In Sinuessa en Valle, Laeta is planning her own rebellion.
"You will report to me," the man says.
No. Not just a man.
Spartacus. The gladiator.
Bringer of rain.
Spartacus is speaking to her. Laeta looks up, defiant.
"You will ensure that slaves receive fair portion of grain," Spartacus says, that voice commanding obedience. It strikes out like a blunt sword, breaking all of their necks. You have no right, Laeta wants to scream. You have no right to speak with such authority! Instead she watches stoically as Spartacus and the monsters who surround him terrorise the townspeople who cower and cry behind her, blocking the way out. Somewhere behind her, Laeta's husband seeps his blood out into the dirt, but she stops that thought from rising in her mind, shoving it away.
"You will report to me." The voice anchors her attention like a firm hand gripping her jaw. "Do you understand?"
Die, Laeta yearns to say. All of you.
"As you wish," she says instead.
"The people need food!" Laeta snaps. Two pairs of hands, like iron bands, keep her from lunging forward. The snarling German and his green-eyed pet hiss at her to stay still. The atmosphere in this room - the tablinum where her husband had sat late nights, calculating, writing - is stifling, the doors and windows open to the heat of Sinuessa's summer.
"We have spared all we can," barks the Gaul, Crixus. He hulks, feral-faced, behind Spartacus, his hand angled to his side, where the sword curves down. "We are under no obligation to put food in the mouths of Roman shits."
Laeta watches the patience drain from Spartacus' face, his gaze hardening.
"That is enough, Crixus," he says, the quiet words shot through with command. "The woman directs her words to me."
The Gaul freezes with stone-faced affront, then stands down like a massive hound. Laeta watches him move away, the fear that turns her knees to water easing.
But not by much.
"Speak," Spartacus says. He is talking to her. He is not harsh. "You wanted audience. Now speak."
Laeta moves forward, tugging at the grips that hold her. A silent command from Spartacus sees the digging fingers dropped from her arms. Laeta rubs the sore flesh, stepping in front of the warrior slave.
"The slaves are starving," Laeta says simply. The word - slave - barely makes its way out of her mouth. "We need more than the scraps your rebels deem fit to give us!"
She is angry now, and Laeta's anger is a dangerous thing in this room of tightly sealed hostility. Any careless movement will see the precariously balanced lid blown off the boiling pot of their fury and hatred. She gauges the sudden rise in tension by the stiffening of necks and the hovering of hands above sword belts. The blond-haired Celt - the smirking one they call Gannicus - narrows his eyes in annoyance, but Laeta does not see the same outrage, the same manic desire for blood, as she reads in the eyes of the Gaul and his woman.
Spartacus is diplomatic. "We barely have enough stores to feed our own," he says simply, "not after your husband destroyed what we had with pitch."
"You seek to blame us for this misfortune?" Laeta demands. In her opinion, her husband had done right; but Laeta had not counted on the rebels blocking their exit from the city.
Spartacus' nostrils flare, a subtle sign of irritation. "I blame your husband for staging foolish attempt to delay the inevitable; this city was lost to Rome the moment we stepped inside it - your aedile's actions did nothing but increase suffering in a way easily avoided."
Laeta can do nothing but stare. He expects me to stomach these lies?
Too much.
"You ask me to believe that, should the stores have remained uncontaminated, you would deign to give my people equal share of bread?" Laeta asks, her tone dead.
Spartacus does not flinch. "Yes."
"I do not believe you."
"I do not need to prove my honour to you!" Spartacus answers, his voice as sharp as a whip. Laeta takes an involuntary step back, but the man's explosive temper is bottled tightly away so swiftly that she thinks she almost imagined it. "I gave you my word. That should be enough."
Laeta is silent.
"Your Romans will get what we can spare," he says with the finality of an executioner, "but no more."
The sting of rising tears infuriates Laeta, but she tamps them down and nods, her mouth a flat, bloodless line.
Her two stinking guards spin her around like a child's spinning top, marching her away.
"Rest assured, Laeta," Spartacus calls out as her jailers turn her around the corner like a puppet, "it will be a fair share."
Laeta almost believes him.
Ulpianus will lose his fingers.
It was a fight, his wife had said, with another starving Roman - they had made him fight for a scrap of bread like an animal in a betting ring, with a sword.
As if Ulpianus knows how to use a sword!
Laeta looks at the blackened wound and fights down her sickness. The rage is harder to control. Ulpianus binds the wound and moans, but the blood seeps through the bandages, the cloth stained with infection. Laeta finds half-rotten bulbs of garlic and smashes them into a pulp; Ulpianus' screams when she spreads the mixture onto the stubs of his finers stab into her ears like thin, sharp knives.
She passes a bag of bread, full of crusts and half-chewed loaves, to Ulpianus, telling him firmly to share the food with the rest of the slaves in the courtyard.
When she leaves him with his wife, he is crying.
Laeta decides at that moment to get them out of the city.
She will take them far away from Sinuessa.
To Crassus' camp.
The name Marcus Licinius Crassus has travelled on secret undercurrents into the city. Laeta hears it murmured by slaves, and traded like stolen goods among the rebels. If any happen to be nearby, Spartacus' lackeys beat them if they hear it, shrieking at the slaves who sit nearby to shut their mouths if they value their lives.
Which convinces Laeta it is true.
It is the best news Laeta has ever heard from Rome. Spartacus' inevitable clash with the legions is the perfect opportunity for her to spirit the slaves out of Sinuessa.
They keep the new slaves chained to the walls of the villas they once owned, chained by their hands and feet like convicts to be shipped off to the bleak deserts of the east. Laeta remains unshackled, the only one of them who can still roam the city freely, and she has become an ambassador to Spartacus, haggling for the lives of her people.
There is quiet power in that position.
As Laeta washes Ulpianus' dark blood from her hands, she unfolds a map of the city in her mind, searching the streets and alleyways with her eyes closed. She has done this before, studied Ennius' maps of the city and the empire. She knows almost every crevice of Sinuessa, has lived here since birth. Laeta knows that there are tunnels under the city, long, broad passageways designed to dump Sinuessa's waste into the sea. The engineers have recently reinforced the drains leading to the coast north of Sinuessa, opening up to the flat plains and roads that spread out from the city like a triumphal parade to Rome.
If Crassus is clever - and Laeta knows that he is, a man with a lurking, alien genius - he will set his camp up there. This is where Laeta will take them.
But she has to hide them first.
Where?
"I had thought to find you here," says a voice from the entrance to the stables.
The unexpected noise makes her gasp in manic fear, expecting attack, and then she curses herself for the impulse.
"You frightened me," Laeta says, recovering. She stands up straight as Spartacus walks inside.
"Apologies," the man says, genuine. He has removed the heavy breastplate and comes before her in a tunic, his short sword nearly hidden in its folds. Laeta wonders if this is done deliberately, intended for her benefit. "It was not my intention to cause fright." If he feels offence at her lack of deference, he does not show it.
Laeta nods, uncertain.
"Is there something you wanted?" Laeta prods, wanting him to go. His proximity is unwelcome, and it makes Laeta nervous. Whenever he stands close to her and speaks, the only thing Laeta can remember is the spear entering her husband's body, thrust there by Spartacus himself. That scene drowns everything.
"Only to ensure that bread reached intended recipient," Spartacus replies, mirroring her diplomatic tone, brusque and business-like. "I take it that your allotment of the food was given to you?" He smiles then, a small peace offering, unable to maintain the distance she needs from him.
Laeta ignores the gesture. "It was," Laeta says. "What was left of it."
The smile slips off Spartacus' face. "What do you mean?"
"I mean exactly what you think," Laeta retorts. "There was not enough to spare. Your brutes likely left the bag half-empty after they-"
"I will not have you accusing my men," Spartacus warns, striding purposefully forward.
Laeta knows she is treading treacherous waters. She does not move back. "I have much to accuse them of," she says, grimacing with remembrance. They nearly took Ulpianus' hand!
"Laeta, if you have grievances against my men, you must tell me." She is surprised when he watches her levelly, waiting for her response with resolve in his gaze.
She finds it hard to begin. "Your men," she says, "they challenged one of the Romans, Ulpianus, fight in a contest for a crust of bread." Laeta's voice gains in strength as she relays the sordid details. "He is harmless! A merchant. His wife is pregnant."
Spartacus continues to watch her without speaking.
"She has not eaten in days."
When Spartacus responds, it is not with the words she had expected. "Who did this?" he asks. "Do you know their names?"
Laeta shakes her head. "I do not know," she answers, exasperated and truthful. "He only mentioned a woman. A German." The wild-eyed bitch, the Gaul's whore.
Spartacus sighs, his eyes closing. For a brief moment Laeta can almost see the weight of responsibility there, the reality of the thousands of men and women he must feed and lead into battle. She almost pities him, until she remembers the dark stickiness of Ennius' blood as it drained out of him, and the bodies that still littered the streets of the city.
He brought this upon himself. They all did.
"Spartacus, they nearly cut off his hand," Laeta pleads, desperate for justice, even as she winces with the involuntary use of his name.
His eyes flick up to hers, gleaming with something unreadable. "I will see this rectified," Spartacus replies. "It will not happen again."
"Thank you." Laeta is grateful.
He nods, turning to go. He pauses, considering. Then he speaks. "Be careful," he says. "It is not wise to roam the streets unattended. Even I cannot control my men at all times."
"I will heed advice given."
"Good."
He is at the stable gate before Laeta remembers.
"Wait!"
The man stops without turning back.
"You never told me what you wanted," Laeta says, urged to civility by his fairness.
He turns his head with a faint smile. "Only to ensure that my brusqueness had not caused offence."
At her confused expression, he continues. "This morning, when you came to me. It was not my intention to be so harsh."
Laeta is mute with surprise. "I...understand," she says, finally.
But Spartacus has disappeared into the darkness.
The stall where Laeta makes her bed is dirty, the floor littered with hay and reeking of mould and shit. Laeta clears a space in the corner and lies down, closing her eyes and her ears to the sounds of uproarious laughter and shameless fucking that fill the air around her, the endless orgy that roils through the city, on and on.
They take our wine and our food and our homes and we sit here and we let them.
Laeta wraps herself in her tattered clothes and burrows into the cold floor. It is better than sleeping in the villa. From the screams, Laeta guesses the gladiators have taken to raping the slaves at night. Laeta's own husband had never touched her against her will. With Spartacus' intervention, the gladiators have never done it either. They have pulled her hair and her clothes and rubbed up against her, leering, but Laeta always has sensed restraint, an invisible leash that keeps them from overstepping. She supposes she should be thankful, but Laeta feels only hate.
All of this is his fault. They took everything. They destroyed it all.
Laeta struggles against the discomfort of the hard ground, something painful and sharp, a raised ridge, digging into her back. She abandons her uncomfortable bed and sits up, clearing hay from her sleeping space. There is something metallic and bulging underneath her. She sweeps the area with her hands, angling her head down so that the weak light of the moon can illuminate the space. It is not enough: Laeta has to identify it by touch.
When she does, her fingers tracing the shape of the heavy metal thing, Laeta's heart stops.
Oh, gods. It can't be.
It is a handle. Desperate now, Laeta clambers up onto her nears and tugs on it with both hands. The slab of wood is heavy. Age and disuse have seen it nearly melded into the surrounding floor. Laeta puts all of her strength into the act of angling it out of the ground.
It rips free with the sound of creaking, splintering wood.
But it remains in one piece.
Under the door, a black, empty space gapes wide.
Thank the gods.
Sinuessa's streets choke with armed slaves. Laeta maneuvres the cobbled roads of the city with her head down. Her villa - not mine, not anymore - is by the west gate, near the sea. It comes into view as she passes under the awnings of the bakery. A glance inside reveals it to be empty, the tools and the ovens smashed. Arcs of blood had fountained onto the walls, sprayed from the sliced arteries of fleeing Romans.
Laeta walks on. She has no food to bring to Ulpianus and his wife today. Laeta does not have enough to feed herself herself; a smattering of old grain, scraped from the bottom of the horses' trough, sits in a cold lump in Laeta's empty stomach. It is the only food she has found in days. But she needs to see them, her fellow prisoners, desperately; any pretext will do. Laeta has news, and it could change their lives.
We could be free.
The entryway to the courtyard is guarded, grimy, hulking gladiators flanking its sides, glaring at her as she approaches.
"Who the fuck are you?" one of them growls, his dark skin rutted with scars. He leans forward, sniffing loudly, almost like an animal who is smelling her. The disgust makes Laeta's stomach clench, her skin prickling with revulsion.
"Laeta, the aedile's wife," she replies, steeling herself.
"Spartacus' new cunt," the other man roars, slapping his thigh as he laughs. Bloodshot blue eyes show in a mongrel glare under a tangle of dank black hair. He tugs sharply at the hemline of Laeta's dirt-stained dress, pulling it low over her breasts. "I think he would not mind sharing."
Laeta rips her clothing out of his hands, pulling it up to cover her chest. "I have permission to visit the captured Romans," she lies, taking a gamble that could end her life. The fear makes her heart pound in an erratic drumbeat, the blood drumming in her temples. "Spartacus has commanded that I am not to be harmed. Move aside."
"The Roman bitch would give orders?" the scarred one spits, low-voiced and dangerous.
"No," Laeta says, her voice catching almost imperceptibly. She forces herself not to drop her eyes, to show weakness. "But Spartacus would."
The men share a glance, deliberating silently, and then stand aside to let her through, deciding that she is not worth their hides. They stand too close, pressing in on her, and the feel of the blue-eyed man's thick fingers burrowing into the flesh of her buttocks makes Laeta bite her tongue against the hot sickness that surges inside her. You are lucky, that grip seems to say. Their laughter follows her inside the courtyard like the barking of blood-crazed hounds.
Inside, the smouldering space is sticky with the salt of the sea. Sheets of cooler air from the water rush into the courtyard, but fail to flush it free of the smell of blood and excrement and death. It is a stink that seems to sink in the mouth and skin, and Laeta has to push herself to walk through it, arms outstretched, like she is parting a curtain. Ulpianus slumps, limp-bodied, against a stone wall in the far side of the bustling area, his frantic wife slapping the sides of his face to wake him up.
She looks up as Laeta approaches, tears making tracks through the grime on her cheeks. When Laeta glances down, she sees that the shackles have rubbed raw marks on her wrists and ankles. She is alarmingly thin. Laeta thinks of the child. Julia had told her, when Ulpianus had fainted from the pain, that she had not felt movement in days.
I am so sorry.
"Thank the gods!" Julia rasps. Her lips are covered in pale, cracked skin, flaking from dehydration. "Please, Laeta! You must help! He will not awaken!"
Laeta crouches down. "Calm yourself," she croons, pressing a hand to Julia's face under the guise of comfort, checking discreetly for fever. The flesh is hot and slick. "It will do no good for mother or child for you to worry so."
"He will die, Laeta," the woman sobs. "I know it."
"He will not die," Laeta promises. Do not let him die, she beseeches, bitter and angry. He should not have to die.
Laeta, burying her uncertainty, shifts closer to Ulpianus, who murmurs and whines in his shallow sleep like a child. Laeta lifts his mangled hand, unwrapping the bandage and checking the wound. It has partially healed into the skin, and when Laeta removes it, it tears away with layers of flesh with it. It has nearly soaked through with pus and fluids; the stench is unbearable. Julia turns away and gags.
"It may have to be removed," she says grimly, "Unless I can treat it soon." The fingers are swollen and tinged black, the meat succumbing to infection. She touches a blackened fingertip, her mouth twisting in horror when the nail drops away from its bed, exposing the dead flesh.
"Can you not do anything?" Julia says, crying openly now. Trails of mucus run in threads from her nose and mouth.
"I am not a healer," Laeta answers, overcome with regret and pity and disgust. Then she lowers her voice, busying her hands with the task of tearing strips of fabric from her skirt and retying Ulpianus' hand. "But, if I can get you elsewhere, I might be able to render aid."
Julia's face has frozen as still as a death mask. "W-what?"
"Lower voice and pay heed to words," Laeta hisses. "I have made plans to take you from here. There are ways to enter and leave the city unobstructed." Laeta wraps the torn flesh with careful, clumsy movements. "But you must remain silent! Say nothing, not to husband nor to fellow prisoner. I have not yet acquired necessary tools to free you from your bonds. But I will come soon, Julia."
The hope blooming in Julia's eyes brings on a brief burst of panic.
"Listen to me! You must not attract unwanted attention through suspicious change of attitude. Remain as despondent and as struck with terror as ever. We will soon be free of these savages."
"I hear and obey," the woman whispers fiercely. "Oh, Laeta. You must not waste thoughts worrying about us. We will not betray you. This I swear by the gods."
Laeta nods. Their fingers, when she looks down, have laced tightly together. She gives Julia's hand a brief squeeze, then lets go. The rebels do not like slaves to spend too much time talking, in case they spark rebellions and plan murder the way they did themselves while under their masters, so Laeta leans toward Ulpianus and pats him awake, murmuring soft words of comfort.
"L-laeta...?" the man rasps, dry-mouthed and hoarse with pain.
"You must not speak," Laeta replies. "Drink." She puts an old wine skin to his mouth, and dribbles water between the parted lips. He sucks the water gratefully, spluttering in his haste to force it down.
As she leaves, she catches Julia's eyes, gleaming with the knowledge of their plot.
Soon.
Laeta lingers in the narrow streets that surround the villa until sundown. The alleyways are empty except for urchins and whores. It is easy to hide behind corners and wait, watching the sky for the first faint sign of dusk.
Laeta knows what she must do.
The aedile's villa has become the hub of the rebellion. It is from this space that Spartacus engineers the rebellion that has ruined their lives; the same one that will end the lives of others before it is crushed. Closing her eyes, Laeta pictures the spread of the atrium, its walls and floor stripped of their finery and set up with tables and maps. She remembers the mounds of weapons and supplies that have filled the smaller spaces of the house, displacing the works of art and the beautiful furniture. It shames her that it hurts so much to lose these things, but it does.
Laeta hides behind an abandoned insula and angrily swipes at her eyes. The time for tears has gone.
She stalks these streets most nights, scouring the empty shops and houses for food and supplies. Most of the buildings have been sacked and burnt, but sometimes, there a things that the rebels missed: hard crusts of bread under baskets or in the grey ash of the kilns, dried meat that has gone miraculously unseen. Laeta shares these things with the captured Romans.
These habits are the reason Laeta knows that, at sunset, there is a change of the guards who stand sentinel by the front gate. It is a small, precious window of time - potentially deadly - and Laeta will use it. She has lived in this house for years; it has secrets that no one except her could know, hidden compartments and passages, things concealed from the eyes.
But she needs to unlock the iron chains. She needs a key, and if not a key, then a thin blade or needle, to unpick the heavy locks. Her husband had controlled the slave markets and presided over sales; Laeta knows he must have had a key.
She simply does not know where it is.
But she will find it. She must.
The fading light makes her shadow dance and flicker on the flat road as Laeta slinks forward. The guards, the same ones who touched and swore at her hours before, leave their posts and disappear from sight. The entrance spreads like a black mouth in the wake, beckoning and ominous.
Laeta, covering her hair with her torn robe, steps swiftly over the threshold, darting across the courtyard on silent feet. The small door to the servants' quarter, hidden behind a screen of ivy, crumpled and dry in the fierce heat, is slightly open when Laeta finds it. She slips inside, closing it behind her. The air is meniscal and cool, the stone corridor as soundless as a tomb.
Laeta treads in the darkness. She has removed her sandals and holds them clutched tight in her hands. Vague sounds emanate from the centre of the house: the atrium echoes with drunken laughter and the crash of pottery breaking. There is the splash of good wine fanning across the floors; the slap of bodies coming together, punctuated by moans and music. Laeta grimaces with loathing, pressing herself closer to the wall. The rough stone is cold against her back: ahead, the soft glow of torchlight illuminates the way.
A turn in the dimness, and Laeta enters a walkway. At the end of it, a short gallery juts like a thumb perpendicular to the walkway; it is empty of its statues and its colourful mosaics. This part of the house is dangerous. Laeta's shoulder scrapes against bare plaster walls; to her left side, the hortia spreads in a carpet of luxurious green, a wide space with access from every part of the house. And no place to hide. If Laeta is caught, it will mean death.
At the mouth of the gallery, at the end of this stretch of wall, Laeta's rooms open to the west side of the house, facing the sea. They are unoccupied. This part of the house stews in a suspicious silence, vacant of life or even the sound of breathing. It makes the skin at the back of Laeta's neck prickle, but she resolutely ignores it.
It is too late to turn back.
She scans behind her once. Then, she darts inside.
A pang of sadness assails her. It is still familiar, this place. It has been cleared of the intimate details of Laeta's life, but, still, it is the same. The walls, the windows that open to Sinuessa's calm sea. The smooth stone floors, tiled with expensive marble. Laeta, aching with the loss of everything, pauses and listens, alert for danger. The rooms are bare of furniture except for a broad table spread with tablets and maps, its surface littered with papers scratched with slanted writing. Unlike the other parts of the house she has seen, there is no clutter anywhere here; everything is clean and ordered with an almost military precision.
It is with mounting horror that Laeta realises these quarters have been taken by Spartacus. There are weapons on the tables; swords and daggers, leather armour, a belt with small, slender knives hanging from it. There is clothing folded and laid on the bed. The scent of sweat and wine lies under the tang of salt from the ocean breeze. There is no sign that anyone else has ever lived here.
He has invaded the most sacred place in her life.
I slept with Ennius here. We were married here...
Laeta pushes these thoughts aside with self-loathing. She concentrates instead on the room. Everything from her former life has been moved, with the exception of the bed and a small writing table, moved into a distant corner of the room. Laeta runs to it, pulling its drawers open and searching through the contents, finding useless papers. The second drawer is unnaturally heavy, and Laeta uses her nails to disengage the false bottom. It works.
A leather pouch, full of gold, sits there, untouched. There are rolls of parchment, tied with scarlet thread, in a pyramid; deeds to land and properties, and the schematics of a shipping vessel that Ennius had designed himself, in hopes of entering trade. It will never happen now, but Laeta cannot afford to dwell on the sorrow that is slowly expanding in her chest. She needs to keep looking.
She almost empties the drawer looking for a key, but none is to be found. The aedile's key, which could unlock any set of shackles in the city, and which Ennius had never let out of his sight, is nowhere. For a moment, the disappointment is as total as the promise of impending death.
Then Laeta pushes it away. There can be no stopping.
Not now.
Mechanically, Laeta takes the bag of gold. Underneath it, she finds a slender dagger, and she takes that too. Her husband had used it to open letters, to slice the seals cleanly away; she reasons that they could use it to pick the locks on the gates and chains, that it might work. It is a smooth, cool weight on her palm, comforting if only for the slim promise of protection that it brings. Laeta tucks the knife and the purse away under the folds of her skirt, and drops the slat of wood back into place.
She has found what she can. Now, she must leave.
Laeta glances around, listening. It is dark in the room now, the light bleeding from the sky. Outside, the torches dance like disembodied spirits in the growing darkness. Laeta's heart beats an erratic rhythm, fear sliding like a cold finger down her spine.
In the stillness that is gathering outside her door, she hears footsteps, echoing in the corridor.
Panic sweeps down, engulfing her. Laeta stills herself, measuring her breaths. Behind her, hidden by a gauzy screen, is a small alcove – the bathing room that Ennius had built for her. Its interior is murky, its pool of water a smooth black mirror. In the shadows that web its columns, Laeta would be invisible. The footsteps grow louder as she stands, thinking, caught like a rabbit in a trap. Laeta sees a shadow touch the threshold. She disappears into the therma, folding her limbs like a limp doll's in a dim corner.
Someone enters the room.
Laeta hears a weary exhalation of breath, and the solid thud of something being dropped onto a table. A sword? A scream rises in Laeta's throat at the thought of it. She catches a knuckle between her teeth, biting it, the pain sharpening her focus. Do not make a sound. She closes her eyes, breathes, and listens again.
There is the rustle of leather as someone moves into the room, sandals slapping the floor. She hears the unseen man – it is a man, she can smell his sweat and hear the deep sigh of his breath – unbuckle his armor and throw it aside. She hears the whisper of cloth being pulled off of his body. And she hears the hiss of a taper being lit, and then sees the soft golden glow of a lamp illuminate the room.
The silent man comes closer.
Laeta realizes he is walking toward the thermae. She barely has time to hold her breath before the curtains are pulled away and he enters.
Even in the dimness, she knows that it is Spartacus.
He is alone. Shocked, Laeta notices that he is naked. In his hand he grips a small, flickering lamp, smelling of sweet oil. He puts it on the ledge of the pool, and bends to test the water. Laeta stares, unable to look away. In the meniscal half-light of the thermae, his skin is amber, burnished bronze. When he moves, the muscles flex and ripple under it, lean and hard. She sees his shoulders, the tapering lines of his waist, and his buttocks. He is as sleek as a water animal. Heat washes over her, stifling her breath. Her knuckle is still caught in the trap of her teeth. Great Mother, help me!
If he sees her, it is all finished.
Spartacus moves in the shadows, stepping into the pool. His breathing deepens as he relaxes, sighing in pleasure. Laeta watches as he disappears under the water, staying there with his eyes closed. She feels the sharp press of the knife against her thigh, and thinks that she could kill him, slip quietly behind him in the dark and draw its sharp edge against his throat. He deserves it; all of them, the rabid gladiators of Capua, do.
Laeta steps forward, silent as a ghost. The knife is in her hand. The weight of it is comforting in her grip. Spartacus emerges from the water; Laeta stalks her way behind him. He drifts to the edge of the pool and reclines there, his eyes closed. The line of his neck is stretched taut under Laeta's gaze, showing sinew and skin, a small hollow at its base.
The blood would pulse into the water quickly, draining his life away with it.
It would be over in minutes. A quiet end to a long and brutal nightmare.
It is an easy decision to make.
Breathing, trying to quell the yawning fear that opened within her the day Spartacus brought the city to its knees, the fear that has only grown deeper and wider in the intervening weeks and months, Laeta steps away from the column that hides her and moves slowly out onto the thermae's wet floor. In one hand, the hand that is not white-knuckled around the hilt of her dagger, she clutches her hem to keep it from sweeping across the tiles and giving her away.
Slowly. One step, and then one more. Another.
Another.
Spartacus brings palmfuls of water to his chest and neck to wash them, his eyes still closed. He thinks himself alone. He does not see me, hear me…
The knowledge steadies her.
Soon, she is almost standing over him, and she lowers herself carefully into a crouch, as silent and determined as a Fury. She leans forward, stretches out her arm…
"Do it."
The world stops.
Laeta almost drops the knife, every muscle and every limb tensed to run. Against the urge to flee, there is the mounting urge to stab forward blindly, hit any part of him that she can before she is caught and raped and murdered.
Laeta does neither.
"That's why you're here, isn't it?" he asks, sounding genuinely curious. She cannot see his face, but somehow, she knows he is smiling. "To kill me?"
"Actually, it isn't," Laeta replies, surprised by how unafraid she is. The inevitability of her death, the bloody reality of it lingering just beyond the edge of her vision, has stripped her of her fear. She lowers the knife, the point hitting the tiles with a sharp clink.
He turns to face her, suddenly, eyebrows raised in question. "No? I'm alone and unarmed. It's the perfect opportunity. Kill Spartacus, Bringer of Rain. End the rebellion."
"I am not stupid," she says. "I did not come here to kill you. I would not be here at all if I did not think I could get in and out without being seen. Do you not think I know what you and your pack of animals do to people like me, to women like me?" She gestures to herself wildly, to her bruised and battered body, her long and unkempt hair, her clothes which were now too loose and too ragged to cover her properly. Spartacus' eyes linger on her hand where it sits over her breasts, on the bare skin under her collarbones. She thinks she sees heat in his eyes, there and gone in a moment. She tries to ignore it. "I was not expecting you to be here."
It is the most she has ever said to him.
He gives no answer to that. Instead, he appraises her with something like respect in his gaze.
She is breathing hard, angry now, or sorrowful. It feels like both, and nothing at all.
"Well?" she bursts out. "Are you going to kill me?"
There is a flash of his teeth in the lamplight, gone in less than a moment.
"No," he says simply, ignoring the knife. Then: "Join me."
He pushes himself away from the edge of the bath, making room for her. The water shimmers in the warm, golden light.
"What?"
"Join me," Spartacus repeats. It is not a request.
I do not want to. The words gather on her tongue, and then they unravel. Her wishes have not made a difference since the gladiators took the city; they would not matter now.
He watches her expectantly. He is enjoying her uncertainty and hesitation, the discomfort that twinges across her face as she imagines herself in the water with him, close enough to touch, close enough for their breaths to mingle. It amuses him.
It infuriates her.
Laeta lowers herself into the pool, fully clothed. She ignores the hand that Spartacus has offered her, to help her down. The water pulls at her, soaking her dress, which sticks to her, moulding to her hips and navel. Sensing her fear, Spartacus swims to the opposite end of the pool. If it is meant as a gesture of good faith, it lost on her; her heart is pounding as loud as a hammer in her ears.
When she is submerged, Laeta lifts her chin and makes herself to face him. She shivers as a subtle breeze breathes through the aperture in the ceiling. It is sensuous and terrifying, the fingertips on an unseen hand.
"Happy?" she asks.
"Yes," Spartacus answers, unfazed by the bite in her words.
She waits for him to continue. He doesn't. He merely looks at her. It is not the first time he has done it. She has caught him looking at her before, weighing her, reading her. It unsettles her, and she wonders what he sees. What he wants. It cannot be her body. She may have been beautiful once, but she is wasted now, her skin stretched thinly over her bones – her sharp clavicles, the spurs of her hips, her ladder-like ribs, all visible.
What do you seek?
…What do you see?
"I know you are planning to escape," he says into the fragile silence.
No. "Escape?" Laeta forces scorn into her voice. "How is escape even possible when you have turned this whole city into a prison?"
His smile withers, thinning to a tight line. "You have found the underground tunnels," he replies simply. "You are planning to lead the Roman slaves out of the city and make your way to Crassus' camp."
She blanches, bile rising to her throat. How can he know? How? I did not even know, and I was born in this city.
"You are wrong," she denies.
Spartacus moves closer, a threatening shape in the semi-darkness. "I think not." He waits for her to reply. When she says nothing, he continues, still eerily calm. "The entrance is in the stall where you sleep. It leads to the caves that line the bay. From there, it is a distance of less than half a day to the plains where Crassus has camped his legions."
"I do not know what you are talking about," she insists, hoping that he has missed the slight tremble in her voice, the momentary lapse in her confidence…but he is the Bringer of Rain, and misses nothing.
"I think you do." He is beside her now, less than an arm's length away. Laeta, if she wishes it, could put out a hand and meet his warm skin. "I have had the whole city scoured, Laeta. Did you think I would miss something so vital, something that could threaten our hold on this city?" Spartacus' voice is low, almost gentle, like he is explaining some immeasurably complicated problem to an idiot.
Laeta realizes, almost belatedly, that she has started crying.
Ulpianus. His wife. His child. All of them. In her mind, she sees the pile of bloodied limbs they will soon become.
They are dead, and she has killed them.
And all of this when the first of the blood that ran in their streets has yet to dry.
"What are you going to do now?" she demands. Her weeping makes this last attempt at boldness ridiculous. She is pathetic – she sees that now. She is a stupid, shattered, ruined woman who thought she could crawl away from her death unseen, taking the city's detritus, its remaining men and women and children, with her. Did she really think she could take them away from this place, set them free from it when it was so firmly in the grip of evil? They will go nowhere. They will stay, and die. The knowledge settles on Laeta like a weight, and she slumps backward until she is sitting in the water like a limp pile of rags, tears and mucus dribbling into her mouth.
He sits beside her, leaving her question unanswered. A part of Laeta knows that she would not have heard him even if he had responded.
"What will you do?" she begs, after a while. She is no longer crying, somehow managing to push the grief down long enough to form words.
He turns to her. In the water, one of his hands brushes against hers, his fingers tracing the curve of her wrist. It leaves a trail of heat in its wake. There is…something in his face as it meets hers, something regretful and almost tender.
"I will let you go," he replies. "All of you."
Laeta has misheard. She must have. "What?" she asks, incredulous.
He smiles. "I will let you go," he repeats, his voice softer, lower, as though he is offering her a secret, something private and dangerous that could only ever be known by the two of them. Laeta realizes, with dawning clarity, that he is.
"Why?" she demands, confused. He has no reason to extend this kindness to her, a Roman. "You owe us nothing."
"That is true," he admits. "I do not owe you anything. Rome took away…everything from me. From all of us. But I do not want your death on my hands, Laeta."
Why? She wants to ask. But, with a nameless stirring in her belly, Laeta realizes she knows the answer.
It's in the way he's looking at her in that moment, wanting to meet her eyes. He drifts closer to her through the still water, his breath misting on the damp skin of her neck.
"Because no matter what you think of me, I do not enjoy your suffering," he says. There is nothing in his words about the others, Laeta realizes. She knows with startling clarity that he is referring only to her. It makes her afraid, and it brings with it a slow, treacherous twist of desire.
It is mirrored in his eyes. They drift to rest on her lips, and he moves even closer.
Does she only imagine it, that faint current of self-reproach that weaves through his words? No. She doesn't think she does. It is there.
But it doesn't stop him from suddenly reaching out somewhere into the semi-darkness, and pulling back a hand clutched around something small, dark, and metallic. Without a word, he gives her a rusted black key, a key minute enough to hide in the palm of her hand, and smuggle out of the villa unseen. Ennius' key. The aedile's key.
She doesn't need to ask how he knew she wanted it, or that she'd come for it.
Those questions are pointless.
That key can unlock every manacle in Sinuessa, and the terror of rebellion with it.
She doubts it has left his sight since he took control of the city.
It doesn't matter whether it is accident or fate. It doesn't stop her from wanting to say, thank you.
You have saved us.
But no words pass between them. None need to, not anymore.
Laeta reaches up, and unknots the ties of her tattered slave's dress instead.
When he kisses her, eyes gleaming in the moonlight, Laeta lets him.
She leaves the villa under a dead sky, her lips burning. The streets of the city are deserted; there is a darkness this night so absolute, it is almost tangible. Alive.
The key is tucked into her undergarments, invisible to anyone who might care to spare a glance at a wasted slave girl hurrying home in the night.
She leaves through the front gate this time, a shawl wrapped loosely around her head and shoulders, and if the guards recognize her, they give no sign of it. Instead, they take one look at her swollen lips and tangled, wet hair, and laugh, taking her for a whore.
They are not entirely wrong, perhaps.
Curiously, the thought doesn't bring with it any guilt.
Perhaps, when they are free, she will remember this night, and rue it. Spartacus' passion, and her own. The feeling of him on her, in her.
She doubts it, somehow. It feels almost like completion, a fitting and proper end.
There is no room for regret.
This is the night of their salvation. They will be free.
Free.
Exhilarated, Laeta runs into Sinuessa's darkness.
It welcomes her like loving arms, like a door opened wide.