“Barbarian indeed,” she sniffed, and bustled off. Rainwater had gathered in the hole left by a missing stone between my feet, and I restlessly kicked at the puddle. Another roar went up from the great arena behind me, and I wondered if I should just become a gladiator again. At least the sentence wouldn’t be twenty-five years. There weren’t many gladiators who lasted as long as two years, much less twenty-five. A short life, but no questions about it—as a gladiator, you knew where you were. Fight or die.

Nothing simple about life now. Years ahead of me, and no idea what to do with them… I fingered the little amulet on its leather lace about my neck. Just a simple brass medallion of Mars, the Roman god of war; the kind you find at any vendor’s stall ten for a copper. My father had given it to me the day I left for Rome. “You should have a proper Roman god to look after you,” he said dubiously, “if you’re going back to that hellhole.”

“Did Mars keep you safe?” I’d asked. “All those fights in the Colosseum—”

“Something did,” he shrugged, and looped the amulet around my neck. The medallion had a stern, scowling, helmeted face on it—Mars looked like a humorless bugger. I rubbed a thumb over the stern visage and looked up at the sky. “Any hints?” I called hopefully. “Gladiator? Legionary? Anything?”

A drop of rain fell on my neck, and the skies opened. I sat there getting wet, trying to work out if it was an omen.

“Fighting, Vix?” The steward eyed me with disapproval when I returned dripping to the house. “A guard with a black eye, it reflects badly on the master. Never mind, pack your things.”

“Pack?” I swayed, tired and wet and still more than a little drunk.

“Senator Norbanus is going to Baiae to join Lady Calpurnia. We leave tomorrow. You’ll be needed to help with the journey—”

“What an admirable black eye,” Senator Norbanus remarked mildly in the morning. “Here, take these scrolls and load them into the litter. Pliny, hmm, I’d better take him. Some Martial, some Cato—can’t do without Catullus—”

A jolting journey in an ox-drawn palanquin. Baiae. I’d never been there. Pretty little town. White marble, blue water, big houses. Women in towels, trotting back and forth from the famous sulfur baths. More patricians here than anything else. Even the prostitutes on the street corners in their saffron wigs looked uppity.