I should share the joy, but at the moment my arm ached and my fingers were lifeless.I turned in a circle, holding aloft the symbol of my freedom, without any sense that the freedom was real.
Nothing was real but the hot sand and my friend’s hatred.The noise rolled on, but the heat and blinding light from the arena floor blotted out all but the bite of wood against my palm.
I didn’t regainawareness until I tried to retire to my cell in theludusthat night.I’d been tended to and bandaged by Nonus Marcianus, the talentedmedicuswho kept the gladiators alive to fight another day.After that came wine in great quantities, bestowed upon us by ourlanistato celebrate the survivors and my new-won freedom.
I drank and drank until I brought up the wine again, disgusting sweet grapes gone to death in the corner of the training grounds.My hand stayed around the sword as I vomited, I clenching the thing as though my freedom would evaporate if I let it go.
Once I was finished being sick, I decided I’d sleep first and then visit Lucia, on whose narrow pallet in the Subura I forgot about death, life, and pretty much everything else.I’d rest until I could better navigate the streets of Rome.
Regulus was in my cell, lying on my bed.He didn’t bother to get up.
“Mine now, my friend,” he said to the ceiling, eyeing Xerxes’s drawings.
“Then where do I sleep?”My tongue was heavy, drink dulling my wits.
“No one cares.”Regulus slung his arm over his eyes.“You don’t belong here anymore.Go away, Leonidas.”
I felt a presence behind me and turned to the hard bulk of Aemilianus, ourlanista.
“Stay if you want.”Aemil’s scarred face, as usual, held little emotion.“I can use you to train the others.”
“No.”My answer was instant.“No more death.”
Aemil simply looked at me.Aslanista, he had to herd forty gladiators through training every day and keep them confined and out of trouble.If anyone wanted to hire us as fighters in the games, or for exhibitions, or as bodyguards, they went to Aemilianus.A former gladiator himself, he knew exactly how to tame us, and one of those ways was to rein in his own emotions.
“You’ll be back,” he predicted.
“No.”I set my body stubbornly, at least as much as my drunken swaying allowed.
Regulus, on the pallet, lifted his arm.“He means, idiot, you either stay and work for him or get out.I’mprimus palusnow.I don’t want you here, so go.”
“I’m sorry.”My tongue, not gifted at the best of times, could not explain why I’d spared him.But Regulus was alive.He had a chance.I didn’t regret the decision.
“Hercules strike you down.”Regulus slumped back to the bed, arm shielding his face again.“I hope he does.”
Aemil continued to watch me from his mismatched Gallic eyes, one blue, one green-brown.“Are you staying?”
I shook my head.Regretted the shake, as the world spun.
“The gate is open for you.”Aemil gave me a nod, a dismissal.“Godspeed, Leonidas.”
I’d lived in thisludusfor seven years, well beyond the sentence given to me for a crime everyone believed I’d committed.A life in the games was an almost certain death.Only the gods had assured it hadn’t happened to me.
I stumbled out of the line of cells to the gate, the sword’s wooden hilt driving slivers into my hand.I still couldn’t release the thing.
The guard at the gate, a man I’d known for years, said good-bye to me as I walked out.The gate creaked closed behind me, the only noise in the silence.
Graffiti on the wall outside showed a crudely sketched figure with too-long legs and an optimistic phallus, my sword raised while I destroyed aretiarius.The letters beneath the figure spelled my name in crooked capitals.
The click of the gate held finality.Leonidas “The Spartan,” was no longer a gladiator, adored by crowds in the arena.
I was free, homeless, and alone in the Roman night.
I went to Lucia.She lived in a house with seven other ladies in the Subura, run by a lean woman called Floriana.They were used to me there, coming and going when I pleased, with Aemil’s blessing.
Lucia had a soft body, a wide smile, and eyes that could be kind.Her hair was dyed red, which made it brittle, but some customers liked a woman to resemble the barbarians of the north.
I was tired, drunk, and bewildered.I said nothing at all, only took Lucia to her cubicle and drove into her like a man drowning.
