Quite correct, I thought. Men who want to die usually do, and Fortune’s smile on gladiators is notoriously fickle. But . . .

I watched Arius stride through the forum, seeing the icy rigidity of his shoulders, the iron grip of the fingers clasped at the small of his back, the fierce impassive gaze he turned on the lanista who waddled complacent and perspiring at his side. Thin ice over savagery—a potent brew, and the fans lapped at it deliriously. The ice never broke, but stories persisted of the men he’d killed in street brawls, the taverns he’d wrecked in drunken rages, the fellow fighters he’d slain in sparring practice, and hopeful crowds turned up daily outside the Mars Street training courtyard in hopes of seeing it for themselves.

Yes. While he lived, while he lasted, he’d rise to the top.

“What’s the news in Rome?” Lepida wrote to me after a careless description of Tivoli’s cool winds and soothing rains, her success at local parties, the Tivoli girls she put to shame. I wrote back an inventive account of Arius’s carousing, naming each and every fabled beauty who’d reportedly offered her services free of charge, and volunteering my personal opinion that he’d sampled them all.

“My, aren’t you talkative,” she wrote back snappishly. “Well, you’d better start delivering these right away, one per week. And don’t think I won’t know if you conveniently lose them.”

“These” turned out to be a packet of letters: prewritten on expensive paper, sealed and scented, and addressed to “Arrius the Gladiator” in Lepida’s none-too-literate hand. Dutifully I took one and made my way to Mars Street.

“Oh yes,” Gallus purred. “Lady Lepida’s maid—you have a delivery from your mistress? These noble ladies and their plotting! Never fear, I’ll leave you in privacy.” He disappeared, leaving me alone with the Barbarian.

For a moment we just looked at each other. “I have a letter from my mistress,” I said crisply.

“I can’t read,” he shrugged. “Only fight.”

“I’ve been charged to read it to you.” I cleared my throat, retrieving the letter and breaking the seal. “ ‘My dear Arrius,’ ” I read, feeling my cheeks flush. “ ‘How horibly dull it is up here in Tivoli with no games. I so much look forward to the gladitorial shows when I get back. I’ve perswaded my father to give you a prime spot. I do hope you haven’t forgoten all about me. Lepida Pollia.’ ”

I folded the letter up. “Reply?”

“None.” He was leaning up against the wall, arms folded across his wide chest, gazing out the window.

“She won’t like that,” I said, and noticed incongruously how a scar behind his ear interrupted the line of his russet hair.

No answer. I curtsied, turned—

“Thought I saw you at the Golden Cockerel last week.”

“Yes. The taverner likes me to sing.”

I saw Arius there the following night, drinking. Deaf to me.

Another letter the following week. “No reply,” he said.

“All right.”