Miserable, in the middle of such glory? No one would ever believe it.

Three

LEPIDA

BEAUTY is fate’s gift—and every time I looked in my mirror, I knew Fortuna loved me.

I dressed carefully: lilac silk to set off my black hair, a chunk of amethyst on each hand to showcase slender fingers, strands of amethysts on silver wire emphasizing the length of my neck. Lovely—and then I had to ruin the effect with a hideous brown cloak over the top, and that long-faced, blank-eyed Thea at my back.

“I’m not carrying that.” I wrinkled my nose at the basket she held out to me.

“Slave girls carry baskets on the way to the forum, Lady.”

I took it grudgingly, looking in the mirror again. At least no one would recognize the beautiful Lady Lepida Pollia when she went incognito to the gladiator barracks. “Get behind me,” I hissed at Thea as she fell into step at my side.

“Slave girls on the way to the forum don’t walk behind each other,” Thea said, impassive. “They walk in pairs.”

That gawky sunburned slut never smiled at me, but I always felt the smile lurking, just the same. I sniffed and hurried ahead, away from the rows of gracious marble villas and toward the seedier district on the edge of the Subura where the gladiator schools were. Even a warm summer day couldn’t make Mars Street pretty.

A perfumed slave boy tried to leave me waiting in the anteroom, but I gestured to Thea and she tossed him a copper that got me admitted. No one kept Lepida Pollia waiting. I was shown into a narrow room with a writing desk, and behind it the fat lanista in midtirade.

“—abusing your followers? Hurling wine cups at powerful fans, say, when they beg for souvenir locks of your hair? Or pitching drunken young patricians into the Tiber when they challenge you to a match?”

Arius sat on a wall bench with a jug of wine in one hand, head thrown back. He drank off a swallow with his eyes closed, and I drew in a breath at the sight of his arms. Rough, brown, muscular, scarred—

Gallus still hadn’t seen me. “I’m not averse to giving you your head, dear boy. A little money of your own, perhaps. Roaming privileges in the evenings. But only if you behave yourself, and—”

I cleared my throat. Gallus gave an irritable glance. “Have you been sent with a gift, girl? Put it over there.”

“I’m Lady Lepida Pollia,” I said, sweeping my hood back in a gesture that showed off my rings. “And perhaps I have come with a gift. We’ll see.”

I stole a glance at the Barbarian, but he took another swallow of wine without looking at me. Too dazzled, of course. Gallus bounded to his feet at once, bowing over my hand, offering me a chair, gesturing a slave boy forward to take my cloak. His eyes flicked past me, looking for my father, then looked back again with greater interest.