by Lydia Pax
Septus put his hands on Aeliana’s shoulders. “You look after him, Faun. He’s a good man. And a good fighter, despite what you saw down there.”
That was clear enough to Aeliana already. Flamma wanted blood, and Caius was rusty. It would have been that way with anyone.
“Don’t call her that,” said Lucius. “She doesn’t like it.”
“What, Faun? Isn’t that her name?” Septus turned to Aeliana. “Isn’t that your name?”
“It’s Aeliana,” said Caius, “and it’s very lovely.”
There was that flush again, creeping and tugging at her neck, like the knowing grip of a long-time lover.
Lucius turned to Aeliana with a great grin on his face. “Oh my. You two did come in together, didn’t you? Have you been prancing about with the bear, little faun?”
“You just told me not to call her that.” Septus frowned.
“You said it as her name. I said it in jest. It’s a world of difference.”
Septus bristled. It was a natural reaction for him. He was bristly. He slapped Lucius on the back. “Come on. Let’s get out of her hair.’
It took Aeliana a moment to realize that the entire interaction had passed without her saying a word. That was…unusual, to say the least. Her focused misanthropy when it came to the gladiators did not present itself in cold silence. More often than not, she was actively disparaging of their activities. But seeing Caius—enormous and strong—so readily vulnerable and in so much pain…it was a distraction. Her heat and attraction for him gave way to real medical concern, and she was a professional.
Next time she saw Lucius, she would stomp on his feet and call him a scum-sucking drunk bastard. He would laugh her off, like he always did, but it was something at least.
After they left, she kept Caius upright and conscious. Anytime she saw him on the verge of passing out, she administered some foul-smelling sulfur under his nose and his dark eyes jammed open. They retained a heavy glaze. A few hours passed like this, with Aeliana taking inventory of her supplies and sending Chloe down to the training grounds with solutions and bandages as the fighters there needed them.
Eventually, though, Caius’s head returned to him.
“Oh,” he said suddenly, voice clear. “Oh, ow.”
He put a hand to his head tenderly, feeling the bruise there. She had wrapped a small poultice around the large bruises in his leg and shoulder, encouraging the blood flow to rush there. There were no breaks in the bone, and his concussion seemed mild. He would need to take it easy for a few days, though.
She told him as much, and he listened patiently.
“I’m sure you’re excellent at your job. You’d have to be, in this place.” He spread his hands. “But, I can’t afford to wait that long.”
“Then you’ll injure yourself again and you’ll get hurt worse, and then you’ll have to be at bed rest.”
Caius frowned. “I’ll feel better tomorrow. I was just knocked loopy a bit. I know my limits.”
“You knew your limits. And then you came back to this awful place. For reasons I can’t understand.”
“What?” Caius smiled. “You’re not swept away by the honor and glory of a honorable fight and a glorious death?”
She bent over, looking at the wound on his head. He smelled like campfires and oak. The idle thought of bottling his essence somehow passed through her head. She could sniff at it at nights to feel this strange amalgam of heart-racing calm. An urge to kiss the top of his head took hold of her—to kiss him, and to cradle his face against her bosom—and she had to close her eyes and shake her head for a moment to exorcise the feeling. She felt like she was going mad.
Gingerly, she pressed in on the contusion. The swelling had gone down.
“I have to wonder whether you’re saying things like that because of the blow to your head or because you’re very bad at pretending. ‘The honor of an honorable fight!’ Surely you can do better than that.”
Her fingertips rested against his face for just a moment. But it was a moment too long if she wanted to have her emotions remain hidden. There was a flash in his eyes—a flash of want and desire—that she had never expected to see from a man such as he. A strong man. A handsome man.
A man that she hadn’t been able to stop wanting since she had seen him earlier that day.
With startling quickness, he took her hand by the wrist. “You have soft skin.”
There was no way to hide the heat her entire body felt at such a touch. The best she could do to hide the sudden spike in sensations was to not hold her breath.
“Part of my job entails access to a great many lotions.”
His grip was not firm. Slipping away would have been easy. But she didn’t.
“It feels good. Do you lotion…everything?”
Now she did slip away, but only to hide that damnable flush again. She wished she were bigger. More skin for the heated blood to rise through before arriving at her face. More excuses as to why she could not keep her face from heating so in front of this man.
Behind her, Caius stood. “I thank you for your service for me. And, for your discretion.”
“Discretion?”
He put a hand on her shoulder. His strong fingers pressed against her back, and she had to gulp to resist the urge to purr. “You clearly know my feelings about being here are mixed. I would prefer that remain between you and me. Flamma might have been more agitated than I expected, and more early, but if other gladiators caught wind of my hesitations, I would be living among a pack of rabid dogs.”
“You are already.” She turned to face him.
“Yes.” He smiled. “But they think I am rabid too.”
He walked out then. She gazed with no little admiration at the thick muscles of his shirtless back. When he stopped at the door, a dozen strange fantasies ran through her head all at once. Would he demand her body then and there? Would he press her against the wall, every thick muscle sliding her upward until her legs wrapped lustily around his waist?
He did none of those.
“You can understand, by the way.”
“Understand what?”
“The reasons why I’m here. I have a daughter, Fabia. As things stood, I was too poor to give her the life she deserves. I fight for her. She’s the only thing in this life I have worth fighting for.”
She responded without thinking. “And dying for?”
“Especially that. Only that, if it means a good life for her.”
Chapter 8
The sun set on Puteoli, and Caius had spent only a few moments in his cell before a guard arrived to escort him back to the house of the Dominus. Caius took the steps slowly, still feeling the effects of his beating earlier, but his head felt leagues better than it had before. Aeliana really knew her work.
How he had left her office after touching her—first on her hand, and then her shoulder—was beyond him. Every part of his being had been yearning to stay. To explore. She certainly did not object to his hands upon her. He wondered how far that courtesy could go. That thought made his manhood stir.
He could not focus on that now. It would not do to walk into a meeting with a dominus clearly affected by thoughts of a woman. Even if that woman was steadily burning him to pieces.
The large house faced the training grounds, with an extended balcony over the front door where Rufus could walk out and observe his fighters and trainers at work.
When he had been here last, Caius was regularly brought inside the bounds of the domus. Guests often wanted to see gladiators up close, to have a look at their physique and maybe see a sparring match between two favorites.
There were always guests at House Varinius. During the day, they passed by the training fighters on their way up into the house. Most of them were clients of Rufus and he their patron.
The system of patronage was not something Caius had a firm grasp on during his short tenure in freedom. If he had, likely he wouldn’t have brought his family to destitution.
Essentially, patronage was a series of exchanged favors that the entirety of Roman society was built upon. A patron would provide their clients with money, food, and jobs. And likewise, a client would provide a patron sometimes with labor, but more often with political and societal support—like votes in elections or petitioning for a patron to be placed a certain office. In Caius’s case, most likely he would have been a hired knife for some ambitious collegium head—and killing was not what Caius wanted in his life any longer after finishing up as a gladiator.
Like many Roman freedmen, once he had earned his freedom, he wanted only to earn his own way and run his life the way he thought a freedman’s life ought to be run. And so he eschewed the social obligations of patronage and unintentionally made a few enemies in the community—enemies who could have been patrons of his. With all his investments gone sour, he’d had nothing—and no one—to fall back on.
Slaves walked by Caius, some carrying blankets and trays, others amphoras and bowls. There was always something slaves needed to attend to in a Roman house, if only to keep them too busy to imagine revolting. On the walls hung many decorations. One held the favored gladiatorial weapons of the Dominus.
The House of Varinius was known for its skilled fighters in the thraex, retarius, and dimachaerus styles. Other Houses, other ludi were known for other attributes—the strength and size of their fighters, or their speed, or their trickiness in battle—or other specialities, like the heavily armored murmillo and secutor styles. The House of Varinius sometimes employed styles other than those of its specialty, but only for well-rounding in its training.
Caius took a moment as he stepped on the cool marble of the atrium to look around. He recalled the place possessing, if not splendor, then a particularly clean and austere atmosphere. But the home now seemed in disrepair. Golden and silver candlebras had been replaced with bronze and copper. Long cracks showed in several walls. Some of the marble had been replaced with simple limestone or granite.
What had happened to let this place fall into such disrepair?
“I don’t like it, Rufus! Not one bit!”
Storming out from the corner office where Caius headed was Porcia Calidius Minor, Rufus’s young and beautiful wife. She was blond and, in that particular moment, fuming. Caius heard Rufus’s voice trailing after her.
“Come now, Porcia. Calm yourself.”
“I will not!” She turned, raising her voice. “How am I supposed to be a respectable member of the Greens without laying down a bet for my cause?”
Caius understood immediately. Rufus had married Porcia shortly before Caius’s departure. She had never seemed to like Caius, which had not bothered him that much, as she had little say in the operations of the ludus and Rufus did not let her have much say in which men fought and how.
As a result, perhaps to spite Rufus, she had taken to a different area of the games than the gladiator fights—the chariot races. There were four factions in the chariot races in the Empire—the Greens, the Reds, the Whites, and the Blues. Choosing a team was akin to pledging allegiance to a king. It was a dedicated position that could not be undone without severe social consequences.
The lady liked to bet on her team. And—Caius looked around once more at the crumbling architecture of the house—she apparently did not bet wisely with her husband’s money.
Rufus appeared in the doorway now. He raised an easy hand to Porcia’s face, perhaps hoping to calm her. She turned harshly. There was as much warmth between them as between Caius’s foot and the floor.
The two had a child stashed away at a school somewhere. He was about seven, to Caius’s recollection. A smart, gentle boy named Marius. Porcia did not relish much the duties of motherhood, and Rufus allowed her to find a good place somewhere out of the city to stay.
They continued their small, awkward stare down. Hoping to relieve them, Caius coughed briefly.
Porcia glared. “Oh, I see now. Yes. You must save your money to let the fighters walk through the house. Very clear.”
She stormed away, casting daggers at Caius all the while.
“Just a moment, Caius,” said Rufus. “I must finish my affairs before we can speak.”
Two new arrivals walked in behind Caius. One was Quintus Pompilius Buteo, a rival lanista to Rufus. And the other was Felix—a gladiator, no doubt being used as a bodyguard, and the brother of the last man Caius had killed in the arena.
Chapter 9
As Rufus and Quintus hashed out their deal inside the office, Felix and Caius were left alone with one another. Guards stood nearby, as they always did in the house, but they were not much in the business of listening to slaves.
“I understood that you had retired.”
“I had.”
Felix was tall, pale, and bald. He had dark blue eyes that seemed to soak in every breath Caius made. They were cold eyes, like snow smashed a hundred times under a tree in winter.
“I thought it a smart move,” said Felix, “considering you would have been a dead man if you stepped in the arena with me.”
“I myself considered it a smart move at the time.”
“Quintus would have made it happen, a match between us. It would have been a great story for the crowd. To avenge his brother’s death, the young veteran must fight the Champion of Puteoli.”
“I don’t remember you being much of a veteran.” Caius smiled. “And it would not have been very much of a fight.”
The fight with Vox, though—Felix’s brother—that had been a fight for the ages. Caius only wished it hadn’t ended like it had. But Felix didn’t seem ready to listen to him on that account.
“You’ll forgive me for disagreeing, Caius. And now you’re back. Here. Ready to fight again?”
“That’s the idea.”
Felix smiled. His teeth were small and white. “I’ll see you in the arena then.”
“Anything is possible when it comes to the games.”
“No. I’ll see you in the arena. Quintus owes me a favor or two. And your man, Rufus, owes everyone in this town thanks to the debts of his mad wife. I’ll see you in the arena. And then I’ll kill you.”
Caius was tired, and Felix angered him. Life and death in the arena was often in control of a gladiator’s hands—but Vox’s death was not. And everyone knew it. And it angered Caius to no end to be blamed for something he was merely a tool in delivering.
So, he lashed out. “That’s tall talk for a bald pup who begged me to spare his brother’s life.”
Flame sparked in Felix’s eyes and he shoved Caius hard. Caius shoved him back and punched him across the jaw. Within seconds, the nearby guards had them separated. Felix twisted and kicked, gnashing his teeth.
“I’ll kill you, Caius. I’ll kill you and wear your bloody skin like a cloak. Cloak from a bear, how about that?”
Caius just smiled, seeing the bloody lip he gave Felix. That had felt good. One of the few things he had heard over his years in peace was the constant badmouth Felix had given him. Felix spread rumors that Caius had wanted to kill Vox, or had paid off Senator Otho to order Vox be executed. It was all lies. Vox’s death never should have happened.
He knew he would pay for striking Felix one way or another, but he enjoyed lashing out. A gladiator, through and through. The old stuff was coming out already.
Rufus and Quintus exited the office, neither looking very surprised. Gladiators fighting among themselves was, after all, nothing new to a lanista.
“I shall take care of all of it, make no mistake,” said Rufus. “Pleasant travels back home.” He turned to Caius and the guards holding him. “Bring him in.”
Chapter 10
Rufus sat on his table, legs wobbling just above the floor. In many ways—an exceptional many—the man was like a child. But he had a good mind for quality in a fighter, and he had never spoken but truth to Caius. Across from him were Caius and Murus.
As a doctore, Murus had considerably fewer restrictions on his movement throughout the estate, though he
was still a slave. He was considered thoroughly part of the household.
Caius, who had sold himself into slavery as a gladiator, also enjoyed fewer restrictions than most slaves who had been forcefully brought into the trade, or born into it. Still, he didn’t want to flaunt such things around. Judging from this afternoon, there was already enough ill will in the ludus against him.
Wine was served. Murus never drank, citing always too many bad memories. He liked his mind fresh.
“No, thank you,” Caius said, seconding Murus. “Gladiators are not allowed such, except in victory.”
Rufus sighed and nodded, taking a gulp of his own glass. “Yes, well. Tell that to Lucius.”
“Someone should,” Murus agreed. “Though he lives on the wave of several victories, we worry he forgets his place.”
Murus sounded like a concerned parent more than a doctore, which Caius supposed was due to his long tenure at the House Varinius.
“I can talk to Lucius if you should like,” said Caius. “He listened to me. He may yet. Is that why I’m here?”
Taking another swig, Rufus shook his head. “No. We must talk, you and I and Murus. We must assess.”
“Your concern stretches past Lucius,” said Caius, “and onto me. Because of what happened with Flamma.”
At this, Rufus and Murus exchanged a glance. Slipping off the table, Rufus pulled a chair in front of Caius.
“What are the qualities of an exceptional gladiator, Caius? Do you recall me telling you when you came here?”
Caius did. He had been raised as a slave from a very young age. When he was fourteen, he was a troublemaker. He constantly got into fights with other slaves and even some freedmen, and when he struck a boy of noble birth, that was the end for him. He was sent to the mines for the rest of his life.
Or so he thought.
When Rufus arrived in the mines one afternoon, years later, to round up good, young fighting men, Caius was one of many who volunteered. As far as he knew, he was the only one who survived past his second fight.
A quick, bloody death in the arena seemed a preferable fate than the slow, agonizing end facing him in the mines. Caius had no issue volunteering then.
