No response. No look of apology. Only an ineffectual, impatient twist. “I know, but—”
“No. You don’t know, Felix. You don’t know anything. That’s the fucking issue here.” Anazâr fought back the urge to lash out and strike. Hit him. Fuck him. Like an animal. Felix unmanned him. “Spoiled impetuous little fucking child of a man.”
Felix’s breath came faster, faster still, and then stopped entirely as he held tight and turned his face away. But his hand never left Anazâr’s wrist. A drunken chorus roared into life inside the tavern, spilling out into the street, over the shrill flute. Felix finally breathed again, and spoke. “I’d hoped that our bond would include some measure of trust, but at least it includes honesty. I thank you for that. Speak from your heart and know that I hear you.”
“The point, Felix.”
“For once, I’m not acting the fool. I have information for you. I’ll tell you everything. And then, once you’ve heard, you can decide . . . you can decide whether I’m worth risking your life for.” His expression at that was so unguarded, so heartbroken, that Anazâr almost relented on his strict stance.
Almost. He shook off Felix’s hand. “I’ll follow and hear you out. Don’t touch me again.”
The shape of Felix’s eyes changed then, although the darkness masked just how. Whether they’d widened or narrowed, the effect was disconcerting, nearing predatory.
I take too much liberty with my own body for one like Felix, born a master. Damn him to Hades, anyway.
“This way,” said Felix, his expressive voice stripped of all emotion and character. He turned, leading Anazâr up a narrow, rickety staircase that scaled one side of the building and disappeared into darkness. What awaited him there?
Someone to kill me.
A wooden door. A low-ceilinged, lamplit room lined with pallets. Bags and pots and cloaks hung from pegs on the soot-streaked walls. This must be how the poor lived, hunching in little cells of the massive insula like larvae in the beehive. He’d never imagined such a life before. All he knew in Rome was abject slavery or obscene wealth, and nothing in between.
Curled on a pallet at the edge of the room was a young girl, no older than ten, with matted blonde hair. An elderly woman sat watch at her side, withered mouth set in a tight seam as she worked a needle and thread in some menial task.
The woman nodded at Felix and returned to her work. The girl drew her shoulders tighter at their entrance, but even at this angle, there was a familiar cast to her face.
“You said I didn’t understand,” said Felix. “Well, neither do you. Not as much as her.”
The girl on the pallet.
“Enyo’s daughter.” It came out reverent and hushed.
“Her name is Litis. I found the whorehouse she’d been sold to. There was no way I could have afforded her, so I pulled rank and invented some insanely complicated court case and swore in my name of Lucius Marianus that I’d send her full price tomorrow, plus bonus.”
“So this will come to light soon.”
“Yes,” Felix said. “But she’s safer here.”
“Why?” The thought of such a young child set to whoring made him want to vomit, but still, any life was better than none. He had to believe that. He moved a step closer to her, opened his mouth to speak some word of comfort—
Felix barred him, laying a hand against Anazâr’s shoulder. And then he snatched it away a heartbeat later. “Sorry. But Dara—that’s Dara watching her—says to leave her space. She’s frightened and mourning her mother. I had to tell her.”
“You—”
“Listen to me, Anazâr. A woman had Litis brought from the whorehouse into a richly curtained litter. This noblewoman spoke of her mother, made sympathetic promises, extracted certain information. It was Aelia. And Aelia told Litis she would be sent for again, soon, so that Litis could join her mother, as soon as a task was done.”
“The lady lied to me,” said Litis, in a high, dull voice. “Maybe you’re lying too. I want—” her Latin tumbled into Gallic and then trailed off into weak, hoarse crying.
Anazâr knew the rest, anyway. I want my mother.
Felix, standing next to his brother at the match . . . he’d been the target all along.
Dara glowered briefly at them both before turning to hush Litis and pet her flaxen hair. “There, Master Felix,” she said in a high, artificial sing-song. “Your man’s seen her with his own eyes. So now I’d say it’s time for you both to leave.” Sweet as it was for Litis’s benefit, her tone brooked no argument.
Whatever Felix’s motivation, he’d found the girl an able, fierce protector. And still, it would never, ever be enough to replace what she’d lost.
What Aelia had taken from her.
“Your mother was brave, and loved you very much,” said Anazâr, and turned to leave before the crying cut into him any more deeply. He’d made it as far as the foot of the stairs before he rounded on Felix, gripping the smaller man’s shoulders fiercely. “Why!” he demanded. “Tell me why you showed me this. Why you did this. Don’t stall, don’t fucking mince words, just tell me plain.”
“I . . .”
“Now, Felix!” Anazâr shoved him against the wall and pinned him.
“I did it because it wasn’t right to leave her, not after her mother died as a result of my feud. And I showed you because . . . I showed you because . . .”
Because you want my loyalty and this is the easiest way to procure it.
“At first, I thought it would prove a comfort for you. To know the affairs of your charge were properly taken care of. I wanted to help you. But I didn’t expect Aelia to be involved. I’m still reeling from that myself. I thought the girl was confused, perhaps, but now that I’ve gotten her free of that pit, she tells the story even clearer. I had to draw you here and show you the proof. It was Aelia. I’ve never had anyone I slept with try to kill me. Their husbands, wives, certainly, though I shouldn’t jest at this of all times, it’s a habit I—”
Anazâr covered his mouth, the gesture less forceful than before, but charged with no less meaning. “You can stop talking now.”
Felix. What a fool. Using all those words to say such a simple thing. You showed me this because you . . . Because you . . . But no, he couldn’t say it, not even in his own mind, not even on Felix’s behalf.
Anazâr collected his thoughts enough to speak. “You could leave this city. Leave all this danger and intrigue behind you. You’re not one of those Romans who would rather commit suicide than face exile; you love what’s foreign.” He let his hand drop from Felix’s mouth, memorizing the intimate sensation of warm breath against his palm. “Why?”
Felix smiled and answered with no hesitation at all. “‘Love knows not the meaning of the question why? Why do some gash their arms with sacred knives, and cut their limbs to the sound of the Phrygian pipe? To each at birth nature allotted a vice; to me Fortune allotted the doom that I should ever be in love.’”
“Your own lines?”
“No, Sextus Propertius. I ‘love what’s foreign,’ was it? Well, I love you. And I’d tell you, and better yet show you, so many more reasons ‘why.’ Come with me tonight to my hiding place. It’s rather luxurious. We can still get you back safe and sound long before cockcrow, if— I shouldn’t beg.”
“I won’t make you,” said Anazâr, and kissed him. His whole body seemed to melt, tension and fear running from him like sweat, and it felt as purifying and clean and right.
One kiss turned into another, and another again, hungry starving relief and thankfulness, and best of all he knew Felix felt it too, that perfect clarity and harmony between them that reached beyond everything, everything, even the words of the poets. Beyond joy and sadness, or perhaps encompassing both, allowing Anazâr to consider the most brutal of facts in the light of compassion. Because now that he knew Felix was not the blood traitor, he had to persuade Felix to leave. And wherever Felix fled, Anazâr could never know and never follow. Not with the possibility of tor
ture—of revealing Felix’s whereabouts—a constant threat.
Tonight, at least, he’d follow where Felix led. That was the small mercy, that this night would be theirs. The greater mercy would come when Felix left.
And lived.
The majordomo, a lanky Aethiopian with a short beard the color of wet steel, kept the door halfway shut. “You’re really pushing it, Felix.”
“Come now, he’s a bodyguard. How can I walk the streets at night without a bodyguard, with liver-stabbing thieves thick as flies? If your master were here—”
“But he’s not, you infernal house-pest.”
“He’ll be gone before first light, I swear. And I’ll make it up to you. I’ve got an advance on a Greek translation coming in tomorrow.”
Anazâr hung back, made himself as small as he could, and trusted to the hood of his cloak.
Felix eventually wrangled their entry into the domus. The disdainful majordomo led them through a vast atrium, then through a study lined from floor to ceiling with scroll shelves. Then further inward, skirting the edge of a dramatic peristyle garden where statues of nymphs rose from star-shaped fishponds clustered around a weeping poplar strung with glass windchimes. It was a tableau that could have sprung full-formed from the strange mind of a god. No, Anazâr reminded himself: wealth and craft alone, quite human, could make such spaces.
The majordomo left them at last in a private room.
There was no doubt as to who was staying here at present. The floor of the room was strewn with clothing and half-rolled scrolls and even a few gnawed pits of fruit. Anazâr surveyed the unmade bed with some concern, suddenly unsure of what he was getting himself into. As soon as they were alone, though, Felix wrapped both arms around his waist, tugged him close as a lover—gods, they were lovers, only an idiot could deny it—and reached up for the edge of his makeshift hood.
“Let’s get rid of this,” Felix said quietly, and Anazâr forced himself not to flinch away. It was ridiculous, his protectiveness of his face. It wasn’t as if Felix hadn’t seen the tattoo before.
“I can’t help but see them through your eyes. The letters.”
Felix’s expression was soft as he unwound the hood, letting the fabric slump lightly to the floor. “They tried to disfigure you,” he said, matter-of-fact. “But it didn’t work. You’re still devastatingly handsome, you know. I’d even wager the tattoo adds to your appeal. Marks you as a man with a dangerous past.” He brushed knuckles across Anazâr’s forehead.
“You’re pushing.” Anazâr smiled and put on a playful approximation of the majordomo’s disdain.
“To be totally honest, they give me a moment’s pause. Before I see past them, that is. Do you want me to show you?” Felix didn’t wait for an answer before he darted away to rummage in an open chest. He tossed toiletry items to the tiles in blithe disregard for their fragility and no doubt outrageous cost. “Ha! He keeps his actress mistress in this room when he’s in town. Makeup, makeup . . . here you are.” He waved toward a low seat. “Sit, sit. I can’t do this if you’re standing, you great brute.”
Anazâr did as commanded, not out of fear but from a languid, dreamlike compulsion. To paint his face, like a cinaedus, an actor, a whore . . . it was a proposition so alien from everything he knew to be true of himself that he could find no offense in it, no reason to refuse.
Felix stood facing him. Tipped Anazâr’s chin up. Looked down on him with a gaze both distracted and piercing, so utterly focused on his task that he seemed a different man.
“If one of my actor friends were here, he’d do this properly,” said Felix, and trailed a finger sticky with some ointment across Anazâr’s brow. A moment of panicked vulnerability hit Anazâr, but he forced himself still until it passed. A fighting reflex, that was all, because his throat was bared to another man. Anazâr realized he was panting when Felix cupped his jaw and pressed a gentle kiss on one side of his mouth. “Easy, now. Just a little more, and then I’ll bring the mirror.”
He closed his eyes and let himself believe that Felix’s sweeping touches were a sort of massage.
“Well, it’s not quite your shade.” Perhaps Felix meant to sound put out or critical of his handiwork, but there was an edge of quiet pride in his tone. “Although I suppose it would blend better if you’d let me do up your entire face.”
“No.” Anazâr opened his eyes. Reached out and caught Felix’s hand in his own. “Show me, now.”
He just wanted to get this over with.
And he was afraid of what he’d see. It wasn’t anything Felix had done, either. Since the tattoo, he’d never stopped fearing his own face. He was about to beg Felix to stop this whole mad farce when the mirror loomed in his field of vision as suddenly as a striking snake.
He looked into his own dark eyes and saw a man of the Free People who’d gone far from his land.
This is who I am.
“You see?” Felix said. Anazâr barely heard him, too transfixed by his shifting reflection in the mercury glass. “What they did to you, it’s only skin deep. Easy enough to disguise. Even easier still to ignore, if only . . .” He paused, and fear seized Anazâr again. Fear of what truths Felix would reveal. His barbed tongue could be turned to truly incisive ends, if the mood hit.
The moment stretched out between them, and over the mirror’s rim, Felix caught Anazâr’s gaze in his own, piercing and as silver as the mirror. “If only you realize its worthlessness for yourself. That this doesn’t mean anything. Well, to status-obsessed fools like my brother, maybe, but not to anyone who matters. It’s all as artificial as if we were actors in a play. You can’t let your role consume you.”
Anazâr’s roles as husband and provider, as warrior, as slave, as freedman-hopeful . . . They’d all eaten him alive. Saturn devouring his son.
All the while Felix shrugged off the weight of his own role. Anazâr had hated him so passionately for that. The hero who slipped his mask and laughed at the audience, as if they were the fools for not knowing they were watching a comedy.
Not even a real man. Shameless. Cinaedus.
He lived for no one’s expectation of him but his own.
“I don’t know if I could do this, in daylight,” said Anazâr. “It would be too visible.”
“Well, at least I’ve got you thinking of a future now. And will you believe that I find you handsome? Tell me yes, or I’ll be forced to get out the rouge and kohl.”
Anazâr wrinkled his nose. “Fine, fine. I believe you. Don’t turn me into you.”
“Excuse me! I do not wear kohl. These eyelashes are the ones I was born with, I’ll have you know.” Which was probably true, since his brother was blessed with the same. Although they seemed less apparent on his more severe, masculine countenance.
No. This night is not for Lucius Marianus to intrude upon.
“But you do wear rouge?” Anazâr teased. And then was overtaken by a sudden thoughtfulness and curiosity. “How do you do that? Or rather, allow yourself to do that? Go between woman and man the way you do. Don’t you ever feel . . .” He struggled for words. Duty to perform? Guilt? Fear?
“If I wanted to be a woman, I’d take a scissor to my balls and run off with the Galli. All respect to the Great Mother, but that’s not my path. I don’t have an answer. I do what brings me pleasure. Manhood isn’t such a strict thing as you believe.” Felix laid the mirror aside, conjuring away the glass-imprisoned stranger who wore Anazâr’s skin.
“You let that man fuck you that day. In the baths. People talk.”
“Let them!” And then he laughed, as if being the object of gossip gave him great joy. Well, it probably did. “The shame in some quarters is well justified by the pleasure. Or even makes the pleasure sweeter.”
Anazâr didn’t understand this talk of pleasure. It had never been thus for him, not the way taking a man or using his mouth or even rubbing against another could be. At best, it lacked pain. Well, perhaps for all his talk of being a man, Felix was built differently.
> “You don’t believe me,” Felix accused, no hurt in it. He paced away, reclined on the edge of the bed, and kicked off his sandals.
“I don’t think you a liar. But you have a choice. Not to subject yourself to such use. You were born a master of men, and yet you perform duties meant for your lessers.” Like me.
“Do my brother and his ilk have you so bewitched you actually conflate pleasure and duty? You’d be the ideal slave, if it weren’t for fucking me.” He slid out of his toga as he spoke, the working of his lean arm muscles distinctively masculine. The gladiatrices had arms as strong by now, but there was an indefinable difference to Felix’s proportions—indefinable and maddeningly alluring. The toga slipped to the floor, and inspiration dawned on Felix’s features. “Do you trust me?”
“Must I?” Anazâr smiled to show he was jesting. He went to Felix and touched his arm, running his fingers up delicious smooth skin, up under the fine linen of Felix’s tunic where it covered his shoulders. Their position was reversed now, Anazâr looking down into Felix’s upturned face, drinking in the pools of his eyes—long lashes, indeed—and the curve of lips half-parted in candid desire. Anazâr’s cock crooked helplessly upward in response.
“I’d . . . I’d like to show you the difference between the two. If you’ll let me,” said Felix. Anazâr’s expression must have turned to apprehension, because Felix was quick to add, “It won’t be like with my brother. If you don’t like it, we’ll stop at once and I’ll ride you like a pony.”
“Can’t we skip directly to the pony bit?” Before Felix could answer, Anazâr regained his courage. “No, wait, I’m curious. I’ll submit to you. You can take me as I did you.”
“I’m not that athletic. Gods, but that was a lovely fuck. I have something else in mind. Quite as interesting, if perhaps less physically taxing. There’s a chest under the bed.”
“More makeup?” Anazâr’s forehead had started to itch. He was anxious to fuck and sweat the paint off.
“Oh, no. Get undressed and I’ll show you.”
Mark of the Gladiator Page 14