Pollio was still droning on about how clever he had been to buy twenty tigers at a bargain price from India when the litter was forced to pull up short. A huge cart blocked the road, ironbound and padlocked, and a litter borne by six golden-haired Greeks. As we watched, a gate barred like a prison swung open and a team of men marched out. Armor gleamed beneath their purple cloaks as they climbed into the wagon, and their faces were somber under their helmets. Gladiators, on their way to the Colosseum.

“Gallus’s fighters.” Pollio twitched back the curtains for a better look, frowning. “Third-raters, all of them. Still, they make good bait for the lions. So would Gallus himself, if you ask me. That’s him in the litter.”

A fat man with a fringe of oiled curls around his forehead leaned out through the orange silk curtains to shout through the gates. “You’re holding us up, dear boy.”

Out through the gates of Gallus’s school strode a big man, russet-haired, a Gaul or a Briton. He wore heavy iron plates over his shins, a green kilt, an absurd helmet with green plumes. A mail sleeve protected his fighting arm, the leather straps passing over his unprotected chest and scarred back. His face was granite-still—and I knew him.

The slave. The one who had fought back in the games of the Emperor’s accession months ago. I remembered weeping a little for him, the same way I wept when the lions fell in the arena with spears through their great chests. I’d thought he was dead. Even after the Emperor decreed mercy, they’d had to drag him out on a hook like they did the dead lions. But he wasn’t dead. He was back: a gladiator.

“Hurry up, Arius,” the lanista called impatiently from the litter. “We’re blocking the road.”

He caught the side of the wagon and vaulted up. Arius. So that was his name.

For once, I was longing to see the games.

THE underground levels of the Colosseum hummed like the pipes of an aqueduct. Slaves rushed through the torch-lit passages, some with whetstones to sharpen the weapons, some with sharp sticks to prod the animals into a fury before they were released up into the arena, some with great rakes to scrape up the dead. Somewhere a lion screamed, or maybe a dying man.

“The main battle’s in two hours,” a steward barked at Gallus in greeting, eyes raking over the gladiators. “Keep them out of the way till then. Which one’s the Briton? He goes after the tigers finish off those prisoners.”

A few hissed words from Gallus, and Arius found himself shunted down a dark passage. Spring warmth never penetrated the bowels of the Colosseum; the passages were dank and cold. Fine clay dust filtered down, shaken loose by the vibrations of the cheers.

A pulley carried Arius to the upper levels; a slave led him to a gate and hastily shoved a sword and heavy shield at him. “Luck to you, gladiator.” Arius waited, rasping a mailed finger up and down the edge of the blade. Against the darkness he saw a wooden sword.