“I prefer to think of them as suitors, Dominus.” Having been a whore, and not so long ago, either, I knew the difference between a suitor and a client. Besides, I might not be able to choose the audiences I sang for, but I could at least choose the men who courted me, and it was something. Slaves have to make do with whatever choices life allows them. “What’s wrong with entertaining the occasional nice young officer?”

“Yes, but you only entertain them if they give you expensive presents.”

“I have a son to save for,” I shrugged.

“But that kind of thing can give a singer a bad name.” Sighing.

“You might be a slave, but that doesn’t mean you won’t want to marry someday.”

“I don’t ever want to marry.” The law didn’t recognize slave marriages. Husbands and wives could be separated when a master died, and never see each other again.

Larcius’s bright eyes saw through me. “What a cynic you are, child.”

“Yes, I am, Dominus.” I dropped a kiss on his plump hand, feeling a little ashamed of my occasional flash of resentment. So there might be times I didn’t want to sing for his friends, times I just wanted to curl up with a book or take my son for a walk like an ordinary girl. I wasn’t an ordinary girl, I was a slave—and a slave lucky enough to have a very kind master.

“Well, perhaps it’s best you don’t want to marry,” Larcius was saying. “I can’t think of a man anywhere who would marry you with that beastly child.”

“What’s he done now?” My son was five years old, and he was a horror. An absolute horror, and he looked just like . . . never mind.

Too late.

A mistake, thinking about Arius, though it wasn’t as bad as it used to be. Wasn’t like getting torn apart with white-hot pincers anymore; no, the pincers were cold now. Instead of tearing, they just . . . probed.

It was all the memories, I thought irritably as I bowed away from Larcius. The way they didn’t fade, not the least little bit. I could still remember the rough texture of his jaw. I could still remember his every scar, drawing my imaginary fingers over each puckered line. Arius kissing me, Arius bloody and shaken in the arena, Arius surprising me with his short deep-chested laugh. Arius, stamped into my bones.

In my early days on the waterfront, all I’d thought about was getting a message back to Rome, to my lover. “I am in Brundisium; come and take me away.” But I hadn’t had money in those days, not enough to send a letter. Later on, when I had money and sent a wild passionate letter on the Via Appia north, I had no response. Weeks of waiting, breathless and heartbroken. No response. Why had I been surprised? Arius couldn’t read. Gallus sifted all his mail, and he had no reason to pass on any letter of mine. I’d softened his prize gladiator, made him human and that much more likely to die. Gallus had probably chuckled over my letter and then torn it to scraps.