Arius laid the torch at Hercules’ still feet: a pyre for a hero. Hercules would have liked that. He went up and down the hall, collecting more torches from their brackets, and piled them around the shield like a bier.

He turned away just as the dry wood of the floor began to kindle. He took off blindly, shivering, stumbling, rebounding off the walls. The halls were oddly empty—but then he’d never been inside the Gate of Death before. Maybe death was empty. Even so, any minute now the Emperor’s Praetorians would come and put a sword through his gut. Any minute now—he stumbled around a corner, bounced off a scurrying slave carrying a pail of old meat for the lions, avoided a pair of guards, and ran down another corridor.

An orange blur rebounded off him. “Careful, there!”

His eyes focused. The orange blur resolved itself into a plump fair-haired woman in a flame silk stola, a dirty child slung over each hip. She regarded him sternly. “Listen,” she said. “You haven’t seen us.”

“What?”

She beckoned behind her. “Come along.” A stream of slaves passed, bearing filthy, big-eyed children on their hips or leading them by the hand. He counted more than thirty.

“What the—”

“You haven’t seen us,” she repeated, waving slaves and children past. “I’ll pay you to forget. Same as I paid everyone else. You haven’t seen us.”

“I’m a dead man anyway.” His body felt like lead. “Better get out quick. There’s fire.”

“Fire?” She sniffed for smoke; felt the stone wall hesitantly. “Where?”

“Back there.” Waving over his shoulder. “The hall where they drag the corpses.”

“What? Who are you?”

“Barbarian,” he said, weary.

“Arius the Barbarian? I thought you looked familiar. That commotion I just heard up there in the arena—that wouldn’t have anything to do with you, would it?”

“Sort of.”

She gave him a shrewd look. “Are you on the run?”

“No.” He spoke patiently. “I’m dead.”

“You look alive to me.” She sniffed the air again. “You know, I do smell smoke. Here, grab this child.”

Arius grabbed. It was easier to obey. He felt little hands leech around his neck, and followed the orange gown up the dark passage. “Who you?” he slurred around a stone tongue.

“Lady Flavia Domitilla. The children are heretics, or at least their parents are. Christians and Jews sentenced to be thrown to the lions. I am arranging otherwise. Are you listening? Do as I say, and you’ll get out, too.”

The Emperor’s niece. Arius supposed muzzily that that was why they weren’t meeting any arena guards in the passages. An Emperor’s niece could bribe people like that to stay out of the way . . . Slaves looked askance at them, hastening past with armloads of weapons or long rakes for the dead, but she calmly tossed coins at them and kept going.

The smell of smoke was much stronger now. The next pair of slaves didn’t even give them a glance, just hastened back shouting for buckets.