Mark of the Gladiator

by Heidi Belleau

  Anazâr found himself smiling against his will. “So you do . . .”

  “What, what? Finish your observation, you baffling man.”

  Anger had fled. If Anazâr opened his mouth again, he’d have no choice but to laugh out loud, so he clenched his teeth until his jaw hurt.

  Felix whirled around to flash a rude hand gesture and a lopsided smile at Anazâr, completed his spin (which was more than a little dangerous in the darkening night, on a sloping street) and kept walking upward, homeward, without missing a pace.

  Anazâr fell back a little more, just in case Felix stumbled.

  The silence they shared did not feel unpleasant in the slightest.

  They neared the house. Perhaps he could ask Felix one last question while this strange mood of his lasted. Felix seemed quite willing to show him a window into another world. Amusement. Laughter. Roman letters tangling together on scrolls and forming songs instead of censures on the skins of slaves.

  Felix stumbled.

  Because it was near dark, because Anazâr was attuned to every sound, he heard. As Felix fell. A hiss. He’d heard nothing like it in the arena—only when the arrows had flown at Actium.

  Instead of leaning to help Felix to his feet, he jumped over his sprawled form and landed on the cobbles in a cat-crouch.

  A harsh breath. The flash of a sword by lamplight. Anazâr ducked the stabbing stroke and came up inside the swordsman’s reach.

  There was a cold purity to this, a welcome familiarity. His body, his senses, all bent to the purpose of killing. Ifri, my goddess, guide me.

  He hugged the man close as a lover, threw himself backward and twisted in the air.

  They hit the stones hard.

  Anazâr was ready for the pain. He felt the man’s grip slacken and tore the sword pommel away.

  If Anazâr stood to press sword to throat—to threaten into submission—the archer deeper in the alley might shoot him down. So he drew the sword closer instead and cut the man’s throat awkwardly, so that pumping blood soaked his forearm and trickled warm and thick from his elbow onto the stones.

  No words. Just the usual sounds a man made dying.

  “Wh-what,” Felix gasped, still sprawled across the paving stones. Anazâr had almost forgotten him, caught up in the fight, but there was no ignoring him now. Pale, huge-eyed, young again.

  “Stay down,” Anazâr ordered. “Quiet.”

  Felix nodded, gave him silence, and failed to faint. Down the alley, Anazâr heard scrabbling footsteps that quickly grew softer. An archer who only shot once—no, it was likely a crossbowman.

  Anazâr tightened his grip on the dead man’s sword. “We’ll go. Stay between my body and the wall until we get to the house. Now.”

  Time itself hurried and sped, a storm cloud racing over the western desert, eerie and skin-prickling in its passage. He protected Felix with his body, edging them both through the network of mazelike alleys back to the domus Marianus. Felix didn’t fight his orders, didn’t pull any of his usual frustrating pranks; and though he seemed terribly shaken, he still didn’t faint.

  And what of Anazâr? He had a naked sword made from killing metal and not practice wood, and a tunic soaked in the blood of a stranger: another slave, a freedman . . . or, perhaps, a citizen. Well, no matter who he’d killed, he had no choice but to hope Marianus would sanction the act. Whatever quarrel lay between the brothers, Felix was of his house.

  He even dared to hope this would bring the two closer together, against a common enemy.

  Felix gripped his left forearm, the one that didn’t hold the sword. “We’re here,” he said. “I—thank you.”

  “Go rest.” Anazâr clasped Felix by the shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “I was about to ask you to tell me some poetry. Maybe tomorrow. If I’m not crucified.”

  A look of fear crossed Felix’s brow. “They wouldn’t. My brother—”

  “I was joking.” Anazâr’s hand drifted upward, but he pulled it back at the last moment, curling his fingers shyly into his palm.

  “You’re supposed to smile when you joke, you know.”

  Although they entered a silent, sleepy house, it didn’t stay that way long. News of the attack spread quickly. The full staff mobilized, a doctor was summoned, and all the while Marianus stood at the threshold of his study, calm and collected and somehow directing the chaos. At the center of the storm, Anazâr silently awaited judgment or orders, head bowed. And by Anazâr’s side, Felix waited too, wavering on his feet but resolute. He’d stubbornly refused multiple offers of a place to lie down, and Anazâr was secretly thankful for that.

  “Call your brother-in-law, Marianus,” a client advised. “Tell him to send a cohort!”

  “Overkill,” countered Alexandros. “By the account of Cyrenaicus, the cutthroats have fled.”

  “What do you know of military matters, old Greek?”

  “Nothing. I’ve merely run politically active households during decades of civil wars.”

  Marianus cut the client off with a wave of his hand. “I will investigate the scene myself. We’ll take ten men.” He turned to Alexandros. “Should we take the gladiator?”

  “I would advise not. If there are allies of the dead man on scene, it would inflame the situation. And a gladiator having wielded a steel sword outside the arena . . .” Alexandros let the silence at the end of his sentence speak for itself.

  “I could say I was the one who killed the man,” Felix offered, his voice uncharacteristically low and faint.

  As well-schooled as Alexandros was in being the ideal inoffensive slave, even he couldn’t help the quirk of an eyebrow at the offer.

  Marianus ignored the suggestion and thrust himself into motion, men filing behind him as he led the way out. “Clean the sword and lock it away,” he called to Alexandros over his shoulder.

  Anazâr watched the thing go, wrapped in cloth and spirited away by Alexandros, feeling like it had taken some unnameable part of himself with it.

  A short while later, the party returned, dragging a corpse.

  “This is an interesting development,” said Marianus, pointing toward the gaping, horrible face. “One of my own freedmen.” His own face was drawn tight, eyes blazing, in stark contrast to the flopping fish-eyed corpse.

  Anazâr cursed in his own language—a brutal phrase about fucking a scorpion hole—not sure if he was cursing himself or Ursus. Because the dead man was Ursus, no questioning it now. Perhaps he should have known before, but the mouth of the alley had been very dark and their struggle frantic and over quickly.

  “Leave. Everyone. Alexandros, arrange a watch by the door, and send word to my brother-in-law. I would speak with Cyrenaicus alone.”

  “I’m not leaving,” said Felix. Anazâr snapped his head to stare at him in surprise, but there was no trace of his usual caustic jesting.

  “Felix, even you must grasp the seriousness of this situation,” said Marianus.

  “I do,” Felix growled back, “and that’s why I want to stay. It was me they were trying to kill and—”

  “Are you so sure of that, brother?”

  “Of course I am! What, do you think he was trying to kill Cyrenaicus?”

  “Just go to your room, Felix. Go, or I’ll have you taken there.”

  The look they shared did not radiate the same intensity of pure hatred as the night of the second report, but it was still unnerving.

  “Cyrenaicus saved my life,” said Felix at last, defiant in his defeat.

  Marianus took Anazâr by the shoulder and led him away.

  “You smell of blood,” said Marianus. “Take off your tunic. Here, have some water as well.”

  “Thank you, Dominus.” Anazâr pulled off his tunic immediately, glad to be rid of the thing. He wet part of it with water from Marianus’s offered cup and rubbed at the dried bloodstains on his sword arm.

  “I’ll protect you if anyone brings the charge to a magistrate. You fought to save a citizen’s life, above all. I doubt
that anyone will bring such a charge, not for Ursus.”

  “He mentioned a wife,” said Anazâr.

  “His slave. She reverts to me now; I’ll send men to bring her in the morning.”

  “She . . . won’t be tortured?”

  He shouldn’t have asked that.

  “No,” said Marianus. “You’re . . . nevermind.” A faint smile curled across his face. “Alexandros will question her to see if Ursus shared the plans of his betrayal. Reward will achieve more than punishment, I imagine, if she knows anything at all. Throw that thing in the corner.”

  Anazâr tossed the stained tunic in the corner of the room, taking care not to get it close to the spinning wheel. This room seemed designed solely for use of women’s crafts, but the walls were still richly decorated, inlaid with mosaics and hung with embroidered tapestries.

  “Is there anything else of value I can tell you, Dominus? I’ve tried to list every detail.” He’d even made a point of mentioning Felix and Ursus’s conflict that morning, even though it seemed like too small a slight to drive a man to murder.

  The real questions writhed underneath that politic one. Who could have done this? What will happen to me?

  Marianus tightened his lips. “I don’t know. I think it wise, at this point, to tell you some of our family history, so that you know what to look for in case of another attempt.” Anazâr’s heart pounded, not with the fear of danger, but with the exhilaration of trust. “When I was newly a man, my father loaned Aelia’s father a substantial amount of money to further his political career. His ennoblement and my marriage to Aelia ensued, once her father Aelius’s fortunes increased. But Aelius’s enemies became our enemies, as well. One of them overstepped. His lands and assets were stripped by Augustus and granted to our houses at the beginning of this year. In fact, this was how the gladiatrices came into my possession.”

  Marianus paused to adjust a toga fold that lay crookedly across his shoulder; Anazâr felt emboldened to fill the silence. “Do you think . . . ?”

  “I wouldn’t jump to conclusions just yet. My brother has his own enemies, after all. Men he’s insulted, men he owes money, jilted ex-lovers. There’s really no end to the scandals in his sorry excuse for a life. But I can’t shake the feeling that the bolt could have been meant for me.”

  The alley had been dark. And there was no reason from an outsider’s point of view to assume that Anazâr and Felix would keep one another company.

  “I was once a soldier, as you know, Dominus. If you wish, I could examine your daily routines and see where you’re most vulnerable to attack. You and your brother. If he’ll follow instructions, that is.”

  “Felix pretends to be a fool, but he has a keen sense of self-preservation. I’ve learned, at great cost, not to trust his outward appearance. I promised my father I’d never turn him from the house, but still . . . well, perhaps this attack will sober him.”

  Admiration for Marianus—for his patience with Felix, for his ability to manage the affairs of his hectic household with dignity, for the way he held himself in a crisis—swelled in Anazâr’s chest. Marianus carried a heavy burden and he carried it well.

  “I hope so, Dominus,” said Anazâr, because everything else he was thinking, everything he really wanted to say—it was all too intimate.

  “You saved my delinquent brother’s life, Cyrenaicus, and for that I thank you. The two of you together so late in the evening was unexpected, but fortuitous. In future, though, if he commands you in anything, confirm with myself or Aelia or Alexandros. Felix may be your superior, but he isn’t your master.”

  The unspoken end to that speech: I am.

  “Understood, Dominus. He didn’t . . . He only . . .” Their passage through the baths became hard to recall in any detail now that he was standing so close to Marianus.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Marianus’s hand came to clasp the nape of Anazâr’s neck, the gesture stiff, tentative, but undeniably wanting. And the smell of him . . . expensive wine and oil and day-old sweat; Anazâr wanted too.

  Anticipating the command, he sank downward, preparing to serve.

  “Not like that, Cyrenaicus. Not tonight.” Marianus’s eyes flashed and Anazâr froze, feeling a strange fearful lump rise in his throat. “No, you do well. Hands and knees, this time.”

  “Yes, Dominus.” He swallowed in relief and continued down to his knees, then further. The rug was of soft, thick, clean-smelling wool; his palms sank down into the fibers, crushing them to form hand-shaped impressions.

  Marianus paced around him. Anazâr heard the rustle of his toga and endured the full force of his calm regard. This is the way things are supposed to be.

  “You’re bruised,” Marianus remarked. “Here.” A trailing touch on his side. Anazâr tried to stay impassive, but a shiver perhaps escaped.

  “I didn’t know. It’s nothing.”

  Marianus stepped away then, going somewhere deeper into the room. Anazâr waited patiently.

  When he returned, it was to spread an unguent onto Anazâr’s bruise. The gesture and the warm, slick touch shocked the breath out of him. The words Thank you, Dominus died on his lips.

  “You’re of great value to me, Cyrenaicus.”

  He had not expected this tenderness.

  Marianus spread him open, his soft, delicate hands smoothing across the insides of Anazâr’s thighs and up, displaying him more intimately. Anazâr’s cock was hopelessly hard, but he tried to quell any other signs of shameful lust, forcing his breath to flow evenly in and out, in and out—a little raggedness when Marianus began to use his fingers, that was all.

  He couldn’t help wondering how much the unguent cost that Marianus was so liberally pressing into him. Whatever the cost, he was thankful for it.

  “Be ready,” Marianus told him.

  “I’m ready, Dominus.”

  He’d taken the full length of his master’s cock down his throat before, but gods, up his ass was another matter entirely. He ached. No, it wasn’t quite pain, but it was almost unbearable nonetheless, that feeling of helpless invasion. Trying not to moan or hiss, Anazâr kept his mouth shut tight as Marianus gripped his thighs and levered him backward onto his engorged prick.

  “Yes, there. Now hold.”

  Anazâr’s eyes rolled back in his head in silent protest of the statuesque stillness he forced body his to assume. His body, which wished to buck and thrash, to be free and be taken all at once. He would do this. He would perform. He clenched his muscles, pulling Marianus deeper, and didn’t even let himself smile with triumph as he heard his master’s jagged, undignified moan.

  Marianus took his pleasure then. The pounding rocked Anazâr forward, nearly toppling him onto his elbows. He lowered his neck, but he held.

  By the time Marianus achieved his climax and pulled out, gasping, Anazâr’s erection had faded. Satisfaction remained, at least, in having seen Marianus to his own gratification.

  Marianus tossed him a torn scrap of fine cloth from a basket. His toga had fallen slightly askew and there was a light sheen of sweat across his forehead, but he was otherwise as stoic and disaffected now as he had been when discussing his brother’s indiscretions.

  “Clean up with this. I’ll leave you here to take care of your own needs . . . unless you’d like me to send for a house slave? Man or woman, I’d be amenable to granting your choice as a reward for your actions today.”

  “Thank you, Dominus, but if I’m to stay here tonight, all I desire is a simple dinner and a new tunic.”

  It had been a long time since the bread at the baths, and now that the tension had worn off, his stomach gnawed at him.

  “Very well. I’ll have both sent to you right away. And as I said before, Cyrenaicus, I value you highly as my slave, but I think, perhaps, you would also serve me very well as a freedman.”

  Before Anazâr could respond, beg and scrape and cry Yes, yes, yes, please Dominus, yes, Marianus swept out the door.

  Anazâr dreamed.

  He w
oke up, in the dream, from a restful sleep on the floor of the same room. He scratched at his chest and forehead to awaken himself, and a wide swath of skin sloughed off. Translucent skin, like the inner membrane of an egg, that carried the letters of his slave tattoo. Below, his new skin shone clean and tender and blank. He peeled the old skin away from his chest, from his shoulders, peeled it like a tunic, tearing and pulling in his eagerness to have it off. As he set to work on his legs, panic surged, because what was he meant to do with his shed skin? If he left it to dirty the house of Marianus, he’d be punished. There was some ritual to perform, but he’d forgotten the words.

  He was close to his new life. So very close. He began to sob in frustration, but the tears never came; by that, he understood he was still in a dream—gods, what an infernal dream—and let his dry eyelids shudder half-open.

  A man stood silhouetted in the doorway. Even in the dim predawn light of the house, Anazâr could see the toga that swept the floor. Marianus. Here to fuck him again? Dream-fog faded; his cock throbbed with immediate interest.

  No. He was a slave who’d been the only witness to an attempt on a noble’s life. Maybe they even suspected that he’d taken part. Perhaps his master’s earlier tenderness had been in apology or regret for what was about to happen now.

  Not here to fuck him, then. Here to torture him for information. Here to send him to the cross.

  Now his heart pounded instead, every muscle in his body preparing to fight or flee. But he wouldn’t fight, and he wouldn’t flee. He’d go willingly and honorably and be done with this life, dying as neither coward nor animal. He closed his eyes again, taking a deep, cleansing breath, and feigned sleep. It would be all right.

  Marianus paced softly from one end of the room to the other, then back again. None of this made sense. Perhaps he was still dreaming. No, this wasn’t Marianus. The nervousness, the strange half-skipping step—even with his eyes closed, he could tell.