You have never been locked into the cell where you sleep, but when Pete closes the door, he latches it from the outside. He doesn't leave you with a torch, so you're left almost fully in shadow, the only light trickling in from the corridor through the small window in your door.
You feel your way to the corner where you sleep and sit on your blanket. The rough weave catches under your fingernails. Your fingertips have traced the inverse of that weave imprinted in pale skin, flushed pink across prominent shoulder blades.
Moments march past you like soldiers into battle while you sit in the darkness. Periodically, footsteps travel up or down the corridor outside your cell. Their sound is the only thing that punctures your stupor. Images of Myka's soft throat cycle through your mind: how it feels against your lips. How it looks under your blade. How it tastes under your tongue. How it looks under your blade.
The air feels full of sand as you breathe it in, an increasingly heavy weight settling deep in your chest.
You don't know how much time passes before the door rattles a little as the lock is lifted, and then your space is flooded with light from the corridor. You raise your hands to shield your eyes from the glare, and see Claudia standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame.
"It's not that bright," Claudia says.
"Yes, well, I've been in the dark for some time."
"Yeah, shouldn't you have a torch in here?" Claudia asks, shaking her head. She takes a step toward you before you can answer and extends a hand for you to grasp. "Come on."
You grasp her wrist as she grasps yours, and she pulls you to your feet.
"Where are we going?" You smooth your hands over the front of your tunic, brushing some of the dust and sand away.
Claudia shrugs, then cocks her head to one side. "There's work to be done, and Leena's not used to doing it on her own anymore. You've got chores, H.G."
She turns and walks out into the corridor, and you fall into step behind her. Your head spins with a thousand questions, tangled in indecipherable knots. One finally wrestles itself free: "Why didn't Leena come and get me herself?" you ask.
Claudia's mouth tightens a little. "Domina asked me to do it."
"Leena's too busy, perhaps?" you say, even though it's not a logical explanation—if Leena were to busy to fetch you, she would also be too busy to have the message relayed through Myka or Claudia.
Claudia's shoulders sag a little. She stops walking and turns to face you. "Look, H.G.," she says, "Not to brag or anything, but I'm a lot smarter than anyone around here gives me credit for. I've noticed what's been going on between Myka and you. She's been, you know, happier these past few weeks than I've ever seen her, and I've been her hand-servant for three years. Given the timing, it wasn't hard for me to put two and two together and figure out that her happiness had something to do with you."
Your eyes drop to the floor, somewhere to the left of your feet.
"So when she got all weird today, I figured it had to do with you. Then when she told me to come and let you out instead of doing it herself—well, I knew. Am I wrong?"
Your arms fold across your stomach as though they can keep the pieces of you from flying apart. You shake your head, no.
Claudia nods once, decisively. "Okay. So, she told me to bring you to Leena, so I'm bringing you to Leena." She shrugs, then turns and resumes her walk down the corridor.
You take a deep breath to follow her, but "Claudia" comes out of your lips instead. She stops, turns back to face you. Your fingertips fit into the dips between your ribs, tucked under your arms.
She cocks an eyebrow at you, expectantly.
Your mouth opens and closes a few times, seeking words. "How is she?" you finally ask. "Is she all right?"
Claudia shakes her head and looks down, one hand rubbing over the back of her neck. "I don't know. Maybe? Not really? She came back from training yesterday dirtier than I've ever seen her, and then asked me to leave her alone in her room for awhile. When I went back to check on her later, she hadn't really moved. Then she went to the bath but she asked me not to come with her. And, I mean, helping with the whole bathing thing is part of my job, so… " The girl shrugs and crosses her arms over her chest, her posture mimicking yours.
A small, sad smile quirks one corner of your mouth. "You care about her, don't you."
Her eyes flash up to yours, hard and burning. "Don't you? And why shouldn't I?"
"She's a Roman, and you're from Gaul. She's a master, and you're a slave. She does what she wants, and you do what she orders." Answering her second question is the easiest way to evade the first.
The girl's eyes fall closed for a long moment. When they snap open again, she grabs you by the wrist and pulls you down the corridor and into the darkness of an unoccupied cell. She turns to face you and her eyes meet yours through the shadow, without hesitation. They are old and wise as an owl's, despite her young face.
When she speaks, it's in the tongue of her homeland: "You can understand me if I speak my own language, yes?" she asks. You raise your eyebrows. Slaves rarely speak to one another in their own language—it raises suspicion among the Romans. You have always spoken with Claudia in Latin.
"As well as you can understand mine," you reply. Your languages are cousins, though far from the same. You have heard variants of her language from different slaves since you've been in Rome, though, and you suspect that she has heard variants of yours.
She nods. "I was born free, you know. Like you."
You nod.
"I was twelve years old when the Romans attacked my town. They killed my father and captured my mother and me. We were sold to a slave trader and then purchased together to work as seamstresses, making clothing. It was dark and vile and we slept on the floor in the same space where we worked."
You think of the darkness of your own cell, that you just left.
"My mother took ill," she continues, "But no doctor was sent for her. She died while I was working and I—I still don't know what they did with her body."
You search her eyes for signs of anger, but all you can tell is that she might be blinking a little more than usual. Maybe.
"I was devastated. I was lonely and terrified and I got so lost in my grief that working became almost impossible. I'd mess up my stitches almost every day. The Dominus would punish me with a strap to the palms and that made it even harder to work because my hands hurt so much." She rubs her hands together, in front of her, absently.
"He finally gave up and sold me. The Dominus bought me to work in the kitchen. I had never done it before. My first day, I tripped and spilled a pot of stew in the dining area. The Domina—not Lady Myka, but her mother—was furious. She yelled at me, threatened to sell me into a far worse place if I couldn't do the job properly. Then the head cook yelled at me, too, for all the work she'd have to start over.
"I just—I completely broke down that night. I snuck out of the kitchen into the dining room and cried for everything—for my mother, myself, the home I still missed. I thought everyone was asleep but she heard me. And then I thought she'd yell at me for waking her, but she didn't. She brought me into her room and gave me a rag for my nose and asked me why I was crying. And she probably just wanted me to say something simple, like 'I miss my mother,' or whatever, but somehow I ended up telling her the whole story. And she just listened. She listened to the whole thing, and she looked me straight in the eye while I talked."
You can picture this: Myka's focused gaze, her green eyes turning down a little at the outer edges, palms resting on her knees.
"When I was finished, she told me she was sorry about my mother. It was the first time anyone said that to me, and I could tell that—that she meant it. And then she said it sounded like I could use a friend, which was lucky because she could use one, too, and it was time she had her own hand-maiden, instead of sharing with her mother. So I became her hand-maiden. And she's done right by me, as best she could. When I became sad, those first few months, she was patient and sometimes she would even hold me and let me cry. I have a pillow and blankets for sleeping, and she—she even tried to get me a bed but her father forbade it. When I'm sick, I don't work, and she brings me a doctor when I need it. She tells me about her life and asks me about mine. She taught me to read and write the Roman language. She even—when she found out I don't know my birthday, we picked a day together. Every year she gives me a gift and some coin and the day off."
You pinch the bridge of your nose with your fingers, and tell yourself the pressure you feel there isn't real, is nothing. "That's all very nice," you say, "But she's still the Domina, and you're still the slave. She makes the orders and you follow them."
Claudia looks down, shakes her head, and looks back up at you. "I know that. I never forget it. But that's the world we live in, isn't it? Here's the thing: I really think she hates slavery. I really do. I had heard that there were some Romans like that, before, but—just a the other week, she came to her room all angry and said she wished we lived in a world where people weren't treated as chattel, neither women from fathers to husbands, nor slaves from master to master. She grabbed me by the hand and said, 'I hope you know I would free you in a second if I could.' And then she said—and this is what really gets me—she said, 'And I hope we could still be friends.'"
"You couldn't, though," you say. "Even if you were manumitted, you could never be friends with an aristocrat like her."
"She's an aristocrat," Claudia says, indignantly. "She can be friends with whoever she wants. She's my friend now."
"I wish I had your good faith," you murmur, toward the ground.
"I don't know why you don't," she replies, almost angrily, reaching out to grab your wrists. "Do you remember when we treated your back with acetum?"
Images flash through your mind of Myka's warm fingers stroking your forearm before pinning your wrists to the ground while the burning, stinging, acrid substance was applied to your wounds.
"Yes," you say, "Somewhat."
"That was the same day you spat in her face. Do you remember that?"
Your eyes close involuntarily. You do. Surprisingly vividly, given your state at the time. "I think so," you say.
"You spat in her face and she still insisted on helping us to treat you with the acetum. She wouldn't let us find someone else to do it. You were kicking and fighting us every step of the way, screaming from the pain, and she stayed." Claudia shakes her head again. "As far as I can tell, she's never treated you like a slave."
She's right, when you think about it. And you realize you've never thought about it before. The only times she has ever referred to your status have been when she has been trying to protect you—from her father's punishment, from life in a cell in the ludus, or from her, when she feared she may have been abusing her power over you.
Just when you thought you couldn't feel any worse, the pit of your stomach drops out from inside you and you think you might be sick.
Claudia's eyes widen. She reaches out and grabs your arms, "Hey. Hey," she says, in Latin, again. "It's okay. Look. I don't know what happened, but I'm sure she'll get over it and things will… they'll be fine."
Your damp eyes meet hers. "I doubt it, Claudia. I thank you for your kind words, but—some mistakes shouldn't be forgiven."
\\
Day after day, you expect Artie, or Pete, or the Dominus, to find you where you're working, grab you by the arm, and shove you unceremoniously into the Gladiators' quarters without even a good luck.
It never happens, though. In truth, your day-to-day activities remain much unchanged from… before. You clean, you launder, you mend gladiators' pads and armor. There is plenty of work to keep both you and Leena busy, and you can't imagine how she ever did it on her own, before.
"The gladiators dealt with dirty pads a lot more often," she says, smiling, when you ask her. She never asks you why she sees more of you now than she used to, or why the Domina never seems to come around anymore. Sometimes, though, you catch her eyes boring into you, like she can see the core of you, pulsing under your skin. Her eyes, in those moments, are touched with sadness, and something that might be pity if you chose to acknowledge it as such.
The Latrunculi board and pieces still live in the corner of your cell. Claudia still visits you, regularly, and sometimes you play. Your hands tend to tremble as you move the pieces, but if she notices, she is kind enough not to say anything.
You do see Myka, occasionally, but only from afar. She still trains with Pete almost every day. A few days after the incident, you sneak away from your laundry, down the corridor to the yard, and stand in the shadows to watch. Her fluttering, agile movements have given way to aggressive, forceful ones. Her blade meets Pete's with a loud, crashing noise every time, her battering offenses driving him backward from their rage more than their finesse. The clumsiness of Pete's movements, compared to how you've seen him before, leads you to believe that he's retreating purposefully, giving her this victory, this feeling of strength.
When they reach the far end of the yard and pivot back, Pete catches sight of you, in your hiding place. He leaps back, quickly, out of range of Myka's blade, and raises a hand to signal her to stop. Then turns and points his blade toward your hiding place. "You," he says, with acridity that could sever your head from your body.
Myka turns, then, and spots you there. Your eyes meet for a fraction of an instant before she looks away and you retreat, helplessly, back down the corridor.
You avoid the armory and the yard when you know she's training, after that.
\\
You begin to wonder if the Dominus has forgotten about you, about your existence and your fate. He rarely comes into the ludus himself, preferring, instead, to trust Artie with the oversight of the facility.
You have seen him and heard his voice once or twice, but as far as you know, he has never seen you. Whenever you hear him in the ludus, you do your best to duck into a cell or to hide in the kitchen, where you know he won't see you.
This time, though, when you hear his voice, you are in the armory and he is approaching from the corridor that leads into the ludus.
"Our Myka does love to spend time down here, training in—what is it, my love? Swords?— with Pete, one of our trainers. But she'll give that up after the wedding, won't you."
"If that's what my husband wishes." Her voice, demurely uttering words that make your gut clench and your throat close for so many reasons you can't begin to parse them.
"Well, it's hardly the most ladylike of pastimes, but—"
Oh, gods.
It's the voice. It's his voice. The voice you hate most in the world.
He's still talking, but you're not listening anymore to anything but the approaching sound of footsteps. The only ways out of the armory are into the ludus or into the yard, and you're sure they must be planning to walk through the armory into the yard, where the gladiators are training.
You look down at the basket full of clean padding that you are putting away, and then you look around, frantically. The room is broad and well-lit; there are no dark corners and no furnishings besides a handful of half-empty weapons racks that will offer little cover. You have nowhere—truly, nowhere—to hide.
Briefly, you contemplate the weapons around you. There is a bow and arrows you could use. Also a trident.
You shove those thoughts away.
The footsteps echo closer. You inhale deeply and resign yourself to continuing your work and hoping that they will walk through without acknowledging you. If you keep your head down and turned away, perhaps, if there is any mercy in the world, he will not recognize you.
"This is the armory," says the Dominus. "And if you'll follow me this way—"
"Warren." The footsteps stop. "That slave…"
You freeze where you are, bent over your basket.
"Servus," the Dominus says. "You will stand in the presence of your masters."
Breath fights its way from your lungs, and your heart rattles your entire body. Obediently, you set the pads down, and stand.
The Dominus is looking at you, puzzled and without recognition. Two other faces in the room recognize you all too well.
There's MacPherson, eyes wide, body trembling in rage. And on his arm, wearing the most ornate dress you've seen her wear and with her hair curled and fashioned elaborately on the back of her head, is Myka, who stares at you until your gaze meets hers, and then she looks down, and you do, too.
She hasn't lost weight, you don't think, but she somehow looks more gaunt, more tired, more shadowed, regardless.
Behind them stand two man-servants whom you don't recognize.
"What in hell, Warren?" MacPherson explodes. "I gave you that bitch for one reason only, and you couldn't honor it? If I'd known you were just going to make a domestic of her, I would have kept her as one of my whores."
You stiffen at the word.
"This is the one you gave me, James?" the Dominus asks. "My manager was supposed to tell me if she healed."
"It's been months, Warren! You didn't think she would have healed by now?"
"I'm terribly sorry, old friend. To be honest, I thought she'd probably died from the wounds and Artie had just taken care of it for me. I'll see to it that he's punished—"
"It was me," Myka says, quietly. "I'm sorry. Leena needed the help and so I suggested the new slave might be more useful that way. I authorized it."
You keep your gaze downcast through the moment of silence that follows Myka's pronouncement.
"Myka," the Dominus finally says. "Your interference with the slaves needs to stop. You're too soft and full of pity and you don't understand that slaves are not Romans and they're slaves for a reason."
"I'm sorry, Father."
You glance up, through your eyelashes, in time to see MacPherson pat her hand gently where it rests on his arm. "Not to worry, dear," he says, "you'll quickly learn that in my home, the slaves know their place."
"As they should here, as well," the Dominus says thickly. With a snap of the fingers he summons one of his man-servants. "Shackle that slave in a cell. You can use those irons over there." He points to a few sets hanging on a wall. Then, to MacPherson: "I'll see to it she's taken care of immediately."
You don't resist as the servant fastens the cuffs around your wrists and ankles and begins to lead you away. There's no fight left in you. The clanging noise of the chains echoes between the stone walls as you walk.
"The last cell on the right before the stairs." Myka's voice calls after you, just before you turn the corner out of sight. "That one's hers."
"Myka!" her father growls. "For gods' sake, none of them are hers."
The servant, however, is kind enough to return you to the cell where you've been living. He doesn't speak, but he offers you a slight, apologetic smile as he locks your leg irons to the hook on the wall. He brings you a torch, too, before he closes the door.
\\
Your shackles are short but you find a way to twist so that you can sit on the ground with your back against the adjacent wall, ankles awkwardly crossed in front of you. The pressure of the metal against your sandal straps begins to hurt, so you untie them and manage to pull the leather out from inside the cuffs so you can sit barefoot.
The metal digs directly into your anklebone, now, but you can't do anything about that. It feels cold, no matter how long it presses against your skin. Your entire body is cold, shivering.
You don't mind that cold, or that pain. It proves you aren't completely numb.
You stare at the door. You will it to stay closed, keeping you safe in this room. You will it to open, freeing you from the tense anticipation of your fate.
When you finally hear the latch rattle on the outside of your door, you scramble to pull your sandals back on, tying them loosely below the chains. You are halfway to your feet when the door opens, and—
Well. You didn't expect this.
"Myka," you say. Your throat closes around the dozens, hundreds, thousands of things you want to say to her, from What are you doing here to I'm sorry to You should stay away from me to You were right to I love you. "Myka," you say, again, as you straighten.
She closes the door behind her. She's still wearing the ornate green dress from earlier. Now that she's away from MacPherson, you can let yourself acknowledge, breathlessly, how beautiful she looks.
When she turns to face you, her gaze travels slowly from the chains at your ankles to the ones at your wrists before coming to rest on your face. Again, you're struck by how defeated she seems; how unbelievably tired. She stays on the opposite side of the room from you, where you can't reach her. She crouches to pick up your blanket and tosses it to you across the room.
"I shouldn't let you call me that," she says. "You heard my father today."
Your eyes squeeze shut and you press the heels of your hands into them before you nod, once. Your fingers comb through your hair, pushing it back from your face and holding it there
"You're going to marry him," you say, desperately.
"Yes."
"You don't love him."
"I don't see how that's any of your business," she spits.
You drop your hands, weighted heavy with your chains and let yourself face her. "No," you say. "Of course not."
When you look at her, she has her fingertips pressed to her own eyes, and then she looks upward, through the ceiling, toward the sky.
"My family is embarrassed to have an unwed daughter of my age. And I need to get away from… from here," she says. Her gaze levels with you. "Don't worry. I won't bring you with me."
Her words strike like a physical blow. Your arms wrap themselves across your abdomen, chain stretched taut below your forearms, and you pray to whoever's listening that you can keep yourself together, keep all your pieces from crumbling to dust between your fingers.
"Why have you come here, Domina?" you whisper.
She exhales harshly and takes a half-step toward you. "I need to know what happened, Helena," she says, firmly. "I don't know why you haven't… I need you to stop protecting me, and stop being afraid of me, and just tell me what happened to make James hate you so much."
So he's 'James' now.
"Domina," you choke, "It's not—"
"No, Helena," she says, firmly. "You're going to tell me. You owe me that much."
Your eyes slam shut, and you fumble your way back to the floor. Your hands come to rest flat-palmed on your abdomen, and you nod.
"All right," you say. "I'll tell you."
