“So it’s true!” the guard spluttered. “You really are back.”
Ferox passed through the gate without response. He was not interested in entertaining everyone’s surprise that he’d returned. There were only two people here whose opinion he cared about, and he hoped they wouldn’t gloat too much at his return.
A gray-brown shadow darted in front of Ferox at ankle height. He stopped in his tracks. “Still alive, are you?” he said to the yellow-eyed cat.
Nyx put his ragged ears flat against his striped head and hissed, then ran away, disappearing into the dusk.
That was the welcome Ferox had anticipated from the ludus’s infamously ill-tempered resident cat.
A deep voice materialized from the gloom. “I could ask the same of you.”
Ferox glanced up to see the rangy form of Jason, leaning against the wall of the nearest building.
Unlike with Nyx, Ferox wasn’t sure what sort of reception to expect from Jason, one of his two remaining friends. After all, he hadn’t exactly upheld his promise to stay in touch after leaving the ludus a year and a half ago.
Jason slunk closer. “Lucullus said you were coming back. I said there was no way. He must have gotten you confused with another thick-headed, surly ex-gladiator.”
Ferox glowered at him, but the scowl on Jason’s face lasted for only another moment before splitting into a grin. Jason let out a ringing chuckle and punched Ferox in the shoulder. “Is it true he offered you a hundred thousand sestertii for three measly fights? Dis, that’s ridiculous. Come, let’s find your room. I doubt you remember the way after all this time.” He gave Ferox a good-natured eye-roll and beckoned him further into the ludus.
The complex was arranged as a cluster of buildings that surrounded a large open field used for training. A sturdy wall enclosed the ludus, meant to keep curious fans out and gladiators in, though veteran fighters were trusted to go about the city as they pleased during their free time. The buildings housed kitchens, storerooms, privies, a laundry, a dining hall, and barracks.
Alongside Jason, Ferox entered the long, narrow barracks building. It housed rows of doors that led to cell-like bedrooms. The doors latched from both the inside and the outside—though the outer locks were only used if a new gladiator was deemed an escape risk.
They reached his old room; despite Jason’s joke, Ferox did remember where it was. A wall lamp had been lit, which cast a flickering light over the sparse surroundings. The room was as small as Ferox recalled, barely wide enough for a man as tall as himself to stretch out his arms without brushing the walls on both sides. But the floor was swept clean, and the narrow bed bore fresh linens.
On that bed, a dark-haired woman sat cross-legged, swathed in a loose dress. Penthesilea, one of the few female gladiators in the city and the only one in Lucullus’s ludus, surveyed him with as much disdain as Nyx. “Welcome back, old man.”
“It’s good to see you too, Lea.” He was only a few years older than Jason and Lea, but for a gladiator, reaching the age of thirty made him practically ancient.
She narrowed her eyes at him, but he didn’t miss the twitch of her lips—a hastily suppressed smile. “Your room has some new graffiti, I’m afraid.” She beckoned to the wall next to his bed.
Ferox raised his eyebrows as he caught sight of the graffiti. The paint appeared suspiciously fresh, and the writing looked like Lea’s clumsy hand.
It took him a few moments to parse the uneven letters.Ferox the gladiator has the smallest cock in thecityempire.Beneath was an artful sketch of a burly, armored gladiator expertly fellating a monstrous disembodied penis.
“Your portfolio is expanding, I see,” Ferox said to Jason, who enjoyed sketching in his spare time.
Jason gave a self-satisfied grin. “It’s my finest work, no doubt.”
“Good luck getting a woman into your bed now,” Lea added with a smug head-tilt at the graffiti.
The most effort Ferox had previously expended to get a woman into his bed involved an exchange of coin, and somehow he didn’t think the average courtesan would be put off by some rude graffiti.
Before he could tell Lea as much, a throat cleared behind them. Lucullus stood in the doorway.
“I see you’ve found your chamber.” Lucullus glanced at the graffiti with an unamused frown.
Ferox stepped out to join Lucullus in the hallway, as the room was not big enough for four. As he did so, he noticed an unfamiliar young woman at Lucullus’s shoulder. Women were an uncommon sight within the walls of the ludus, except for servants, the occasional courtesan, and Penthesilea. This newcomer certainly wasn’t Lea, and he’d never known Lucullus to bring a woman to the ludus. But nor did she have the bearing of a servant.
In the dimness of the corridor, it was hard to see her face clearly, but Ferox could make out a messy braid of curly, wheat-colored hair that laid over her shoulder. A linen dress swathed her from shoulder to ankle, and her figure beneath it was small and delicate. He guessed she was in her early twenties, perhaps eight or ten years younger than himself.
Lucullus handed over a piece of papyrus, recalling Ferox’s attention from the woman he couldn’t place. “This records our agreement, and the terms of your three payments.”
Ferox took the paper and nodded. “Thank you.” He didn’t bother trying to read the clusters of words. If Lucullus said the paper recorded those things, Ferox believed him.
The woman’s eyes ran over him with brazen interest. Usually, female attention was couched behind a veneer of coyness. Thiswoman, however, examined him so thoroughly he felt as if her sharp gaze was burning straight through the worn fabric of his tunic.
He caught her gaze, expecting her to flinch in embarrassment at having been caught staring. Instead, she just smiled at him, her manner assured and utterly unabashed.
