“On your knees, slave,” growled a soldier. His silver breastplate shone from the shadows, a pale moon falling down upon Anazâr.
The soldier kicked his feet out from under him. He hit the earth cursing, “You’re not my equal. Not for bravery, not for anything, not fit to lick my feet, you fucking toad born from shit—”
A boot to his stomach took the rest of his words. The soldier cinched his shackled hands and ankles together behind his back. “I won’t kill you. That’s what you want, I imagine. Won’t be as easy as all that. Not unless your master says so, and I don’t suspect he will.” He flicked his eyes to the edge of the room, and Anazâr realized that Marianus was here, too. Watching, just out of Anazâr’s field of vision. Silently approving of the soldier’s treatment of him. So much for the compassionate patriarch he’d tricked himself into believing in.
The ladder creaked again. The soldier rose, ascended through a beam of light, pulled up the ladder, and closed the cellar door behind him. No escape.
Anazâr wheezed for breath until the bruised knot in his stomach finally untied itself, and the musty air flowed freely into his lungs. The cellar grew brighter as his eyes adjusted to the lamplight. He balanced, painfully, on spread knees, his arms stretched down and bound behind him, his throat and stomach bared.
Two more forms lay not far away, bound like him and fallen to their sides, with heavy burlap sacks tied over their heads.
“Amanikhabale? Cassia?” he gasped.
A muffled howl. Weak thrashing.
“You were magnificent,” said Marianus, rising from where he’d been sitting on an overturned bolt of cloth, next to Aelia. Always next to her. Shackling her, and unaware. “I really would have liked to sell you. I thought about cutting your tongue out and doing just that, since you’d still fetch a handsome price after today, but the Aethiopian corrupts everything she touches. I can’t trust you not to write.”
He wanted to curse and rage and rage and live. But the fire had gone out in him. The last door he’d ever pass through had just closed above.
“Call the soldier back to kill him, dear,” said Aelia, her sweet tone at odds with the grim, chill meaning of her words. “I’d like to be done with this business.”
“Yes, I’ll make sure it’s done,” said Marianus, gently. “But first, where is Felix?”
No answer from Aelia. She tucked an errant curl back into her upswept hair, seeming to give neither of them any notice.
Marianus reached out, snatching Anazâr’s face between thumb and fingers. “Where. Is. Felix?” he repeated, growling now. Oh, he was asking Anazâr.
“I don’t know,” Anazâr replied, truthfully. “If he’s half as smart as he thinks he is, long gone now, to Egypt or Greece or—”
“No. You do not play this game with me. I’ve heard a single slit to the eyeball—”
“Lucius. Please. He’ll be more forthcoming if you start with the women.”
“Oh,” said Marianus. “I suppose you’re right. As always, darling.” He drew a little knife from his sleeve, like one used for paring fruit.
Anazâr’s stomach flipped. His head whipped to Cassia and Amanikhabale, both hunched and shivering under their hoods. It took all the power in his body not to wail and rattle against his shackles. But no, it wouldn’t help, would only goad Marianus into further cruelty. Protect them. Even if it meant turning the knife on himself.
“Why do you call her darling?” he gasped before he’d even had the chance to think it through. “It’s me you fuck, while she’s out spreading her legs for your brother. You should put me in that pretty stola and sit me somewhere nice and ornamental while you cut out her tongue.”
Marianus rounded on him, but he wasn’t angry, he was grinning. “How very transparent, Cyrenaicus. But I suppose nobody buys a gladiator for his wit.” He studied his knife briefly. “Well then, considering all your plotting, it’s clear you know these little bitches better than I do. Who should I start with, then?”
Amanikhabale, his ruthless gladiator’s mind supplied. She’s weathered torture before and come out whole on the other side. Cassia’s too weak to bear it.
He couldn’t choose. He couldn’t. Maybe if he just clamped his mouth shut, Marianus would return to him with his knife. But he knew it wasn’t true. Marianus wouldn’t be manipulated so easily. He’d cut both and gauge Anazâr’s reaction for himself.
“I can’t!” Anazâr jerked in his bonds, shaking his head in exaggerated tearful frustration. “Please! Mercy, Dominus.” Weakness drew violence like no other quality. Some men could not suffer seeing a wounded, writhing thing without wanting to stamp it out. The last game. The last door.
“Mercy? Tell me where my fucking brother is, and maybe then I’ll show them mercy. The mercy of a quick death, anyway.”
“Not for them, Dominus. For me. I’ve seen a man c-crucified. Mercy.” He lowered his head in imitation of a kicked dog. His spine screamed in agony and he yanked his neck back up again, into a pose equally animal and vulnerable.
“Your old master did say you were a coward. I didn’t believe him, before.” Finally, Marianus turned, touching the point of his knife to the pad of his forefinger, twisting it in thought. “I suppose I’ll have to now. Very well then, say I show you mercy. What will you show me in return?”
Anazâr gulped air in genuine relief. Amanikhabale and Cassia both spared, for now at least.
Except he had nothing to offer. He could only forestall. Delay. And even that couldn’t last forever. What was he hoping to accomplish, here? They’d all be tortured and die regardless. He was a coward, trying so desperately to goad Marianus into killing him first. It wouldn’t save Amanikhabale and Cassia’s lives, only save himself having to witness their torture.
The blade of the knife bit into the flesh of his left cheek. “Speak, slave.”
“Anything, Dominus. Let the women go, and I’ll tell you anything. I . . . Felix. He’s my lover. We arranged to meet. I’ll tell you where he is.”
“He’s right here.”
Felix.
Anazâr looked up, unable to believe that the voice really could be—
But it was. Felix, standing half-hidden in shadow, his face looming over Aelia’s shoulder, his hand clasping hard on the junction of her neck and collarbone. He didn’t look to Anazâr, just stared, boring holes into his brother’s eyes.
“Drop the knife, brother,” he commanded.
The knife fell, hitting the packed earth with a delicate sound.
He loves me beyond all measure. Aelia’s words. Her truth. His own truth.
Felix.
“Felix!” Anazâr shouted. “She’s reaching for her—”
Aelia slid the hairpin into her fist and twisted in one fluid motion. The jeweled end flashed gold and pink and then—
Red.
Blood. Felix’s blood, gushing out dark from where the hairpin had sunk into his eye socket.
“Felix!”
Felix clutched his face.
Fell.
Went still.
“Felix!”
Anazâr’s whole body bucked against the iron of the chains. He was shouting, but he couldn’t hear the words, just felt them searing up his throat, ripping his tongue in half. The chains didn’t break. They never would. He didn’t understand how he could have ever tricked himself into believing otherwise.
Felix was dead.
Hot tears streaked his face and he didn’t care. He was tired of bearing his slave’s burden with noble, quiet dignity. All he’d worked and strived for, and what had it gotten him? He cast aside the last of his hope of freedom. Gave in to the weight of the chains. Let them anchor him to the dirt.
And wept.
The point of Marianus’s knife touched the underside of Anazâr’s chin, tipping his face until they were eye to eye. Or would be, anyway, if Anazâr could bring himself to look at Marianus as he once had. As it was, even though his face was raised, his eyelids sank to hood his swimming vision. All he coul
d see was a dark shadow creeping across the dirt floor.
“So you really were lovers, then,” Marianus said, his voice vibrating with tight-reined anger. “Shame heaped on shame heaped on shame, Cyrenaicus. To think I once treasured you so dearly, and now here you are, cowering and sniveling for my cocksucking brother. At least now I’ll be rid of both of you.”
A trailing pink vision. Aelia’s stola. A gentling woman’s hand, stroking her dear husband’s neck.
“Don’t be so hasty, Lucius,” she murmured, her voice a sweet, harmonious force. “We’ll need to set the scene of Felix’s terrible murder. A quarrel between a Roman citizen and his gladiator lover, tsk tsk. Well. A barbarian can’t be expected to suppress his urges forever, can he?”
Marianus’s expression darkened, the heat of his anger extinguished by the calculating coldness of their plot. “Of course.”
“Good man.” She smiled as her husband rose to standing, unfazed by the blood that welled in the wake of his knife as it cut up Anazâr’s chin. She even unflinchingly pried the dripping thing out of Marianus’s hand, wiping it clean on Anazâr’s filthy tunic before stowing it neatly away in the folds of her stola. “Not your own blade, dear. Use this, instead.”
From those same gentle silk folds, she produced another knife. Bigger, more worn than the one Marianus carried, and not even remotely ornamental. Secreted from the kitchen at some point, perhaps.
The one she’d intended Anazâr to kill her husband with before her plans were spoiled.
Now, she pressed it into Marianus’s palm and closed his fingers around it. “Have the gladiator kneel next to your brother’s body and slit his wretched throat with this. Once he’s dead, we’ll unshackle him and put the knife in his hand. Lay them both out in the pool of his blood.” She paused, casting her gaze about the room like a hunting lioness. “And if the Aethiopian bitch knows what’s good for her, she’ll be sure to tell the whole lurid story of their affair—culminating in a truly tragic murder-suicide, of course—when she submits to torture later tonight. You do want to live, don’t you, Aethiopian? Or shall I have this whole sorry household of slaves killed, and give testimony to the investigator myself?”
Say yes, Anazâr inwardly begged. Say yes, and let this horrible blood sacrifice end with me.
A long, unbearable silence, as dark and yawning as the unknown of the afterlife.
Amanikhabale spoke. Her voice trembled, but still rang clear and bright, even muffled as it was by the fabric of the hood. “Yes, Domina. For Cassia’s life, I’ll tell the most sordid tale Rome has ever heard.”
If Aelia or Marianus reacted with surprise to the terms of Amanikhabale’s bargain, Anazâr did not hear.
To die.
To follow Felix into death.
That would be fitting. That would be the pleasing fulfillment of an incomplete pattern.
Facedown in blood-soaked dirt, a dead Roman of the army of Octavianus flung over his back. Actium. Those were the siege months. The hungry months.
The sortie had failed. The enemy’s supply lines were too well-defended, and the cavalry had been caught between two lines of spearmen closing like the pincers of a monstrous crab. He’d been knocked off his horse, kicked in the head by another—
Anizgul lay beside him. A sword slash had burst one eye, laid his cheek open down to bone and tendons. The other eye intact, death-glassed.
Anazâr waited for the soldiers of Octavianus to come and send him to join his friend. A quick stab between the shoulder blades, that would be a fitting end. But their Latin shouts receded. So he rolled the corpse off his back, crawled from the mud, and ran for the trees.
I’ll mourn you later, friend, he told Anizgul in his mind. The crushing weight of guilt fell upon him. It seemed like there was never a proper time to mourn. The count of the dead was ever climbing, unceasing. So why was he still alive?
Anazâr wouldn’t move under his own power, so Marianus hooked him under the arms and dragged him to where Felix’s body lay.
“Don’t make this hard on yourself, Cyrenaicus,” Marianus said, grunting with the effort. “Lie down.” And when Anazâr still didn’t move, shouted, “Lie down, damn you!”
Felix’s body was facedown, one arm at his side, the other fallen draped over his head, as if he were merely sleeping. There was so little blood, Anazâr could almost trick himself into thinking so. He wished he could reach out, touch him one last time, brush the hair from his brow or close his glassy remaining eye, make his pose a little more dignified or something. But he couldn’t, chained as he was, so he knelt and waited for Marianus’s impatience to turn to blows.
It didn’t take long.
“I’ve had enough of this, you bastard fucking—” a punishing weight slammed into Anazâr’s back between his shoulder blades “—slave! Lie down! Lie down!” Over and over again, a hot, thudding pain not nearly as sharp as a whip, broader and duller but deeper, sinking into bone and muscle. Certainly not Aelia’s kitchen knife. A candleholder, perhaps. You can’t kill me with that, he almost said to Marianus, in scorn, or in pleading for something faster—he wasn’t sure which one. The pain filled him, a constellation of agony: screaming back, bruised knees, wracked arms. And worst of all, the loss and the grief for the light in the world that had just gone out.
He should really just let himself fall. Perhaps, if he aimed right, he’d be able to land close enough to Felix that they could touch. Shoulder-to-shoulder, at least, or with their heads bent to each other’s like strolling lovers.
“Lie down!”
If it didn’t hurt so badly, it would seem absurd, the way Marianus screamed and flailed and beat him. His pampered master’s body, so unused to labor, must be a mess of sweat and nerves by now. Good. Anazâr didn’t need to seek out a final victory in his master’s humiliation and discomfort, but he thought maybe Felix would appreciate it.
“Oh for Jupiter’s sake, Lucius. You’re making a fool of yourself now. Don’t you see all he’s doing is getting you worked up? He’s obviously not going to do what you say, so would you please just put that bloody thing down, pick up the damn knife, and finish him? We’ll have the women lay him out properly once he’s dead.”
“Sorry,” said Marianus. “You’re right, of course.” The candleholder hit the ground with a heavy thud.
Anazâr sank into the throbbing, rhythmic pain of his bruises, letting them rock him like the waves of the ocean. Easing him down to death.
“The knife . . .” Marianus said, and there was cold terror in his voice, but it didn’t make any sense, because surely Marianus was not the sort of man who balked at putting an animal to death?
Anazâr forced himself to open his eyes and look.
Felix’s hand was wrapped around the hilt of the discarded kitchen knife, the arm that had been lying at his side now extended over his head to grasp it.
Felix has the knife.
Felix is alive.
Anazâr threw his bound body forward, barreling into Marianus’s legs and taking them both to the ground in a pile of limbs and chains and toga. They rolled. Marianus straddled his bucking chest, and then came an open-handed slap across his face, then a punch, then another. But Anazâr was done accepting Marianus’s abuse. He’d fight. He’d fight to the fucking death. Blood blinded his right eye. Spots enclosed on the vision of his right.
Aelia screamed.
No more blows came. Above him, Marianus swayed, held upright only by the arm draped over his shoulder and braced across his chest. Felix’s arm, capturing his brother in a one-armed embrace.
No, not an embrace.
Stabbing him in the chest from behind.
The knife was lodged deep in Marianus’s left chest. Blood cascaded down his chin, dappling the soiled white of his toga. A mortal wound. A quicker death than Marianus deserved. His body jerked and twitched and finally slumped forward over Felix’s arm, head lolling only for a moment before Felix pushed him like a sack of wheat onto his side on the dirt floor.
“Anazâr,” said Felix, rushing to kneel at Anazâr’s side. Marianus’s body was a misshapen lump in the background. “Oh, Anazâr.”
Anazâr didn’t even care that Felix was saying his name where others could hear it. Didn’t care at all. He let the spell of it bring them both back to life.
Because Felix was alive. The hairpin was gone, leaving his one eye a bulging, bloodied mess, but it obviously had missed the killing angle. Blood was streaked across one cheek, finger marks from where he’d tried to wipe his face. But he was alive. Alive and whole and the eye would heal and all would be well.
“I love you,” said Anazâr, and even though it came out a weak croak, he’d never said anything with such power or conviction or meaning.
“Of course you do,” Felix replied, “I just saved your life.” He smiled, the expression somewhat grim and horrible, considering the state of his face, and then he turned. “Aelia! Get me the fucking keys for these shackles, or so help me gods, I’ll give your hairpin back to you in the same way it was delivered to me.”
But Aelia didn’t answer. Instead, she stood in the space where the ladder to the cellar was raised and lowered, peering to the ceiling.
“Help!” she shrieked. “Help! Help! Alexandros! Lower the ladder! Send the guards! Felix has gone mad! He killed Lucius!”
The guards.
Anazâr looked to Felix, smiling when Felix reached out and finally cupped his face in one soft hand.
I’ll die touching you. That’s all I ever asked.
“Alexandros! Alexandros?”
At last, a beam of light fell. The perfect shadowed outline of Alexandros’s silhouetted head sketched itself across the floor. “Yes, Domina?” he asked, as calmly as if she’d been requesting wine.
“Lower the ladder! Your master is dead! Send the guards, damn you, man!”
Mark of the Gladiator Page 20
