Felix.
What in Hades would Felix want with him? He waited for something: an order, a touch, a purposeless strand of conversation. Maybe Felix was drunk.
. . . if he commands you in anything . . .
A rustle of cloth.
Anazâr risked a curious glance, still feigning sleep.
Felix lay on his back on the bare floor, out of arm’s reach from where Anazâr lay, and let out a puffy, distracted sigh. His arms were crossed on top of his chest—an uncomfortable pose. So far from restful it veered on corpse-like.
I should offer him my pallet. It should be me sleeping on the bare floor. But Anazâr didn’t say anything at all. Whatever Felix meant by this, Anazâr wouldn’t risk embarrassing him by revealing he was awake.
The man had seen his death tonight. Perhaps for the first time, even.
Anazâr could barely remember his own first time. A night attack by bandits on a trading trip to the coast; one of his uncles had died under their scimitars. Then, after he joined the levy sent to Alexandria, there’d been times beyond counting.
He counted anyway, drifting off into the past, into sleep.
“Where’s Ursus?” asked the Aethiopian.
“He won’t be coming back,” said Anazâr. “I have a new assistant, a Gaul slave named Rufus, who’ll arrive shortly.”
Amanikhabale played nonchalantly with her newly plaited hair. “What happened to him?”
Cassia, sitting next to her, looked up from her wooden bowl of porridge. Other women followed her lead, until he faced a semicircle of staring gladiatrices.
“Why would you ask—” Anazâr cut himself off in frustration.
Switching to Greek and lowering her voice, she said, “You might as well have it out. Slaves will gossip.”
Gods damn her, she was right.
“He’s dead,” said Anazâr, and watched a gasp of realization run through the ranks of the gladiatrices, language barrier by language barrier. He put up a hand before they got out of control. He’d give them the whole truth, no room for scandal. “I killed him. He—” How to best phrase it? “He made an attempt on the house of Marianus, and I acted in its defense.”
“Yes! Killing!” shouted the Sarmatian, in Latin. Good—she was learning.
“Well, well.” Amanikhabale’s eyes narrowed. “Quite surprising. Although now that I recollect certain experiences with our previous master, I have theories regarding such an attempt. I’d be happy to share them directly with our new master.”
He admired the quickness of her maneuver. Her goal, obviously, was to convince Marianus she was better employed as a domestic slave. Whether her information was true or cleverly spun from air . . . now that was another matter.
“Then I’ll report your offer tonight.” As he shifted, a beam of light from the high window dazzled his eyes. He blinked and rose from the floor. The gladiatrices remained in shadow, hunched over their bowls, conferring like crows. “Talk, but keep eating. We have no time to waste; I want you all training in armor soon.”
The three Germans looked at him dumbly.
“Eat,” he said in Latin, and mimed the motion of spoon to mouth.
“Eat,” repeated Cheruscia, the German with the pale green eyes. “Eat!”
“Atalanta would like to know if you took the head of Ursus,” said Venatrix.
“That’s not done here,” he replied, and stalked off to fetch the armor. He found himself wanting to stay and teach them—we are a civilized people, not savage headhunters.
We?
He shook his head, ill at ease and wondering if traces of the dream-fog still lingered.
“Feint, shift, strike! Feint, shift, strike!”
The row of women did not move in harmony, but at least they moved.
Anazâr kept them at practice until arms began to tremble and the weakest could no longer raise their wooden swords above waist level.
After a short rest, he summoned one of the Gaul women forward. Enyo seemed to be the oldest among them; as he drew her hair away to fasten the murmillo helmet, he noticed a few strands of gray at the temples of her auburn hair. She spoke little Latin, and he suspected she had some slight fighting experience. Perhaps she belonged to one of the rebel tribes.
“Enyo does well,” he told the resting gladiatrices. He turned to face her, lifting his sword and judging the weight, so cumbersome compared to the true steel he’d swung last night. “Attack. Feint, shift, strike, repeat!”
She came at him slowly, though with good form. He blocked every blow, retreating a calculated half-step each time.
With the helmet on, it was possible to imagine he was facing a man. Perhaps their opponents, if they were men, would perform the same mental trick to make killing them easier.
“Stop. Rhakshna! Take my sword.”
The Sarmatian was at his side almost instantly. He retreated a few paces and gave the signal to begin. “She will attack in return,” he warned Enyo. “Steel yourself.”
A Gaul woman called out something in their language, too long to be a translation. Enyo attacked. The Sarmatian let her go through two series before she fluidly rocked forward to ring a punishing blow to the side of Enyo’s helmet.
She fell. “Roll!” he shouted, and grabbed the Sarmatian’s arm, knowing that she had the instinct of every good warrior—to stab a fallen enemy.
Rhakshna hissed in frustration, but lowered her sword.
Enyo raised herself to a sitting position, gasping for breath.
“Next time, roll. Who’s next?”
“Me!” called a man’s voice from across the warehouse. “But can I avoid the fighting and go straight to the rolling? That seems like the most entertaining part.”
Anazâr’s stomach lurched. Felix.
He forced a look of bland courtesy onto his face, putting up a hand to halt the practice. “Lucius Marianus Felix,” he greeted. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
Felix’s head tilted, eyes crinkling. All traces of yesterday’s honesty—pleasure, fear, frustration, cold-gutted horror—were gone, like that man had been a figment of Anazâr’s imagination. Felix appeared the same thoroughly unpleasant trickster as always.
“Oh, you find my presence pleasurable now, do you, gladiator? Well, that’s an exciting turn of events! Don’t worry, I won’t tell my brother . . . if you let me stay here, that is. I thought I could do a turn translating, you know, as thanks for saving my life.”
Ugh, the mooning way he said that: saving my life, dripping with undeniably sexual appreciation, like one might praise a sweet overripe fruit as the juice dripped down one’s chin. A quiet murmur went up among the gladiatrices—the ones who spoke Latin, at least—and Anazâr could see his carefully tended control of this situation slipping away from him again.
—if he commands you in anything—
“Leave to fetch scroll and ink. Write down a list of Latin words and their Cimbrian partners. You’ll begin with eat, drink, run, and the like.”
He’d hoped to unsettle Felix with the mere suggestion of actual work, or at least throw him off balance by not reacting with the scandal he was obviously hoping for, but no such luck. Felix nodded studiously to himself. “So I’ll start with tits, bollocks, piss and shit, and fucking.”
“You joke with these women’s lives,” Anazâr said, unable to keep the tone of condemnation from his voice. “As is your right, of course. Though I’d thought for a moment . . .” He shrugged his shoulders.
“He’s a pretty man,” said the Sarmatian, twirling her sword and smiling rakishly.
“I am indeed,” replied Felix in Greek, and bowed to her, although when he rose again, his mischievous eyes had locked on Anazâr alone. “And, Cyrenaicus, I’ll do as you ask. No games, I swear.”
We’ll see about that, Anazâr thought, but outwardly nodded his assent. “Thank you,” he said, and despite today’s many efforts in that direction, was finally unbalanced by Felix when his begrudging thanks was met with a surprised, pleased smile.<
br />
He called Amanikhabale aside at the midday meal. “I accept your offer,” he told her.
“Very good. Should we retire to your chamber? If you’re concerned about being seen taught by a woman, I could always claim we’re having sexual relations.”
“You think of everything. No, that won’t be necessary. Tomorrow we’ll have the implements.”
“Oh yes, you’ve turned the master’s brother into your personal scribe. Much respect.”
“Don’t praise me yet; there’s no telling how horribly this arrangement might end for me.” He hadn’t meant to say it. Hadn’t meant to confide in her—as a rule, he didn’t confide in anyone—but there it was. Out in the open. He waited, falsely nonchalant, for her response.
“I have a favor to ask of you, in return.” She lowered her voice and switched to Greek, even though the other gladiatrices were beyond earshot, clustered around the food baskets carried in by the boy Rufus. “It’s not for myself. It’s for Cassia.”
Anazâr shook his head briefly in surprise, wondering at first if he’d heard right. Of course. He’d asked that Amanikhabale speak with her after her suicide attempt, though he hadn’t expected they would get along to this degree. This was better than he could have hoped for. “I’ll do my best,” he replied.
“She has a daughter. When she killed her husband—and he was a man in great need of killing—his family turned out her daughter. She’s with Cassia’s sister now. Cassia seeks to send her daughter a letter, and hopes to receive one in return. That’s all. She’s too timid to ask you on her own account.”
Anazâr was about to explain that this was clearly impossible. That his movement was circumscribed to a well-defined, escorted path between warehouse and domus.
Another memory: far away, in an oasis in the desert beyond Cyrenaica, his brother and his wife. Perhaps they had a daughter, too, now.
“Your own kin, in Nubia—” He broke off, knowing he’d crossed a barrier that slaves were accustomed to guard against the past.
But Amanikhabale seemingly took no offense at it. “Ha! I’m not Nubian. They gave me the name of a Nubian warrior queen, but I’m from farthest Eastern Aksum, by the Red Sea. Too far for letters to reach, but Cassia’s old life lies only one hill away.”
“I’ll see what I can do. I might be able to find someone to deliver the letter.”
“One last thing,” said Amanikhabale. “Not a favor—a warning.” She paused, and her eyes, usually so darkly flashing and bold, turned to the shadows. “The Sarmatian spoke rather freely about the other women at the baths. She may mean to claim a wife, perhaps by force. The customs of her people are . . . enigmatic.”
Anazâr suppressed a groan of frustration. He’d assumed that this particular issue, at least, would not surface among women.
“There will be no fighting or forcing, and no allowances given to Rhakshna. Beyond that, I care not.” That was the simplest way, and how the old ludus had worked.
“I see. Another wise decision.” She blinked and smiled.
“Go.”
Felix did not return that afternoon. Anazâr assumed he’d balked at the effort required of his task and been distracted by drinking or gambling or fucking.
As the light faded, his escort dragged the doors open: Quintus, pulling double duty.
He wasn’t alone.
“Welcome, Domina,” said Anazâr. She looked beautiful in the evening light, dressed in deep regal purple, with the red of the sunset filling her curls with strands of copper. Beautiful, and bizarrely out of place. The gladiatrices stared, cast their eyes down in fearful deference, and raised them up to stare again.
“Good evening, Cyrenaicus. I’d like to speak with you alone.” She raised a fold of her stola to her cheek, then lowered it with a strange hesitance.
Without her husband hearing? Why else would she intercept Anazâr at the ludus, before his evening report? “The second level?” he asked, gesturing up the stone ramp.
She floated past him, ascending by lamplight. He followed. When she turned to face him at the top, her eyes were level with his, and the little flames of the lamps danced in them.
“Here,” she said. “This is a delicate matter. I’m not deceiving my husband, nor am I asking you to deceive him. I intend to tell him of this visit, even. I love him and obey him . . . in most matters. But I can’t come to him about this, not yet. Not until I’m sure. I wouldn’t cause him strife over unsubstantiated suspicion.”
The murder attempt. That was why she’d come. He nodded mutely, urging her on.
“I do wish that you keep my visit secret from Felix.”
Something rotted in Anazâr’s gut, like bad fucking meat.
“I will try,” he said. Slaves will gossip, Amanikhabale had warned; it was an inexorable fact. All the gladiatrices had seen Aelia.
“I’ll have to take that chance. I believe that the cutthroats were meant for my Lucius, and that Felix is involved somehow. No—” she raised a small hand glittering with rings, stilling Anazâr with a single sharp sideways motion “—no, it would be the height of foolishness to fall into his own trap, and Felix is no fool. But the bolt strayed wide, and there was no second shot. And Felix and I . . . we have a certain history which causes me to doubt any protestations. Again, nothing hidden from my husband. But Lucius is willfully blind when it comes to his little brother, always holding out false hope. I would have you not be blind in such a manner. To keep your eyes open very wide indeed. Ears, as well. What have you heard from other slaves?”
He felt as if he were standing at the edge of a shadowy abyss, an almost unspeakably strange feeling, because he was standing at the real edge of one as well. He swallowed, dry throat suddenly aching, and leaned his elbow against the wall, propping himself away from where the ramp dropped. “The Aethiopian says she has information about her former master, the enemy of your father.”
“Send her to me. And watch yourself around Felix. He’ll use your inclinations to his advantage, if you give him any chance.”
Anazâr jutted his jaw in defiance of the weakness she perceived in him. “I would never sway from my loyalty to your husband.” A promise, proudly given.
“I believe you,” said Aelia. Her face softened. He remembered her carrying Lucullus on her hip, consoling her crying child. Then the moment of vulnerability passed; the senator’s daughter put on her public face again. That stoic, beautiful mask, as perfect and removed as the face of Juno.
“I’ll send her up to you now, Domina.” He nodded to her, turned, and walked down the ramp, trailing his hand against the wall to keep the dizziness at bay.
Aelia spoke with Amanikhabale for a while as twilight fell. Anazâr used the time to painstakingly recall every nuance of Felix’s words and actions the night of the attack, over and over again, searching for any sign that might prove Aelia’s theory.
He didn’t want the theory to be right. He didn’t want to believe that Felix, the infuriating man who had somehow made him smile, could plot to murder a brother by blood. Felix had looked genuinely shaken and fearful that night, hadn’t he?
Actium all over again. The information that could save their lives, hoarded by generals and the highest born. A rebellious voice deep inside shouted to let them all die on their own swords. Why should I fight your battles?
For the sake of freedom. For the sake of loyalty.
He’d be called on to make a choice very soon. He could feel the moment coming, sure as a legion marching in lockstep, sure as the flooding of the Nile.
She floated down the ramp again, Amanikhabale pacing behind, towering over Aelia’s slight form.
“Quintus will see me to the shop down the street where my litter awaits,” she said. “Then he will return for you. Farewell. Keep us safe. And you—” she turned to the gladiatrices “—bring honor to this house with your swords!”
The men at his old ludus would have cheered and howled like wolves at such words from a lady. His gladiatrices merely looked to each ot
her in confusion as Aelia slipped out the door.
The morning started auspiciously. Unlike all the mornings before, when breakfast was a cold, quiet affair, punctuated only by petty fighting, today the gladiatrices spoke in excitement with one another, and even the wary, tribal Gauls intermingled, inviting the Aethiopian into their midst. They’d been sharing speech more often. Beyond reminding them to practice their Latin, Anazâr didn’t intervene.
It had been a week since Aelia’s visit, and Felix—doing nothing to alleviate the suspicion she had laid upon him—had not returned. In his absence, and Marianus having yet to provide an alternative, they went without a translator, making do with body language and the Aethiopian’s linguistic talents.
Anazâr seized the time to scratch on the stone floor with a piece of charcoal. Moving from left to right, the arc of his alphabet was smooth, though its letters were rough, unsteady, blurred. The count of them is twenty and three, twenty and three. He counted and began a chant, forcing his lips to stay closed so that the sounds echoed through his mind in strange, thunderous silence.
He knew the shapes of many words—shop signs, street markers, his slave name of CYRENAICVS—but they had always struck him as somber and static, not at all like the clamoring, perplexing little letters that writhed inside the words.
Felix would have grown up in full mastery of them. As of other things. And people. Anazâr, besieged by this battlefront of ill-shaped letters, would appear to Felix as a crawling baby, an idiot, an animal.
No. Felix has flaws too numerous to count, but he never shamed me in that way, did he?
Had he shamed Anazâr at all? Teased him, yes. Toyed with him, frustrated him, tested him, but always in the same way he did his brother. Never as a slave.
Damn him. It didn’t matter how egalitarian he was in his mischief, and what that said about his character. It didn’t prove anything, so long as he stayed away. So long as he let Aelia’s accusation rest unchallenged on his face, as damning as the TMQF etched into Anazâr’s. Damn him.
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