The ludus that will be my home now is on the other side of the city from my master’s house, past the amphitheatre and near the brothels and taverns. It smells worse than the marketplace out here, and the sounds of fighting and fucking are loud and boisterous even now, just past sunrise.
Over the noise of the drunk and the amorous comes the familiar, rhythmic thwack of wood smacking wood and the clank of metal on metal. Men shouting, grunting, swearing. The crack of a whip, the bark of a trainer.
A busy ludus.
The ludus of the lanista Drusus.
Gods, watch over me . . .
Armed guards stand outside the front gates of the ludus. Mixed blood, both of them, dark skin marred by scars and brands. They’re probably mongrels with ancestors from all corners of the Empire, Gaul to Carthage. Retired gladiators, maybe.
“What’s your business here?” one asks me, his accent thick and unusual.
I glance at one of my escorts. He nods sharply toward the two standing in front of the gate, so I turn to the guards again.
“I’ve come to speak with the Master Drusus.” The words are hot sand on my tongue. “To enlist as an auctoratus.”
“An auctoratus?” The other guard’s eyes dart back and forth between the two men flanking me. “What’s with them, then?”
“He owes our master a debt,” one of my escorts says quickly. “Magistrate’s approved him.” A hand between my shoulders shoves me forward, nearly impaling me on the two spears suddenly pointed at my guts.
I catch my balance and show my palms. The guards hesitate, then draw back their weapons.
“All right, then,” one says. “Come with me.”
He takes me through the gate and hands me off to another weathered foreigner. One of the trainers, if the wooden sword and leather flagellum on his belt are any sign. He gruffly orders the guard back to his post and then leads me across the training yard.
The inside of the ludus isn’t unlike the one where I spent my previous fighting years. Barracks along two sides of a sand-covered training yard. Men sparring. Trainers, some sparring, some watching with flagellum at the ready in case anyone gets out of line.
Heads turn as I’m escorted across the yard. Gladiators are bought and sold all the time, moving from city to city depending on where the auction’s wind blows them, so it’s no surprise I’ve seen a few of their faces before. Some more than others.
One of the trainers watching a pair of fighters—novices, both of them, says their footwork—fought at Circus Maximus a long time ago. I’d recognize those scars and brands anywhere.
Next to that pair of fighters, a lethally quick-footed Egyptian lad spars with a Roman twice his size. The Egyptian sold at an auction earlier this year for a small fortune. We’d all wondered who was willing to pay so much for a single gladiator. Now I know.
I also recognize the bald Parthian by the water trough. He fought for another lanista in Rome until last summer, and I figured he must have died when I didn’t see him at the Ludi Augustales. But he must have been sold to Drusus, and when he sees me, he narrows his eyes and folds his massive arms over the thick scar I left on his chest two summers ago.
Any of these men, any one of them, may be the one who’s bedding the Lady Laurea. By the Furies, when I learn the name of the fighter who’s the reason I’m here, there might well be nothing left for Master Calvus to punish.
We leave the training yard and follow a corridor—much cooler than outside, thank the gods—past the barracks and out into a flat, empty courtyard. On the other side of the courtyard, in the breezeway along the lower floor of a limestone house, we stop outside a closed door. Beyond the door, there’s an argument going on. A loud one.
“You can’t be serious!” shouts an exasperated man.
“Your master wants a fight to the death?” comes the cool response, a calm voice that contrasts sharply with the gruff, gravelly one of the man with whom he argues. Drusus, I assume, and I swear I hear the smirk in his voice as he adds, “Then he’ll pay more.”
“But . . . but . . . Jupiter’s balls, you price-gouging flesh peddler. Gladiators die in the arena all the time!”
“It’s unfortunate.” I can almost see the man shrugging indifferently. “Some live, some die. But a guaranteed fight to the death with one of my gladiators is triple the price of a standard match.”
“Triple? That’s theft!”
“If I wanted to steal your money, I would just steal it instead of engaging in these tiresome negotiations.” Drusus sounds amused, but his voice is still chiseled from cold stone. “Gladiators are expensive, you know. Even the barbarians have to be trained and fed. If you want a guarantee of a dead man at the end of the fight, you’ll damn well pay for the live man I’ll have to purchase and train if mine is the one who loses.”
“And if your man wins?”
“Then the people attending the fight are entertained,” Drusus says, “and the gods are duly honored. The price stands.”
The other man is quiet for a moment, and then releases a sharp, aggravated huff. “Very well. I will let my master know, and if he’s willing to pay your absurd prices, I will return to negotiate a contract.”
“I look forward to it.”
The door flies open. A gray-haired, red-faced man storms out, clutching a tablet to his chest and grumbling to himself.
“Wait here.” My escort steps into the room. A moment later, he re-emerges and sends me in. When the door closes behind me, I’m alone.
No. Not alone. My escort is gone, but I am certainly not alone.
The room is dark except for weak sunlight that squeezes past the single, shuttered window. An oil lamp on a table offers just enough light for me to make out the faces staring silently back at me. A scribe in the corner, propping a tablet on his knee and holding a stylus. Against the back wall stand two immense men who look like they could, without much effort, break any man in the training yard in half.
And sitting in front of the two armed men, leaning on the armrest of a large, ornate chair with a wine cup cradled between his slender fingers, is Drusus.
I gulp.
So this is the mythical Drusus, then. Some legends are wildly exaggerated, but the ones about the man called Drusus are not. Slight in the shoulders and sharp in the eyes, and though he’s seated, I can tell he’s easily a head shorter than me. And just as the legends say, he’s young. He’s no longer a boy, but I can’t imagine it’s been too many summers since he first had to shave the smooth skin across his sharp jaw and cheekbones. I never thought it was possible to consider a lanista beautiful, but it’s hard not to think of Drusus that way, especially compared to all the other lanistae, the grizzled, graying men with bulging bellies and rotting teeth.
Youth and size aside, the legends certainly don’t falsify or even begin to exaggerate the man’s unnerving presence. He’s the lowest of the low, a reviled fleshmonger, but he sits straight and tall with an arrogance about him, like he’s ready to receive the Emperor himself. The Emperor, who’d be wise to bow and scrape at Drusus’s feet.
I’d bow and scrape if I could move. As it is, I can barely breathe. Perhaps it’s my fear of being discovered, but I swear the blue eyes staring back at me can see right through to any lie or truth I might try to hide. Maybe it’s the truths I’m hiding, or the stories I’ve heard about him, but Drusus intimidates me just as all the stories said he would.
The pair of massive bodyguards makes him appear even smaller than he already is, but two elephants don’t make a lion any less dangerous. I’d sooner take on both of them in the arena than face him alone.
Always he wears that leather breastplate, they say. I’ve heard he never ventures outside his own chambers without it, not even when the sun is merciless. And he never leaves the ludus without both the breastplate and his bodyguards.
Wise, I suppose. With or without his reputation, a lanista can’t be too careful. There are stories back in Rome about one who used to strut about with nothing on above his belt. No one likes to be anywhere close to a lanista, so he figured there was no need to protect himself. Didn’t even have guards with him because the gods and his reputation were all he needed.