are to be reborn again in the sands of the arena.”
“I see. Good night.”
“Thank you. Good
night to you, my dear. And do let me know if you need anything later on.”
Chapter 14
She barely had time to process the full conversation with Iunius—and the fact of his existence, such a strange man—before another disturbance down the hall broke her train of thought.
“I’m the doctore, so you’ll let me through!”
There was some more mumbling and scuffling. In a few moments, however, Lucius was at the gate of her cell and no worse for the wear.
“Good evening, Doctore.”
“Little flame.”
Wine tinged his tongue. It was not so much that he slurred, though. Enough to make him impulsive, perhaps.
And why did that give her a little thrill, thinking of this muscled man acting purely on impulse in her presence?
Gwenn was well versed in the effects of alcohol on men. She had seen her fair share of lost causes—men and women who had no reason to exist except for their next drink.
Lucius did not seem like such a lost cause when he had been training them earlier, or when he had bought her the other day. But now, seeing that heavy look in his eyes, she wondered. He seemed right on the precipice.
A gentle shove might ruin him forever; it might save him.
“What brings you to my cell, Doctore? Do you want to tell me to thrust?”
She swallowed the innuendo that came unbidden—perhaps you want to show me yours?
Gods, why did he have to be so awful and so handsome at the same time? The torch in his hands only highlighted the strong features of his face. His chin was perfectly crafted. She wanted to know what it tasted like with her teeth raking against his jaw.
He laughed. “No. You have spirit, do you know that? It’s a strange thing. I find myself thinking on it often.”
“Why is it strange to have spirit?”
“I tell you what to do all day long. And it’s ‘Yes, Doctore” here and “Of course, Doctore” there. It’s annoying.”
“I’ll start telling you ‘no’ straightaway, Doctore.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean you act happy to be here. It’s ridiculous. You’re a slave.”