Chapter 1
April AD 63
Stepping around the corner for a cup of wine at our local popina late one evening should have been a simple thing. I left Cassia immersed in studying the household accounts, her greatest enjoyment, and went to ease my evening’s thirst with vinegary wine on the Vicus Salutis.
The April night was rainy so I decided to sit inside, even though I’d have to pay extra for the stool. As I ducked under the popina’s roof, smote by the musty scents of wine, men in unwashed tunics, and old food, a man’s voice boomed out of the shadows.
“Leonidas!”
The voice was familiar, but for a moment, I couldn’t place it. It belonged to none of the gladiators I knew, or to Aemil, my old trainer, nor to anyone I’d met since I’d gained my freedom.
“Join us, Leonidas,” he called again. “The wine is terrible, but the company is fine.”
The drunken slur held a cultured note it was trying to hide, which at last told me where I’d heard it before. It was not a voice that should be shouting anywhere but on the Palatine Hill, in an enclosed domus with twenty servants and twice that number of guards surrounding him.
The speaker, a large man cloaked in drab brown, worn boots on his feet, lounged on a stool at the end of a corner table. The three men with him, elbows on the boards as they enjoyed cups of wine, were locals, well known to this establishment.
I understood why they didn’t recognize their drinking partner. While his image appeared on many coins, these particular freedmen weren’t likely to see anything of higher value than an as. Also, a profile with a laurel wreath stamped on a coin did not always look like the person it was meant to represent.
The man’s scraggly whiskers hid a pudgy chin, and his reddish-brown hair had been darkened and flattened with oil. Nero, the princeps of all Rome, grinned at me from the shadows, knowing full well I was aware of who he was.
Nero liked to occasionally slip away from his home on the Palatine, much of which was under construction as he sought to connect the domii of Augustus, Tiberius, and his own into one continuous, airy villa. He would slum in the Subura or drink in popinas like this one before retreating to his hill. Or he’d simply walk the streets, enjoying the sensation of being thought an ordinary citizen.
I spied none of Nero’s praetorian guard but they must have followed him. Despite his desire to blend in, I doubted the prestigious guards would allow anything to actually happen to him.
“The great Leonidas will spurn us, will he?” The princeps half rose from his stool and thrust a wine cup at me. “Now he’s a freedman, he’s above it all?”
Nero’s eyes held a dangerous light. He was drunk, and though in the garb of a pleb, he could summon men to kill me on the spot. The hard look that accompanied his grin told me he expected me to play along with his ruse.
I had nothing to lose by pretending Nero was simply another customer, so I shrugged. “I don’t always drink with strangers.”
Nero burst out laughing, his nod telling me he approved of my riposte.
“No one is a stranger with you, Leonidas.” Nero rose all the way to his feet, shoving the cup at me once more. “We know every bout, every win you’ve ever made. You’ve never lost, have you?”
“A few times.” I grasped the wine and sank to the stool one of the regulars pulled out for me. I’d lost twice, in fact. The first time, I’d been spared by the retiring gladiator in his last match. The second time I’d survived by a hairsbreadth, which had made me realize I couldn’t afford any more mistakes.
The man who’d drawn out the stool—Blasius, I remembered his name was—showed broken teeth in a grin. “I saw those first fights. You never looked back.”
Nero plopped into his seat, his face mottled with drink. “A gladiator can’t afford to look behind him. He’d be stuck in the gut if he did.”
The other men laughed, and I acknowledged the paltry joke with a faint smile.
I hoped I wouldn’t be expected to regale the table with details of all my matches, most of which I wanted to forget. I was spared by Blasius, who drew a bag from the belt on his tunic.
“A game?” he suggested.
The table had a game board scratched into it, in the grid pattern for Latrunculi. I saw no box of counters waiting, though, and knew Blasius had something more basic in mind.
Blasius poured four dice into his palm, rough-hewn cubes of bone. While these dice had six sides, the spots for two and five were absent, which meant he wanted to play some rounds of tali.
I was no stranger to games of tali or tesserae. Time not training in the ludus could become tedious, and we’d turned to dice to pass the days. Aemil, our lanista, had at first tried to ban our gaming altogether, but he never could. He reluctantly allowed us to play but forbade us to gamble, though we did not always obey that rule.
I preferred dice to boardgames because dicing was based on pure chance. Boardgames, on the other hand, took more skill. I was better at thinking on my feet than strategizing, so I was usually the loser at Latrunculi, a game that required a steady head and careful planning.
“Four for Caesar?” Blasius suggested.
Nero started, but Blasius’s innocent stare indicated he had no idea who he was speaking to. Four for Caesar was the street name for a game of chance Augustus had been reputed to favor. Players threw a set of four dice until one got the Venus throw—every dice turned up a different number—meaning he’d won whatever money was on the table.
