Arius shrugged.

“Such a dear boy.” Gallus reached out and stroked Arius’s arm. His plump fingers pinched hard, and his black peppercorn eyes locked onto Arius’s with bright curiosity.

Arius reached out, picked up the tallow candle beside him, and calmly poured a stream of hot wax onto the soft manicured hand.

Gallus snatched his burned fingers away. “We really will have to do something about your manners,” he sighed. “Good night, then. Dear boy.”

As soon as the door thudded shut, Arius picked up the wine jug and drank off every drop. Letting the jug fall, he dropped his head back against the stones. The room wasn’t spinning anymore. Not enough wine. He closed his eyes.

He hadn’t meant to fight. He’d meant what he’d told Gallus, standing in the dim passage underneath the arena, hearing the roars of the crowd and the screams of the wounded men and the whimpers of the dying animals. But the sword had been placed in his hand, and he’d gone out with the others in the brisk group battle that served to whet the crowd’s appetite for the solo bouts, and he’d seen the African he’d been paired to fight . . . and the black demon had uncoiled from its self-devouring circles in his brain and roared joyously down the straight and simple path of murder.

Then suddenly he had been standing blinking in the sunlight with another man’s blood on his face and cheers pouring down on his head like a swarm of bees. Just thinking about those cheers brought an icy sweat. The arena. That hellish arena. It spoiled his luck every time. Even slaughtering its guards had failed to get him killed.

After that savage beating seven months ago, he had awakened in bed. Not a soft bed; Gallus didn’t waste luxuries on half-dead slaves. Dragging himself painfully into the light, he heard for the first time Gallus’s voice: high, modulated, reeking of the slums.

“Can you hear me, boy? Nod if you understand. Good. What’s your name?”

Hoarsely he croaked it out.

Gallus tittered. “Oh, that’s absurd. A Briton, aren’t you? You barbarians always have impossible names. Well, it won’t do. We’ll call you Arius. A bit like Aries, the god of war. Quite catchy, yes, we can do something with that.

“Now. I’ve bought you, and paid a pretty price, too, for a half-dead troublemaker. Yes, I know exactly why you were sentenced to the arena. You were part of a chain gang making repairs on the Colosseum, until you strangled a guard with his own whip. Very foolish, dear boy. Whatever were you thinking?” Gallus snapped for his little slave boy with the tray of sweetmeats. “Well, then”—eating busily—“you can tell me for starts how you ended up working a chain gang in the Colosseum.”

“Salt mines,” Arius forced out through swollen lips. “In Trinovantia. Then Gaul.”

“Dear me. And how long have you been working in those sinkholes?”

Arius shrugged. Twelve years? He wasn’t sure.