LITMIR.BIZ

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“Die? But he was fighting so well when we left.”

      “Sure, he had the battle spirit on him. The rest surrendered, but he took on the whole century with his bare fists. Ah, if any of us here were bards, his fame would be sung and his story told to all the tribes for all time.”

      I’m a bard, I almost said. But I wasn’t. I was a failed first year student turned whore and slave. If any bard knew my story, he would be silent for shame.

      The men showed us to a cell. My charioteer lay on his side in the straw, his hands shackled, his face turned to the wall. His breathing was shallow and labored.

      “Has no one tended him?” asked Bone. “Owners usually take better care of their investments.”

      “Not when the purple thinks they’re dangerous,” said one of the men.

      I knelt beside the charioteer. As soon as I touched him, I could feel that he was in critical condition, bleeding on the inside.

      “Is he, Red?” Succula whispered. “Is he your father?”

      I shook my head, because I couldn’t speak. It wasn’t Bran, thank the gods, but it was one of my combrogos, one of my people, big and brave as Bran had been, but much younger. And he was dying, dying in pain in a Roman prison.

      “Can you do anything for him?” asked one of the Gauls.

      “She’s a whore not a healer,” said Bone. “I’m afraid he’s past needing her services.”

      “I think you’re wrong, man. She’s one of ours. Look how she’s feeling of him, like her hands have eyes. She’s had training. She has the healer’s touch. I’ll swear it.”

      He was right. I called it the fire of the stars; it started in my crown like a swarm of honey bees, burning through my body like strong drink, only sweeter and hotter, burning me clean as it went, burning in my hands, burning unbearably until I had learned what it was for. I followed the fire into the man’s body, found the places where the blood stopped and pooled instead of flowed. The fire poured from my hands—redirecting, mending, shoring up, restoring life and strength.

      “What if she is, then?” someone spoke bitterly. “What’s the use of his being saved just so someone can stick a blade between his ribs or hand him a cup of poison?”

      “Ssh,” said Berta. “Let her be. She must do what she can.”

      “So he’s a marked man,” said Bone. “What’s he done?”

      “It’s not what he’s done, it’s what they think he’ll do. Best not to speak of that, if you get my meaning.”

      No one did speak after that or if they did, I didn’t hear them. I was far away inside the warrior’s heart, which grew stronger and steadier. I breathed with him slower and deeper. At last I rose. He was out of pain; he would live. But I didn’t feel eased or happy. He might have planned this chance to die in battle, and now I had ruined it.

      Before we left, I described Bran to the other Gauls—for so they were; none of them came from Pretannia.

      “He was before my time in the pens,” said one man; he was older than I was, older than Siaborthe, more slightly built, with a curved scar on his face. “I remember hearing about him. One of the Silures, you say?”

      “King of the Silures.”

      The man shrugged. “King doesn’t mean much in the pens. It’s how a man carries himself. I heard that Bran was a fierce fighter but fair. Men trusted him. Purple doesn’t care for that.”

      “What does it matter to them?” I asked.

      “Name Spartacus mean anything to you?”

      There was an uneasy silence. All of us here were slaves, however well or badly off. All of us lived on that edge of rebellion and hopelessness.

      “Was Bran killed?” Without meaning to, I lowered my voice.

      “No one knows. At least I’ve never heard for certain. He just disappeared.”

      “He might be alive then?”

      “I’m sorry I don’t know more, lass. Your foster-father, was he?” he asked, gentleness overcoming the wariness by which he survived.

      I nodded. If I spoke, I’d weep. The pity I saw in his eyes was unbearable. Worse, I knew he felt shame for me, the foster-daughter of a free King, now a Roman whore in a filmy red toga. He was ashamed, too. We were both ashamed for staying alive at all, for in some degree choosing life as a slave over an honorable death. When did the moment come and go when we could have killed ourselves but didn’t? Or did it recur again and again? Poor Siaborthe. What had I done to him?

      “Come along, Red,” said Bone. “There’s nothing more for you here.”

      “When he wakes up, give him bread softened in wine, if you can,” I said over my shoulder to the Celt with the curved scar as we left the pens.

      Would I ever see a free Celt again?

      Berta and Succula walked with their arms around me. No one spoke as we made our way out of the pens, but the silence held a charge. It was Dido who finally confronted me, stopping our party just before we went out into the noise of the streets.

      “Red, I’m sorry. I can’t ignore what just happened in there. Something came into you or over you. I don’t know what. I mean that man was dying, and you brought him back to life.” She fixed me with her blackest gaze. “Who are you, Red? Why have you been hiding from us?”

      I returned her look as steadily as I could. I didn’t know how to answer her questions. Or maybe I didn’t want to.

      “I told you my story,” I said shortly.

      “Hmm,” said Dido, narrowing her eyes. “Then I guess your story ain’t over yet.”

      As we made our way through the streets, Dido’s words resounded in me. I thought I had lost my story, as I had lost my mothers, my child, my people, my gods, my love. But today some goddess had found me in a tacky Roman temple. The fire of the stars had come to me in a prison and healed a man through my hands. Lost. Found. Dido was right; the story wasn’t over. Maybe I would find my way again. Maybe, just maybe, I was on it.

      “Watch your step!” Dido called.

      A moment too late. Not everyone in Rome had plumbing.

CHAPTER SEVEN

       ENCOUNTER WITH THE ENEMY

      “We can forget about getting a litter now.” Bone held his nose. “I swear I can’t take you anywhere, Red.”

      And so my wish for a long walk was granted. I got to see extremes of poverty and wealth as we left the slums, where the plebeians tossed slops and stood in long lines for public baths, and began to climb the Palatine with its terraced gardens and sprawling palaces. Anecius had a particularly classy address on the Forum side of the hill not far from the Via Sacra.

      With her legendary skill for flouting the conventions and intimidating the members of her own class, Domitia Tertia had arranged for us to be received as guests at the front door. Without turning a hair at the sight of a bevy of bedraggled whores, the ab admissione (a slave title that translates roughly as the perfect butler) escorted us to a room furnished with couches. Here, he informed us, we could rest and dress for the evening’s festivities after enjoying the house’s private women’s baths. At the mention of the latter, he could not resist a pointed sniff.

      We

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